The Adobe Ilustrator and all the fun one can have with it/him.

My course in Multimedia has led us from Photoshop CS3 to Ilustrator 2.0(or whatever--we'll see how I do on the tests!?!). Both are part of the Adobe Suite. Now, I have a problem with this series. The layer images should be visible for easy access. My instructor didn't know how to get the layer image bigger. It is not even the size of my smallest piece of toenail.

Meanwhile, I was working on a very complex design, not really paying attention to my layers and paths and what was on top of what, but finally, my image I really wanted the machine would not save, noting that the file was corrupted. What could that mean, I thought??? Perhaps I should not have even attempted all the stuff I was trying to do. I took bitmap images and put them in this vector-based program. I spent 20 minutes working on the colors in a photograph of a painting of Ganesh.

My teacher did not know the name of Ganesh. He's really into sci-fi and whatever. But then, maybe he has a point: Ganesh could be called Vishnu or to have Vishnu-like qualities, couldn't he?

Tomorrow I have to get up early for work. The music teacher erased my scheduled supervision system for tomorrow off my white board when I was out of the class. That means I'll have to get up earlier...or not!

Celebrity SKin + APOCALYPTO

There was a band in San Francisco, kind of a metal/glam band, called Celebrity Skin. I met some of them in the late eighties when they were around. In any case, I bought a three cds for $1.50 at the Senior Center thrift store. I got Blur, House of Pain, and Hole. The Hole cd is entitled Celebrity Skin. It is all full of words about Los Angeles, the place of celebrity skin, plastic surgery and generalized superficiality.

I'll bring them to work tomorrow. Lately my day has gone by better when I listen to new cds, especially ones to be played loud. The past two weeks I was listening to Morrissey. Now it'll be House of Pain!

Meanwhile, I watched most of the (painful) scenes from APOCALYPTO. This film was a complete disaster. A very complex civilization is made out to be the Egyptians or present-day America...full of slavery, lack of justice, and overdone violence. Please do not watch this film. It is an abomination. It's worse than LASSIE. People who understood the mechanism of time couldn't be sentimentalized, thoughtless dogs--as they are portrayed in this film.

LA VIE EN ROSE & BECOMING JANE (or something like that)

Why does Gerard Depardieu have to be in every French film? He's like De Niro in that way, I suppose. His character got killed early in the film LA VIE EN ROSE. It's a story of the life of Edith Piaf. The person who deserves the most applause in this film is the actress who plays the quintessential Parisian singer. Of course, I'm forgetting her name right now. She goes from 20 to 40 very easily and sings in the French style like Edith P.

The film has holes in it--Edith P.'s bisexuality is only hinted at, her coming to be married is unexplained, the fact that when she was very young she bore a child named Marcelle and later fell in love with a French boxer (no, not a dog) named Marcel. How she kicks heroin is also not shown. Her life was so rich in drama, I suppose...hard to cover it all.

LA VIE EN ROSE played with BECOMING JANE, and English/Irish collaboration about Jane Austen's only "love," a young Irish lawyer named Tom. The scenes of Ireland are gorgeous. The two male actors who play her brother and Tom are quite attractive for fair-skinned men. Is it me, or does ripping off Antonioni English-style just not seem feasible? This film wasn't too boring, but only the Tom character really kept me watching. The actor had a lot of range and wasn't the least bit dull in that 18th century English stodgy way.

Bro Jud found out.

It had to happen some time. Last Saturday night Jud had me scheduled on a panel of speakers at the Patient's Cooerative. I was supposed to talk about his "Presmont Plan." Why he wanted me to talk about it, I don't know. I've never given him any indication that I understand much of the plan. When I asked him what he wanted me to say, he urged, "Say what your heart tells you to say."

So, I talked about love energy, of course. As far as anything else goes with his learning modules, and etc., I had no idea what to say about the plan.

Today I called Jud to tell him about something regarding the recording of the last show we did which was last week. He finally got around to telling me, "I don't think you understand anything about the plan." Bro Jud found out.

Now that I'm studying multimedia, I might get closer to finding out myself. But, for now, I don't know anything about the plan!

Love Energy, revisited.

Tonight I did the Bro Jud on Love Energy Show. How time has flown since I first saw this show on the San Francisco cable channel in 1996. Jud was always a wise man, a funny, weird, pervy wise man. The first time I saw the show, I didn't know Jud. I just saw the name of the show on the cable menu and thought, "'love energy...?' is this show about Venus and astrology? I need more love in my life..." There was this really insanely cool backdrop of psychedelic color bursts. Jud talked about dedicating the show to the 'world's greatest lover"--Italian porn star, Rocco Siffredi. I was laughing so hard at this.

The show this evening was dedicated to Yuri Kokoshkin, head of the Trident Group, a capitalist-paranoia surveillance thing from Russia about Russia. Jud did not explain why the show was dedicated to this guy at all. Then, he had me read from a book by D. Ikeda about the founder of the namyohorengekyo ideas. This was getting weirder. Thanks to a friend at Dreams of Kathmandu that I had the book by the Tibetan monk, Sakyong Mipham, Ruling Your World. It's a book about compassion for oneself and others. What a night. I got to rock out. These are my last days of freedom!!!!

The Spacey Rocker

Here's a picture of me on a night when I got to perform with my electric guitar. I played my songs I had with a band back in the mid-nineties called Martyr Mia. It was a really fun evening, but I remember that I was depressed. Just joking!!! Do I looked depressed in picture?

The reading training.

I don't know about the state of education these days. Teaching reading is one of the hardest things to do besides operating on a brain. I really admire Kindergarten through 4th grade teachers--they have the hardest job.

My students have severe disabilities. There is one who seems to be more speech delayed. He was on the verge of making the leap from sounding out letters (phonemes) to blending sounds to make meaning.

We got there at 8:30, took a break at 10 for 10 minutes, had really good lunches they provided from 12 to 12:45, worked until 2:45, and then we had homework. There was only one night which had a lot of homework to it. It took me an hour and a half to do!!! The article was on metacognition and a priori knowledge...kind of esoteric.

Thursday night I was panicking, because they told us that if we didn't finish the five days, we wouldn't get paid for any of it!! I finally fell asleep close to one o'clock and arrived 35 minutes late the next morning. Fortunately, if we were late less than an hour, all we had to do was do make-up work during lunch.

I don't know how I'm going to get up for work every day two week from now!

One day and two nights of freedom.

There is tonight and tomorrow night and the day tomorrow left until I have to "work" toward some teaching goal. I'm going to a weeklong seminar on teaching reading. Now, remember, my students do not often recognize letters. The reason why I'm going to this thing is two-fold: the district wants a transitional class for students with more skills or they just want to say they have a functionally academic classroom for students with moderate to severe cognitive delay and autism.

I have a space on MySpace.

I'm such a space. I belong on MySpace, however I lack the technical skills to make my space reflective in some way of myself. I've seen others who know how to create web pages do theirs very creatively. Hopefully after I take my Multimedia class at City I'll be more technically-minded and adept...not inept.

My name on the myspace is charuta, so I think the address is charuta@myspace.com, but I have been wrong before.

Spending money on clothes has become an obsession.

"Obsession for women"--shopping. Last night I wanted to see the British punk band THE SLITS. They were playing at the Independent which is on Divisadero. I used to go to that place when it was a small blues venue. I don't know what my problem was last night. No one wanted to go with me nor had heard of THE SLITS. So, I sat at home and looked them up on the website of the club which referred me to the band's own website.

I hadn't seen a picture of the singer, Ari-Up, in over twenty years. I remember someone having told me that she had gotten involved with Organization for Krishna Consciousness--or whatever they're called. In the pictures on the website, she was wearing a turquoise-ish green/blue hoodie with matching pants. The song she was talking about was "Shoplifting at Selfridges." This is one of her new songs. Since she's the only original member of THE SLITS playing out these days, she can make up a new song with band.

But I thought it was both weird and still cool that she shops and shoplifts (which I remember many punks back in the day doing). I'm worried that shopping at thrift stores--and anywhere, for clothes, in general--has replaced the good clean relaxing fun of reading a book, lying on the grass in the sun (umm, what sun?), or volunteering at Amma's kitchen (something I still must do this summer).

The state of the San Francisco rental market.

Back to this topic again: why are all these landlords so greedy? Everybody uses craigslist here to find places to rent. Consequently, if a place is truly great for the money, 50+ people will show up for the open house. I don't know why, but more and more people are moving here again. I saw a place in the upper Haight last week, and two guys just out of college were telling the landlord that one of them had a job and the other one had enough savings to give the landlord 5 times the rent in advance. Everyone has a right to live here, and there is no question about that.

But someone put on craigslist tonight a large paragraph on the topic of landlords who advertise one bedrooms + another room which turns out not to be a legal bedroom and charges over $1000 each for these two supposed bedrooms. AND, what used to be a low-rent area like the excelsior or the bayview has now become equal with trendy areas like the Mission and Noe Valley. It is hard for me to believe that people are paying so much money for places that are in dangerous areas.

I saw a house in the Balboa Park area which is quite humble and rumbles with cops all the time. I used to have to drive through there to get to my job as a teacher of 8th grade English. It was an area of the city, since I'd only lived in the Mission, Haight and South of Market areas, I'd never seen before. When I went out to look at this house, I thought the rent was still over-priced because of the area. The rent was $1700. for a small three-bedroom house. I know there are people paying $1000. or less for a good neighborhood and equal amount of space. It's because rent control still works for some people--yay!

Unfortunately for me, my landlord sold my house I had rented in 1994 for $850./month. This was a whole house with a huge bedroom upstairs and a massive one downstairs. We paid $425/month in rent. By the time I was forced to move out, the rent was increased to $560. or something like that. The other night I spoke to someone who's been living under rent control for 20 years in Bernal Heights. I told him that he couldn't imagine how lucky he is. The author of the craigslist blurb about the inflated rents and demands of landlords in San Francisco said he was moving to India. Now, there's a thought.

LA ARDILLA ROJA.

This is a very sexy movie--LA ARDILLA ROJA. It begins with a scene of a tall, thin man with dark, longish hair kicking a railing high above the sea rocks. He can't get himself to jump to into the abyss. Instead, a person on a motorcycle crashes into the railing and the two of them fall, fortunately, to the sandy part that separates the road from the abyss. The motorcyclist is a woman, we find out from him, as he gazes into her eyes which are the only distinguishable body parts under her motorcycle gear. He says her eyes are a "tangled blue," but they are actually brown.

She says she can't remember anything. Where is she? What is her name? He is happy to her that her name is Elisa, the same name as his ex-girlfriend who broke his heart. She is ok with this, and the two of them have a hot love affair that is quite unusual because the camera does alot of the work to make this happen. There are many shots of just their eyes and faces looking for each other. He is a famous Spanish rock star from the band called Las Moscas, The Flies. He wears a t-shirt with just his face on the front.

That's enough for this movie. You'll have to rent it to find out more. It won many awards at Cannes in 1993.

Other people's parents and I KNOW WHO KILLED ME.

No one knows what horrible experiences you had with your own parents. NO problems? NO problem. But for those of us who know otherwise, the parents who were not even the slightest bit hippy or were first generation Irish-American or Republicans presented their children with MANY problems. This isn't the place for me to talk about my parents. But this evening I met one of my housemates' parents--his father, specifically.

My housemate's father, is, in many ways, a freak. Just what that means, I'd rather let Derrida figure it out. Meanwhile, this man had the look of someone seen on the streets many times who is not receiving proper psychiatric care. This man has absolutely no social intention. He has never worked. I know that sounds like the privileged class, but, hopefully people will all want to give back to the community who can.

This man really surprised me when he cupped his left hand and patted the outer edge of my upper arm near the shoulder and said, "Thanks for taking care of my son." Sensing the obvious, I said "We're friends." My friend said he could take care of himself. Then, the freak father said, "She's a nice lady...I just wanted to thank her."

It's too bad that this freak father, Mr. Irish-American father, couldn't really control himself. He is the ultimate co-dependent, saying shitty things to me to try and control his son's feelings. Trying to bring "Reality"--in his own negative way--to the fore.

Enough about him. Let's talk about Lindsay Lohan's father in I KNOW WHO KILLED ME. Poor Lindsay's father had separated her from her twin sister at birth. This father kept the secret from the mother. In many scenes, Lindsay gets her right fingers chopped off. She also does pole dancing. But, back to the father--he isn't the one who chops off her fingers, in case you want to pay to raise your thinking-ability quotient enormously.

THE BEST FRIEND comes from France.

No wonder every cinema has its "stars." Sometimes the script or the plot--or even the other acting--may stink, but the "star" holds the cinematic galaxy together. In THE BEST FRIEND, the obvious star is Daniel Auteuil (sp?). He has been in many good French films. I can't think of the names of these films at the moment, but I've seen at least 5 good Daniel A. films. In THE BEST FRIEND he plays an art/antiques dealer of fame and renown around Paris who, according to his circle of acquaintances, has no friends. Leave it to France to ask us to deconstruct "friend."

I don't know about you, but it seems like he has friends to me. But the film portrays him as someone who has great difficulty being close with anyone or empathizing with them. He consequently goes to a support group for people without friends. Because this is a comedy, and because Daniel's character is really not a nice guy (but is trying to be, somewhat). The scene after the meeting when the man with the bottle glasses and Burberry scarf shares his umbrella with the Daniel figure is funny (the play on the British) but also a bit dumb. Being mean is dumb.

Meanwhile, there were many laughs in this film. Parisiens are not very friendly. The self-referential nature of the laughs makes it a good one. You have to like Paris and France to really like this film. It is high brow French realism and BRIDGET JONES' DIARY all in one.

Displacement and TIbet, dreamspell and the Maya.

I was in the doctor's office last week, and I saw that National Geographic has yet another article on the Maya. Got to go buy it! When I was eighteen years old, during the summer after I graduated from high school, I went with my boyfriend to Oaxaca, Mexico. He had been to this region a few months before, but he was overjoyed to go again and spoke of all the spirituality and the Federales. Some may know that there has been a lot of social protest going on in Oaxaca and Chiapas very recently. This is Maya country. When I was there, I saw very small people who lived off the land and were quite shy. In the New York Times magazine from July 7th this year there is an article on the Mayan predictions for December 21, 2012. I am wondering how many people will, by 2012, be cognizant of the Aztec/Mayan calendar and its call for CHANGE.

Meanwhile, back to the discussion of displacement. This year I have had the good fortune to become friends with some Tibetan people who are quite special. One of the women lived in a cave for over 10 years, came out, got married and had seven children. She is a yogini of incredible intent and serenity.

Like Palestine, Tibet has been wiped off the map. I would appreciate anyone teaching me about the plight of other groups of people who have become displaced. My knowledge of the African struggle is limited to that in this country. I watched a C-Span (yes!?) 2 Book Review show the other night. It depicted a Harlem panel discussion with audience participation about the nature of the African-American struggle for human rights in this country. The panel and the audience had mixed reviews of rap and the larger media in this country. Marshall McLuhan was a rare genius.

Naji al-Ali and finding a place.

I saw in the BBC News a small article on what's "In Pictures." The article concerned the work of the Palestinian "cartoonist" Naji al-Ali. If I could put the link in here, I would. Al-Ali was "gundowned on a London street..." in August of 1987. The killer was not found. It is my belief that the Palestinian struggle is much like that of all human beings in their need to have a place, to be in a safe and healthy place that they can afford and that is of their choosing. Naji al-Ali was ten when the state of Israel was created and he became a refugee. His drawings feature a child, about 9 or ten, seen from the back as the figure is looking, and shoeless. The BBC also showed a current graffiti piece from the wall which divides the Israeli side of the West Bank from the Palestinian on the other side of the divide. The figure is peeing a huge arc-full toward the other side.

Just last week I saw a bumper sticker that read: "Don't be a dick." To bitch means to yell or complain excessively. What does being a "dick" really mean? Does it mean being greedy? Does it mean being mean? Does it mean being insensitive and awkward? Does it mean taking someone else's right to a home?

Now those who remember that I'm looking for a new home due to the landlord's greed and harassment-issues, might think, how can this bitch equate the major problem facing the people on earth with her own stupid, trivial life? How? Because I can. And you can be a dick any time you want to. Someone can put a bumper sticker or some other message out to the public to read, but that doesn't mean that you have to do it. That's because no one kills you if you're a dick.

Bro Jud on Love Energy and AZUCAR AMARGA

We taped The Bro Jud on Love Energy Show this past Wednesday night. Jud used to wear a 4" leather peace sign on a long black string. For the past two or three years, he's been sporting a wool-tweed oversized sportcoat and some sort of collared shirt. I don't think he picks out these clothes. But then he's been so full of corporate language for quite some time. "Multi-tasking" is keeping him feeling young, he says. That's good for him. But it's a drag when one person has to the work of more than one person in the name of "multi-tasking." Whatever happened to doing one thing really well? What happened to the land of the expert?

Meanwhile, I haven't mentioned a film in a while. Since having seen MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT in my film history class, I've had a real interest in Cuban film. AZUCAR AMARGA (Bitter Sugar) is a "true" story of two lovers in their twenties who become conflicted by their situations and desires in a country where learning and accomplishment are somewhat rewarded but in which (inescapably???? ...the nature of the relationship between male and female?) "money changes everything." He is a scholar and is told that he will be sent to study in Prague. She spends her time meeting men of money in the hotels where most Cubans are banned. This is an actual recount of people who lived, let's remember.

I was not surprised that the women in this film were not educated. The date, though, of AZUCAR AMARGA is 1995 or so. This doesn't seem long ago to me, but my notion of time is built upon the separation from my punk life in the Mission to my entering the world of Monday through Friday work--full-time. Dull, I know. Several relationships are in there, of course.

But now back to the film. There is no country on the planet that discusses life decisions in terms of Socialism like Cuba. AZUCAR AMARGA is full of doubt about the success of socialism in Cuba, yet everyone agrees that Socialism is conceptually sound. The problem I had with the film is the seeming fact that few people have a "spiritual" life there. Decisions are made along ideological--or rather social concerns--rather than along metaphysical ones.

SICKO

Sooner or later a Michael Moore documentary will really cause the change we are all begging for. In a very humble way in his new film SICKO, he shows how his work caused one hospital to decide to give a child soon-to-become deaf the cochlear implant for the OTHER ear, TOO. He draws on the past (mainly through old Hollywood footage and nineteen- forty-ish cartoons) because it has created the present.

BUT not only in the United States of America--this time. He follows the healthcare industry and its history from the post-WWII era in the U.S., Canada, France and England (we're hoping its true for all of Great Britain--even Northern Ireland) and Cuba to this year! The National Health System in England is portrayed as a really well-run, fair, just institution. The same is true of health care systems in France and Canada. Behind Canada and England's national healthcare philosophies are individuals who somehow elicited the natural human emotion of empathy in creating a just healthcare program. France is a place where the state fears the power of the individual. Demonstrations are shown in France to present this point.

Americans live in fear; there is no doubt about this. People, in general, don't like "demonstrators." Those of us who walked all throughout the spring and fall 2003 against the invasion of Iraq did it because we meant it. We still mean it. What happened?

The search continues.

Once in a while, stereotypes get revisited, even amidst the glimmer of hope that change is possible. Yesterday I looked at a place on 24 Street. This is like the Upper West Side--without all the great places to see performances, etc. I suppose it really has nothing to do with the Upper West Side. In fact, San Francisco and New York have very little in common except for the fact that they both have huge parks in the center of the city. After all, there is only one Haight Street.

Meanwhile, what I'm trying to convey, is that this street and surrounding area appeal to a person of a certain monetary income and of a certain taste category. In other words, they fall into a stereotype. In my own way, I fall into a stereotype, but I'm not sure what it is. Am I a Haight (lower or upper) Street type? Am I a Mission type? The telling question is, Am I a Noe Valley type? I've never lived in this neighborhood before, but I have lived in the others more than a few times.

To get to the point: in viewing the apartment on 24 Street, I was attending an "open house," in which all contenders for the same place could be seen. Everybody looked more American than me. Everyone looked like they have more money than I do. All of them looked like opium was only a fragrance.

Today I called the owner of the property. He was nice to me. I am a karma-dharma kind of person in that I teach for the school district...and my students are the specially "impaired" kind. In the end, however, he revealed that he had offered the place to someone else and was awaiting their decision. I thought, "I knew it was going to be Mr. and Mrs. America who would get the place!"

If anyone wants to vote on whether my attitude is defeatist or realistic, let me know.

Greed and harassment, in all its forms.

I have been living in San Francisco, California, USA, for many, many, many years. The reason why I first moved here was because it was very affordable and artistically stimulating. In 1985, I was able to live on $400/month, rent included. My main occupation was painter and musician, i.e., artist. I worked at a European-style cafe next to the warehouse I was sharing with five other housemates. We had an immense garage, music room with a piano and various instruments, painting spaces, a large sun room, a tv room, two bathrooms, etc. My total rent was $110./month.

By 1990, five years later, my then boyfriend and I found a place in the Mission (this is where the warehouse was, too) for $675./month, one bedroom Edwardian apartment. Four years later, in 1994, he and I moved to Bernal Heights and paid $850./month for a two bedroom house with a backyard, garage, etc. I had two huge closets in my room!

In summer of 2003, over nine years later, the landlord informed me that he was selling the house. By that time my boyfriend and I had long since moved out. The landlord didn't even give me the option of trying to buy the house. I moved to Berkeley, thinking that rents would be cheaper. I lived in a crack neighborhood off of Sixth Street and was constantly being harassed by tenants in my building and having my car windows bashed in and stereo ripped off. I had signed a six-month lease, fortunately, and tried to move with my two cats in December of 2003. No rooms in San Francisco accepted cats--or, at least two of them. I was forced to take an 8'x9' room in a boarding house situation back in Bernal Heights.

No formal papers were signed. The landlord said he was considered a roommate (even though there were no rooms available to him in the house and he in fact did not live there). Because I had to keep my babies, I decided that I would accept this place. It is now 2007, so I've lived in this place for 3 and 1/2 years. During this time, one of my cats died of old age (she was 17, named after rocker Lita Ford!). The other cat died prematurely this past January ( he was only 9 years-old).

I find myself in a situation in which I could possibly find a better place, but there are so far so many places that are extremely expensive that I don't know what to do. Today one of my housemates and I looked at places. The biggest one, and one which is in the Mission, was $2750./month for three bedrooms. The bathroom was the 4'X3'. The landlord wanted first month's rent plus two months' deposit. Although the place had high ceilings and nice floors, it was completely overpriced. The most depressing, saddening place we saw was back in Bernal Heights. The landlord wanted close to $3000./month for a "three" bedroom house that the elderly woman who greeted us at the door had been living in most of her life. The rooms were tiny. There were bars on the front windows ( I suppose since this woman had been living there a long, long time, she lived there when Bernal was a "bad" neighborhood and therefore still kept that idea in her head).

So many people have moved to San Francisco with tons of dollars that landlords are taking advantage of the fact. Areas of the Mission that were severely dangerous are full of people in designer clothes and cars eating and drinking in the chic neighborhood restaurants. One of the teachers where I work told me that she lived in what is definitely considered a dangerous neighborhood: outer Ocean View. I'd wondered how she could live there. What choices does one have to make? Live in a "safe" neighborhood like Bernal but with a landlord who harasses his tenants (particularly me because I moved my musical equipment up from the garage and put in the "common space") or move to crack neighborhood again and be harassed by neighbors!!!!

What is this all about: greed, harassment, i.e., non-community living but instead a city where "money changes everything."

STIFF UPPER LIPS and more on Amma...

Usually I like British comedy. The film STIFF UPPER LIPS was featured in the British secion of the video store. Although an inventive film, it needed something for women to have even more fun with. The plot revolves around 22-year-old Emily whose aunt wants to have married as soon as possible. Emily is limited to the men in her world: the bushy-eyebrowed vicar, her idiot brother, her brother's Homer-quoting Cambridge friend, and the hunky stableman--turned butler--George. None of these men is within her age range. George is at least 15 years older than she is. Somehow the comedy of classes would have been enhanced by some eye candy for the female viewer. There were some good laughs in the film, though, and I love Peter Ustinov...it must have been made in the 1990's sometime.

Last night was the ashram. I took up all these women who has never seen Amma before. In fact, I feel my seva during this time that Amma has been here has been to transport and help individuals to see Amma. I could tell that Amma was happy with me for bringing my Tibetan friend and some other new women. I promise myself to meditate now and from now on. When I see Amma again, I want to be in closer communication. Last night was very magical, but I hardly saw anyone I know. Actually, every day that I went to the ashram had been very uneventful and yet very calm and peaceful.

What a way to end the teaching period--seeing Amma!

Quelle liberation!!! Out of the nine years that I have been teaching children with "severe impairments," ages 5 to 8-years-old, the past 2006-2007 school year has been the most maddening of them all.

The first two years were easy: the teacher in the room next to mine taught SI kids, ages 9-12-years-old. She and I would go to lunch at the local Chinese restaurant every day and talk about how difficult our assistants, otherwise known as "paras" were. To be honest, mine were more agreeable than hers, so I could really lend a sympathetic ear. She left to go teach at a private school.

The next five years after that there was a teacher in the next room who from the first day of her employment at the school treated me like I had number two all over my face. Every day for close to five years she would treat me with such disrespect that it was only Psychic Horizons which helped me ground and keep my space because she kept trying to whack me out of it.

Then, for the past three years there has been a teacher next door who sees the teaching of the kids in a very similar way to me and treats me with respect and kindness. This has been a blessing. However, both of us have had to deal with paras who hate us and challenging student configurations. Although both of us have the desire to heal and help, we have found stumbling blocks and boundary violations along the way. Today, the last day of class for the children, we both gave each other a hug for making it through.

What was most interesting today was that I dressed to go see Amma and went down the street to the bank. A young black woman came out of the chic Italian wine bar and told me she liked my attire. I recognized her from a special branch of SFUSD that we both were participants in this semester. She couldn't believe I remembered her. How could I forget? She is very intelligent, witty and caring--and probably in her mid to late twenties. I wish I had been that together at her age!!!! We talked on about teaching and all that--best not to get really into it. Then I went to the store, and I met another woman who also works as an SFUSD teacher! I forgot my groceries. She came out of the store and mentioned that I might be celebrating a bit too early!!!

Meanwhile, the highlight of the day was going to the ashram in San Ramon to see Amma. For the past couple of years I've kind of taken Amma for granted. Tonight I was in complete gratitude mode. How fortunate we are to have a human being like Amma around twice a year!!! The evening was spent in meditation, singing, talking with friends, old and new. I enjoyed speaking with an Indian woman who had a darling 9-year-old daughter and a son soon to go into pre-med. I hope I see her on Friday at Devi Bhava. The energy at the ashram was extremely relaxed and soothing. I ate dinner alone by the lake, listening to the crickets.

I saw Amma on Tuesday.

Please excuse the last post. I'm too tired to try to figure out how to edit a post with blogger.com. There quite a few errors in it and it had little to say.

At least now I'm going to describe my visit to see Amma on Tuesday morning this week. We arrived at 10:10 am and Amma hadn't come yet. Next minute Amma is there. The ashram is covered with devotees. I got darshan around 2:30 pm, but in the meanwhile I had a really intense meditation sitting on the floor near Amma. I like to sit there. Fortunately, the ashram was not so crowded that I could sit and meditate there.

Went to have lunch. The Indian food line was really long...not a big deal. Talked with a woman in line about her business doing energy/healing work with people with cerebral palsy. I was trying not to think of work!!!

Amma has been on my mind as well what happens at the ashram when she' there.

Last year I went to Amma's ashram in San Ramon every Saturday night for satsang. This year, I've only gone to one satsang. It was in April. Actually I could write at least a short story about all that has happened to me by me for me at me with me and etc. at Amma's ashram--especially when Amma is there.

Back in 2002 in a floatingly hot summer, I spent Devi Bhava with a very young man from Montreal with dreadlocks and a drum. We both got mantras and names that night. He uses his--abbreviatedly--now. (I said "Hi" to him at Amma's birthday satsang last September--a million years ago!!!) I don't use mine. It's too weird. I thought Amma was going to give me a name that meant "Patience" but she gave me the name Charuta. The moon is in the name somewhere, but it doesn't mean "moon." But I digress again. It's all in a name, isn't it? For me, Amma really blew me away in a way, but actually the first thought that came to me was "inner" with regard to "beauty." It has been a problem for me to look at myself on the outside.

When I think I've done some work on my inner world, I do something karmic to make everything more challenging.

This young man I met at the ashram that year and I related to one another in a more karmic way for me. I have Venus, Rahu and a very important other planet in Scorpio in the 10th house.

"Wear your love like heaven...
Alizarin crimson...
Can I believe what I see
All I have wished for could be
All our races proud and free...

THE DEVIL IN DANIEL JOHNSTON and Greetings

This was the second night I watched the film THE DEVIL IN DANIEL JOHNSTON. When I saw the MTV footage of him from about 1985 I realized that I had seen him before--on TV! Many people become famous through that medium. But I think Daniel will be more well-known for all the documentation he did on himself throughout his teens and twenties. He recorded many of his musings and made films when he was in high school. The film about him is therefore full of rich documentation of a true artist. This particular artist is one who was suffering for a long time with mental illness.

Many of us wanted to be on MTV in the eighties. Videos were on constantly, and there were many theme musical shows, one of which Daniel Johnston performed on. He was a product of a kind of Amurikana that is steeped in Christianity and the Bible. No wonder he came from the southern US of A. To me he's kind of an anthropological study of a culture that is its very own and which I, though from the suburbs of San Francisco, can appreciate.

But what's most important about Daniel's contribution to the world is his music and his visual art, paintings and drawings. His metaphors are so simple and sweet. It is no wonder that he went off his meds weeks before he would perform. And though people--his peers one of whom I am--could find some of his lyrics somewhat over the top, the sentiment is real and therefore to be accepted as such.

There is much more to be said about this artist but I would just recommend the documentary. Some may find it exploitative of the mentally ill. I see it as an appreciate of genius.

Just to digress like I usually like to, I want to say that if anyone writes me a "Hi there" I will not respond. For some reason this harmless phrase puts me off. It's an acknowledgment of personal space without the warmth of sincere greeting.

SHREK THE THIRD

Yes, good ol' Shrek. I really liked the first one. I went with some severely cognitively impaired young adults I was teaching in summer school. It was so fun. It was so new. We saw it at 11:00am at the Metreon. SHREK 2 I saw with a friend in the early evening at the Metreon. It, too was sweet. So far I've said nothing about the film that would inform the non-Shrek person.

My favorite thing about Shrek is that one of the guys who works at the local cafe wrote "Tortuga" under Shrek's picture. That made me laugh. I think tortuga is a funny word; it means turtle. A turtle, a donkey, and a cat. I love cats. It's so fitting that the cat has a Spanish accent. He's portrayed as a player in SHREK THE THIRD. In fact, the kittie is the only one who doesn't reproduce in the film. And that's the plot of SHREK THE THIRD.

I got bitten again.

As much as I like to say "Hi, doggie, doggie," to the nearest sweet French bulldog, I have always been afraid of getting bitten by a dog. The only "wild" animal, i.e., one which bites and etc., to gain entrance to the human abode, is the dog. It's odd that humans also can bite into apples and into each other.

Today was the second time this month that I have been bitten by a student. Actually, it's been the same student each time. This student is not the only one in the class who bites. I've been the lucky one to be a "human bite" recipient. I went to occupational health. They know me there. I've received alot of bites and scratches from students over the years.

My getting the bite was no one's fault. I could consider myself slow in realizing that someone intends to bite me, but I won't go there. The blame game is overdone. I'm not sure what karma has to do with it.

What does karma have to do with being "the world's tallest woman?" Where does this woman reside, you may ask. When I saw the caption on the cable menu, "World's Tallest Woman" I was drawn to it. This woman lives in China. I hope this documentary follows her, because she was just given 6 months' worth of medicine to help reduce her pituitary gland tumor. The pituitary gland controls the endocrine system, and the endocrine system controls height. The "condition" this woman has is called "giantism." She stands 7 feet, 8 inches tall. It was incredible to me that people in her village and the health workers in Shanghai treated her with so much respect. She actually demanded it by being a person without an impairment in her ability to communicate her wants and needs.

PAN'S LABORYNTH and the Himalayan Fair.

I've gone to the Himalayan Fair for the past nine years. It has always been eventful. There is always a musical or dance event that is fascinating. There is always someone that one meets that one hasn't seen in a long time and the meeting is good. I have a poem about something that happened at the fair when I went by myself. Today I went with my friend toward the very end of the day. The last performance of the day was taking place: the closing blessing ceremony by Tibetan snow lion dancers.

When we looked at the booths, there was a lot to see--as usual! But, then again, it was Sunday, and (hopefully) the vendors had sold most of their good stuff. I tried on a Nepalese patchwork skirt with panel of the eyes of the Buddha hovering over the vagina. I thought it really tantric, but it didn't fit quite right. I don't like having a belly sticking out!!!

Meanwhile, there was more to say about that, but Blogger is rushing me through. (Usually I take a break and come back to a blog...)

PAN'S LABORYNTH was as magical as I thought it would be. My friends and I wondered about the scene where Ofelia is in the bathtub. A cleansing ritualist symbol or suggestive of child sexuality?

Art: a work of Art.

I like to paint. Today I have spent much of the time in an intense sense of bliss at the thought of not having to go to my job during the week and actually having moment to be free. It was essential to mention the job because I just got paid today and could, therefore, spend a little bit of money.

Back to painting. Sometimes I do watercolors of the same subject more or less. I see them as emotional reflections of a mind at thought, at thinking, at listening, at wondering, at stating, etc. Really, they are just sketches for much bigger paintings that might never get done.

I looked at some ads for new places to live, but I'm sorry, I want to be able to have fun and not have to feel that I have to be away from the place a certain amount of time to make every one happy. And these people never take cats. Although I no longer have a cat, there are to two cats here in the house, Pablo and Buddy. They have varous other names like Pineapple, the Pubbers, Chunky Monkey and the Budders.

But I digress again. This was supposed to be about Art. I watched the film ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAl tonight. Why did John Malkovich have to be in it? Wasn't the story line completely tired (the boy who wants to be an artist so he can have beautiful women...)? Sexy this film was not. Enlightening this film was not. Pubesxent this film was. It was supposed to be a play on some other film (Terry Zigoff can't be this bad of a director??). I really liked Steve Buscemi and the casting of non-Hollywood actors.

I haven't said anything about Art and neither did this film. I haven't said anything about love and neither did this film.

American Hardcore

I tried watch THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP but got lost on the premise:"Love is an extrapolation of a dream" or some poopoo like that. This film is really sick. Now, I haven't seen it to the end, so I might have to correct myself. But I found myself wondering what "love" the film is referring to. The main character loves no one, really. Oh yes, his name was Stephane. And oh yes, he's Mexican in France. The woman he has a romantic relationship with is named Stephanie. Is she an extension of him and he and extension of him?

Back to Derrida, what's in a name? What is "love"? As we know, the Greeks (and, sorry, I'm not shedding light on this for anyone with a reference to what love means in an idigenous culture) had a couple of words for love: agape, love for all and eros, "romantic," i.e., love involving sex. Is Western culture still stuck on this? But, of course, because sex sells. It's all about the money. Once again.

I don't feel like elaborating on this much further. And the whole concept of self-love, as taught in many cultures and espoused by many therapists for those who find themselves in doubt, is another issue. But, I wonder, is it?

Some of the poems...

Yeah, I got to play tabla at the Club Deluxe!!! It was very cool for me to sit on the floor next to the stage and be kind of from somewhere else. I'm in a good mood. Yes. My room looks like some kind of weird bazaare, with stuff to look at everywhere--and defnitely a lot on the floor!

But I digress...Just wanted to post a couple of the poems I read the other night at SHE SPEAKS #2:


RIver Tongue


You see inside my billowing, soft-magenta lips
With yours, hard and driven, spreading to open
What is seen inside...


A cavern of the raspberry popsicle where
Sweetness resides and deisre wants to fall
Into the moonlit sky.


Your truly musky, muscular tongue sips
And licks its much-wanted candy cane
That lives year-round.


Your rows of growth in your brown garden,
Your cheeks and chin, burrow into mine,
And we smell greenness.


But pink is our color because we live
Inside pink and glow outside pink and
Play in pink.


Let me rip out your black eyes and stick
Them inside my head that I may always
See as we do.

That's enough for now. No, maybe I'll type out Prem:


Prem (Love)

Judging and unjudging (a proper gerund?),
Your nose to the right or to the left,
A droit ou a gauche, meories stilled
In the movement de mon coeur without a
Relationship. In your compassion, you know all.

The lake is full and open to your remembrances
And what ripples and what is now calm.
Oh, esta mi agua, and nosotros podemos.
Pero yo quiero the pink smell of happiness,
I know you want it, you have it, you give it.

Yours truly, and the fairies and sprites have
Joined us in the celebration. What will you
Have of me now? Gibt es Blumen everywhere,
Traversing the planes of being, being with you
Among those who sweep and ponder distantly.

SHE SPEAKS

March is the month of women, drinking in the name of "Christianity," the Amurrikan flag, and Cesar Chavez. I have been blessed to be a part of the women who make up SHE SPEAKS. We are woman musicians, poets, performers, etc.!!! This has been the creative outlet I've needed for a long time. Today I sent off one of my performance pictures for a bio thing. The photo was from May of 2002--five years ago!!! Scary.

Although I've been doing The Bro Jud on Love Energy Show for a number of years now, I have practiced with the band ahead of time only once! And, although there is not enough room in my room for even me, I will be playing tabla every day for at least a half hour until next Tuesday when I'll play at the SHE SPEAKS event at Club Deluxe on Haight (March 20th, 8 pm).

They want me to sing and drum to the Goddess. As one who knows Hinduism might know, the Goddess has many forms: Lalita (Lakshmi, Goddess of Love and Money), Saraswati (Goddess of Music and Knowledge), Durga (a form of Kali, but much prettier, and, according to a customer from Japan who came into Love of Ganesha last week, Goddess of Wisdom), and, of course, Kali, Jagd herself. I think the bhajan I'll sing is to Kali. But my tabla is sooo out of tune. I need some help!!! Too bad one of my boyfriends who plays tabla went back to Gujarat a year or so ago. I'll just practice my na. Everything else will fall into place.

I don't want to talk about the love life situation at this point, but I will. Last week a guy I had a heart connection with called me. He was in town after coming and going since last June. He would e-mail me that he was in town and then would never meet up with me. He must have done this at least 5 times. It's too bad that I couldn't deal with being let down any more. It would have been good to see him. Then there's the white guy (I don't think I've gone out with a white guy since 2002) whom I would like to have as a friend. We met up some time in late February when he played at a performance at The Beat Museum which I shot video of. Then there's one of the Mexican guys I know who had me to dinner but never inquired into my health (I was dying from the flu and bronchitis) after I went to his place for dinner. He seemed into being validated as a lover. To be honest, I was not really attracted to him physically. But I would have liked to hang out with him as a friend to find out if we could be lovers. Many men I meet don't think that getting to know someone should have some mystery to it or that sex is tantamount to any meeting otherwise it would be a waste of time for them.

Now I know I have more to offer than just my body, etc. But there really haven't been any guys around who can recognize and not be afraid or threatened by my intelligence and stupidity. Such is the karma of the moment. But I feel good about the fact that my having been so sick and really still recovering is making it much easier for this Scorpio/Sagittarian woman to resist sex!

I just signed into the New Blogger...

Ok. Now I have a new blog. It's been a while since I've written anything. I was very, very sick with the flu, acute bronchitis and a cold. Stayed in bed for four days at the end of last week. Was out of work for two days;; the whole classroom fell apart. Working now is even more depressing. There were fights among the assistants as to who knows how to run the class. Going to work is the worst it's ever been.

I took a nap for two hours this evening, and when I woke up I was sweating. The heat was really high in my room for some reason. Just this simple biological event ant the rest and visit to the astral and dreamland helped me see that work is not the most important thing. It couldn't have been furthest from my mind. My comfort came first. I think this will be my approach to the next two hellish days: I will concentrate on what makes me feel good about myself. My actions will take the form of well-intentioned, well-spoken and thought-out activities and events.

There is much to do. I've cut out the chai and the caffeine for the week. This is helping in a big way. It's too bad that I can't wear these new jeans I bought--because they keep falling down! (don't use animal products--don't have a belt) So, I don't care. I'll wear my long skirt tomorrow with ripped thermal leggings underneath. I will compromise and wear my white high top converse tennis shoes (in case I have to run after a kid).

As you may infer, life has been on the dull side as far as sex and love and tantra. There's a guy I met a few weeks ago I have to contact to give him something I made of his music. i hope we can be friends. A person from the past called me and wanted to bring everything up to the present at 1:00am in the morning last night. I had to say I've been sick and can't stay up late--not to mention that work has been so shitty. He didn't call me today. This is not a pattern I want to continue. So I go to work and try to get better physically and emotionally. I still think alot about Arlo but not as much. I think he is happy with Lita again now on some other plane or even as her newly-born kitten.

Soon to be over being sick with the flu.

It seems like I haven't written in this blog for a long time. Lately I've been so tired from the flu and bronchitis that I haven't felt like typing. Boohoo.

Just wanted to write about ROCK AND ROLL SWINDLE. A friend of mine lent it to me, and I'd seen it before. It's from Malcolm McLaren's perspective. Today a friend came by and was talking about all this stuff from out punk pasts (presents?). She's from Ireland and has a totally European perspective--from the gentry side. Her family was gentry in Eire and had lots of land. She doesn't have to work for, perhaps, the rest of her life. But she refuses to "own" things.

Anyway, she was telling me she saw The Slits somewhere on Tehama...I don't know this club. Why didn't I call her? I couldn't understand her message, and, the times she was callilng me before, about 3 years ago, she was going to live in a camper van across from the house she's rented with others for years and years.

This has become a digression about abouts, a bout de la mer. I was at work! So, I kept doing what I was supposed to be doing and listening to her talk about different bands (Noh Mercy, The Seemen,,,_Swell Maps.... In any case, she brought up Johnny Rotten's answer to THE R...SWINDLE. I think it's called THE FILTH AND THE FURY. I do want to see it. But I'd rather draw my own conclusions from it than listen to my "friend" and her take on everything.

Oh, the gentry thing. She acts, when I say I'm busy and can't come over tomorrow, she says, "Oh you don't have to make excuses..." This means to me that she couldn't give a shit about my life. I am mere working class--something she aspires to in dress only.

I still miss my kitten.

The blog has been empty recently because I've been doing too many things at once and with alot of rushing around and around, trying not to think about anything but work, of all kinds, from what I do and get paid for and what I do and don't get paid for like doing The Bro Jud on Love Energy show, playing guitar and singing, getting home late. Tonight I got the chance to laugh until I was crying. My friends, another couple, I know, were out tonight in boring Glen Park at the last bit of sleaze in the area, the bar called The Glen Park Station. My friend was tripping, and I was tripping. The air was full of mistrust and yet of the serious desire to have a good time because it was Friday.

The point of all of this is that I couldn't help thinking about something that was distracting me. It was an empty thought in the back of the mind that I couldn't identify. When I was asked if I were preoccupied with something, I had to say yes. But I still don't know what it is. The grief I feel over the loss of my cat Arlo, my friend, my protector, my connection with the sense of family.

I can still laugh, and that is a good thing. It made me cry, which is also a good thing. It's difficult to convey the comingling of loss and desire.

First, I'll Take a Shower.

the course of the nameless blog after 10 days of not writing a thing. THE SLOTH. The Grief. The ...

Tijuana, Ziggie Stardust, and grief.

he last time I went on an airplane was in December of 2001. My friend and I did one of those things to San Diego on the Tijuana line. Tijuana was almost empty because it was December 12, a day of the Virgin. The shops were empty. I bought a ceramic candelabra with dolphins and mermaids and mermen. (I don't have it anymore--another karmic story). It was so cool to be out of this country for a little while and out of the city which is wonderful but can get dull. I think it is now 2007. That was six years ago. Imagine how much I long to see something new!

Six years ago my cat Arlo was 3 and 1/2. He was so cute forever, forever, forever. Whenever anyone came over, he let them know who was also present. He was a friend, "he was all right..." I don't even have to mention that he was one of the more beautiful cats ever created, with sleek black hair and body, green-grass eyes, a small tuft of white hair in each ear and the longest tail I've ever seen on a domesticated cat.

{My mind is swirling, my muscles tense and guarded. My eyes are about to burst. "I want you to walk...")

My cat Arlo is dying.

"Nothing could be more fun than watching an animal die." Have you ever heard anyone express such an opinion? I wonder how people who work in slaughterhouses feel about this.

For me, in the past two years, I have had to watch two animals die: my 17-year-old female cat, Lita (named for guitarist Lita Ford), and now, tonight, my 9 1/2 year-old cat, Arlo (given the name in deference to the poet/activist/musician Arlo Guthrie). Now, the real animal lovers in the crowd would ask, "WHY ARE YOU NOT SPENDING TIME WITH YOUR CAT--instead of writing in your dumb blog?"

The answer is that I can't find him right now. He's hiding in the room. I rented a really heart-filled film from Iran, THE WHITE BALLOON." I thought Arlo and I might watch it together. I hope I find him. Oh, he's under the bed. I will sleep with him tonight and take him tomorrow, if I can get an emergency appointment. It's so awful. He's not even purring.

When Lita was put to sleep, she was purring so was Bat, her son, when he died in the mid-nineties.

Arlo and I will stay together. I can't let him go, that's the problem.

Still in December

It's supposed to be January, but I haven't noticed the difference between December and now. It's really cold. How trite an observation one might comment, but then what else has been said that hasn't already been said? I mean, really. Family Guy and South Park say most of it in new ways. What will be my way of saying it?

"It's my way or the highway." Some people say this. I think they live in the suburbs.

Meanwhile I got my car tuned up this evening. What a miracle. There was no oil in the car's engine. It's really incredible that it was still running. I suppose this is what makes it not December: I got something important done that I was planning to get done during my vacation. It's a good think I didn't go to the ashram this past weekend. Ganesh was letting me know that I hadn't prepared for the journey.

This brings up the question if one can ever truly "prepare" for something or "be prepared to" do something. In Spanish "to be prepared to" is "dispuesto a" which is actually an acjective. I wish I had studied Foucault--it's not too late! The various adjectives for "dispuesto a" are listed: "ready; clever, disposed, helpful."

I saw VOLVER today.

The first "day" of 2007, in the Judeo-Christian tradition and etc. Whatever. It will also be the Year of the Boar in China, and in Southeast Asia New Year's Eve won't be sometime until April something. I hope it's a year full of love, compassion, understanding and healing.

Meanwhile, I saw two films over the weekend: OLIVIER, OLIVIER (1991, France) and VOLVER (2005, Spain). What was common in both films, ironically, because I didn't know what either was "about" before seeing them, was pedophilia. Olivier is raped at the age of 5 or 6, leaves lhis family estate for Paris, gets involved in street sex (it is suggested) and return at 15 to find the old.young Olivier.

VOLVER (from the Spanish verb: "volver" to turn (either up or down, or over) finds the mother--there are a few mothers in this--of the young teenage girl arriving home to find her lover dead. He had been eyeing the young girl in a sexual way, and when he finally attacked her, she killed him with a knife. It turns out the young girl's mother (played by -always-tightly-clad Penelope Cruz) had been raped by her father and bore the young girl in the film who is also her sister.

I can't talk about any of this anymore. Tomorrow I have to return to work and be there at all times for the kids. The hours are the best part of the job: 8:30-3:00 most days. I am trying to look at the positive aspects of this type of work. I wish I were the kind of person who could take a nap. So, getting up early means a long day for me. There are so many creative projects I haven't gotten to (video, music). I also will be doing yoga this year again. I'll make space in my tiny room!

I saw VOLVER today.

The first "day" of 2007, in the Judeo-Christian tradition and etc. Whatever. It will also be the Year of the Boar in China, and in Southeast Asia New Year's Eve won't be sometime until April something. I hope it's a year full of love, compassion, understanding and healing.

Meanwhile, I saw two films over the weekend: OLIVIER, OLIVIER (1991, France) and VOLVER (2005, Spain). What was common in both films, ironically, because I didn't know what either was "about" before seeing them, was pedophilia. Olivier is raped at the age of 5 or 6, leaves lhis family estate for Paris, gets involved in street sex (it is suggested) and return at 15 to find the old.young Olivier.

VOLVER (from the Spanish verb: "volver" to turn (either up or down, or over) finds the mother--there are a few mothers in this--of the young teenage girl arriving home to find her lover dead. He had been eyeing the young girl in a sexual way, and when he finally attacked her, she killed him with a knife. It turns out the young girl's mother (played by -always-tightly-clad Penelope Cruz) had been raped by her father and bore the young girl in the film who is also her sister.

I can't talk about any of this anymore. Tomorrow I have to return to work and be there at all times for the kids. The hours are the best part of the job: 8:30-3:00 most days. I am trying to look at the positive aspects of this type of work. I wish I were the kind of person who could take a nap. So, getting up early means a long day for me. There are so many creative projects I haven't gotten to (video, music). I also will be doing yoga this year again. I'll make space in my tiny room!

Where were we?

The year is coming to an end (kind of--there New Year's celebrations in many cultures at different times), some people look ahead and backward and others just are glad that it is now and that's all that matters. For me, it's all of the above; but I try not to let past and future draw me in.

Today I felt the first pangs of exhaustion that comes from doing too much. Working alot. It's been a good week and a hectic week. I'm glad I feel tired. I need the sleep. One could write a whole treatise and a half about sleep. I recommend "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater" the author of which slips my mind. Sleep can mean lots of things, but mainly surround dreams and visualizations.

Yeah. I need the time to hallucinate, visualize and otherwise dream.

Yesterday was my birthday.

A birthday just records one's solar return; the sun returns to the place it was the "year" before based on the natal chart. One is supposed to be more tired. Perhaps that is why I am drinking so much black tea, chai. Actually, today a good friend of mine gave me thermosful of the chai he makes. I like it so well, that I couldn't resist drinking the whole thing? I've been buzzing ever since! He gave it to me mainly because I was working at the store today. Not that many last minute shoppers, so we had some time to talk. He had been to the ashram in San Ramon the night before and recounted a story told by the swami there.

Apparently Amma had asked him to watch the fanning of a banana leaf that was refreshing her. He had said that so many people wanted to have this honor of fanning Amma, that he was very nervous in carrying it out. Actually, he hit her by accident and Amma gave him this "look." Amma explained to him that the subtle bodies were upset with the way she had been treated although it were an accident. The subtle bodies watch out for Amma.

The question of Amma came up between another friend of mine who is from India. He says that he has no interest in meeting her nor in doing any Hindu practice. This person has the same birthday as me. I thought we might share it (I used to share it with my brother growing up--we're not twins, just two years apart). However, he must have been doing something fun, I hope. I didn't hear from him.

However, I did see a lot of friends today and exchanged gifts and all that. I also saw the film BOBBY. I'm not sure about how I feel about this fictional drama. It has too many Hollywood trashy actors in it. Lawrence Fishburne and Sharon Stone were the most gifted of this ensemble of "actors." The acting aside, the quotes from video footage of Bobby Kennedy was very rewarding to hear. I didn't really know what he said because I was far too young to listen to candidates for office or anything. What I'm getting at is that this man was truly eloquent in speaking from a humanitarian point of view about real problems.

So, it was a good birthday. I felt transformed and somewhat interested in something new to do with my time. I'm not sure yet.

I won't get into how much of a brat I was about the gifts I got.

The time of gift-giving and all that.

Tonight I spoke with a friend with whom I have had a strained relationship for quite a while. This woman talks incessantly about herself and her life ad nauseum. Actually, I just put the phone away from my ear when she starts talking about her week at work, day-by-day, detail-by-detail; all this is about subbing in K-12 schools. SInce I work in a K-12 school, some of this is either quite boring for me or just annoying. When do I get to talk about what happens, day-to-day, detail-to-detail in my week? This person doesn't have time to listen to that. But she must be listened to. (She's mainly German-American.)

Actually, she reminds me alot of my mother--who is far from German-American. She exudes the manic, vaporous, narcissistic tendencies of the "bad" Irish-American matron. Enough about her. At least my mother didn't tell me what she wanted me to buy her for Christmas.

This friend basically told me, when I said I would be making cds for people, that she only wanted Persian, world or Middle eastern music. I was thinking, " Wow, you're limited in your experience of life. Just because you're not into 'rock'any more (even though she likes U2 (yuck--even though Bono has his moments) and Beck (she thinks he's cute, is what I see). there is music she hasn't heard before that is made by experimental, albeit western, musicians. It's cool to be into "world" music, and I really like Indian and Arabic music and know the music of some artists well, I just don't like being told what to buy for someone. This person plays the starving artist (although she is light years away from being starved) and gives people gifts from the thrift store and things she finds on the street. Just because I work really hard--full -time--and have a bit more money than she does, I don't have to buy her anything. I'll check out the Senior Center's thrift store in the neighborhood or go down to Community Thrift and buy her some cups or bowls or something. Yeah, that's it. I'll buy what I know she likes and pay less than I would for the incense!!

"Money, money, money; nickels, nickels, nickels. How I love the sound!" (Lucy lines in "A Charlie Brown Christmas.") Greed, greed go away. I just want to have time to play.

I forgot to mention vacation.

Today is my first day of vacation. I am really enjoying my emotional and intellectual freedom already. I want to go to Mexico for a few days in these two weeks, but I don't have the cash, really. One has to plan for trips, right?

Seeing stars very large and close-up.

I wonder how many people have had the experience of travelling around the city at night while they're eyes are completely dilated. No one can describe the glistening colors, red and charcoal-grey and whites with haloes and sculptures in movement. This is the second Friday for me of spending the evening enjoying the view from my eyes.

Last week I went to the opthalmologist about my eyelid infection. Boring, right? How long (it's been since Halloween--hmm) that my eyelid has been some shade of red and either puffy or just red. Today they told my at the clinic that, looking at both eyes, that...well, both eyelids "kind of look the same." OK, fine. They can't figure out why I got "cellutis" on my eyelid. But when will it go away???

Maybe I should start meditating it away. It's served its purpose in getting me to finally have a full eye exam and all that. Today they told me that I could have had this eye disease at birth. I believe it's weird to have eye issues. So many people deal with them but I never really have had to wear glasses or anything. In any case, they told me that it would probably take a long time--if at all--for my eyes to get to the point where I might need surgery. Ok. I agree with that.

Meanwhile I took my final exam last night in the film class. I wrote about Dorothy Arzner's CRAIG"S WIFE from 1935, one of the Depression years. Arzner was the only female director in Hollywood during the "Studio Years," 1917-1954 or something. (I didn't read the chapter on this.) CRAIG'S WIFE is about a woman who loves her huge, mansion-like house over her husband and everyone else. Because the "Studio Years" were punitive (there was a Production Code written by and enforced by a Catholic layman, Joseph Breen)--if you didn't love your wife or husband or were a gangster or a non-patriot you were somehow punished from above or below. These films are hard to watch. For example, in CASABLANCA Ingrid Bergman makes the correct choice in going off with her husband instead of living with Rick, her lover for a time. Actually, CASABLANCA made me want to puke it was so overdone. CRAIG"S WIFE is disturbing in a different way. The music, the camera angles all point to a woman on the edge--and being vulnerable in that way was not permitted in film depictions until ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. But that's just my opinion.

The film history test and THE BRO JUD ON LOVE ENERGY SHOW

Thursday I have to take the final exam in my film history class. I really hate art history. It's really subjective, putting parts together that may not fit just to prove some sort of point about nothing. CASABLANCA was so boring. So was STAGECOACH. Actually the latter film was degrading to watch. Being human can't meant that one human has a right over another for grabbing land.

So, I'm not studying for my exam. I've been thinking about what I'm going to read on THE BRO JUD ON LOVE ENERGY SHOW tomorrow night. Also, I want to sing and play one of my songs. I have to work tomorrow. This is such a busy week. I should mention that I'm going to try to understand Jud's utopian plan with alot of love energy.

Studying for the film history test and eye disease.

This semester I took the first half of Film History 20 at City College. One thinks, CIty College...really difficult, huh? Actually, I've not studied so much for a class than since I went to UC Berkeley. I took my papers really seriously. In this class, I have to take the TESTS seriously. He gives us mass information about the early days of film and Hollywood and all that. Classical cutting, parellel editing, the master shot, medium shot, close-up, deep focus cinematography (CITIZEN KANE), reverse shot/shot editing (CASABLANCA), the musical (THE GOLD DiGGERS OF 1933), and etc. I did my paper on the films of the only woman director in Hollywood in the 1930's: Dorothy Arzner. She did melodramas, which, according to our instructor, starred women. My paper dealt with the class struggle depicted in two of her films: THE BRIDE WORE RED and CRAIG'S WIFE. My instructor found my discussion "interesting" but not "deep enough." I didn't make a big deal out of the fact that Dorothy Arzner directed women in films about women. To be honest, I'd rather not have to talk about LIFETIME television. I'd rather watch "Family Guy."

Speaking of what can befall a woman, I'm dealing with the loneliness of having NO BOYFRIEND and having been just diagnosed witih an eye disease--in both eyes. I've had an eyelid infection for almost two months now. The eye disease is in the back of my eyes. It's called "lattice degeneration." A lattice is a physics matter. Apparently, not enough blood flows to the affected area and it breaks down. On Friday when I return to UCSF for my follow-up exam to probe into what might help deflect the onslaught of retinal breakage that results with lattice degeneration.

Not a real font of good news today. Feeling like I want to write a personals ad, since I never meet anyone at work or in the usual places one meets prospective loves. Somehow I'm ready to face this week at work, because Friday after 3 p.m. means Christmas vacation!!!!

Thank God for Stewie.

What would an otherwise lazy night be like without "Family Guy?" IT is so crass and gross and disgusting and cliche but oh so funny--more than once in an episode. Tonight's show was on sexual abstinence for teenagers--especially Meg. The penises are placed next to the ears of the person one might be having an intimate moment with. Hilarious.

Speaking of sex, what is it without love? Someone was telling me today that Amma says that most couples today in lust and not in love. I wonder how she knows this. And, with all she has spoken of karma, wouldn't there be some destiny and payback involved in the whole sexual thing? We haven't even addressed the dharma also implicated.

Nonetheless, I keep dealing with my karma everyday. I worked today at the store. Played a 9 hour cd of Indian classical music after listening the Dalai Lama chanting and Amma's earliest bhajans. It was a good day for music and contemplation.

And, I thank the antibiotic for my eye infection might be really working to get rid of it!

Tonight I took video at The Beat Museum.

Why do I have friends I hardly talk to turn me on to such cool things? Mutual respect but not enough closeness, probably...for whatever reason. I hope we will be better friends after tonight. But my friend asked to shoot video at a performance of woman poets and musicians at The Beat Museum. The Beat Museum is on Broadway and Columbus, really close to City Lights Bookstore. This whole area has such a history of being a creative place. It also is home to the city's strip clubs. My aunt lived in this neighborhood in the fifties and sixties. She was an art collector--mostly California fiftes Abstractionists. I grew up looking at the many paintings in my house and the ones in hers and my other aunts. I loved this palette-knived oil painting of a grove of trees in a medum shot. The painting was quite flat for a painting and yet sculpturally so interesting.

I digress. The Beat Museum. There were original photographs of Ginsburg and Cassady and Kerouac and all the other players in the play. What a perfect place for a performance by women? Especially on Broadway? If I had performed with them, I probably would have shown quite a bit of skin. That's what Broadway--can be about or, at least include. The words were delivered very differently from woman to woman. There so much variety of voice and song. My friend's song was about the Black Panthers (sex included) and Courney Love's implication in the murder of her husband Kurt Cobain. I know that has something to with my avoiding formal wedding and the legal issues involved.

Digressing again. It was alot for me to take in. People were great in abundance as spectators. I tried to include them in the experience. I hate when people look at the camera. I don't want to offend anyone by not acknowledging their presence in the video credits. Nonetheless, there was not too much ego out there tonight. Every performer was quite understated in over-expressing their importance. Substance, what the poems and songs were about was tantamount everest.

I just regret not buying a cd from a young guy who had included his songs on a cd full of well-known rappers. I told him that I didn't really know any of the music. He said I could get into by listening to it. Then, I asked him which song of his was on the compilation. He said, "I'm the guy with that..." or something like that. What did that mean? He said, "I'm one of those kind of guys." Wink wink. "A player,?" I said. "You'll have to find out for yourself when you listen," he smiled. He was just so cute that I could't resist, right" No. I didn't dig his attitude. I kept on video taping and forgot about him. Then I remembered, and I went out to see if he were there. He had told me earlier that I looked like someone who could afford to buy the cd for $5.00. Yeah, maybe, not really, and I work too stressful of a job. Video is much more interesting than teaching--anything...even drumming. I was having tons of fun. Sorry, but I don't think I was ready to listen to the music he had offer or was just off in my own world like he was. The video camera is not even mine, if that's what made me look like I have any money. What is this, I need to make my own cd so that I can trade (barter?) next time. That's what another friend did who had performed. I'll ask her to make me a copy.

In any case, I paid $24. for 3 dvc tapes. I shot two tape's worth. It was a real excursion into the nightmares of having a camera the battery of which now only lasts for about an hour. I kept having to charge the battery there in betweeen the performers. I was sweating!! ( I like to shoot through a rack of t-shirts, camera angle from below. Ozu --

The week from hell has ended.

When does your week "begin"? For those of us who do the 8am to 4p--or whatever--the week begins on Saturday. No, actually Friday afternoon. My Friday afternoon was a resolution of much time spent wondering why November was such a difficult month. The US elections were uninteresting and more of the same to me. Boring. Scary.

My days spent at work were often extremely taxing. I stopped bringing my guitar to work to play for the kids. That's part of the problem. Not staying in touch with my inner rhythms. I NEED to play music and sing and dance. Children with autism also need to move and dance and hear music. Also, I took a week off at Thanksgiving and when I got back on Monday all these social workers had come by and undending social problems were thrust in my face.

Creatively, not much got done this month. I have been so apathetic. I started out painting and ended up doing nothing. The toilet still doesn't flush correctly. Shopping for clothes was uneventful and dull. I only saw Amma once. (I can say seeing Amma was the best moment of the month besides the video I took of my friend and my ex-lover shouting about the minimum wage in the U.S. I shot an hour's worth. (So dedicated, right?) I want to edit it down to 10 minutes or less. My friend couldn't get a word in. People don't like to watch others' frustrations for too long!

Frustration? Try dealing with a karmic debt you don't know how to pay. Your heart is pounding. You can't breathe. The stars are all tugging at your hair. Your hands move but not your voice. This all happened today. I put my forehead on the rug in the meditation room at Love of Ganesha. My face fell into the garlands in the singing bowl. Ganesh always hears me.

I saw Amma yesterday.

I took Monday and Tuesday off from work this week. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are already holidays. So, I didn't go into work at all this week. I'm writing like this week is over!!! It started on Friday night when I felt really weird and tired but took a video of two friends arguing about the mininum wage. I woke up Saturday morning with a wicked flu. Stayed in bed until Sunday when I worked at a store in the Haight. Monday I cleaned the house and my clothes while I was still sick.

Yesterday morning I drove to San Ramon to see Amma. Every time I see I come back glowing with what must be love. She is the embodiment of love and compassion. There is something very nice about getting a hug from Amma. She has what must be divine love radiating from her pores. Although there were tons of new people there, the vibe was completely chill. No stress. I didn't do any seva, though.

I want to see her in a public program on Friday. The retreat that people are on up there didn't appeal to me because I did it once at this time of year three years ago. If you don't have a boyfriend or friend to stay with, someone of my means has to room with someone unknown. Hotels in general don't appeal to me, but the one I stayed in (for one night!) was right next to the freeway. What a getaway!!!

Negativity and the pull there aside, I am so happy to be able to see Amma at all this year. I've been sick. I don't want to pass it to her or anyone. By Friday I'll be strong enough to drive there and deal with the crowds!

Election Confection Smechtion

Have you every had candy that made you puke? Licorice is one that does it to me. The election coverage by CNN and CO. was so strange and uninteresting that it was not really eye candy (which tv mainly covers) but puke without the awful candy. I voted so completely other than most. I got so disgusted with the ballot that I sent 1 sheet in with no voting on it. As far as the legal people, judges and whatever, I voted "No" on all of them!

The good news was that Berkeley residents overwhelmingly voted to impeach Bush. It is a little known fact that many highly educated people live in Berkeley. There ware people who just understand that it's their right to vote as they feel.

Oh, the blood.

Just got back from seeing THE DEPARTED. WHY so many guns? Why Jack Nicholson as one of the gangsters in Boston who
made no effort to concoct a Bostonian accent! The only things that made this film not just another CSI:Wherever were the dissolves and jump cutting. At one point I had to go to the bathroom, and all I could think of was, "This film is not WILD STRAWBERRIES." But in its editing techniques and rhythm the two had something in common. In Scorcese's film there a lots of shoty adagios (almost like sound bytes sometimes) within the greater work, while in Bergman's film threre are just adagios that overlap.

So many films came to mind when I watched THE DEPARTED: RESERVOIR DOGS, KILL BILL, THE 400 Blows...

"Craziness" or "brattiness.

Tonight I should be videotaping at party that is newsworthy. The cable channel 29 is looking for news for it's upcoming show
November 17th. I got upset by the host of the Bro Jud on Love Energy show. When I told him I was tired from the week, he said "Stop making excuses...your'e a flake." I won't go into details, but he expect me to make copies of his show on my dvd burner from Apple. There was a huge problem with the mini-mac I bought initially last year. Now that they've put in a new harddrive,
I have to know how to transfer data from one harddrive to another. It's a long (and boring) story.

So, instead videotaping an event tonight, I am seeing Scorcese's newest film. It's just not my thing--the whole "gangster" thing. But a friend of mine who has never been verbally abusive to me wants to see it. I'll go. I want to talk to my film history teacher about the Scorsese film. I got an Q--no, an A on the last exam. Soviet, German and French cinema. I wrote about
the French film, though I loved Eisentein (we didn't see much of him). He was a painter on the film screen.

Saved it up for this Dance.

I'm in love with my cat but won't admit it. There, I said it. Unconditional love is so alluring. Now he has lost tons of weight and
had x-rays taken at the vet today. They think it's his kidneys. They want to do ultrasound testing. I don't think the vet is right.
But, then, what do I know? If I buy him some food he really likes and he starts to throw up everywhere, it will be a test.

Well. it's only our lives. He has been a punk, too. That's kind of what I like about him. But, utimately he's very sweet. He's all black (with white hairs in his ears) with green eyes. He is lovely. He's sweet. He's always gone outside and has never lost a
cat fight. He's nine and a half years old.

Right now I'm very concerned about him. It's hard for me to see him so boney. Maybe he will live longer than anyone thought. I believe it's totally up to him. He might be ready to leave. He may want to stay. Of course, I want him to stay. But I want him
to eat!!! He has to eat at least at the same ratio that I consume fattening foods. I feel pudgey today.


From Hairs

Celestial, gleaming, starry night
With fingers crawling up and down,
A tabla is seen but not heard,
All dressed in green, the suggestion
Of indentation is still present.
Another source. Be together.

Too tired to blog?

I think that I need some rest. But it seems that everything needs my attention--RIGHT NOW. For example, one of the cats left feces stains in about 4 places near my bathroom. At work, I did some social work...after hours. At noon when I went to a cafe with one of my friends, I could have fallen asleep right there. I got a large chai and kept going! I hope that the month of November will be balanced and healthy. I tried making dahl tonight (another task--but it was good).

There's a book I haven't started for my Latin American Art class. The film text goes unread, too. I wonder what film we're going to watch tomorrow night. It happens to be GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933...OK, that's enough.

Time to lie down or do some yoga.

I have an eye infection.

Tuesday I stractched my eyelid near the inner eye area. It got infected. First it was a flat red, then a pink mound of almost
one half an inch..running down onto my inner nose. All you have to think about is what the Kilingon's look like. This creation
took about 4 days until Saturday. I went to the emergency room. Got a shot in my butt muscke (!) of antibiotic.

Now I am still dealing with it. IT itches. It burns a little. I should be resting my eyes. It looked better after I'd had some sleep.

Happy DIwali

I think it started on Friday: Diwali, the Festival of Lights and the New Year in India. It goes on for several days. I have a friend
from India who took me out to Diwali dinner. Usually Diwali is spent with family and friends. But my friend has no family here
and his car is in the shop, so he didn't feel like going down to the San Jose area to be with friends of long standing. Actually,
I've know him for almost six years.

We went to DOSA on Valencia. They serve DOSAS which are crepe-like, long and filled with vegetables. They are dipped in
some sauces. Yum.

I also went to do a video shoot and forgot to charge the camera battery. Oh well, I got 5 minutes of my friend's performance.
It was at LIfetime Books which is on Polk Street. What sweet place! It has a staircase winding down into it from the second
floor. The book emphasis is metaphysical mostly. The performance was interesting. My friend sang about Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party and then went on to Mary Magdalen.

Forgot to mention the Bridge School concert I went to last night. I loved the Trent Reznor ensemble. He has a string quartet
behind him...heavy on the cellos. Everybody else rocked hard and soft, but with Neil Young at the center of it all, the message
was often political. Yay. Does anyone think that Trent Reznor's music is political? Should there be a difference?

It was supposed to be a haiku.

I've been having trouble with blogger.com recently. They haven't posted my latest
blogs to the blog. It's weird. Can anyone explain why this is happening?

Meanwhile, I tried to change the heading with a haiku. It didn't print out the way
I wrote it. It looks kind of dumb. But maybe I should write more haiku. I miss
writing poetry.

Port of Shadows

Grey, white, black, fog
Swirls by you in fashion-
Like sweetness, a new
Flavor of obscurity.

Nelly, you stand in a
Cellophane coat. White.
You just happen to be
There at the rendevous.

He sees you and it's
Instant passion, love not
Unadorned with past surrender
And soon-to-be death.

Let's play where's the blog?

Last night I blogged about painting...sort of. I was thinking about so many things that my original idea left my mind when I sat down to write. This happens now and then and makes for a writing exercise, at the least.

I'm wondering if anyone else who blogs has found their most recent blog in another area than the actual blog. When I went into "search blog" and typed in the title "About Painting," the blog came up--by itself with my little picture in there.

Today it was really hot. I was so happy. Got to walk around the room for a while in my barefeet. Yay. Not many kids. Didn't have to go out to the recesses except in the morning. Made bats from stencils to teach color.

Tonight I need to read from some texts for my classes. Tomorrow night we'll see UN CHIEN ANDALOU which is one of my favorites. I used to love Dali. I still do, but I can't paint like that myself. I'm more of an Expressionist...black and white and colors. Tablas.

I have two choices: read about the Maya or about the technology of early sound films.

About Painting...

I was lying down on the couch and looking up at one of my old paintings on the wall. It's from 1998, and I did it in the garage of my old house I used to rent. I lost that house after having lived there for 9 1/2 years. The landlord sold it to a woman with enough money to buy it. By the time he sold it, I was painting upstairs in the dining room. That was so great. The garage could get really cold!

In any case, this painting could use some work. But I'd rather leave it as is because it's part of a gallery project sponsored by an organization that used to exist in San Francisco for people who had suffered physical and emotional abuse as a child. The place was called The Morris Center. This painting was selected as one of about 70 that
they chose in all to represent feelings of recovery and bliss.

To me the painting is unfinished. However, it does give a sense of calm. I want to take the painting down and start working on a new one RIGHT THERE. My landlord would freak. He has very inexpensive carpet on the floor, and I paint in oils. Oh well.

I've been painting in a little watercolor book. My subject matter for the past three or more years has been the two drums that make up the "tabla." To me this image allows rhythm to flow through the painting in different ways. Color has alot to with the sense of time and space, too. But painting a musical gift is fun for me since I play guitar and love to play music with other people. My tabla playing needs a lot of help now. In the old house I used to play all the time and for a short while had a trio (guitar, tabla, didjeridoo) called BHAKTI. We played at Day of the Dead in 2002 at a gallery in the city.

I feel tired. Got to get up early for work! Earlier in the evening I thought I had something to say about painting. I did, and now I'm remembering how I was going to start writing about it. Tomorrow.

Oh....Love.

Harold Pinter is a great playwrite. Whenever I forget my proper ways of conveying
meaning through this medium, I find myself often so full of it that I can't find
anything. Thank you, pinter.

To remove any suspense, I will expose the goal: to convey the deepest feelings one
can have about karma and what it feels like to always be in debt. Amma says that karma
is like having a debt to pay. Even in this life we accrue more debt. Thoughts are
what get me in trouble, I think. I'm not the kind of person to express verbally what
I'm thinking about too often. Writing used to be the best way for me to let it go--especially in high school and university. The kind of writing I do now is for
individualized education plans. I try to be objective. I don't write, "So and so is a cute 5-year-old..." Stay away from comments that subjective. The way any person looks
is a matter of opinion. Not everyone agrees that Bush looks like a liar. Do you know
what I mean? There are so many cruel people in the world that it is often very
difficult to distance oneself and ignore it all.

Oh yes. Back to karma. Debt is pretty cruel. The Buddha was correct. Dharma should be something welcome. I often consider dharma and karma the same. It seems that I'm constantly paying back as I go. Well, there's my job, for instance. Working as a schoolteacher is very difficult work emotionally and physically. This is the only profession that pays its members to take over 2 months off--paid!

Meanwhile, my love life is such shambles. I know I have to let the Moises thing go.
Tonight I went to a party where this woman who's supposed to be my friend wore one
of his set of earrings. She said, "Oh, he's a cool guy." My response was less than
casual: "There are cooler people in the world than him." The whole Love of Ganesha
crowd seem so caught up in who is holier than thou. Why do I feel so distant from them? Why do they all make me feel so lonely?

It's now close to one year since Moises and I got together. I was very vulnerable.
I hope after this past year since January that I have become less accessible than
I was last year at this time. The space between lovers was great a year ago. Such has not been the case this year, and I'm happier for it, but I lost someone, too (the eccentric guy from London). I have a friend I see now and then. I like him. He has the same birthday as I do. We are from different countries and different religious traditions. My birthday is December 24th. In this country, no one's around on the 24th. One year, about 3 years ago, I spent my birthday totally by myself the whole day and night. I wanted to do it because I never had. The birthday always had to be spent with family up until I was 30 (and beyond that) and then it's been spent with
friends.

I am digression-free now. Sorry for the interruption. This was supposed to be about Love. This is where Moises, Amma, the Argentinian guy I met today who is a friend of Moises, the woman wearing the Moises earrings, all this stuff comes up as a test. Am I over the weirdness of still thinking about someone who is a karmic test. The debt has been paid. The way I can keep the creditors at bay is to stay neutral to anything that has to do with this man. Earrings? Who cares? My love is for myself first. Being a faerie is really hard on the plane of the humans. If you've ever read THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI, you will know what I mean. The faerie world is where I've come from. It's still possible to be human and not get caught up in what
humans do to hurt themselves and others.

Using the camera.

Tonight I worked as a camera person for cable access channel 29 here in San Francisco. The show was their "open mic." What a joke. Now, I don't make fun of musicians unless they're just too stuck on themselves. Such was not the case with this group. They were humble people playing instruments. There was a female impersonator singing to a couple of songs on cd. There was a guy who imitated Jeff Buckley's style of singing who wasn't too difficult to listen to. But Randi and Jack of the trusty Bargain Basement Band stole the show in terms of heart. Randi does not have a good voice. But she can wail like Janis and was around when Janis was around. She sings songs about people taking over their governments and leading themselves. She sings about medical cannabis. She herself has mild cerebral palsy.

I don't know. I guess I had fun playing with the camera and getting a good shot. But I hope that next time there will be some variety in the musical people represented. The guy who soloed played in the band the last time. And the jazz band had the same bass player that played the last time. The only women represented was Randi.

This past weekend I went to a show because I was invited by friends. I saw John Mayer, Sheryl Crow and Marjorie Fair. I liked Marjorie Fair best. The commercial sounds of the other two didn't move me. Marjorie Fair sings about life with underdistorted guitars. They had put together some lyrics which one could relate to.

Tonight I heard and saw Kurdestani music.

What does it mean to say that you "saw" music? You cut it in half (no, fifths)? Have you ever heard Kurdestani music? I saw the film CROSSING THE BRIDGE set in Turkey and about Turkish music. (There is one Kurdestani musician represented.)

Tonight I was supposed to usher at Cowell Theatre in Fort Mason with my friend. She kind of gets on my nerves sometimes. It's probably the fact that she says weird, under-handed, competitive comments that makes it so. Now, I realized when I got home (I never went to the bathroom while I was at the theatre) that my butt-cleavage was showing most of the evening.

Perhaps I was inspired to wear my clothes thusly because I was so full of desire. There were many men I find attractive at this event. I met the first one backstage. At first, we had to sit with a man from Persia, and he and my friend were talking politics and he was using the word "us" for Ablurrika and my ears were literally begging for prozac until my friend found out we could go backstage and eat the food for the musicians before the show.

"Do you play doumbek?" I heard a woman ask someone to whom my back was turned. He answered her that he did play a drum. I was fascinated by that and the fact that his spirit was so open, so faerie-like, that I was confused. He was in his early thirties with shoulder-length wavy hair. I had never met anyone from Turkey nor had I met someone who whose culture was also Kurdish. This was all too much. He gave me this really genuine smile and I sort of let loose this snarly smile that I never encountered in or on myself before. What was this about?

So, as I sat and heard the lecture before the concert, I pondered my earlier ghastly behavior. The lecture was given by one of the musicians who described the soul of the music and a particular song's message. One of the songs was prescriptive for human interaction: soul meets soul and repects it on that deepest level. Later on, I was talking to a person who was working there and said that I thought Ablurrikans were the most self-indulgent in terms of bad moods and being unfriendly. He agreed with me. I'm looking for a discussion.

Still processing the ashram.

I read the post from last weekend pre-ashram visit. Forgot to mention the good things. There was a spot on the floor for me to sit and meditate. When the bhajans started, I was dancing as a sat. It felt so relieving. My meditation was on joy: the bliss of freedom from worry or care but still involving them in the process of being in the moment. Perhaps that was what was so helpful about this time. I really stayed in the place where I went in my mind and that was where I was.

It really helped when I had to talk to the old lover who is a young guy from Nicaragua. What he told me didn't bother me, but he seemed so ready to jump on my balloon when when I talked about some of my housemate problems. He's living in a commune. He sleeps with someone different every other night. At least I don't even have to say hello to this housemate who is one of 3 that I live with; four people and three cats.
But, in any case, I was happy with myself that I didn't trip or wonder about this person anymore. I saw another guy I kissed AT the ashram back in 2002. He is from Montreal but has been in this area off and on. He said "Hi" and that was all that was good...seeing the soul of the other person and greeting it.

The ride back to San Francisco was fused with talk of free and fun sex at Burning Man. One of the guys from Love of Ganesha (is it a coincidence that he's from Paris?) was recounting all the woman he had sex with in the desert. There were also the women who wanted to have sex with him. He and my friend were talking sex. Amma
knows there are many forms of love.