As soon as I found myself purged of the disease of unreasonable expectations, I find myself infected with another disease, of an all too real kind.
This past Tuesday, I noticed an inflammation in my tonsils. It was quite a surprise to see the swollen glands hanging in the back of my throat, since in the past the phenomenon has always been accompanied by a severe sore throat and trouble swallowing. I consulted with a nurse at the university health center, and at her suggestion have been pumping myself full of ibuprofen (for swelling) and cough suppressant/expectorant (for cough, obviously) and ceased smoking. The combination of remedies has not so much cured as it has prevented any aggravation of my symptoms.
As I'm sure most of you are aware, it is cold and flu season. Most of my friends and acquaintances have fallen ill periodically over the past two or three weeks. This afforded me the occasion to inform them that I had not been sick in almost three years. This, friends, is what we refer to as "karma," in the popular understanding of the word; an immediate reckoning for one's behaviors in this life. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the illness is in my throat, which is the same place from which the damning words issued.
On the other hand, because I also find that alcohol aggravates my throat, I have been enjoying a very calm and restful weekend. I should be taking more advantage of my abundant free time to make some headway in my senior work research, but after making my way to the library and grocery store yesterday, I felt no desire other than to lounge unimpressively in front of my computer watching South Park episodes online until I fell asleep. Perhaps my untaxing routine is the reason why I woke up at 7:30 this morning. Still, today I have real stuff to do, and will most likely spend another Saturday sober in my apartment, so I have time. Some time, anyway.
In other news, my birthday is in a month and a half. As a gift to myself, I bought a ticket to see the Books at the Miller Theater at Columbia University. The last time I saw the Books was at Webster Hall about two years ago, and I ate an entire eighth of mushrooms and had a wonderful mind-expanding, six-sensory adventure without moving five feet the whole time. I have been waiting a long time for them to come back to New York, and I feel like the universe has been dropping me clues... because I had to watch this film for class
And at 2:58, the little boy utters a sentence which is sampled in this song at 2:25:
AND
I had to watch the film Medea for the same class, the clip from which is actually included in the first scene of this video for this Books song:
Finally, a third instance of the Books popping up in the most unexpected place occurred Thursday evening. The school was hosting its monthly Coffeehouse Cabaret which I normally do not attend, but my friend was performing. As we were waiting for it to begin, the warm up music was several tracks from Lost and Safe, including "Be Good to Them Always". I hadn't heard their music played at that volume or in such a large area since the last time I saw them perform, and it got me really pumped for the show.
Also, I want to get some mushrooms (maybe for the show, maybe not) because in my last tarot spread, I asked the cards "What next?" and I got three cards which have been recurring in my spreads, and the other two when taken together told me to seek new ideas in nature. Because I have been turning over and over the idea of finding mushrooms since I bought my mushroom ring in December, I took it as pertaining directly to it. And since my expansive journey on acid last Fall, I have found an utter lack of new ideas in the experience... it's redundancy and inorganic quality have persuaded me to pursue more natural experiences for a while. Because I've been clearing my head in anticipation for writing my senior work proposal (meaning, I haven't smoked weed since before the semester started) I think taking a trip would be a good departure for me, especially since by the time the concert rolls around, my proposal will have been submitted for exactly a month... nothing to worry about there.
I am moving forward on the path.
Showing posts with label psychedelics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychedelics. Show all posts
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Sunday, November 2, 2008
I can draw on the Universe
Last night I drew another map of the universe. This time I found mirrors and a black hole. The titans were still there, of course. There were a few handsome devils and at least one devilish woman.
We sought and found the Green Man, but when I tried to put him in my pocket, he disappeared. Now I have to spend the day trying to find out where he got to. I know he's not lost.
We sought and found the Green Man, but when I tried to put him in my pocket, he disappeared. Now I have to spend the day trying to find out where he got to. I know he's not lost.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Well...
It has been a while since I've posted anything substantial, no?
As I mentioned in earlier posts, I had what can only be called a psychedelic/enlightening/transformative/world-altering experience. I didn't quite realize how deeply the effects lingered with me until last week when I finally gained enough perspective on the event to understand that I had been completely shattered by it. I was neglecting all my homework, grossly indulging my social inclinations, and shirking all personal responsibility not confined to basic hygeine. I really lost track of myself there for a number of weeks. Finally, last Thursday I suddenly, without prompting, emerged from my haze and recognized how seriously I had been jeopardizing myself in my obligations to school and others.
Today was the first day since that experience I managed to finish my homework for class. I am miserably behind in two of my four courses (a total of seven overdue reading responses and one overdue project proposal... yeah. No good). However, it is too late for could have, should have, would have. I am thankful that despite myself I have recognized the issue in time before it deteriorated further, and is still manageable. I am now in the process of playing catch up and pulling the loose threads back together. However, in no way do I regret the experience or the timing of it. Surely it was inconvenient as regards my academic life, but as regards my spiritual health it could not have been more beneficial. I still profess that I am no longer the same person I felt myself to be going into it. Change is neither simple nor without consequence.
As I mentioned in earlier posts, I had what can only be called a psychedelic/enlightening/transformative/world-altering experience. I didn't quite realize how deeply the effects lingered with me until last week when I finally gained enough perspective on the event to understand that I had been completely shattered by it. I was neglecting all my homework, grossly indulging my social inclinations, and shirking all personal responsibility not confined to basic hygeine. I really lost track of myself there for a number of weeks. Finally, last Thursday I suddenly, without prompting, emerged from my haze and recognized how seriously I had been jeopardizing myself in my obligations to school and others.
Today was the first day since that experience I managed to finish my homework for class. I am miserably behind in two of my four courses (a total of seven overdue reading responses and one overdue project proposal... yeah. No good). However, it is too late for could have, should have, would have. I am thankful that despite myself I have recognized the issue in time before it deteriorated further, and is still manageable. I am now in the process of playing catch up and pulling the loose threads back together. However, in no way do I regret the experience or the timing of it. Surely it was inconvenient as regards my academic life, but as regards my spiritual health it could not have been more beneficial. I still profess that I am no longer the same person I felt myself to be going into it. Change is neither simple nor without consequence.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
briefly
Sorry for the radio silence the past week or so. School started up again and I've been very busy with that as well as rediscovering what it's like to have a regular social life. Also, I had an incredibly profound experience this past Saturday that I am still processing and it will take a little while longer before I'll have it sorted out. Some of you who are my close friends already know what I'm talking about. As a result, I've been drawing almost nonstop (for instance, I skipped class today to work on a drawing) so look forward to more of my artwork being posted in the near future.
On a different note, I hope you all of you New Yorkers/East Coasters are enjoying the transition to Fall. I know I am. It is my favorite season, and there is little I love more than the crisp smell of leaves and the chill of a cool breeze stroking my cheeks.
See you all soon, before the trees are bare of leaves.
On a different note, I hope you all of you New Yorkers/East Coasters are enjoying the transition to Fall. I know I am. It is my favorite season, and there is little I love more than the crisp smell of leaves and the chill of a cool breeze stroking my cheeks.
See you all soon, before the trees are bare of leaves.
Friday, July 4, 2008
[Repost] When I read this in class I cried because I am a big baby.
At least I got an A.
I grew up with a lot of ambivalence towards my religious traditions, especially Judaism. My family participated in holiday rituals for Christmas, Easter, Passover, and Hanukkah, but we never attended services. As a result, I was educated in the cultural dimensions of Judaism and Roman Catholicism with none of the faith. I was never baptized and I was never a bat mitzvah. There were times when I attended Mass or synagogue with my respective grandparents but I was never required to absorb any of it, so I never tried. The stuffy, crowded confines of those houses of worship and vague references to “the Holy Father” and “Adonai” failed to arouse my imagination as a fidgety, anxious little girl.
I learned more about Jewish tradition every Seder than I ever learned about either Judaism or Christianity in all my visits to church or synagogue. The private and personalized ritual of Passover just felt more accessible than formal worship. I was included in a way that I never was in a congregation of initiates. As the youngest member of my father’s extended family, it was required that I read from the Haggadah every year. The reading was always lead by my Uncle Joe, my father’s younger brother and the only member of our secular Jewish family who could still read any Hebrew. The whole ritual was very lighthearted and humorous. Joe, famous for his appetite, would present the so-called abridged version of Exodus, with a refrain of “ya-da ya-da, etcetera, etcetera” until it was finally time to eat. It was the humor and the theatrical (as well as the culinary) experience that made Passover memorable for me. It was the feeling of inclusion that leant the ritual recitation meaning for me, a feeling which I never felt during Christmas with my mother’s family.
I grew up identifying myself as half-Catholic, half-Jewish, as testament to my mixed heritage. But when I entered middle school, for the first time I experienced the phenomenon of rejection by other Jews. Many of my religious Jewish classmates were approaching the magical age of thirteen and the big mitzvah pay off, literal and figurative, of all their hard work in Hebrew school. As “real Jews”, they felt some cliquish need to distinguish themselves from the corrupted likes of me. If I self-identified as “half-Jewish” in their presence, I was almost always met with one of two responses: “You can’t be half-Jewish,” or, “Which half?” Since my mother wasn’t a Jew, then I couldn’t be. Never mind my Hebrew last name or my great-grandparents’ loyal involvement in the Jewish community. I didn’t go to Hebrew school or synagogue and I would never be a bat mitzvah. Lighting Hanukkah candles or eating matzo and latkes didn’t cut it. Time after time they declared their verdict: guilty of goy.
Needless to say, I was turned off. I had had enough traumatic experience with the ruthless world of adolescent socializing to accept my role as misfit with a faint sense of relief. At the same time, like most teenagers, I felt like an alien at home. Holidays became little more than meaningless routines I ambivalently complied with. I didn’t recognize myself in my family, I didn’t recognize myself in God, I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I found meaning in music and sought acceptance in subculture.
For most of middle and high school, music was my only religion. It was the only thing I felt I could safely invest my faith in. I passed in and out of my school’s various subculture cliques, which I identified with more through common musical tastes than any ideological impulse to subvert norms. But the pressure to conform to group expectations was not exclusive to the popular cliques, and it always left a sour taste in my mouth. For me it was about music and expression, not fashion or rebellion for its own sake. As I proceeded through high school I alternately rejected and was rejected by scene after scene, from punks and alt-rock kids to metal heads, hardcore thrashers, or straight-edgers. I never found the kind of curious acceptance the Riot Grrl movement gave to Jennifer Bleyer, but I never stopped believing in a supportive community.
It was around this time I developed an interest in Wicca. In part inspired by exaggerated media portrayals, I browsed local bookstores for information. What I found was a religion with just as much history and tradition as any monotheistic one, without any of the formal constraints. It appealed to me for much the same reason it appealed to Ryiah Lilith. I could be a solitary practitioner, communing with the divine elements of nature beyond the scrutiny of a community. I finally had a name for that feeling of calm that swept over me when I sought solitude in nature. I recalled numerous occasions sitting awash in moonlight by my window in the middle of the night, or listening to the rustling of leaves by the breeze in a park. There were also single memories of watching the sun set over the Pacific from a shiny black perch of prehistoric lava flow in Oregon, and the cool smoothness of river rocks beneath my feet and the swirl of water around my ankles in the Smoky Mountains. Wherever I traveled, near or far, that feeling stayed with me. There was a harmony to nature, and Wicca awakened my spirit to its place in it.
Unfortunately, the distractions and pressures of the social and academic spheres won in the competition for my fickle teenage attention, and I abandoned Wicca as a way of life by the age of sixteen. I sometimes regained the feeling of unity I experienced in nature, but I stopped relating it to spirit. Not until my second year of college on Long Island did a profound longing for meaning return. I was struggling through the mire of apathy and self-loathing that my social life seemed to thrive on. Many of my friends sought to numb their feelings with alcohol and other drugs, and for a while I did, too. But the gnawing dissatisfaction in my gut gradually forced me to reevaluate my lifestyle. Experimentation with psychedelic substances in the past had, on more than one occasion, sparked moments of profound self-realization. Psychedelic experiences had inspired me to make positive change for myself in the past and change was what I needed more than anything. I longed for a confrontation with the uncomfortable reality of my unhappiness, its sources, and its solutions, so when the opportunity presented itself, I embraced it. My catalyst was psychedelic mushrooms, and for eight hours I wrestled with the ugliness of an inner darkness that threatened to engulf me and the beauty of outer lightness my unveiled eyes revealed. When I finally sobered it was with the conviction that the heart of divinity resides within. In myself I had discovered the ultimate spiritual authority.
That revelation of spiritual autonomy has been the single most dynamic event of my entire life. Without it I never would have left Long Island, and it is the foundation from which I have gained the strength to assert my social, intellectual, and sexual autonomy, as well. To a large degree I have my cultural Jewish heritage to thank for planting the seeds of that autonomy, without which I am certain my experiments would have been fruitless. And like Billie Michele Mandel, my grandmother was very influential to my development. She has lived a long, challenging, exciting life. She married at a young age, leaving college after her first year to have three kids, and worked as a kindergarten teacher. In the early 70s she divorced and went back to college part time. After her children were grown, she traveled around the world, finished her degree, worked as a biofeedback engineer and yoga instructor, and retired in the 80s. But what I consider the biggest testament to her strength of character and devotion to her family was when she accepted responsibility for me and my older brother, raising us in her home when neither of our parents was emotionally or financially capable. Because of her constant nagging and reinforcement, it was simply a given that I would attend college. She never set a limit on what I could achieve and always pushed me to live up to my potential. Though she never explicitly stated it, I knew very well that the pressure she put on me to choose whatever life for myself I wanted directly reflected her lack of choice as a young woman. And as much as I resisted her pressuring at the time, without it I would not be the fiercely independent individual I am. But my grandmother is not a feminist in the conventional sense. Her cause is not women’s rights, but her family. It was through Jewish traditions such as Passover, and to a lesser degree Hanukkah, that I first came to understand the importance of family and my responsibility to strengthening its bond. I feel fortunate to have grown up without any formal religious training. I may not believe in God, but thanks to the values I inherited from my family, I believe in myself.
I grew up with a lot of ambivalence towards my religious traditions, especially Judaism. My family participated in holiday rituals for Christmas, Easter, Passover, and Hanukkah, but we never attended services. As a result, I was educated in the cultural dimensions of Judaism and Roman Catholicism with none of the faith. I was never baptized and I was never a bat mitzvah. There were times when I attended Mass or synagogue with my respective grandparents but I was never required to absorb any of it, so I never tried. The stuffy, crowded confines of those houses of worship and vague references to “the Holy Father” and “Adonai” failed to arouse my imagination as a fidgety, anxious little girl.
I learned more about Jewish tradition every Seder than I ever learned about either Judaism or Christianity in all my visits to church or synagogue. The private and personalized ritual of Passover just felt more accessible than formal worship. I was included in a way that I never was in a congregation of initiates. As the youngest member of my father’s extended family, it was required that I read from the Haggadah every year. The reading was always lead by my Uncle Joe, my father’s younger brother and the only member of our secular Jewish family who could still read any Hebrew. The whole ritual was very lighthearted and humorous. Joe, famous for his appetite, would present the so-called abridged version of Exodus, with a refrain of “ya-da ya-da, etcetera, etcetera” until it was finally time to eat. It was the humor and the theatrical (as well as the culinary) experience that made Passover memorable for me. It was the feeling of inclusion that leant the ritual recitation meaning for me, a feeling which I never felt during Christmas with my mother’s family.
I grew up identifying myself as half-Catholic, half-Jewish, as testament to my mixed heritage. But when I entered middle school, for the first time I experienced the phenomenon of rejection by other Jews. Many of my religious Jewish classmates were approaching the magical age of thirteen and the big mitzvah pay off, literal and figurative, of all their hard work in Hebrew school. As “real Jews”, they felt some cliquish need to distinguish themselves from the corrupted likes of me. If I self-identified as “half-Jewish” in their presence, I was almost always met with one of two responses: “You can’t be half-Jewish,” or, “Which half?” Since my mother wasn’t a Jew, then I couldn’t be. Never mind my Hebrew last name or my great-grandparents’ loyal involvement in the Jewish community. I didn’t go to Hebrew school or synagogue and I would never be a bat mitzvah. Lighting Hanukkah candles or eating matzo and latkes didn’t cut it. Time after time they declared their verdict: guilty of goy.
Needless to say, I was turned off. I had had enough traumatic experience with the ruthless world of adolescent socializing to accept my role as misfit with a faint sense of relief. At the same time, like most teenagers, I felt like an alien at home. Holidays became little more than meaningless routines I ambivalently complied with. I didn’t recognize myself in my family, I didn’t recognize myself in God, I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I found meaning in music and sought acceptance in subculture.
For most of middle and high school, music was my only religion. It was the only thing I felt I could safely invest my faith in. I passed in and out of my school’s various subculture cliques, which I identified with more through common musical tastes than any ideological impulse to subvert norms. But the pressure to conform to group expectations was not exclusive to the popular cliques, and it always left a sour taste in my mouth. For me it was about music and expression, not fashion or rebellion for its own sake. As I proceeded through high school I alternately rejected and was rejected by scene after scene, from punks and alt-rock kids to metal heads, hardcore thrashers, or straight-edgers. I never found the kind of curious acceptance the Riot Grrl movement gave to Jennifer Bleyer, but I never stopped believing in a supportive community.
It was around this time I developed an interest in Wicca. In part inspired by exaggerated media portrayals, I browsed local bookstores for information. What I found was a religion with just as much history and tradition as any monotheistic one, without any of the formal constraints. It appealed to me for much the same reason it appealed to Ryiah Lilith. I could be a solitary practitioner, communing with the divine elements of nature beyond the scrutiny of a community. I finally had a name for that feeling of calm that swept over me when I sought solitude in nature. I recalled numerous occasions sitting awash in moonlight by my window in the middle of the night, or listening to the rustling of leaves by the breeze in a park. There were also single memories of watching the sun set over the Pacific from a shiny black perch of prehistoric lava flow in Oregon, and the cool smoothness of river rocks beneath my feet and the swirl of water around my ankles in the Smoky Mountains. Wherever I traveled, near or far, that feeling stayed with me. There was a harmony to nature, and Wicca awakened my spirit to its place in it.
Unfortunately, the distractions and pressures of the social and academic spheres won in the competition for my fickle teenage attention, and I abandoned Wicca as a way of life by the age of sixteen. I sometimes regained the feeling of unity I experienced in nature, but I stopped relating it to spirit. Not until my second year of college on Long Island did a profound longing for meaning return. I was struggling through the mire of apathy and self-loathing that my social life seemed to thrive on. Many of my friends sought to numb their feelings with alcohol and other drugs, and for a while I did, too. But the gnawing dissatisfaction in my gut gradually forced me to reevaluate my lifestyle. Experimentation with psychedelic substances in the past had, on more than one occasion, sparked moments of profound self-realization. Psychedelic experiences had inspired me to make positive change for myself in the past and change was what I needed more than anything. I longed for a confrontation with the uncomfortable reality of my unhappiness, its sources, and its solutions, so when the opportunity presented itself, I embraced it. My catalyst was psychedelic mushrooms, and for eight hours I wrestled with the ugliness of an inner darkness that threatened to engulf me and the beauty of outer lightness my unveiled eyes revealed. When I finally sobered it was with the conviction that the heart of divinity resides within. In myself I had discovered the ultimate spiritual authority.
That revelation of spiritual autonomy has been the single most dynamic event of my entire life. Without it I never would have left Long Island, and it is the foundation from which I have gained the strength to assert my social, intellectual, and sexual autonomy, as well. To a large degree I have my cultural Jewish heritage to thank for planting the seeds of that autonomy, without which I am certain my experiments would have been fruitless. And like Billie Michele Mandel, my grandmother was very influential to my development. She has lived a long, challenging, exciting life. She married at a young age, leaving college after her first year to have three kids, and worked as a kindergarten teacher. In the early 70s she divorced and went back to college part time. After her children were grown, she traveled around the world, finished her degree, worked as a biofeedback engineer and yoga instructor, and retired in the 80s. But what I consider the biggest testament to her strength of character and devotion to her family was when she accepted responsibility for me and my older brother, raising us in her home when neither of our parents was emotionally or financially capable. Because of her constant nagging and reinforcement, it was simply a given that I would attend college. She never set a limit on what I could achieve and always pushed me to live up to my potential. Though she never explicitly stated it, I knew very well that the pressure she put on me to choose whatever life for myself I wanted directly reflected her lack of choice as a young woman. And as much as I resisted her pressuring at the time, without it I would not be the fiercely independent individual I am. But my grandmother is not a feminist in the conventional sense. Her cause is not women’s rights, but her family. It was through Jewish traditions such as Passover, and to a lesser degree Hanukkah, that I first came to understand the importance of family and my responsibility to strengthening its bond. I feel fortunate to have grown up without any formal religious training. I may not believe in God, but thanks to the values I inherited from my family, I believe in myself.
Friday, June 27, 2008
more nuggets of wisdom from DJ
DJ (6:51:58 PM) : there's a dali museum near tampa
DJ (6:52:00 PM) : it is pretty badass
DJ (6:52:11 PM) : too bad it is in tampa
bibliophile (6:53:04 PM) : yeah, the persistence of memory was on loan to them for a while but now it's back at the moma for this new exhibit
DJ (6:54:55 PM) : dude
DJ (6:55:00 PM) : the clocks
DJ (6:55:03 PM) : they're fucking melted
DJ (6:55:20 PM) : his art is what i imagine it would be like to be on peyote
bibliophile (6:55:31 PM) : yeah, and most of the time he was completely sober
DJ (6:55:33 PM) : they all look like they're out in the desert
DJ (6:55:49 PM) : i associate peyote with the desert for some reason
DJ (6:55:58 PM) : like it needs to be enjoyed in arizona, or maybe eastern nevada
bibliophile (6:56:58 PM) : well, i associate peyote with the desert because it's a cactus
bibliophile (6:57:19 PM) : http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=5633
DJ (6:59:26 PM) : dude my grandpa has like infinity of those in his garage
bibliophile (6:59:54 PM) : cacti?
DJ (7:00:10 PM) : paintings of cacti
bibliophile (7:00:16 PM) : oh, haha
DJ (7:00:18 PM) : do you know what the hbi is
bibliophile (7:02:04 PM) : HeBrewIs?
DJ (7:02:14 PM) : hmm, no
DJ (7:02:19 PM) : it stands for Hot Beef Injection
bibliophile (7:02:23 PM) : haha
DJ (7:03:05 PM) : anyway we taught it to my uptight friend allison
bibliophile (7:03:28 PM) : mhmm
DJ (7:04:19 PM) : and every week or so, either me or george will leave a cryptic message on her wall
DJ (7:04:36 PM) : DJ wrote
at 8:11pm on May 29th, 2008
Have bebeh inya?
at 8:11pm on May 29th, 2008
Have bebeh inya?
DJ (7:04:44 PM) : DJ wrote
at 11:59pm on June 11th, 2008
any new HobBIes?
at 11:59pm on June 11th, 2008
any new HobBIes?
DJ (7:04:53 PM) : but i am proud of my most recent opus
DJ (7:05:02 PM) : DJ wrote
at 6:59pm
Hey! Boy, I have big issues here, but I have boldly insisted he buy it. How 'bout it?
at 6:59pm
Hey! Boy, I have big issues here, but I have boldly insisted he buy it. How 'bout it?
DJ (7:05:08 PM) : the best part is, she is probably flipping out
Monday, April 28, 2008
Swooning Swans Swept Away on the Seas
My eyes were the size of the skies.
Green and clean and mirrors of mine so we see,
I slipped through the floor in a gold and white fold.
Silhouettes of sea sounds
flitted forth from your face,
and your smile drew dunes 'cross sunned skin.
The size of my eyes was too wide,
and your gaze fell away from my play.
Still, from my sill, in the sumptuous rain,
the green of my dream swayed and danced until dawn.
The next day on my way from the train,
I cast free from my thought,
the illusion of fusion of minds.
I dared my desires desert me,
cast away such fantastical flights.
A day or two spent, and I willfully went,
but dared not hope perchance we might pass.
When the day's work was done,
to a bed of brown eyes I spoke of vast skies,
revelations and astral designs.
But in those bulbs of dark brown,
not a glimpse to be found,
of that glimmering green of the sand and the sea.
No sooner had passed this desire so dreaded,
than I did dismiss it as folly.
No sooner dismissed,
through the window I glimpsed
your figure, passing in stride.
Shocked as I was, no matter,
because... my willful unwilling had won.
Let me will you away,
so I meet you some day,
when all that remains are the memory stains,
of those eyes, emerald stars,
swallowed up by the sands of my dreams.
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