Zippers, More Crap from China, More Crap from the World of Politics and Asherah

Another zipper snapped off in my hand ... this one on my green Newport hoodie, made in (you guessed it!) China.  Only had it for a year, which should surprise exactly ... no one who has any familiarity with the absolute junk China foisters on us with the full support of every politician out there, may they all burn and rot in the bowels of ... so anyway, I found an Amazon entry for a replacement full zipper hoodie ... called Joe’s USA! ... except for the small print that whispered that  Joe USA's entire product line was, I then learned, made in Honduras.  “Joe’s USA”, my un-American ass.

It’s been a struggle, opening Facebook every morning and reading nothing but non-stop crap.  I don’t care what side people are on, I just keep reading more and more insane political crap that stopped making sense a year ago.  I finally found some “safe” Facebook pages to park on when I’m chatting with a friend, so as to ignore all of it.

Example:  I have learned more about space travel, post-modernism and “Aviation Technology” in the last six months than I had in the last 20 years – can actually give you the names of different airliners; discovered that the symbol of Egypt Air is actually Horus.  (I absolutely love it - Who knew?  Yay, Horus!!)  ANYTHING but American politics.

No, not even politics, it’s just non-stop juvenile, brain-dead insanity.  And now, I don’t care what side you’re on – nothing you say at any point will change anybody’s minds, so just GROW UP and SHUT UP!  Everything you post is either a deliberate or unintentional lie, so you are perpetuating this 3-ring circus that the 2016 election has turned into.  In fact, this entire country needs an intervention, at this point.  The days until this insane campaign is over can’t pass fast enough.  Thus ends my 2016 Election rant for the day.

And Fall has set in. Any hope we had for a warmer fall to make up for the chilly May and June has wrapped itself in hoodies, flannel sweatpants, woolen knee socks and left town.  I have this sullen determination not to turn the furnace on ... so, as I sit here with my teeth chattering, grumbling at my perverse stubbornness ...

I would have changed the title from “The Changing Heart” to the “Watchful Heart”, but that’s just me.  (Woke up to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents program; that’s what was airing at the time).

Have just begun Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel, Saul M. Olyan, Society of Biblical Literature, Monograph Series,  (#34),  Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia,  1988.

What I like:  he doesn’t start out like a Judeo-Christian-Islamic defense lawyer (“Impossible!  Blasphemy!  There is no other god except ...!”), which is very refreshing.  Instead, he starts out with the various (and conflicting) interpretations of Asherah and her relation first to Baal and to El and to Yahweh.  What I’ve learned:  much like the christians swearing their Paulian version of their cult is the only correct one; the Torah went through much the same process of being politics-driven as opposed to anything spiritual.  Most christians have little or no knowledge of the numerous variations of christianity that existed until Rome took control and ruthlessly slaughtered adherents of the other versions.  Had nothing to do with whether there might have been any truth in those other beliefs – as always, it was a matter of who swung a meaner sword.  Since no one likes to look at the truth that their “correct” religious beliefs only came about by means of grotesque slaughtering of entire towns ... christians now believe their version is the only “correct” one for spiritual reasons.

Same was true of the Torah – Olyan makes a point of which schools of thought influenced which passages he quotes.  Christianity follows their political choice, the Paulian sword – and Judaism, for the most part, adopted the Deuteronomistic versions of the Torah, which were re-written after each tragedy (the fall of Jerusalem, the Babylonian exile, etc.) to explain past history.  The exile, as an example – much of the blather about their one god being a “jealous” one came after they had been exiled, by way of explaining why such a horrible episode had happened to them.  You get together a bunch of pissed-off guys who had just been driven from their homeland, and who buy and sell women like cattle, and what else is their version of the Torah going to sound like?  The Queen of Heaven disappeared from early judeo-christian-islamic books.  They still don’t believe She ever actually existed in their belief system.  But She did.

This really isn’t contributing much to “C’era una volta”, and the origins of the Big Bad ... but for that I’m reading The Gnostic Gospels: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, The Origin of Satan by Elaine H. Pagels (New York : Vintage Books, 1989, c1988), but I was in the habit of reading that, unfortunately, when I was laying on the beach, relaxing to the sound of the waves against the shore.  Fall comes around ... I have to change my reading habits.

So how do you resolve the issue of fallen versus not fallen in the matter of heavenly beings? If you go by the edicts of the medieval church, the only angels who are to be considered legitimate and not fallen are those three archangels whose names appear specifically in the Bible: Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael.

Of course, conspicuously, these three also appear specifically by name within the sacred texts of another culture entirely. In the Sumerian tale of Inanna’s descent into the Underworld, Michael, Gabriel, and associates stand guard at each of the gates of hell. Those three beings who would later be adopted as archangels into Jewish myth appear as guardians who exact payment from the goddess before she may pass through the various levels of the underworld in her attempt to reach the throne of her sister, Ereshkigal.

The weird and wacky history of earth’s bizarre religious traditions continues ...

Et in Arcadia ego. And Piero Blows Away Honduras.

“Et in Arcadia ego.”

There was a Samhain circle Saturday night, but I was still fighting off the effects of the (now tossed away) steroid-laden muscle relaxers – slash – pain killers – slash – neurological de-stabilizers.  It takes a long while for the effects to dissipate, and it was exhausting keeping it completely suppressed and out of public view.  I suspected that I would not benefit from a high-energy circle swirling around me; I think I sorta need exceedingly low energy, dead silence and soft music right now.  So why I thought it was a good idea to download the latest Joan Jett and the Blackhearts cd I have no idea.  Shoulda downloaded Mel Tormé. 

Hey ... what a great idea.  Let me go look in the I-Tunes store ...

Later ... listening to Mel Tormé singing, “Til the Clouds Roll By”.  He was before my time, but Harry Anderson’s character on “Night Court” was so obsessed with him, I went and listened to him, and have been listening to him ever since.

Besides, I had to spend the entire morning getting my car fixed.  Supposedly, they replaced the defunct emissions filter; as soon as I got to Methuen, the “Service Engine” and “Security” lights went back on.  Return of the white-hot rage and bloodshot eyes.  Squealing tires as I made an angry U-turn in a semi-empty gas station parking lot.  Back to dealership repair shop.  “Explain this to me,” I snapped at them, pointing at the lights.  To their credit they didn’t blame ME for it.  Unfortunately, the guy who runs the “error lights analysis machine” – or whatever they call it – had left for the day.  I have to go back again NEXT Saturday.  I don’t believe I’d be happy about that even if I weren’t under the influence of steroids breaking bad on me, among other issues.

There was something else.  The morning after the serious meltdown, I had to get up and go to work.  Reason:  whatever time off I still had I needed to coordinate a move.  I wandered by my tree at about 6:30AM almost ashamed of what she must be seeing in me; I felt compelled to stand under her branches as though she had whispered, “Come stand by me” – under the umbrella of her still verdant canopy of leaves, where I always find peace.  I can’t touch her trunk – the way that the groundskeepers have her set up, she’s planted in a fenced-in dirt mound, surrounded by yellow chrysanthemums.  To get near enough to touch her trunk, I’d have to squash the mums.  So I have no choice but to stand on the sidewalk under her canopy, although ... I longed so much to put my arms around her and lean on her trunk and just cry.

The moment I came under her canopy, I felt such an embrace I wanted to burst into tears again, but these were the good tears this time, and I knew what else had gone wrong.  Yet another learning failure:  one I had learned a year ago after returning from seeing Il Volo at the Beacon Theater with my twisted face, and had then learned again in the WC1 class (not to mention a few circles) and yet had forgotten completely after both lessons:  if you’re going to raise energy, do not fail to ground it when you’re done!

I had been allowing it to accumulate.  The occasional “wipe down” in class had dissipated some of it, but nowhere near all of it because I had raised energy in other ways away from class.  I had to be consistent and vigilant, and I hadn’t been – at all.  It had just built up, again and again, until the meds triggered the downside of it, and I exploded like a volcano.

One thing I love about my tree:  she loves me unconditionally, no matter how massive of a screw-up I am.  She just poured compassionate love into me, took a huge chunk of energy out of me and grounded it herself.  Then she suggested I do the same, so that I could recognize the sensation of grounding.  When she was done, I was trembling and near tears again.  Everyone should have a tree who loves them.

So after the new set of dashboard lights incident, I came home to continue packing and perform a grounding ceremony.  That plan was squashed when the phone rang.  It was the floor guy.  “Hey, where are you?” he wanted to know.

Another example of communication going completely awry in this new version of hell that was my life under the influence.  My version:  he was supposed to call me back at the office Friday afternoon to verify our appointment for 3:00 pm Saturday and never did.  His version:  we were meeting at 3:00 pm Saturday.  Fine.  I’d jump in the car, drive all the way to New Hampshire and be there in an hour.

No keys.

The white-hot screaming rage was back upon me in an instant.  I threw things across the room, breaking things, hearing them shatter as they hit the wall with intense pleasure ... trying to find those keys.  I knew exactly where they were 24 hours earlier; now I couldn’t find them.

If you’re tired of reading about one screaming temper tantrum after another, imagine how tired I am of flailing around in them – over and over and over again.  I’m also extremely tired of the reasons I felt I had for perpetuating them.  Chaos.  Disorder.  Things completely out of control.  Things lost and missing.  Miscommunications.  If these things were happening once every few weeks or so, it may have been tolerable.  But these were happening in succession, one right after the other – and sometimes simultaneously, for weeks on end.  I had no chance to solve one dilemma before the next one hit me.  I had no recovery time.  And it was killing me.  I couldn’t even find time to develop an affirmation against it, or – obviously – to ground it, although I did try a fast, hurried version, and you can see how well that worked.  Things just kept piling up.

An example:  I found the keys and sped off to Seabrook at 3 in the afternoon, but not before finding yet another notice from AIMCO on my door.  Now, understand that it was an AIMCO employee who set up the automatic rent payment, via which they were to get paid every month (and sometimes twice a month, being the chronic thieves that they were).  I made SURE they were the ones who set it up because I didn’t want to hear from them ever again about the monthly rent.

The notice read:  “You underpaid us!  Send more money!” despite the fact that they were the ones who set up the payment deduction in the first place.  I screamed, “What the f ...!” in the mailbox room.  These freaking jackasses!!!  That wasn’t the end of it.  In the mailbox was a check for “overpayment of rent money” in the amount of 14 cents.  So, to summarize: on one hand I owe them more money, but on the other hand I overpaid them by 14 cents.

Blood sped through my arteries up to my head again.  GET ME the *(^&* OUT OF HERE!!!  I hit the road in yet another state of rage, thanks to the perpetual, abject stupidity and ineptitude of the North Andover, Massachusetts Royal Crest Estates leasing office (AIMCO).  Got there before the floor guy.  And found a notice from the Seabrook, New Hampshire tax assessor’s office on the door.

JUST purchased the thing.  Hadn’t even moved in.  And already I’m getting notices from the Tax Man.  Or in this case, Mary Dow, the Tax Lady.  (Figures.)  I just stared at the notice in bewildered shock.  Not a “Welcome to Seabrook!” welcome wagon notice.  Not a “How can we help you?” offer.  An order – a DEMAND – that I show up and let Mary Dow, the Seabrook, New Hampshire Tax Lady tramp her muddy stinking shoes through the house, sniffing and peeking into corners, so I could pay her money to buy more muddy, stinking shoes.

Like I said.  One thing after another without a pause to recover.  I stood at the front door, reading the command performance notice, trembling and hyperventilating, no longer feeling welcome in New Hampshire.

Only one other moment calmed me back down again:



Only time I’ve tried not to scream with the audience ... at a video.  I have no idea how he manages to stay grounded faced with that audience reaction ... girls and women screaming for him ... to him ... all this ... and that body!