"Every moment of one's life, one is growing into more or retreating into less." - Norman Mailer

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's ME! ...or not.

I am apparently Supergirl. Take this superhero quiz to find out who YOU are:

http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/superhero/

My results:
Your results:
You are Supergirl
























Supergirl
85%
Spider-Man
80%
Wonder Woman
80%
Iron Man
80%
Superman
75%
Hulk
75%
Green Lantern
70%
Batman
45%
Robin
40%
The Flash
40%
Catwoman
40%
Lean, muscular and feminine.
Honest and a defender of the innocent.


Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test



Link to my results:
http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/superhero/result.htm?a=75&b=80&c=45&d=85&e=80&f=40&g=75&h=40&i=70&j=40&k=80

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Making Up For Lost Time... No te preocupas.

I have taken a proverbial page out of the blog of my good friend Elizabeth (see new link to the right) and have happened upon--albeit "sin querer" (unintentionally)--my own "FreeWill Astrology" horoscope o'the week. And Elizabeth certainly has a page to spare for me; her new blog is called "A Room Full of Books," and all I needed was the one page.... Elizabeth's blog is the absolute authority on all things literary. At least, in my world, it is. Elizabeth is my biblio-beacon, illuminating for me her opinions of her favourite tomes, and giving me ideas for great picks and must-have items. Go check out her blog. She is the most amazing rising Reference librarian EVER! She will someday rule the written wor(l)d!!!!

To get back to it, ahem, here is my horoscope from FreeWill:
"My life is about finding time to dream," M. Night Shyamalan has said. I urge you to make that your motto, Leo. The progress of your most practical ambitions later in 2006 will depend on whether or not you spend the next few weeks tapping into information that's available through fantasies, meditations, dreams and other altered states."

Now, to some who read this blog, perhaps my finding credence in astrology is akin to listening to demonic spirits. For me, however, I feel like it's affirmation from the cosmos that I'm heading in the right direction. For the past year or two even, I've been adrift in the metaphysical sea, with no dogma to guide my path--except the belief that belief systems as a rule are flawed and even deceptive and that the people who stand atop them and wave their banners are, at best, inconsistent but well-intentioned, and at worse, malevolent liars.

This belief in "no belief system" is the most dangerous kind of metaphysical existence. I have felt the lack of true and sincere belief in my heart very acutely for some time now. I have sought to fill that gap in all manner of ways (med school? smoking? partying? grade-consciousness? scholarship? agnosticism? money?), but what it's come down to is that I have to remove the impediments in the path to that lacking. I had blocked my open heart with rationalization, anger, disappointment, skepticism. Now I am trying to uncover those layers that have been blocking my ability to commune with the metaphysical part of myself.

(At least) one of my family members is worried that I am opening myself up to evil forces if I open myself up to "positive energy" of the random and unidentified variety. I understand what she means, because I saw her go through the same dark path for several years. But I feel like I've already been on that path; that when I stopped listening to my heart and started listening to my ego instead, I allowed those darker forces to wheedle their logic into me. I know what darkness feels like and looks like; I know well how I behave when in their sphere of influence. And what I'm trying to do now is push them back and out of me, and fill that part again with goodness and hope. But I'm not, at this point, ready to name the positive force to which I am praying, because I still feel like that inherently puts spirituality into a man-made box and creates more room for anxiety and anger to reign in me. Nevertheless, this force is, intuitively the same as that which I've always appealed to, but which at some point I decided was indifferent to me and possibly non-existent. It's easy to see now that this force never changed; only I did.

So I'm trying to change back. "...At this point a new story begins, the story of a [wo]man's gradual renewal, her gradual rebirth, her gradual transition from one world to another, of her growing acquaintance with a new...reality." (Dostoevsky, the second to last sentence in Crime & Punishment)

And the horoscope in LEO encourages me; that is all. And as far as its advice goes, I have been paying special attention to my dreams of late, as they seem to be imbued with transcendent meaning, full of vivid images and memorable phrases. I have begun writing poetry again (most of it, as yet, horrible--case in point in last entry); I am drawing a bit; I am trying to dig back into my memories, in order to remember the magic of children's thinking. I am looking for the divine instead of the man-made; I welcome the supernatural, the creative and the unifying.

We'll see how it goes.... !

Friday, June 09, 2006

Things Are Intense--but Good. (What Else Is New?)

This is flippin' ridiculous. It's been over two weeks since my last, pathetic post. Inexcusable!

And yet, I have some excuses. For example: I have been a busy bee! in such pursuits as Birth in the Bluegrass (still wrapping up the loose ends from that one), Freshman Orientation at UofL (ongoing), creating a myspace account (yes, I'm officially addicted to the internet), Facebooking, reading, having some intense interaction with my husband (not like that, you perv). I also just got hired as a Spanish and Italian tutor for REACH (free tutoring provided by UofL). Oh, yeah, and one other little detail:

I GOT A FULL TUITION "ETSCORN" SCHOLARSHIP FROM THE HONORS PROGRAM FOR THE 2006-07 SCHOOL YEAR!!!!

Bwahahahahaha. I am so very happy not to have money troubles for the foreseeable future. Aaahhhhh..... I also have started doing yoga in my backyard (weather permitting) which has made me feel better physically. Spiritually I seem to be going through some kind of passage.... the immateria and the holy are calling to me. I am beginning to seek to answer that call once more. I have started trying to meditate and pray (on purpose) again. I'm not sure who I'm praying to except that I want to channel the forces of peace and good and power bigger than myself. --I think I've been trying to rely too much on myself for answers, instead of just letting them fall upon me, as they used to. Too much seeking, not enough finding. I need more stillness to find, I think.

Anyhoo. As part of my re-invigorated "Slow down, you move too fast; you gotta make the moment last" mantra, I have written my first poem in more than two years, in an attempt to get the creative juices reciculating through my soul. I share it here with you now, simply to demonstrate that I am rusty, but I am trying to reconnect with that part of me. Here it is:

I never noticed, till now
how the clouds resemble bones
A front of sirrus whisps
lined up
like a column of crooked vertebrae
with good bone density
...no celestial kyphoplastys on this front.

There, after the spine,
a single, trailing hyoid circle
of a cloud
smeared by the wind
--Someone must've smashed the throat.

These cloud x-rays float beyond my roof
toward that gibbon of a moon:
waxing, the densest bit of bone mass in the evening sky.

Yeah, it's weird. Sorry. As an aside in case you're curious, a kyphoplasty is an outpatient surgery performed by a neurosurgeon or orthopoedic surgeon wherein a collapsed spinal vertebra has a needle inserted into it with a balloon on the end; the balloon is blown up to resotre the vertebra to its original height, and special cement is inserted to fill the balloon and recreate the density and structure of the vertebra to its original state. In addition, in case you are burning to know, the hyoid bone is the only bone in the body that is not articulated (does not connect) to any other bone. It's high in the throat and helps the tongue navigate its intricacies. It's cool to look at on an x-ray because it appears to be floating in the throat, different than the stacked architecture of the spine, shoulders, ribs, et al. Here's a representation of it in the body, relative to the cervical spine and skull:



Here is a short pictorial representation of the main parts of a kyphoplasty procedure: