The last night at the ashram.

It was a bizaare evening. I have to process this and then write something worth saying. For now I can say that Devi Bhava in November is an amazing and beautiful way to say thank you.

The thirteen seed portal.

There's a paper I'm supposed to be writing for a class at City College. The paper is about the Mayans and time and the esoteric nature of the glyphs and then about the nahuales. Maybe I should write a paper about the relationship between a nahual and the Skywalker time glyph. The website put out (I think) by the famous Mayan time professor Jose Arguelles is the source of my knowledge about the glyphs. The portal website names each day's figure glyph and its placement within the tone element.

When I saw Amma a very special estoteric glyph was on that calendar day. The blue eagle representing the eyes of the divine, the viewing of all as divine, in the now, in the present, the ultimate present. The tone was rhythmic, after the 3rd and 4th dimensions comes the rhythmic pulsating of the universe.

I got darshan with Amma this morning.

We left for the ashram in San Ramon at about 7:15. My friend who normally drives a taxi cab for income was driving. Both my other friend and I didn't have to drive! She was shuttling people back and forth three times a day. That's just too much and too generous. Thursday I took some people in my car, and I was feeling like a taxi driver. Maybe I've driven to the ashram with lots of people over the years and I felt like not having to worry about the driving. My car is a five-speed, so I especially have to be aware at all times about what gear the car is in and etc.

In any case, I was so grateful that I could sit and anticipate my experience with Amma. I had not idea when we first got there and the ashram was closed off that I would get darshan tonight with Amma. We missed her initial talk, which is something I always enjoy. But we sat for about an hour and a half in the ashram after getting tokens, and Amma was smiling at everyone and giving darshan with intention and sweetness.

I was so happy to get a kiss on the head! And one of the people in our group, a visitor from Germany wanted to get blessed with me. It was really nice. I'm always alone when I meet Amma, and tonight was special.

We got shuttled out to the car about five miles away from the ashram and headed for San Francisco. Someone at the ashram shop asked me if I were going to the retreat this weekend. I had to say no. Monday night is Devi Bhava. I have to go!!! Even if I don't get darshan with Amma, I want to be there to see her again.

Amma is coming on Thursday.

Mata Amritanandamayi is my mother. She is Amma. Read the biography by Judith Cornell. It gives some insight into a person who is more than a person. There are many gurus in India, and there are many spiritially-inspired and gifted people within the Hindu/Buddhist prayer construct.

When I listen to bhajans, I am content. Driving is not that difficult. (I have an 8-hour cd of bhajans written by Amma--it's called the Bhakti Pod, because Amma is Bhakti, self-less love.)

She will be here on the Amurikan holiday of Thanksgiving. I've been thinking about the "holidays" of Autumn: Indigenous People's Day, Dia de los Muertos, Samhain, Diwali, and now Thanksgiving. These months can be dreary upon people's emotions and psyche (see the events in France, the strikes). People are empowered. Somehow Thanksgiving is the perfect day to see Amma. All of us vegetarians will be gathered together to pray for everyone we know and don't know as well as ourselves. It will be a good thing to do.

The Visionary Activist and Planet Glee

Last Saturday, a week ago, I got to meet a person I'd heard on the radio--KPFA--many times and have always had something to say to. It was very weird. I had listened to her lecture at the Green Festival and then bought her book. I stood in line and bought her book. After talking with her, I see that she is a person thinks deeply on some of the same topics that I do. I'm not into American politics the way she is, for instance. Maybe I don't understand her point of view completely. We differ in that she uses western astrology for her interpretations and I believe that Vedic is more accurate.

I'm writing about Caroline Casey (I almost wrote Carolyn Myss--who is that?). Her book is entitled MAKING THE GODS WORK FOR YOU. Yeah. I read about my least favorite one of the gods, Shiva, Saturn. He is not one to be ruled! She writes, "Saturn is our...basic center. In fact, this god lives in our real center, the psychic uterus, right below our navel.

The word hysteria, derived from the Latin word for uterus, addresses this Saturnine issue of loss of center...A therapeutic colleague once described hysteria as occurring when one evters a world that is not of one's own definition. THe process beigns with detachment, which becomes loneliness, which becomes hungry yearning. Hurngy yearning tilts us off balance so that we easily fall into someone else's game, where we then thrash crasily like a hooked fish. Thrashing crazily could be called the predomeineant symptom of the last twentieth century. But flailing is actually a healthy raction to an unhealthy situation, as when a fish attempts to become unhooked. (p.86)"

Caroline is a genius. Saturn is impossible to comprehend. But she demystifies this force while making it even more mysterious--akin to our "center," not in the Derridean sense or Freudian, but in the psychic sense, the realm of Ouspensky and Gurdieff, of the esoteric school.

She and I agreed that Vedic has its similar interpretations of the planets. The first Vedic text I read was Robert Svoboda's Light on Life.

The American idea of DARJEELING LIMITED

It's been a while since I've blogged. I like the word blog. It sounds like blob. In the film BILLY ELLIOTT, our main character says something like "Don't be a blob..."
--or something like that. I didn't get the meaning and context.

Perhaps I don't get the meaning and context of the newly-released Wes Anderson film DARJEELING LIMITED. Starting Friday, November 9th, this weekend started the Diwali celebration. Everything Indian, all Friday night and all weekend. On Friday I saw one of Shahrukh Khan's latest film in which he plays the coach of a women's hockey team that goes to the World Cup. Kind of a sleeper, and Shahrukh barely smiles (his most entertaining facial expression), it was worth some Diwali fun.

There is no excuse for DARJEELING LIMITED. It is purely annoying. I forgot that I mentioned that I might not understand the context. Actually, I think I do. It's another Hollywoood slap in the face to the American worker, to the people who go see films in the theater and buy popcorn and veggie dogs and whatever. This is a wannabe French farce yet instead insults and bores us all the way along.

There are three supposed brothers whom we meet together on a train in India. Although I think Adrien Brody is a great actor, and he is the only one worth watching in the film, I can't believe he would--as an Engishman--make fun of India. Yes, he can't rescue the Indian boy from the downcurrent, etc., and he is invited to the child's cremation, there is no respect paid to India and its rich culture and people.

Owen Wilson puts me to sleep, and just how is Jason Schwartzman? Certainly not the hearthrob this film makes him out to be. These characters never wonder about money. They have an unlimited cash flow. THey have matching, expensive luggage. They dress like French guys often do in suit jacket and unbuttoned buttoned, tailored shirt. They soulless monied Amurikans in a country that experiences some of the deepest poverty on earth. I failed to see the humor and I hope that most Amurikans will not even wonder what India is like. THey will be overwhelmed if they were to visit this beloved, sacred land.

NO END IN SIGHT

This is the title of a documentary written and directed by Charles Ferguson, 2007. It reveals the steps toward the Iraq invasion through the eyes of the people who were actually in Iraq working for the US government. The film begins with the some very sad footage of an Iraqi young man in a casket and other men crying incessantly around him. I was brought to tears and couldn't imagine myself getting through this film.

So, I walked out to the bathroom. The guy who was working at one of the best theatres in San Francisco, the Red Victorian, was reading Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky. This was a guy I could trust with my feelings about the film. He said that it was well-composed and that he came out from it feeling very frustrated.

For me, the film is another documentary of talking heads interspliced with actual footage of the explosions, fires and demonstrations that Iraq has seen since the US invaded in 2003. Some of the talking heads are actually people who cared about what was happening--and were here and survived.

Others, like UN Ambassador de Vello from Argentina, did not survive. The US government in the form of a Mr. Bremer (who only made it to Iraq once) placed the UN ambassador there for its own purposes: to gain the trust of the Iraqi political elite. Why he had to die in the process is unknown.

What is also left unknown is why the US quadruplets, Bush, Cheney, Rice and (the other one skips my mind--fill in the blank, if you know) kept putting people in Iraq who spoke no Arabic. One is left with the feeling that to bully a group of people and kill and torture them doesn't require that any communication be achieved.

The news is full of the fact that the Iraqi army had been re-hired by a new government, the US. Because Baghdad is held by many factions of Iraqi groups and the US had its hold on Saddam's palace in the center of the city, it is difficult to see, once again, any communication happening. Meanwhile, the cost of the war is something in the thousand trillionth of dollars. Although the draft is not mentioned, the fact that the US doesn't have enough enlistees to carry on conflicts in Iran and North Korea, there might be an end in sight.

The film concludes with a statement by one of the US enlistees. I was able to make it through this insanity without shedding too many more tears. Somehow I couldn't imagine how a woman profesor interviewed from Harvard's government school could actually believe that the son of the president who got the whole ball rolling in the Middle East could possible be a person of intelligence and compassion. I asked my friend about this during the movie. "She's from Harvard, isn't she supposed to be smart?" My friend said, "Maybe she was just idealistic." Yes, belief in the American voting process as a just one is idealistic. But those of us with a material viewpoint can see through the opaque electoral college, two-party (in name only) system. I would like to see a documentary on those scholars and researchers who are looking into the revamping of the whole US legal system.

Laughing Lotus

There's a new yoga studio in San Francisco. It originated in New York City. The purveyors are from San Francisco and brought some New York-style performance to the city. I missed the kirtan, because I had to see Dr. Fu (my acupuncturist from Shanghai) to cure some of my usual stuff. There's another acupuncturist I see from my health plan who is also good. Her name is Ji Ling. But I digress...

The event--the opening of the Laughing Lotus--began at 7:00. That's when I woke up at Dr. Fu's. So, I missed about an hour or more of the festivities. But I was greeted sweetly at the door and welcomed by the sound of chanting. The place is painted so inobtrusively, in a kind of magenta/peach, and the gods are also painted on the wall. Ganesh is a pink elephant!

What was really cool for me was that I got to see my friends (part of my extended family) from the Love of Ganesha AND a friend I hadn't seen in almost 20 years. I had been thinking about this woman and the man she had a deep connection with who was my housemate, the brilliant left-handed guitarist from London, Snakefinger. There was something I had always wanted to tell her, and I got the chance to tell her tonight. It was kind of an apology for being such an immature baby girl back then. Now I'm a mature baby girl!

But more about the studio: there is a shrine to Amma! Yay! This pleased me much, because not many people really appreciate who Amma is and what she means to humanity. It's not that I'm pushing my guru on anyone...no. Amma represents bhakti, love. She gave tons of money to the Katrina victims. I hope she can help the monks in Myanmar!

In any case, if one wants to study yoga, this would be the place to go. There was a performance by six women who did a yogic dance, fundamentally. They were so graceful in their movements and looked like they were so selfless about it. That is perhaps what I like most about this place: its humility and beauty.

BAMBI

This will be my second time trying to get through this film. I has made me wonder why some women want to be called Bambi. I was acquainted with one once. The music is really getting on my nerves. What is it about this time period (the fifties in Hollywood) that's so annoying?

I borrowed this film from a spiritual friend. I suppose I'm waiting to see what uplifting message I'm going to get from this.

Once, again, I missed San Francisco's version of Berlin's Love Parade. What was my problem? I don't like that it's in CIvic Center. Everything I've gone to there (besides political rallies) has been weird for me. About five years ago I played guitar outside at the Medical Marijuana celebration in the flea market section of Civic Center. What's the difference?

I'm just making up excuses. It was four hours of dance that did it to me. But last night I saw some extremely practiced dancers at Fort Mason. The ensemble is a collaboration between Chitresh Das (Kathak pandit) and Jason Samuels Smith, a really talented tap dancer at the beginning of his career. To dance tap with Kathak speed and rhythm is really marvelous. I gained a great respect for tap dancers.

It was cool, though. I got to speak with Chitresh Das after the question and answer period after the show. I asked him how it is for him to dance Kali, to tell stories of Kali with dance. She is an enigmatic goddess for sure. He answered that he is from the city of Kali, Kolkatta. Someone just mentioned to me that his friends are in Kolkatta now.

Anyway, the question is: do men also has a Kali nature? I believe they do.

Housing and html

It's been a while since I've looked at the craigslist housing stuff for San Francisco. Somehow I knew I would be shocked, and I was. Places in certain neighborhoods of the city have gone up at least $500 for the same thing back in the summer. It's too scary. Somehow I don't know if I want to go through the being-the-new-roommate thing. But I would have to be anyway, since this house is so different and the way it's set up I can't hear anyone upstairs. My housemates I've been looking for places with I hardly hear at all and they me. What if we all lived on one floor? That would be a new living situation to consider. But I do know these guys. It's soo hard!!

Today I spent all day reading the html book. It's not really hard, but it will take practice. I don't intend--nor can I--learn the intricacies of this with the amount of time we have. We spent alot of time on Photoshop--our self portraits. This program does not require that much time to get some basic stuff out. Some people do know html already. They didn't even come to class! That's how the Photoshop should have been. But I'm having fun with the project, even though visually I'm keep things very simple!

Thank God for FAMILY GUY

Adam West plays the principal of Quahog High. His is the funniest character of the show. He was on recently as the mediator in the dispute over Petoria, the country Peter had established within Quahog. This reminded me of the Peter Sellers' film THE MOUSE THAT ROARED about a country which wants to be taken over--and taken care of--by the U.S. It's not a direct connection, but both FAMILY GUY and Peter Sellers' films are high on my list of comedic products of genius.

Today was considered--according to the calendar--as the first day of Fall. I wish my friend had called earlier about celebrating the equinox with candles and meditation tonight. It's cool. I have homework for a class tonight to do and I had a good time while out to dinner and walking around in the lower Haight tonight. I hadn't hung out there for a long time. It was actually not windy! I used to live in this neighborhood, and not a lot has changed, really. There's a cheaper Indian/Pakistani food place there now besides Indian Oven.

Cafe International was happening today with live jazz and blues fusion. Life store had all the lovely scents they've been making for a long time... I bought "Violet." Maybe it reminds me of the time I spent early September up north near Klamath about 9 years ago. I've got to get out of the city more!!! On Friday night, some people on Valencia had plants and some others a carpet of grass with plants strewn out into the street. I thought Friday was Fall equinox. Nevertheless both days are viable emblems of transition. Time speeding by. Days are shorter. When we have a heat wave in the middle of the week, it will actually feel like Fall equinox in San Francisco for me.

YOU, ME AND DUPREE

There is a tendency to admit--after the fact--that a film had something moderately interesting to think about. This week I watched MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3 and YOU, ME AND DUPREE. The choice to watch these movies lay with friends; I didn't select them. It's weird, because I had told one of my friends that I wasn't into action, suspense and dumb dialogue films. But as soon as I got over there, MI 3 was on cable, and my friends were watching it. They had organized a "movie night" that was really just a viewing of what was on tv on their high definition, surround sound video system.

I actually saw the first MI with Tom Cruise back in the nineties. While I was watching MI 3, I kept thinking about how I had dragged my friend who had a Ph.D. from Harvard in anthropology to this droll film. She watched it, but she made no comment afterward. I just tried to pick out the actors I liked in the film (Lawrence Fishburne, Ving Rhames and the Belfast actor whose name I can't recall. In fact, he and an English actor were the only Europeans in this very American-Hollywood-patriotic marvel of a film.

The actors in YOU, ME AND DUPREE saved it for me, too. Actually, I only like Matt Dillon. Kate Hudson has shown that small breasts, thinnish lips and very small breasts can be a part of a beautiful Hollywoodish young actress. Her acting itself, though, is flat to me. Matt's was very flat. He's best as New Yorker. Playing an LA-style character is just not him. It's like he's from another country, and everyone is less self-conscious.

The peroxide-headed actor, Owen Wilson, is just not funny. He's not even cute. How did he get into films, I wonder? He's one for whom the Stanislavsky method really has paid off.

There are marriages between man and woman in both of these films. Another common occurrence in each film was the union of a man at least 12-15 years older than the woman. The difference was subtle, because Cruise, Matt Dillon and Owen Wilson are all boyish, though two are over 40. Of course, all of these actors have had their share of plastic surgery. I was looking forward to watching a thought-provoking film. But all I got were two films that stated that real love is dependent upon how good one looks.

The University of Utopia.

Bro Jud is such a trip. I hung out with him this weekend. He truly has affected many people with his ideas and collectives. Look in Wikipedia for polyamory. Jud and his commune mates came up with this term.

Jud showed me some literature that he wrote in 1979, years after the commune was founded in the Haight. The article I found most interesting concerned the 'University of Utopia." It's taken from the black/white pamphlett entitled "Utopian Eyes."

It begins:

The work of George Gurdjieff and Peter D. Ouspensky is worth following up with the creation of a vanguard school for the study of human behavior...In my opinion, one has to arrive at the tenth dimension of love before one can attain the fifth level of consciousness. This brings us back to Gurdjieff and Ouspendky. One should read their writings to get a clear picture of the first four levels of consciousness. Then one can begin to grasp the conception of the fifth level, which involves thought transference via the attainment of altruistic love..."

To be continued...

Cheval De Frise and Derron Brown

Derron Brown is a psychological illlusionist. When he was a child he fantasized about turning the head of the kid in front of him. To me, Derron Brown has a psychological profile that is quite interesting. He is by no means unintelligent. There is a hyper-conscious ferocity about this person. He does not claim to a psychic. I watched some videos of his shows this evening. I want to watch the episodes in which he takes on a psychologist and, in another, an advertising designer. Derron Brown's world is so Orwellian--yet psy-fi.

Tonight I also had to listen to some heavy guitar music. Cheval de Frise is from Paris. There is a steel-string, amplified guitarist with an eccentric drummer; there is no singer. I bought this cd when I lived in my other house in Bernal. I use to shop alot at Aquarius Records on Valencia. The cd was recommended to me by one of the people working there. I had said I wanted European metal of some kind. I wonder what they would sound like with a singer--there songs have many and complicated changes in them. They are hardcorecollagerock.

Nichts zu sagen.

It really helps to a language that no one around you knows. My Spanish is pretty bad, but I can understand when someone is talking about me. I think I know French better, but I remember two women talking in French together so fast that I didn't get much. For some reason I studied German in high school. I finished German I in one semester and German II the next one. I even took it at the university, reading Goethe's Faust and Jung.

My favorite writer in German is Rainier Maria Rilke. I remember talking to someone from an online meet and greet session about Rilke. Why did he have to be so effete?

Meanwhile, when I'm really angry, I'll not swear--but I will talk to myself in German. Sometimes I call people names--they usually revolve around what kind of animal they look like to me.

Ich bin sehr canzada esta noche.

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!!!!