Pillars of Sand (Viva la Vida)

I used to rule the world

Seas would rise when I gave the word

Now in the morning I sweep alone

Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice

Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes

Listen as the crowd would sing:"Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"

One minute I held the key

Next the walls were closed on me

And I discovered that my castles stand

Upon pillars of salt, pillars of sand

-Coldplay

If I were a monarch, it would have to be a king, or preferably, an emperor. Either Arthur or Charlemagne. Actually, in the olden times, I would have liked to be Pope. Complete spiritual and temporal dominion.

Being a Queen would not quite cut it. I like The Empress and all, don't get me wrong, but I like the old-fashioned kind of power. Direct, undisputed, king power. Queens have a different kind of power, which is fine, and being Queen would definitely be better than being, say, the Head Janitor, but, if I could choose, I would be King.

There are so many ways to have power. Money. Beauty. Youth. Connections. Physical strength. Love.

I had it all, I lost it all, and I never knew what I had until I lost it. That sounds dramatic. Pluto in Capricorn is dramatic. And it's sad. Endings are always sad, even if they're inevitable, and expected, and far overdue. Who doesn't feel sad at a breakup, or a move, or one of those big life changes?

As to those, I detested puberty. I can barely stand to think of it even now. One day, I was running around without a care in the world, and then, bam. Blood and gore and brassieres and cellulite, and strange men standing too close in museum lines, and a lot of shit that I did not understand or want to. And that book, "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret" which they forced us at gunpoint to read, just made me sick. The bitch didn't know when she had it good.

I haven't hit menopause yet, but I'm sure that will be sad too. My friends who are there already, or almost, are in denial, and I suppose I will be too, especially since I never had kids. I never had a particularly strong desire to, but I always thought that it would happen, somehow, in extremis, and it didn't. At least, not in this lifetime. I'm sure I've had plenty of kids in other lifetimes and maybe this lifetime is just a time-out. I've always avoided the step-parent thing too. It seems fraught with difficulties.

I was sad when I got married, sad when I got divorced, sad every time I left one country or one man for the next, but I did it, because there's only one way to go in this life, and that is forward. This year, I got sick, and ended up leaving everything in California. I didn't have the strength to deal with it, but there was also some weird streak of illumination that was telling me that the losses were the whole point.

For what profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and loseth his own soul?

I had the whole world in my hands, but I had gotten lost, somehow, down one of those rabbit holes it used to amuse me to explore, always so sure of my own power, of God's protective presence, but in one of those rabbit holes I encountered the void, and I got lost, like Carlos Castaneda in his dreams.

I didn't know up from down, or light from dark, and I was even getting used to living down there, away from the light, and the air.

Evil exists, is the point, although not necessarily in the way you imagine it. In fact, it's almost never the way you imagine it, because then you would recognize it and avoid it. Evil always looks exactly like good, except better. So you keep messing with it, sure that the good must be there, just below the surface, and it isn't. Somebody described eating Domino's pizza as eating more and more of it to try and find the flavor you know must be there, but isn't, and in the end you have a bellyful of pizza and a feeling of deep dissatisfaction. That's kind of the deal with evil. And evil isn't so much an active kind of wickedness as it is a lack of, well, good.

So God, like any indulgent but responsible parent, yanked me out of the rabbit hole and grounded me indefinitely, and here I am.

And I've said these things before, more or less, and it's not like I want to flog a dead horse, but what am I supposed to do if Chris Martin always puts the way I feel into words? Well, not always, there are a few songs on the new CD that I skip, but on their other CD's, each song brings an immediate memory of a person or an event in my life.

My pillars of sand have crumbled, but maybe I can use the rubble to fill the potholes in the castle driveway, so all is not lost.

Viva la vida!

Hello You Wacky Sagittarians

Needless to say, I scared myself to death the other night with my attempt at ghostly fiction. Luckily, God has blessed me with an almost complete lack of imagination, so I am not often tempted to invent spooky tales of wolf-people, or woof-people, as my stepfather pronounced the word.

Which leads me to today's subject: Sagittarians. We are now smack dab in the middle of Sajj and I have a message for all the Sajjes of the world--relax. Breathe. Calm down. Look before you leap. Count to ten. Don't fly off the handle. Don't make a scene. Don't get married again, at least until you've finished counting to ten. Then, walk around the block. Is your potential mate in bankruptcy court? Is he or she still married to somebody else? Don't do it, Sajj, you'll be sorry in about five minutes.

Don't fire your secretary. Don't fall in love with your secretary. Pretend like you don't even have a secretary, unless you want to dictate a letter, and then, you know what? Just type it yourself.

If you're bored, Sajj, and I know you are, throw a party. You're good at that. Go dancing. You like to dance. Go to Madagascar. I bet you've never been to Madagascar. Wouldn't you like to see how they harvest cloves? Sure you would. You could fly through Amsterdam. Amsterdam is lots of fun and they have amazing chocolate.

Or, you could join a cult. I believe that I might just have an opening as a "Follower", but apply now, the slots are filling quickly!

The thing to remember, Sajj, is don't go with your gut instinct. Your gut instinct is wrong. Your gut instinct has gotten you into trouble in the past, hasn't it? You thought you were going to pull a fast one but it backfired, didn't it? So don't do it, whatever it is. Action is overrated. Thought is nice too, Sajj--you can do a lot of fun things in your head without getting yourself into big trouble.

So just relax, have another glass of champagne, and handcuff yourself to something heavy until that funny little itch in your stomach passes, the one you always get before you do or say something really unforgiveable.

We all love you, Sajj, but the Law of Karma is real. Once you get that ball rolling, it's not going to stop until it comes back and flattens you. Remember Wile E. Coyote? He was a Sajj. So if it's a good deed you have in mind, or a kind word, or some homemade lasagna, then go for it. Pull out all the stops. But if you feel like making trouble, just remember the Wheel of Karma, and order out for pizza instead.

On a Night Such as This

All around was stillness, the language of winter. The wind whirled and drove the snow like daggers into the soft belly of the night. There were no stars, no moon, just the faraway hint of a dirty mauve sky. And then, out of the darkness, a knock came on the door.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Are you scared yet? I am. I am scaring myself. This is that kind of winter night, blustery and eerie, a night for haints to walk, which I sincerely hope they don't. At least, not here. If I see any haints, I will direct them to the nearest shopping center for some mall-walking. At this point in the story, a mysterious, lean figure with a cape shielding his face would appear at the farmhouse door.

He would warm himself by the fire, if he were willing to go out to the woodshed and schlep wood, and deal with a possible rodent living in the fireplace, and then he would tell a mysterious tale of a maiden's death yet to be avenged, or some other wrong still unrighted. And then he would ask to borrow the toenail clippers--I am still working this part out--and only upon his leaving would the unsuspecting farmer's wife discover a wolf's claw stuck in the nail scissors!!

I know that the "mysterious stranger is really a wolf" thing has already been done in Ladyhawke but I feel it has rich and as yet untapped dramatic potential.

But wait, what was that? Could it have been....a knock on the door?

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Shave Off Your Burns!!

As I stopped at the local library today to drop off my copy of "Cidade dos Homens" (great film, btw), my attention was drawn by a fashion statement so rare and wonderful that I literally had to stop and stare.

The statement was being made by a person who, it pains me somewhat to admit, must be about my age, i.e. FOREVER YOUNG!!! (Read: early 40's). The most eloquent part of the statement was being made by this person's hair, which was a flowing, waist-length mane of dishwater brown with some serious split ends. The top part, however, was carefully feathered and held in place by bobby pins and a copious use of Aqua-net. You could tell it was Aqua-net just by looking. The effect seemed to be a combination of The Mullet with the look made popular by Warren Jeffs' seven thousand wives, when they have their hair down, which is very elaborate in the front and long and stringy in the back. I gleaned this important bit of information by reading all the trashy mags, and if you need to know anything about Brangelina, ask me first.

I have to be honest here--I have never felt a particular fondness for Jen Aniston, a feeling the movie The Maid solidified. In fact, I had to walk out of the cinema after one of the characters expressed surprise that another character had not seen her own husband's, um, anus. And Jen always has a look on her face as if she'd just swallowed a mouthful of carpet tacks. But what I was going to say is, Brangelina, would you stop acting like anuses, and Brad, lose the Hitler mustache, ok? Brad Pitt seems to have absolutely no mind of his own. It probably comes of having a name of only two syllables. I could never love a two-syllable man, myself, but Angelina seems to think she has enough syllables for the whole clan.

Having had more than one glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, I will admit at this point that Angelina Jolie seriously irritates me. The Italians would say, "she stands on my dick", and, given the literal impossibility of such a thing, me being female and all, I think the expression renders the idea quite well. I have noticed, in an informal survey of my friends and supermarket cashiers, that Angelina Jolie has this effect on most females. I have never met a female person who finds Angelina anything but annoying. I have no idea what male people think, but I have an opinion of the male capacity for discernment that is, alas, on the low side.

Of course, it just may be that the most annoying thing about Angelina is that Brad likes her. Obviously, I am into Symbols, and Brad Pitt is, arguably, The Symbol of the desirable male in the Western world. And therefore, his choice of a life partner has a bearing on all of us females, indirectly. And it has to be said that his choice is something of a disappointment. I mean, I'm not saying he had to like Rita Levi Montalcini, but fuckin Angelina Jolie?? The upshot here is that Angelina is, by process of elimination, in the position of World's Most Desirable Female, meaning that the rest of us women feel at least slightly disenfranchised. So maybe that's why we hate her.

The good news is, Jennifer Aniston is also extremely annoying, and even though Vince Vaughan has gotten to be decidedly chubby, I really think he can do better than Madame Carpet Tacks.

But I digress.

What I witnessed today is an anachronism and I was so happy. I remembered why I love living in Ohio. You can have a Fundamentalist Latter Day Mullet on your head and be taken seriously, by someone. This person also had a mysterious chain hanging off of his belt and I'm sure it only adds to the attraction for the denizens of the parallel universe in which he lives. He was very thin, clad in all black, with some of those white leather hi-top tennies that I'll bet you haven't seen in a while, unless you also live in Portage County. He smoked some kind of smelly cigs and had copious sideburns. It was wonderful!!

I am not being mean, I'm really not. I would personally rather endure Death by Sloppy Joes (my mom, who went out of town for the holiday, left me Sloppy Joes for sustenance, forgetting that Sloppy Joes is not food) than commit such a fashion coup d'etat, but I am a Capricorn, forever condemned by the pissy planet Saturn to a life to be lived in shades of taupe. That doesn't mean I can't envy the other signs, the fun ones, who don't live their lives in fear of ridicule.

Now, having expressed my joy, I must return to my pasta, which is a variation of La Boscaiola. Meaning, we have sausage, a tiny bit of tomato, garlic, mushrooms, and cream, but instead of the peas, we have squash. And oh fuck, I forgot to buy Parmesan, but I have a certain Innocent Flirtation with the Butcher, a thin and intense type with tattoos, so another trip to the store is never as tragic as it could be. If you make this dish, you have to be very careful because the squash is sweet, so it has to be balanced with an appropriate amount of spices and acidity. Key word: Tabasco. Not Frank's. Not hot pepper flakes. Tabasco. Buon appetito!

And let me breathe in freedom

Yesterday, Buddy the dog and I were in my mom's minivan on a deserted road, when a bald eagle flew directly overhead and went soaring out over the lake. I had been lost in my own thoughts and Buddy in his, but the eagle woke us up to an immediate and full awareness of our surroundings. Ok, I'm giving Buddy Black Jack a little more credit than is really appropriate, but he did kind of move and wiggle his tail a little bit and in this world of cell phones and i(Pod)solation, I call that an impressive level of awareness. The bare gray trees, the snow gradually melting in the warm sun, and the utter stillness that you experience sometimes on a holiday, when everybody is at home. And then this magnificent apparition.

Today, not far from where I saw the eagle, I came across a dog dying in the road. He had just been hit by an SUV, and I pulled over and started wildly honking my horn, hoping that someone would come out of the houses and claim the dog. But nobody came.

The SUV, an old model plastered with Obama bumper stickers, slowed down and stopped when it heard me honking. I guess maybe it read an accusation into the car horn but that wasn't the intent.

The dog was still writhing in a pool of blood. I never knew blood was so thick. I didn't know what to do so I just crouched down by it and laid my hand on its neck and spoke to it until it died, in Italian, of course. That's the language for kids and dogs. The SUV guy came up and asked about it and I told him to go knock on the doors until he found the owners, which he did, except nobody came to the doors. They were all out at the sales, I suppose. Here the stores opened at 4 a.m.

The SUV guy came back as I was gently trying to move the dog's body to the shoulder of the road. He just matter-of-factly picked it up by its neck and the skin of its back and laid it down in somebody's yard but I made him move it closer to the road so that it could be seen and claimed.

"It wasn't my fault," he said. I implied heavily that it was and that he should have been more careful. There was perfect visibility and nobody on the road. He got kind of mad. He wanted me to say it wasn't his fault, but it was.

I know I'm judgmental. I was named for a judge in the Bible. If I had hit the dog, I would have judged myself. I wouldn't have said it wasn't my fault. That dog was somebody's joy and now it's somebody's heartbreak.

I was coming from the music school and I was singing in the car, an air by Handel. "Lascia ch'io pianga," which was in that movie Farinelli, about the castrato. It means, "Let me weep, my cruel fate, and let me breathe in freedom." I swear that I was singing that aria when I came over the hill and found the dog. What were the eagle and dog telling me? I don't know. Both times I cried, in my mom's minivan, which aroused the concern of Buddy Black Jack the Dog. Buddy's preferred therapeutic mode is to put his cold, wet nose on some part of your body and wait for you to feel better.

Yesterday, Pluto, the planet of death and transformation, moved into Capricorn, my Sun sign. One of the legends about the Eagle is that it would fly so close to the sun that all its feathers would be singed off, and it would fall to the ground, only to be born again. Maybe the dog was a Capricorn. But I don't feel like divining today. I feel sad. It could have been me in the red SUV, except for the Obama stickers and the fact that I object to SUV's. (I actually like Obama, but I don't like getting yelled at by a sticker). But we all get distracted behind the wheel, we're all in a hurry to go somewhere, we don't think of the consequences until it's too late.

And the owners, why did they let the dog run loose? Maybe it escaped. Maybe it just wanted to be free. My stepfather used to say, when Inga got loose, that he could hear her humming "Born free" on her way to the golf course. Freedom is a need, like food and air. Or maybe the owners were too busy trampling Walmart employees to care where their dog was. But I want to believe that the dog achieved its desire, and now he breathes in freedom.

Lascia ch'io pianga
mia cruda sorte
e che sospiri la liberta'.

Giving Thanks, Giving Back, and Giving a Disclaimer

The disclaimer is, I realized that I probably sound preachy a lot, and I don't mean to. This blog is mostly just me talking to myself, and trying to put my thoughts in some kind of order, and trying to make some sense out of things that seemingly make none. And if I preach, I am really preaching to myself, and not to any innocent bystanders that might accidentally be reading, because I am fully aware that I know jack-all, fundamentally.

With that in mind, I turn to our upcoming holiday, first and foremost, of course, with a sense of how blessed I am, primarily in the bright and glorious souls that light my life like the candles on a birthday cake. God has blessed me with incredible abundance, surrounded me with beauty and finally, peace, and sent me messengers of love in every imaginable form. I think of people, wandering in and out of my life, and my animal friends, and the music that is my direct connection to myself. And I sit here on my farm, watching the snowflakes meander and then fall, like toddlers just learning to walk, and I do know, truly, how very very special this lifetime is. I have no idea what will come next, or what came before, but I know that right now, my life is indescribably beautiful.

And I think of my struggles of this past year, so shocking and terrible to me, and of how many people would have gladly traded places with me, even at the most terrifying moments, because their daily struggles are so much harder, and of a much greater duration, and it is so humbling.

And while I am on the subject of thanksgiving, I want to bring up the related subject of forgiving. I still do not know what forgiveness really is. I asked my ex-husband, Tommaso, to define it for me, which is what I do whenever I can't figure something out, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend, who thinks that ex-wives should spend their lives in Timbuktoo or the North Pole, far from modern forms of communication, including carrier pigeons and smoke signals.

Tommaso's answer was typically brilliant, and beautiful: Forgiveness, he said, is saying, "That doesn't belong to me anymore."

And for once, I'm not going to get all chatty Cathy and interpret that statement in my own image. I think it stands pretty solidly on its own two feet.

So while we are giving thanks, and just generally giving, which 'tis the season to do, after all, it might be an opportune time to give back to the Universe all those ugly sweaters (metaphorically speaking) we don't need anymore, and just hang on to the really good ones, that we just can't quite part with, and let the Wheel of Karma do its job.

What you cause another to experience, you will, in turn, experience. That's Karmic law.

So even though I promised not to interpret, what that says to me is, I can't make anything OK, just like I can't make something a bigger deal than it really is. I can't protect anybody else from the consequences of their actions, just like I can't protect myself. Karma is the ultimate role reversal. So forgiveness, ultimately, is just lay that burden down. It was never yours.

That's it. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Tarot Has Moved!

I'm putting all the Tarot stuff in another blog, The Blasted Tower. It just makes more sense that way.

God's Ejector Seat

I have Morgellon's Disease. I'm not going to go into the gory details of this illness, when google can do the job for me. Suffice it to say, it sucks.

I became aware that I had this disease on January 16th of this year, four days after my 41st birthday, when black hair-like things started to emerge from my skin, all over my body. I had had some crazy skin problems for about 2 months prior but thought it was a staph infection I had picked up at the gym. In Oakland, you can pick up just about anything at the gym, not just guys named Cedric with fuzzy dice hanging from their rearview mirrors.

So, when these black things started coming out of my skin, I marched myself down to the ER at Kaiser Permanente Hospital, because I didn't want to fuck around with the family doctor. I was sure that somebody would have a simple explanation for what was going on with my body, and some meds to clear it right up.

The nurse's reaction immediately knocked that hope out of the ballpark.

"Ooooh," she said. "That's so weird!! I was just hearing on the radio this morning about this weird disease!"

She went off and came back with a printout from the internet. "Don't tell the doctor," she said, "I could get in trouble."

So that's where I first heard, or read, the words "Morgellon's Disease," a strange, horrifying, and to-date incurable ailment that most doctors continue to insist is "all in the patients' heads," and that's when I knew I was in very deep shit.

After four hours at ER, I got to see the doctor, a jaded Asian guy who spent about 25 seconds telling me that they don't do that kind of testing there, before he sent me on my way. A few weeks later, I learned that Kaiser actually has a Morgellon's Research Study or something equally bogus. Obviously, this doc hadn't been informed.

There are enough Morgellon's forums on the web with horror stories about people's experiences with their bodies and with doctors (both of which categories seem to have been possessed by evil aliens) to make any further discussion of same superfluous.

I do want to say that I'm doing great. At the beginning, my plan was to kill myself. I didn't want to die, but I didn't want to live with the modern equivalent of leprosy. On the other hand, suicide is no walk in the park. It takes planning, it takes energy. Most of all, you have to really want to die, and I didn't, ever. And I especially didn't want to die looking like shit.

Then, spurred by my mom's incessant nagging, I actually found someone to treat me, which is the great miracle in the life of any Morgellon's sufferer, and I started to hope that maybe, I could get well, and live. And I did, and I am. Alive, I mean.

I was told from the get-go that this is a chronic disease, but as my condition began to improve, I started to believe that I could heal, completely and permanently.

This has not proved to be the case, unfortunately or fortunately, however you look at it, because this disease forced me to become healthy. I had to start to really take care of myself, nutritionally and energetically. The Jelly Belly-based diet had to go. The daily living sacrifices of my energy had to go. People, situations, even thoughts that dragged on me, had to go. I had to learn to say no, and I had to learn to say yes, at appropriate moments.

How often do we say no when we really want to say yes and vice-versa? How much of our lives and actions are dictated by guilt? If my life is a journey, and my body is the ship, is Guilt really the best captain?

But it's hard to get to the point of mutiny, until something comes along, like Morgellon's Disease, and makes it literally a do-or-die scenario.

Morgellon's Disease got me out of Oakland. It got me out of multiple energy-draining relationships. I'm not blaming anybody else. I offered my energy freely, like baring your neck for the vampire squad, because that's how I was brought up. Put others first.

But it was killing me. Sometimes I wonder if that was the real disease--not Oakland, but the way of life that had gotten me there. The contorted idea that my life was best left in the hands of other people, or fate, or blind chance. The system I had perfected of buying affection through good deeds. The resentment that had built up for 40 years, from always listening, always "helping," but never speaking, never asking for help. Always waiting for other people to figure out what it was that I wanted, or needed, and always disappointed.

Sometimes I wonder if this black shit that I still see coming out of my skin, sometimes, is really resentment, and hate, and anger, manifesting in a physical form. Capricorn is a material sign. Maybe this is just God's way of communicating in a way that a material girl would take seriously.

I don't know. With Morgellon's Disease, nobody knows.

I didn't kill myself, but in some way, I died. Along with my furniture, my car, and the few relationships that meant something to me out there, I left the person that I had been for 41 years in Oakland. If it sounds dramatic, it was.

I went to see a medium sometime in the middle of the really acute part, and to get to her house, I had to cross River Styx Road. I crossed it again on the way back. As far as symbols go, I'd say that's pretty good.

Now, I've started to live again, in low gear, true, but who's to say that life should be lived at high velocity? It's strange because Morgellon's is, in many ways, a secret disease. People look at me and they think I'm the healthiest person in town. Sometimes, they even look at me as if I were an attractive woman, which is a shock. I cannot speak for other diseases, but I know that Morgellon's completely annihilated my sense of sexuality. I didn't feel like a woman, I felt like a monster, and the thought of men made me want to vomit.

Maybe this is TMI, but it is, after all, a blog. Read at your own risk.

Now, my skin is clear, I'm back in shape, and I'm starting to think about how it is that I want to live the rest of my life. I went to a Qi Gong master a few months ago. I didn't tell him about the disease. He told me I was one of the healthiest and most integrated people he had met, energetically.

"Nobody's perfectly healthy," he said. "Everybody's got something. The trick is, find the balance."

So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do more of what I love--write, be musical, be physical, be silent--and less of other things. I'm trying to learn to be the captain of my ship. I'm learning about control, and love, and how the two can cohabit. I'm trying to do all this with the market in the crapper, and of course, that's scary, but the nice thing about Morgellon's Disease is that practically nothing can scare you anymore, once you've plucked worms from your eyes.

The reason I'm writing this blog is that for a long time, I wouldn't say the words, "I have Morgellon's Disease," and I wouldn't let anybody else say them either, just like nobody was allowed to say, "How are you?". I would say, "This disease has manifested in my life," and I was waiting for it to de-manifest just as suddenly. But that hasn't happened, and maybe it won't.

But neither will I. De-materialize, that is. I'm not going to teleport to some other realm, or go flying off on my broomstick to a better life in somebody else's body. Not because I don't want to, but because the possibility just hasn't been offered to me. Also, I've gotten kind of fond of Cassandra.

I can't say that I'm ready for whatever Life has to dish out. In fact, I'd like to make a special request for Life to ease up for a while. But I am trying to perfect the art of living in a state of imperfection. That's all.

The Bum-Bum Anthology

In the life of every woman, there comes a moment--an ugly moment--when the forces of gravity begin to become apparent. We will skip the various and sundry indignities associated with gently falling triceps and eyelids, because who really cares? Nobody ever has to see your triceps, except at the beach, and there, nobody will be looking at your triceps. They will all be busy sucking in various parts of their own anatomies, and trying to gauge strategic moments to flop in the water, preferably during a shark attack or another time when the attention of the masses is otherwise engaged. And the eyelids are easily remedied with a nice pair of glasses, dark or otherwise, and anyway, the "mature" eyelids as we shall call them tend to confer an air of jaded mystery.

Although I try to never to say never, the eyelidoplasty, or whatever the technical name for it is, is probably one of the very last surgical touch-ups I would ever consider. The "yes I've been around the block, et vous?" look is immediately supplanted by an expression of perennial owl-like surprise, which is not necessarily sexy unless you happen to actually be an owl.

So there are parts of the body that may lie in eternal and dignified repose, like fallen hikers on Everest, without any real need to pick them up. Obviously, one does what one can to stave off each individual ignominious defeat, but there is a time, as Andrea Bocelli seems to think, to say goodbye. Of course, the real Italian title of Bocelli's "Time to Say Goodbye" actually means, "Pass the Parmesan cheese and the wine and make it snappy", but we will overlook that point for the purposes of today's blog.

Other body parts may be propped up quite satisfactorily with some art and artifice. Of course I am talking mostly about women. Men tend to expand, rather than sag, but they always seem to be able to convince themselves what a fine fellow they are despite abundant evidence to the contrary (ciao, Enzo!). If a man begins to take an active interest in his appearance, it usually means that he is falling for the secretary, or that he has been warned by his doctor of imminent and extremely unpleasant consequences if he continues his current lifestyle.

Women begin their battles with gravity early on. A college friend of mine, Mary, had been abundantly blessed, in my opinion, with womanly attributes, but she complained bitterly of "shoddy breasts". Many other People I Know (and I am not admitting anything here) have been known to shun certain intimate positions for fear of being betrayed by certain rebellious bits of flesh. Sharon Stone gave what I consider an excellent tip, years ago, by revealing that she wouldn't think of making whoopee without a bra on. There you have it.

The finest engineers in the world are at work, not on bridges, as has been amply demonstrated by the unfortunate tendency of the latter to fall into rivers, but on bras. Your average Wonderbra contains as many pulleys and hoists as were used to construct the great pyramids of Egypt. So there is no reason whatsoever to ever be seen without a fetching decollete, at any time, and no further worries need to be had on the subject.

What remains, alas, is that part of the body that is not so easily dominated or understood, the butt. No section of the female anatomy inspires such a broad range of opinion as the derriere. And, without getting into a country-by-country breakdown of gluteal esthetics, it is fair to say that women all over the world have a love-hate relationship with their butts. Flat, round, big or small, everyone would like theirs to be slightly different.

Until, that is, the age of 40, where butts universally and definitively tend to go south, like a flock of recalcitrant geese that has no intention of ever coming back. At that point, the much-reviled butts of yesteryear begin to seem like Paradise Lost.

And although it happens to everyone, the amply endowed are the most at risk. It doesn't matter how many thousands of squats and leg lifts you do, your day will come. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, sweet pea. The question is, what to do?

Cybill Shepherd, or possibly Kathleen Turner, said once that as you get older, you can either save your face or your butt, and your butt is behind you. Meaning: put your best face forward! Of course, it is not quite that simple. It is like preserving the facade of a Gothic cathedral and letting the sanctuary run to rack and ruin. Of course, it may seem a bit sacrilegious to compare the butt to a church, but actually, this part of the female anatomy was revered long before anybody thought of worshipping anything else, because that's where life is created.

So, something must be done, but what? This, dear reader, I do not know. My Brazilian friend who, incidentally, has a perfect butt by any standards, declared one day at the gym in sincere sympathy that "a big butt is a big responsibility". And each of us is left, ultimately, to shoulder her responsibilities alone.

So, for the time being, long live lunges and squats and stairs, and harem pants, and A-line skirts, and the eyesight that goes in the crapper with all the rest, because as the Italians say, "When the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't hurt."

And long live the butt, in all its glorious decline, because at least it provides a comfortable place to sit. In Italian, "butt" is synonymous with "luck," and we are indeed lucky to have this extremely accommodating piece of anatomy, because otherwise our pants would be hanging somewhere around mid-thigh all the time like my friend Kate's father, one of the few people in the world to have been born with a concave caboose.

So my friends, put your head between your knees and kiss your ass hello, and say, like the Italians do, "Che culo!"

The Hermit (Happy Birthday CTJ!)

The Hermit came up in a spread yesterday and so I started thinking about it and wanting to write about it. But, my stepfather Tom's birthday is approaching and I wanted to celebrate that, too. Then it hit me--Tom was The Hermit! I say was because Tom is, technically, dead, or at least, the body he used from 1933-2001 is now reduced to ashes and sitting in a shoebox in my mother's closet. She says she can't think of what to do with them.

Tom is, of course, alive and well and living in Paris, like Jacques Breil, or somewhere equally nice. Tom was a leg man--I believe that's what attracted him to my mother, although he later claimed, with his Irish blarney, that what he liked best about my mom were her kids--and he would appreciate the legs of les Parisiennes. In this, his most recent life, he didn't like the French. I don't believe he had a great deal of contact with French people. It was just a guy thing. Real guys don't like the French, and Tom was a real guy.

He liked football, and baseball, or should I say, he liked the Bengals and the Reds, just like my father. And, like my father, his athletic "preferences" were responsible for his being almost constantly in the grip of a depression that was as deep and real as it was incomprehensible to those of us who don't care a damn about televised sports. This latter category, worldwide, comprises mostly women, although of course there are plenty of exceptions to prove the rule, so ladies, don't get your fur ruffled. But I think it is fair to say, with my pith helmet firmly in place to ward off the vicious attacks of Female Sports Fans, that although women might find TV sports a fun pastime, they do not allow their team's record to interfere with their sense of self.

To illustrate: when I lived in California, I found that the only way to get anything done was to hire people from New York to do it. California people always wanted to enter all your data in their computer and have someone call you with an estimate, possibly next week, or not, if you even got through to a real person at all which was rare. The New Yorkers, almost always Brooklyn natives, would say something like, "Two-fifty. Tomorrow ok?" and the job was as good as done. Now I can honestly say that I am not a big Cali fan. My favorite parts of living in Oakland were the weather and being able to wear flip-flops all the time. So having that contact, however tenuous and far-removed, with New York, was Balm in Gilead for me, and I always enjoyed getting Dick and Ben and whoever to shoot the shit for a while, which, being New Yorkers, they were more than happy to do. And, when asked why they had left Brooklyn, the guys of a certain age always mentioned the Dodgers, as in: "There was no point in living in Brooklyn once the Dodgers left." They said this in perfect seriousness.

And so I want to say, as a woman, and let the chips fall where they may, that this is a part of the male psyche that women just cannot penetrate. It's like men cannot understand the horrors of cellulite, or why women have so many shoes.

And for Tom, and my Dad both, the fact that the Bengals and the Reds used to be real teams and then they just sucked, worse and worse every year, was pretty devastating. I think the worst thing was getting their hopes up, every year, and then having them dashed, again and again.

Tom had more or less the same star-crossed love affair with golf. When he played a decent game, life was worth living, but when he had a really bad streak, he would retire into a brooding silence. Several times, he gave up golf, and gave his clubs to charity. Then, after a year or two, a particularly lovely spring or who knows what would fill Tom's breast with hope again and he would go out and get new clubs, and the cycle would start all over again.

Through it all, alcohol was his constant companion and best friend. The men of Tom's generation drank hard liquor, not beer or wine, and Tom had a preference for vodka. Tom was already an alcoholic when he retired, a little early, and his retirement proved to be his undoing, because there was no longer any reason not to drink all day long. He wasn't a violent drunk, or abusive in any way, except to himself. He just sank deeper and deeper into himself, his recliner, his TV and his apathy, until nobody and nothing could touch him, which I suppose was the point.

Before retirement, Tom was a protestant minister, for the United Church of Christ. We moved back to Ohio in order for Tom to accept the position of Head Pastor at the local campus church. Some people may be shocked at the seeming discrepancy. What? An alcoholic minister? There were a few who criticized. One of Tom's successors, a female interim minister with a tight perm and the facial expression of an asshole just barely holding back diarrhea, remarked pointedly, at a meeting in which my mother was present, that "an alcoholic can't serve God." Ah yes, of course, it's only the perfect who can serve God. All, uh, mm, I confess I lost count--how many perfect people are in the world again? To my knowledge, out of approximately seven billion of us, there is not one whom God has made perfect, or even close. And if God depended on only the perfect to get His work done, it would be more or less like Alitalia depending on only the honest and hard-working employees to get their planes in the air. As my Hapkido instructor used to say, "You fight with what you have." And just as Alitalia has chosen to keep flying, somehow, with ancient planes and thieving employees, it is my belief that God has chosen to fight with what He has.

Tom fought, too, a daily battle with his demons, not all of which were found at the bottom of a gallon bottle of cheap vodka. Many of those battles, he lost. But he was the best preacher I ever heard. He had a way of making a point with gentle humor, with humility, with infinite tolerance for the human frailty that is called, by some, sin, an odious word. I always hated church before Tom came along, and I hate it now, mostly, because it's boring and because it is my considered opinion that many preachers are full of shit. And the worst thing about them is their insistence on preaching. I usually leave a church feeling bored, depressed, or like I've been attacked. That's why these folks become ministers, probably--a chance to really let that supercilious, holier-than-thou attitude fly. But it is one of life's contradictions that a preacher who preaches will fail in his mission. Because what is the mission of a pastor, if not to bring some measure of comfort and joy to his flock? What better way to teach love and forgiveness than to let that same flock practice it on their shepherd?

Several years after Tom's death, I was on a bus in Tunisia, which passed what to me was an unusual sight--a shepherd, swathed in dark robes, sitting with his back to the lone sheep of his flock, which hovered anxiously and jealously nearby. Just in that brief flash as the bus drove by, it was clear that there was some degree of role reversal in that relationship.

When I think of Tom and his congregation, this image comes to mind. Tom ministered to that congregation as best he could, and he did a good job. Everybody said so then, everybody says so now. He played backgammon with shut-ins, charmed the old ladies, served on hospice committees, performed weddings and funerals, and the countless other tasks that make up the job of a minister. And it was, to Tom, a job. It had been a calling--he said he had been undecided whether to be a baseball coach or a minister until he "got the call" but he treated it with the work ethic of any other job. He was in the office from 9 to 5, with part of Friday afternoons spent at home agonizing over his sermon. He wasn't one of those who treat the ministry as a Sunday-only job.

But as his alcoholism became more pronounced, both before and after his retirement, it was the congregation that ministered to him. Not overtly, perhaps, but in their unfailing love, and compassion, and protection, and forgiveness. I actually went to the church last Sunday, and after the service, fell into conversation with a man who must have been in his sixties. He asked who I was and I explained my connection to the church, and told him how hard I find it to sit in a church where Tom is not preaching. Because, and I know this sounds ridiculous, I keep hoping that he will, somehow, materialize, and tell a couple of jokes, and preach a 20-minute sermon (he kept a very strict eye on the time, so that nobody would have to miss any part of whatever game was being televised), every time I walk into a church, and he never does.

"Tom had his failings, everybody knows that," I said to the gentleman, wanting to ward off that uncomfortable moment when you know people want to say something but don't, out of politeness.

"But that didn't make us love him any less," is what the man said to me, and it was so obviously heartfelt that I couldn't speak any more. I just sat there gulping, glad I had worn my glasses, which dam up the tears, somewhat.

Tom died in 2001, the inevitable end of an alcoholic diabetic, a few months after the attacks and a few days before Christmas. I was sad, and most of all, angry, because I had wanted to save him, and I failed. I hate failure.

But in my head, I know that Tom is at peace. Whatever his mission was on this earth, God saw fit to release him, from his body, and what God has put asunder, let no man join together. It will seem blasphemous, I'm sure, to some, to compare Tom to the Christ, but there are many ways to be crucified. I don't think anybody chooses to become an alcoholic. "Take this cup from me," Tom might have said, and maybe he did say it, but it did about as much good as when Jesus said it. That cup was his to drink, and if it held vodka and not vinegar, it didn't make it any less bitter.

Or maybe I'm just kidding myself, and there really are Perfect Ministers and Perfect People, and Tom is sitting in the drunk tank in one of Dante's more unpleasant rings of hell. But I don't believe that, with my head or my heart, and if a God that permits so much suffering on earth would continue to torment us in the afterlife, then fuck it all anyway.

Anyway, Tom's 75th birthday would have been this November 24th, putting him smack dab in the beginning of Sagittarius, the sign of preachers and partiers, saints and sinners, enlightenment and mortification. Sajj is a sign of extremes, of hot and cold, ups and downs, irresistible charm and psychological isolationism.

And this is, in a nutshell, the energy of The Hermit. The Hermit runs off into the woods, fleeing from his most frightening enemy: himself. Whither he goes, none can follow, and The Hermit fights his inner enemies alone, with God at his right hand. The Footprints in the Sand parable, which you will see on refrigerators and bookmarks, describes the energy of The Hermit. Always lonely, yet never alone. Ever straying, never lost. And after a lifetime of trudging through the sand, a wave comes and the only traces of a life are erased, as if they had never been. Except in our hearts, where the footprints of The Hermit will always remain.

Happy birthday, CTJ.

The Snow's Falling Down, It Gets Colder Day by Day

Thank you, Chrissie, for another blog title.

Here in Northeast Ohio we've been hit this week by what used to be called blizzards and is now called "Lake Effect" weather. I was listening to the radio and the dj said, rather wistfully, that "Lake Effect" are not words that anyone is ever really happy to hear, and I would concur with that.

I think the change in terminology has a sound economic basis. A blizzard is a good excuse to stay home, lake effect weather just means drive slow and take the 4wd if you have one.

My mother, with her morbid sense of beauty, is always raving about how beautiful the snow is, and I cannot honestly say that the snow is ugly, especially if I've been well-insulated with some Zinfandel (red, bien sur) and some Pretenders, and if only I could figure out how to use the fireplace, I could almost get fond of freezing to death. However, my personal preference is for sunshine.

People always comment in the spring on how much weight I've lost, and I've given up trying to explain that my weight hasn't changed significantly in 20 years, it's just the five layers of clothing that make me look what my ex-boyfriend Alessandro called a "Bagonghi." I don't think Bagonghi is a real word, he just made it up, it kind of means what as kids we would have termed 'a big fatso'. I would like to get some of those Hello My Name is stickers and write, Hello My Name is NOT Bagonghi. I just play one on TV.

The other night I was driving home from my martial arts class in the Duchess of Fat, which I foolishly took because a) I love that car and b) it has a kick-ass stereo, and it was total white knuckle time. The forty-minute trip took me an hour and a half, and I didn't even have time to contemplate, Why the fuck do I live in Ohio? because I was too busy being terrified. I started out on the freeway, which was terrifying, and then I got off on Rt. 303, a two-lane highway which was, of course, a rollercoaster. I don't think I breathed the whole way. Luckily, the guy behind me was not one of those people who think 20 mph is too slow in a blizzard and crawl up your ass, which is one of my fifty thousand pettest peeves. There was a truck jacknifed on the road, and it just made me realize what an idiot I'd been to leave the house.

Luckily, the same God that invented Lake Effect Weather also invented beer, which is the number one holistic treatment for post-blizzard stress disorder. I've driven in some pretty crappy weather, but I'd say Monday night was quite possibly the crappiest. Needless to say, the Duchess of Fat is now firmly ensconced in the garage, where she intends to stay until we get some halfway decent weather.

And speaking of weather, I would like to say hello to my Follower, an expert on Libras, giant American cars, and crappy weather. I must say that having a Follower is indeed a heady feeling. I now have to suppress the urge to go out and take over the world in an evil dictatorship in which everyone will be forced to drive Buicks and not throw their weights or grunt at the gym. Power, friends, is a dangerous thing, or a sexy thing, if you read Foucault, but don't read Foucault.

The Lovers

All the world loves a lover, so the saying goes. This is not, strictly speaking, true. Many of us wish that lovers would get a room. When I was in Tuscany this fall, I was persuaded by my hotel owner to go to a local spa called "Le Terme Sensoriali--The Sensory Spa". The idea was that all the senses, or the chakras, or something, were to be stimulated by various "holistic" means.

Having a degree in Holistic Medicine, I am naturally suspicious of anything bearing the label "holistic". It's not just that familiarity breeds you-know-what. It's that holism carries within it the word "whole," and that implies that nothing is outside of holism. Not cigarettes, not Vegas, not Dunkin Donuts, nor MRI's and chemotherapy. Holistic medicine is whatever makes you feel better, right now, and if it's a band-aid, so be it. When you don't need it anymore, you will discard it. I promise.

So considering that I was, as stated, in Tuscany, in a constant state of awe brought on by the sheer poetry of the landscape, the amazing food upon which I gorged like there was no domani, the wine ditto, and a beautiful pseudo-rastafarian farmer who rode his tractor as if it were a bucking bronco, the need for further sensory stimulation was, shall we say, limited.

But the owner of my agriturismo, an intimidating young woman with pale eyes and rather unfortunate purple sweats, convinced me with the sheer force of her personality that I should go, and sold me a ticket on the spot, for 30 euro, which is 45 bucks to you and me.

So off I went. One reason I was in Tuscany was to soak in the thermal baths, renowned for their healing powers. It was a beautiful fall, sunny but not too hot, the perfect time of year for the baths.

I was welcomed to the Terme by a thin dark woman with raccoon-style eye makeup and a languid air, the type of female that inspires in me an old Muay Thai urge to elbow her in the face. She handed me a robe and told me, her voice practically inaudible over the piped-in Afghani funeral dirges so unaccountably popular among the holistic set, that Alberto would be showing me around, once I had changed into my swimming suit.

I squished around in my flip-flops for quite some time before Alberto appeared, almost coming to an ignominious end several times on the slippery marble floor, which had no drains whatsoever and was sloppy after a full day of equally squishy people.

Alberto and I practically collided as I was on my way to the bathroom, which was indicated by a mysterious hieroglyph that I assumed meant "little girls' room" in ancient Egyptian. Alberto seemed a bit put out that I had not waited for him, and proceeded to launch into an explanation of the set-up.

This immediately lived up to the purpose of the spa by stimulating my olfactory sense, since Alberto, my guide, had really tragic halitosis, an affliction shared by many of his countrymen who believe that too much brushing wears out the teeth. Alberto explained at great length and with what seemed to me an unnecessary aspiration of air the purposes of the various saunas and pools, which were heavily chlorinated, a contradiction I hastened to point out to Alberto.

"People don't come to a holistic center to be poisoned," I declared, with a deliberate lack of tact. His breath spurred me to ever-greater heights of rudeness. Alberto and I then engaged in a lengthy discussion in which we each repeated our divergent points of view, with increasing heat, until I managed to exploit a momentary distraction to squish at high velocity, heel-toe heel-toe, toward the Poisoned Pool, as I mentally dubbed the jacuzzi in retaliation for the stupid names that were posted all over the place. "The Chamber of Silence" (i.e. a room with nothing in it), "The River of Life" (a bunch of stones you were supposed to walk on but which hurt so nobody did).

The Poisoned Pool was not very well-lit. I squished carefully into the pool area to the strains of "Tequila," which I swear to God was being played by a band out in the park grounds, and didn't notice until the last minute that there was a couple in one corner of the pool, the female of which was being humped from behind by the male, wearing glasses and a plastic shower cap. Da duh, dada deeda dada/ da duh, dada dee da daaaah...I fail to see how anybody could get their sexy on to Pee Wee Herman's theme song, but whatever.

In any case, I was forced to reflect at that moment that, far from being part of those who love a lover, I often find them distinctly annoying.

Having said as much, I would now like to talk briefly about The Lovers card in terms of the Tarot.

Just as I personally have mixed feelings about Lovers in general, The Lovers is a card of duality. The original name of the card was simply Love, but at some point it became The Lovers, and I consider that a stroke of genius, because love is always conflicted, isn't it? Has there ever been a love story that was simple and devoid of second thoughts, ambivalence, illusions and even betrayal?

Love is not a thing that comes nicely packaged in a box from LL Bean. Love is more like a Rubik's cube that most people will never figure out but will die trying.

The whole point of The Lovers is, two heads are better than one. You will never figure it out by yourself. But you also don't need another person to have love in your life, or even a dog or a gerbil. Each of us have love because we are love. Love can take on many forms, but in its most essential form, love is energy. But just as God needed to create the Universe to see the reflection of Its greatness, love, too, needs to witness itself, and that's where other people, and animals and the like, come in.

If you don't believe me, think about the people you have loved and who have loved you. What are they, who are they really that is so great, except for mirrors to see yourself in? If that sounds narcissistic, let me give a concrete example. A person who lets you see your beautiful self, your giving self, your sexy self, your dutiful self, your sassy self, and the list goes on. Those selves are already there, inside us, but we don't know it until we see our reflection.

Now think about the people who should have loved you, but didn't. Didn't they show you a reflection of yourself, too? So who's to say they didn't love you? Stop telling yourself tales of defeat. It's all love. If anyone is familiar with Stop the World I Want to Get Off, there is a touching song at the end where Littlechap asks Evie how she could have loved someone like him, when he couldn't love her back. And without getting too far into it, she tells him that if they could live twice, she would love him all over again.

And that's why The Lovers is a card of duality. It's going back and making all the same mistakes, with the same person. Love me Two Times Baby. It's the Me that's in You and the You that's in Me, it's the One that is Two and the Two that are One, and two is just a number, because The Lovers card is infinite, like a series of circus mirrors, where you lose track of what is "reality" and that's how it should be. It's kind of like Carlos Castaneda's dreamers who get lost in a dream and never return, not even with their physical bodies.

The Lovers is the Beauty and the Beast, the love that heals and the love that hurts. It's getting what you want, and not getting what you want, and which is worse? Anybody who has ever gotten what they want knows the answer to that.

It's the reality and the reflection of reality, and knowing the difference or not.

Oftentimes we don't. We get lost in the mirrors, and we don't know how to get out, and we live in this happy fantasy until one of the mirrors breaks, and then we feel this sense of loss, and betrayal, without realizing that we lost nothing. That part of us we saw reflected in our lover is still there, but now it is a fully integrated part of us. The breaking of the mirror just means that we don't need it anymore.

And yes, there is a way of connecting to other souls, and yes it is love, so it is all about Me Me Me? Yes and no. Because that form of love is there, all the time. We are all connected, all the time. Nothing you can do will change it. Getting married won't change it. Breaking up won't change it. Hating somebody won't change the fact that you love them.

First Corinthians, which is such an amazing revelation on the subject of love, says that "Then you will know fully, even as you are fully known." And I think that when we talk about love in its human form, knowing is a big part of it. To know is to love, if not to like, because the two are really not necessarily connected. Like is on the merit system, love isn't.

And so all those people who are in bad relationships, I want to say this. You love this person. Love is never a bad thing, so don't beat yourself up about it. Celebrate that love. Take that love to bed with you at night like Linus with his blankie. But get out of the relationship. Because love and relationships are not the same thing, in fact, they are diametric opposites.

Love is an absolute. It has no boundaries, and no rules. It can't be trapped, it can't be commanded or commandeered.

Relationship, on the other hand, is another word for "rules". The only way for a relationship to work is if everybody knows the rules and sticks by them. Otherwise the relationship will crumble, which might be a bad thing or a good thing, depending on our objectives.

And this duality is in The Lovers too, because on this earth plane, love will lead to a relationship, and a relationship will always involve love, of some kind. The two are almost inseparable, like Siamese Twins, for most of us normal folks that haven't been Enlightened and aren't quite sure we want to. (Is there Dunkin Donuts in Nirvana?) And the trick is finding that delicate balance somewhere in between reality and its reflection, so that the love relationship can stay alive, somehow, like the same Siamese twins that would die if separated and so live to have a weird but unique and even somehow satisfying existence.

Kind of like the Sensory Baths. Tuscany is a sensory bath. Life is a sensory bath. The reflection costs 30 euro, the reality is free. Life is free, but it ain't cheap, is what I always say. So choose carefully, or choose with reckless abandon, it's all the same, because the price of love is more love. And love is not a game of ping-pong. It's more like bumper cars. Meaning, you don't sit there for all eternity lobbing love balls back and forth with the same person. You get in your little bumper car and step on it, and what happens, happens.

GM, Je t'aime

My grandfather Raymond was an emigre from Kentucky. He came as a child with his family to the Cincinnati area, where great-Grandpa George bought hundreds of acres of land that eventually became farms. George was renowned in the area for his ability to pick a winner, in terms of land, and anybody who was thinking of buying called him to walk the land with them, before any final decision was made.

Ohio represented the Promised Land to my hillbilly ancestors, who left home and family in a tiny holler called Olive Hill for the rich and rolling lands of Ohio. That part of Kentucky is so full of hills and valleys and creeks and whatnot that the only thing you can really farm is tobacco.

As far as I know, Great-Grandpa George was not disappointed. Farming is not an easy life, but it has its rewards, and even the mere ownership of so much land gave my family a sense of security, the same way I feel today on my measly 36 acres.

George made a daring move, even though it might not seem so today. But back then, to pack up kit and kilter and move to another state to seek a better life was risky. I suppose it was in the blood. There is evidence that one of our ancestors, a Welsh prince named Madog, was actually the first to discover America, back around 1000 A.D. Of course, everybody would like for their ancestor to have discovered America, and to be a prince, and you can doubt if you want.

But if you had ever met my grandfather, you would not have been able to doubt that he was the descendant of a monarch, because he was a gentleman--a gentleman farmer, as it happens.

He eventually took over the main farm, after having married my Grandmother Olive. They had everything: livestock, and soy, and fruit trees, and grain. And when they had established some kind of economic stability, they got a Buick.

A Buick was the only kind of car I ever knew my grandparents to drive. I asked my mom if they ever drove anything else in her memory and she said that she thought they had a Pontiac once. It must have been a midlife crisis type thing for my Grandpa because that was the only non-Buick anyone ever heard of.

I asked why they didn't buy Cadillacs instead and she shook her head. "Grandma felt they were too flashy."

According to my father, my grandfather never actually got rid of any of his Buicks. He said that, when it was time to get a new car, Grandpa would just drive the old one up onto a particular spot on the farm and park it there, like a faithful horse being put out to pasture. This would be in keeping with my grandfather as I knew him. He didn't like waste, and when he sold the farm and built a house on the housing development that took its place, a lot of what other people might call junk was transported to the new location. You never knew when it might come in handy, was Grandpa's idea.

I might be giving the idea of the stereotypical Hillbilly with an old refrigerator and a hound dog on the front porch, but my grandparents were not that way at all. Of course, they might have been suppressing the Appalachian instinct, like I do. I had to stop myself at the last minute from turning my old toilet into a planter. Blood tells. But my grandparents' house and grounds were immaculate, and if Grandpa did have a retired fleet of Buicks parked somewhere on his 500 acres, they were not visible to the casual glance. Grandpa's bent and rusty nails were very neatly categorized in old tin cans.

I think that in every woman's life, there is one man who has such an enormous influence that she spends her whole life trying to find him again. If you would have taken a casual glance at my grandfather, you never would have thought he could be such a man. He was quiet, unassuming, and seemingly subservient to my grandmother. He wasn't particularly handsome, but he gave a sense of solidity, with the sturdy stature and the broad cheekbones of a Welshman. I was a very shy child, more accustomed to women than men, and my grandfather had to exert all his subtle charms to win me over, which he did, successfully and definitively. One of the principal Moments of Glory in my life was when I got to "drive" my grandfather's enormous tractor over to Uncle Clyde's farm, half a mile down the road.

Grandpa was a Libra, and somehow managed to manifest only the good traits of that sign. He was slow to decide and to act, but when he made a decision, it was always the right one. Thanks to Grandpa's business acumen, his offspring has lived a good portion of our lives on Easy Street. He was fair. If one kid got something, the other two had to get something of equal value. There was none of the robbing of Peter to pay Paul that happens, unfortunately, in so many families. Anybody who knows Libras at all knows that you can't catch hold of them. If you try and grab on to a Libra, you will find yourself with a handful of air, but when you let go, the Libra is there again. You can't make them do something, but if you give them enough space, they will do what needs to be done. And they don't go away.

So without even getting into the whole Libra thing, which is a definite theme in my life, I will say that I am happiest when driving Buicks.

I had a '96 LeSabre in Oakland, which I named "Fatty." Fatty was baby-blue, with a matching velour interior, and had a few scrapes where the elderly owners had accidentally driven up on medians and the like but was otherwise in fantastic condition. My mother, who drives a Mercedes, said Fatty was the most beautiful car she'd ever seen. When I left Oakland, I had to leave Fatty (with a Libra, of course) and in Ohio, I've been driving a Nissan Truck, which fills me with an overwhelming sense of indifference. I've been keeping my eye out for a car like Fatty but none has presented itself, until yesterday.

I am now the proud owner of a golden-beige 97 Park Avenue. My mother and her Benz are once more on the analyst's couch with the sense of inferiority that my new old car has produced. Because it's in her blood too. She's like the rebel kid, trying to break away from Mom and Dad by buying a foreign car, but inwardly convinced she's made a horrible mistake, as we all are when we break tradition.

I can't get my Grandpa back, but I keep trying. And driving the Duchess of Fat down Mogadore Road today, I felt like I had almost succeeded.

So GM is in the doldrums, and nobody knows what will happen next, but I hope they get a bail-out. Because a GM car is not just a car, it's a symbol, to those of us who weren't always middle-class (and I'm not talking about when we ruled Wales, but rather of when the middle-class was somewhere at the end of the rainbow, somewhere across the Ohio river) of dreams come true, and good times that aren't quite gone, as long as you're driving a Buick.

The Empress

The first thing we need to do when talking about The Empress is differentiate between her and The High Priestess. The original name of the High Priestess was "Papess," btw, i.e. the female Pope.

The way I like to think of this mystical Thelma and Louise team is the following. The High Priestess is a mortal woman who communes with the immortal realms, whereas the Empress is a goddess in human form. The High Priestess might be a psychic or a witch, a medicine woman or an oracle. In energetic terms, HP represents the intuitive part of us, the part that uses her mortality as a springboard to explore other realities.

The Empress, on the other hand, uses her immortal nature to get things done on the Earth plane. It's like the idea of "ascending to descend," the boddhisattva who turns his back on Nirvana to help out the human race.

People used to believe that kings were kings because God wanted it that way. So it was the idea of a temporal power that was, however, conferred by divine right.

When people talk about The Empress, a lot of times the word that comes up is "Mother". Although The Empress is definitely a creative force, I think the word "mother" is limiting.

The Empress is in charge. It is a feminine kind of power, meaning more yin than yang. The Empress can act when she wants, and when she thinks it advisable, but the Empress can stay her hand, and often does.

It is this idea of refraining that is peculiar to the Empress as opposed to the Emperor. There is so much value placed in modern society on action. "Just do it!" There is no brand of tennis shoes that says, "Just chill!"

And yet, there is no real or historical justification for this idea that doing is better than not doing. The fields have to lie fallow if they will produce. There is, in every life, a time of hibernation, and a time of production. Even Ecclesiastes gives equal weight to active and passive, "A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing."

The movie Elizabeth shows this energy almost perfectly. Elizabeth was one of the most immensely powerful rulers of the Western world ever, yet the film shows her staying her hand rather than striking. The quality of mercy belongs to The Empress. Unfortunately, Elizabeth's soft heart cost her dearly, and her enemies almost succeeded in invading England, but in the end she was victorious.

The soft heart is the Achilles' Heel of the Empress, but it is also her foremost virtue. She does not govern with her head, like the Machiavellian Emperor, but with her heart, with her gut. The power of the Emperor is intellectual, whereas the Empress' power is emotional.

In the movie Pirates of the Caribbean number Four thousand and twenty-six, the goddess Calypso had been divested of her powers and chained to a mortal body, by her own volition, all for the love of a man. Now listen closely because this is THE crux of the whole Empress energy. Calypso did this to herself. She was a goddess, she ruled the seas, and for some guy who wasn't even that cute, she threw it all to the four winds. And then, of course, she was sorry about it, but by then it was too late to weasel out of the agreement.

Eventually, I forget how, the curse or whatever is lifted, and you see this perfectly normal and mild-mannered mortal woman grow to about 200 feet tall and let me tell you, she is pissed. All those years of bondage and humiliation have not left her in the best of moods.

And I absolutely love that image because that is the story of Everywoman. The power of women is immensely greater than the power of men, because women can create life and men can't. This is why the original deities were female, this is why the less developed economies have men running after women and not vice versa. But this power has undergone a disconnect. Women have psyched themselves out into thinking that the only way to be powerful is to imitate men, but the opposite is the case. Women's true power lies in being themselves.

When I see my friends running after men, I want to scream. And I want to say this: You will never catch him. Men are yang, they can run a lot faster than you. But does anybody believe poor Cassandra? No. The legend says that you couldn't catch a unicorn either. The only way was to have a virgin sit perfectly still in the forest, and the Unicorn would come lay his head in her lap. We will not get into the symbolism in THAT because this is a PG rated blog. But there is a definite lesson to be learned!

I am not going to generalize and say what that means. Women come in all shapes and sizes. The problem is thinking that only the shapes and sizes most similar to men are ok, and I'm talking emotional and social shapes and sizes as well as physical.

Much more than men, women seem to be constantly trying to be somebody else than who they are. Everybody wants to look like Gisele Bundchen.

Do you know what a Brazilian said to me about Gisele Bundchen? "She's eh-gly." (That's how Brazilians pronounce the schwa. You have "fehn" not fun, etc. It's kinda cute.)

"Skinny. Ehgly."

Brazilians, as it happens, like booty. Does that mean that Gisele Bundchen should run out and have seal blubber injected into her thighs, or go back in time and be related to my family? Obviously not, otherwise she would not be a multikajillionaire top model. The world is not yet entirely made up of Brazilians (gracas a Deus!)

The point is, everybody is somebody else's pinup. Every woman is beautiful in her own unique way. And beauty is power. Love is power. Embracing, refraining from embracing, it's all power. And power, guess what, is a good thing. But power is nothing if you can't connect to it and control it. No point in owning a Buick if you don't have the keys.

The High Priestess, whom we haven't gotten to yet, tells us: Know thyself. The Empress tells us: Love thyself. Respect thyself. Because if you can't love yourself, you can't love anyone.

If that sounds like crap, just think about it. Loving is not really that hard. It's not rocket science. It requires no effort. Love is already there, binding each of God's creatures to one another. All you have to do to love is stop struggling. Stop fighting it.

People treat love as if it were a used car salesman. They think they're going to give away all this love and then get ripped off by not getting enough, or the right kind, in return. But love is not on the barter system. Love is not a toll road. Love is a matrix. Love is The Matrix. And we're all in it, whether we know it or not. It's tapping into that Matrix that makes us powerful.

Love and power--here we are again at The Empress.

So, in terms of healing, what I want to say is this. What if you weren't really you, or at least, what if you weren't who you think you are? What if you were a goddess? Which goddess would you be? How would you behave as a goddess? How would you feel as a goddess? What would be your goals, your dreams? What would be important to you and what would be insignificant? Would you still go out with that cheapskate guy? Would you still allow yourself to be patronized, condescended to, offended, dissed and abused?

Back to the Tarot, ho ho ho, THE FOOL

Keywords>ognuno per se e dio con tutti, put your mask on first!

The Fool is the first card of the Tarot and its number is zero. The Fool is actually the protagonist of the story which is the Tarot, which we can entitle "A Fool's Journey." And we could easily cut out the Fool's face and put ours in its place and that's the point, each of us is the Fool in his own story. We have met the idiot and it is us.

But I'm being a little hard on the Fool to call him an Idiot. What the Fool represents is us with the innocence and trust we had in the womb, swimming happily around and thinking that Life wasn't as bad as everybody said. The minute we begin the birth process, of course, a good portion of that trust is lost, because it is extremely painful and traumatic to be born. Sylvia Browne says that when she regresses her clients, they can get through all kinds of terrifying and painful experiences, including murders and torture, but the birthing process is just too horrible. So she doesn't even do it anymore.

The Fool has never been hurt, or betrayed, or disappointed, and literally does not know the meaning of the words. He is setting off on this crazy mission with the enthusiasm of a child going to Disneyworld for the first time. To the Fool, everything is beautiful, everybody is nice, and everything in the garden is just peachy. There are no curbs or checks on the Fool's energy. There is no thought of shame or social conventions.

I went a little early to my martial arts class yesterday and there were some kids grappling. I thought I'd die laughing. They had no idea what they were doing and they didn't care, they just did whatever, and then they would fall over, and then they would decide that since they were already lying down they might as well take a nappy-poo. They were driving the hotshot visiting martial arts guy insane. You could see the veins popping out on his head.

These kids epitomize the Fool energy. They are not foolish, they just don't give a shit, and they trust that things are going to be ok. That is the Fool. Except for, while the kids have their parents lined up snapping photos with their digital cameras, and watching like hawks to make sure the sparring doesn't get too rough, the Fool is alone, apparently, except for a dog, which inevitably appears on almost all the Tarot decks.

It's an accepted bumper sticker fact that dog is God spelled backwards, and with all due respect to the cat lovers of the world, there is no animal that incarnates God's love for us better than our woof-woofs. The love of a dog is complete, unconditional, and unending. The dog doesn't care what we look like, how we treat it, or what we feed it. It thinks we are just the bee's knees. I have seen so many dogs in Italy, abandoned on the roads by their owners, trotting along with their tails wagging, racing up to every car to look inside, confident that they will find their owners there.

I don't like to use the term owners. The idea that any living thing can own any other living thing is ludicrous. But I don't know what else to call them. The point is, those dogs will get run over and they will be happy about it, because they're sure that it was their owner who accidentally killed them when he came back for them. There is a dog in Altopascio who goes to visit his dead owner at the cemetery every day. Sylvia Browne has a Spirit Dog from another lifetime who accompanies her everywhere to protect her.

So this is my idea of God. Always there, protecting us, loving us, following us around, never failing, never doubting that we are The Best. Because God has the incredible capacity to see each and every one of us as the most wonderful of His creations.

I want to appease the cat people of the world for a minute with a quote that I really like:

Dogs teach us how to love, cats teach us how to live.

There is no cat depicted on the Fool card, but that doesn't mean the cat isn't there. The cat is on the couch, or under the bed, or something. So the Fool card is about learning to live, and learning to love, and the two things chase each other, just like a cat and a dog. Because what is life without love?


And although most often, the Fool is talked about as an open-hearted and trusting approach to life, the same goes for love. "Why do fools fall in love?" asks the song. The answer is that fools fall in love because nobody else is that stupid! It's not the smart person in us that falls in love. It's that little tiny bit of Fool that survives the slings and arrow of outrageous boyfriends that still has the crazy audacity to poke its heart out of the shell, one more time, and get clobbered.

When the Fool appears in the spread, it reminds us that there is another way to be, besides suspicious, and wounded, and hopeless, and despairing, which is the way we might end up feeling when the going gets rough. It reminds us that we are not alone, as long as we have the Dog-God and the Cat-Act. The cat tells us to ACT on impulse, saying, "If it feels good, do it."

My hotshot martial arts guy could serve as the antithesis of the Fool energy. The Fool has no agenda, and is just as happy when he fails as when he succeeds, because he doesn't know the difference. The martial arts guy had the Fool energy smothered basically the minute he was born by a father who expected him to carry on the family dynasty. His whole life has been on an agenda, and the worst thing is, it wasn't necessarily his. The guy is now 60 and he is still working on his father's agenda. He is one of the all-time greats in the martial arts, and nobody will ever match his record, but he's not free.

I am not judging the martial arts guy, quite the contrary. He has gone literally beyond the limits of human capability, he has reached the maximum of his own potential and gone beyond it. I have an enormous admiration for people who can be that focused. What I am saying is that it might be nice for this person to be able to experience the Fool energy at this point in his life.

As The Fool reminds us, It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

Happy Armistice Day

Today is Armistice Day, i.e. Veterans' Day, which is really not the same thing. An Armistice is when both sides agree to stop fighting, and today is the 80th Anniversary of the occasion that we are commemorating, when the Allies and the Axis powers signed the armistice on the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour. So the word "armistice" says to me the avoidance of conflict. It's not exactly peace, but what is, exactly, peace? Isn't true Peace the lions lying down with the lambs and the Republicans hanging with the Dems and the Ohio State fans tailgating with, I dunno, Michigan? And how likely is that? I mean, isn't it a heck of a lot more likely that the lions and lambs will get along than those other scenarios?

The word "peace" implies brotherly love. People are at peace when there is nothing to fight about anymore, and that implies awareness, and growth, and we are quite simply not there. We can say, "There is nothing worth going to war about," but that would be us, who are rich, and have everything we want appear at the click of the mouse, like genies from the bottle. Sure, maybe money can't buy happiness, but abject poverty can't buy happiness either. So it's very easy to say "Peace out, dude!" but where there is suffering, there will be war.

So I want to go back to this word, Armistice, and suggest we think about its meaning and really celebrate it today. An armistice is never a final solution. The word armistice implies arms, and where there are arms, there will be conflict. At best, an armistice is a band-aid. But what I want to say is, there's nothing wrong with band-aids, and they are certainly better than the alternative, which is bleeding all over the place and making a mess.

We are never going to solve the problems in the Middle East, or anywhere else in the world. Maybe we can help a little, but who really knows. There is so much deep-seated cultural stuff that we just can't understand, or change, and that's fine, because that's their culture. We have our culture, they have theirs.

I am personally opposed to sending American kids to get shot at, for any reason, anywhere in the world, and yes, I do have a special predilection for American lives. It's like saying to a parent, "Oh, you care more about your own kid than the neighbor's." Of course, the parent is more interested in the safety of his own child than other children. It's only natural.

So today, we have changed the name to Veterans' Day, and rather than celebrating even a delicate, uneasy kind of half-assed peace, which is the armistice, we are celebrating people who have gone to war, many of whom never came back. And those people totally deserve to be celebrated, and applauded, because they really did give all, but I would just like to see them celebrated on another day, because today is the day to pray for armistice.

Because even a half-assed kind of peace is better than none at all.

The Chariot

The Chariot is frequently summarized as "triumph over adversity". I think, though, that it is important to understand how this triumph is achieved, i.e. through control.

I talked a little about it in the Devil post, but this card is really the one most directly concerned with the idea of control. Because in order to drive the chariot, someone has to hold the reins, and if you want to get where you're going, it is highly advisable that that person be you.

When I look at this card, I think of the myth of Phaeton, the son of the god Helios, whose job was to drive the sun across the sky in his chariot. At some point, Helios made the mistake of offering to grant any one wish of his half-mortal offspring, and Phaeton immediately took him up on it by asking to drive the sun in Helios' stead one day.

Helios immediately realized what an idiot he had been to make the offer but by then it was too late--he had promised. This should serve as a lesson, by the way, that there are some promises that are best not kept.

So Phaeton drove off in the chariot, and of course he made a royal mess of things, and he ended up scorching the earth, and Zeus had to strike him down with a thunderbolt, and Phaeton's body fell into a river, and that was it for Phaeton.

This story is all about control, and power. Although it is easy to get them mixed up, control and power are not at all the same thing. The horses pulling the chariot are stronger (i.e. more powerful) than the driver, but the driver controls them. Therefore, control can use power to achieve an end very effectively, just as power can use control for its ends too. The best thing is when power and control work together, because they sort of check each other and balance each other.

When they don't work together, there are problems. This is what happens with the classic controlling individuals. These people use control to compensate for their feelings of disempowerment and in case you don't know, it is a giant pain in the ass.

There are a lot of ways to be controlling. You don't have to know someone to be controlled by them. One example is when you're driving the car, and the person in front of you is going well under the speed limit. Just try and pass that person. They will speed up to a million miles per hour, and if you pass them anyway, they will honk and flip you off. You were supposed to stay behind them.

I bring this up so as not to get into the usual "my mother/my boyfriend is controlling" thing. Everybody's mother and/or boyfriend is controlling in some way because, when they love something, people want to keep it close to them. This is the natural human instinct. My mother-in-law uses food for control, my mom does it with money. What does your mom do? What do you do? I think that is a very hard question to ask of ourselves. In what way am I controlling of other people?

As I said before, I am more of a power person than a control person. I want everybody to just do whatever they want and leave me alone. I don't want to control anybody and I don't want to be controlled. This is why my dog Spike was the most disobedient dog on the planet. He never actually obeyed a single command, he just humored me when he felt like it, which was hardly ever.

But that is probably controlling too. Keeping people (and dogs) at a distance is a way of controlling them, I suppose. Sitting up in an Ivory Tower, saying "You, yes; you, no," as I was once accused of doing, is controlling. So being in denial about the whole control thing, or acting like control is some kind of hideous character flaw like halitosis, is really not helpful or realistic.

In Jiu-Jitsu, which is a form of grappling, they tell you that the first thing to do when you want to control someone is pull him in close. This is counter-intuitive to some extent--our instinct is to back away from a conflict situation. But when there is no place to back to, you need to get right in there and control your person before he can control you.

Of course, before you can take the reins of control into your sweaty little palms, it is really helpful to know what it is you want, and what you don't want, and where you are willing to compromise. It is helpful to have a plan--a flexible plan, but a plan.

And it is helpful for the whole team to be in on the plan, the team being head, heart, and body. This is hard in my case, since my team does not really get along. My head thinks my heart is a complete idiot, my heart is too cowardly to tell my heart to go to hell, and my body is in a state of almost total disconnect from both. In other words, I have more or less the same degree of internal unity as the Bad News Bears.

But enough about me. The deal is, you can't control your heart, whereas the head and body are much easier to control. So the only option seems to be to put the heart in control. I know that sounds like a very bad idea to any thinking person, whereas all the touchy feely people of the world are like, "What?". The analogy I would draw would be Rainman. Remember when Tom Cruise wanted to fly to L.A. and Rainman was like, No way, only on Qantas. And so Rainman (i.e. the heart) ended up being in charge, and they drove, and it turned out really well, actually. It didn't go how Tom Cruise wanted it to go but it was fine.

So I'm babbling here, but this is a draft. Getting back to Triumph Over Adversity, that is pretty much what it's about. It ain't no bed of roses, although it can be nice, and all, but in general, a lot of times, in this life, you're like, "Fuck." So that's when we all kind of need to get in there, and latch on to whatever is bugging us, and not let go until we are controlling IT and not the other way around.

Divi-Nation--The Hanged Man

The reason I call this Divi-Nation is because I think this nation would benefit from a little more of the Divine. Tarot reading is one of the many forms of divination, which just means seeing the Divine, i.e. God, in everyday things, whether they be cards, clouds, coffee grounds, or toenail clippings. (I have never personally met anyone who used toenail clippings as a divining art but there's always a first time.)

The point is that Spirit will take any opportunity to communicate, and the communication is phrased in a way that the intended recipient can understand and know that it's meant for him. It seems hard to believe that reality can be manipulated like that, or that anyone, dead or alive, would bother, but apparently there is not a lot to do on the Other Side ;-)). Just kidding. According to Sylvia Browne, there is even more to do there than here. It's like, over here, we're kids playing on the ground, getting messy and flinging our toys around and generally creating chaos, and they're trying to clean up after us AND go on with their own lives.

What I want to talk about today is the Hanged Man. The Hanged Man is not as gruesome as it sounds, he is actually suspended by one foot, with the other foot on the inside of his knee in a kind of yogic position. I often sleep in that position so I don't think it's strictly yoga, but it's very comforting actually.

The reason I bring that up is that it's really not that uncomfortable a position. The Hanged Man is not in agony. He didn't necessarily choose to be strung up by one foot, but he's down with it (literally).

In the spirit of acting like all cards are all good, I could say that this is a fantastic card, but I'd be lying. It is not a bad card. This card is about forced inactivity. It could be an injury, emotional or physical, it could be financial, but oftentimes it's just circumstance. Your hands are tied. You are locked into a certain set of circumstances and there is, for the moment, no way out.

I was asked once in a class what my greatest fear was and I thought about it and said, "Being trapped." I think that probably many people feel this way, otherwise prison wouldn't be a form of punishment. And The Hanged Man is definitely trapped. He is at the mercy of everything and everyone that he encounters or, more precisely, that encounters him.

He is not completely helpless, since his hands and one leg are free. He's not Braveheart, tied down with his guts being ripped out. He can defend himself to some extent, he just can't escape.

All he can do is wait for release, for Deus ex Machina to sever his bonds and let him go on his path, hungrier and maybe a little wiser, with a renewed sense of gratitude for life as a free person.

I'm sure each one of us can think of times when the Hanged Man has been a very strong energy in our lives. I recently had that card come up again and again, as I struggled with very long and difficult health issues. I felt like I was a prisoner of my body and my identity. I just wanted to disappear, teleport out, reincarnate as any old thing, and just completely forget about this particular existence. But I was trapped. And the crazy thing is, I had moments of lucidity where I was actually grateful for my imprisonment.

For the first time, I felt ok about not doing the things I didn't want to do but would have felt obliged to otherwise. We all have things we do out of a sense of obligation, and that's fine, unless those things outweigh the things we do because we want to do them. Life is not meant to be one long schlep. So for basically the first time in my life, I was able to practice taking care of myself, not because I wanted to, but because I had no other choice.

The Hanged Man manifests in so many ways. It's a Time-Out. It's being stuck in a crappy situation that gives you time to rest up for when you're free again, which you will be, sooner or later. It gives you time to think about how you got into that crappy situation. It gives you a chance to develop a very strong desire to never get yourself into that crappy situation again.

It is a fun energy? No. It's a total drag. But it's not painful, it's not lethal, and if you look at it from the right perspective (i.e., upside-down), it can be a chance to just literally hang out, take the weight off, realign those vertebrae, and think, or dream, or whatever you want to do. Because the Hanged Man has no responsibilities or social obligations. His only duty is to survive, and live to fight another day.

Divi-Nation--The Devil

The Devil is possibly foremost among the Difficult Cards. Whenever I get this card in a spread, I say, "Shite." Historically, this was the Quintessential Bad Card. If you got the Devil in a spread, you knew something bad was either coming your way, or was already happening and you just hadn't noticed it.

Now, we are all very PC, including the Tarot, and we don't talk about bad and good anymore. So often, a really terrible thing will give rise to something really good, and a really mean person will make us grow, so it's hard to pigeonhole people and events.

The traditional symbolic rendering of the Devil is a horned figure, with or without cloven hooves, carrying a pitchfork, who goes around saying "HAHAHAHAAHHAAAA!" like The Joker from Batman. It's a good comparison actually, because the devil is, if you will, rather ridiculous, at least in the popular conception. It is hard to imagine anyone worshiping a Satan that silly.

If we look at Christian tradition, on the other hand, the devil is Lucifer, Son of the Morning, God's brightest Angel, the "fallen" angel. No longer content to sit at God's right hand, Lucifer wanted to actually be God, and he was banished from the sight of God because of it. But I think that Lucifer wasn't banished, he just left of his own free will, because God's great gift to us is free will.

So if we think about the Devil in these terms, it makes more sense. The Devil is not something ludicrous and ugly, but rather something beautiful, and magnetic, that operates completely hidden from the light of God.

I think every woman believes that her ex is the Antichrist, and with good reason. Usually we have someone in our past who was completely self-absorbed, whom our friends begged us to dump, i.e. the guys I blogged about in October. And it seems like the more selfish and horrid they are, the more we love them. Guys do the same thing, always falling hard for the ho with the silicone tits who takes all their money to run off with a guy named Cooter she met at a strip club (a real story someone was just telling me).

And what is it about these people that is so attractive? Oftentimes, these people are physically attractive, although not more than nice people. Sometimes they look like complete pigs. It is the attraction of the Void, the irresistible pull of the Black Hole.

So what I'm getting at, in my incredibly verbose way, is the idea of the Devil as Lucifer, whose name means "light". The Irish tell of faery lights leading travelers astray into shadowy realms whence they return after many years and travails, or never.

When that card comes up, we should look, not for an overtly mean and bad person, but for something whose light is leading us astray, possibly blinding us, possibly intriguing us, and by astray I mean, further from ourselves.


When we love, grow, create, we are doing our bit.

When love turns to fear, creation is supplanted by consumption, and we cling to the Known Evil (in the form of a person, an idea, a way of life, or whatever) like limpets, rather than opening our arms to change, then what we get is spiritual stagnation.

Of course, stagnation does not stop life, it just breeds life forms that we don't necessarily want. The fish die and we get a pond full of algae, mold spores, and worms. Of course, we can say, "It's all good," like they do in Oakland, and we can feel very virtuous, but there is nothing virtuous about being out of control in our own lives. There is nothing wrong with wanting fish in your pond.

And this is where I disagree with my spiritualist friends of last week, who say, Just lie down, and wait for the good life to come. There is no guarantee that I can see that physical death will let us off the hook in any way. So all this lying around is not virtuous, it's just a waste of time.

Of course, there are times when you can't do anything, your hands are tied, and that's the Hanged Man energy, which we'll cover next time. But most of the time, there is something we can do. Most of the time, we do have some control, which is not a bad thing, even though I spent most of my 41 years thinking it was. Since my mom is a control freak, I decided I wouldn't be that person, so I ended up being the Anticontrol freak, which is just as controlling, actually, in a way.

Control is one of those very tricky things, like salt. Too much, and you ruin the dish; too little, and you ruin the dish. Like salt, control gets a very bad rap nowadays. But the truth is, salt is essential to life. The sea, whence we all came, is saline. Too much control will smother any life, love, or relationship; too little will let the good things in life float off like helium balloons.

And that's what happens with our thoughts, and our feelings, when we have the Devil energy in our lives, and we find the Devil card in a spread. It is a light that is actually darkness, a love that is really fear, a dissipation masquerading as creation.

In very concrete terms, and now I'm going to sound like Dear Abby, the Devil is, a lot of times, a person. It is the illusion of love. It is illusions about love. And we chase these faery lights to disaster. But people do this with jobs, with places, with families too. Each of us has an Achilles' Heel, a thing we're insecure about, and that's where the Devil energy takes root.

So when we get the Devil card, that's where we should look. What are my weaknesses, and who or what is playing on those weaknesses?