Fuck the Crisis Let's Dance

These are doctors in Spain protesting about privatisation of hospitals. Coincidentally yesterday I had an impulse while I was in the bank (La Caixa, the "assassins" with the evictions, but I've always liked the staff in my local branch) to buy some private health insurance. On the surface it sounds all wrong! ha ha But I trust the impulse and love the spirit of these doctors. 

ELIAS: I shall offer one exercise, and I shall also offer to you to be paying attention and allowing yourself distraction, but the exercise shall also be influencing in emphasizing that to you and actually moving you into more of an ease of not discounting yourself. I shall express to you to incorporate the action, the physical action, each time you are noticing your own resistance or noticing your own acquiescing or noticing your expression of receding and denying yourself your own expressions, each time you notice, engage the physical action of dancing. Each time! (Laughs) This also serves another purpose, for it is an actual physical action in which, if you are allowing yourself to genuinely incorporate this exercise, you shall find yourself incorporating that action in physical locations with other individuals observing, which moves you into an expression of trust. For, your attention must be upon yourself and in allowance of your own trust, and not focused upon concerning yourself with the perceptions of other individuals, which is also an excellent practice in focusing your attention on you in the moment and offering yourself that acceptance.

www.eliasforum.org/exercises/dance.html

Bee

the B network

Seagulls and Moon

there must have been hundreds of thousands of seagulls yesterday morning at Catalan Bay just as the sun was coming up. On the west side of Gibraltar the moon sinking behind Algeciras ~ and more seagulls. Late afternoon I saw a seagull standing on the divider between the lanes of the road, with a broken wing. But like the vole of the flood, he didn't look distressed, somehow.

"Many individuals may be experiencing imagery which is a projection within energy of Rose, and in this, one of the favored imagery that Rose is projecting of is connected with birds. Therefore, this is an offering of energy in the direction of an acknowledgment of this shift in consciousness and the importance of it and the strength and intensity of its movement.
 ALL of your creatures that are identified as birds within this dimension hold an energy fleck, so to speak, of this essence of Rose, for this is the choice of that essence, to be projecting energy into this particular species within this dimension."
Elias

The Expected Unexpected

Mythogeography and Counter Tourism

Ilda gameboard: Counter Tourism

WHY? Because the heritage business has a dark side! Beneath the simple sounding stories in the Visitor Guide and behind the locked gates marked PRIVATE, there lies a multitude of inconvenient stories, hilarities, wonders, extremes and outrages. When Counter-Tourism opens the doors, tourism becomes a funny, subversive and adventurous experience - not a deferential procession through the unrevealing homes and castles of Heritage plc. Counter-Tourism upsets the sanitising efforts of the heritage industry. It is also a personal and social journey of mini-pilgrimages, challenges and pleasures.

HOLD ON – IS THERE AN AGENDA HERE? Yes – this is an approach to place/space that celebrates the multiplicities of meaning in every heritage site and upsets the industry’s attempts at meaning-control and homogenisation – call it “mythogeography”. It’s what gives counter-tourism its emphasis on the sites of heritage, on the places themselves.

HOW?

1. By intensifying and sharpening your perceptions - see what’s behind the scenes, outside the site, just offstage.
2. By blowing apart the homogenous heritage story to uncover, the multiplicity of stories.
3. By changing the kind of tourist you are.

http://www.countertourism.net/

Park Road Dream

Recalled a dream snippet (after a chat with M about dream recall or lack thereof, and smoking, saying why not just change the belief that smoking affects dream recall so I can have both). Well it wasn't very pleasant at first, I had got home and all the dogs were missing, and the feeling was just awful. My (disengaged) grandmother was there, making a few phone call enquiries to try and find out where the dogs were. It turned out that the dogs were fine, there had been a mix up and they weren't  supposed to be there anyway. Then I realized I was at Park Road, Grandmas house, not my house.  Maybe even the dogs hadn't been born yet, if I was back in Grandma's house at Park Road.

Gordon Bennet

Gordon Bennet! I say that alot lately.

"Stanley was soon retained exclusively by James Gordon Bennett (1795–1872)"

I was looking at a photo of Henry Morton Stanley (had an email off Dad all about him) thinking how he reminded me of my dad's grandfather, and then the next email was a photo with his picture hanging on Dads wall. Bobs your uncle,  Thoughts Illustrated.

Stanley was from Wales and Bennet from Scotland: "Bennett the elder was born in Scotland in 1795, emigrated to the US, became a journalist, founded the New York Herald in 1835, and instituted many of the methods of modern journalism, or at least “journalism for the frankly ignorant and vulgar".

Vulgar sync with quote posted earlier today:

"As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular."

Oscar Wilde

Let's Dance

Moulin Rouge it is then for the fancy dress party on Friday. I had been undecided and procrastinating for weeks about our costumes, clearly waiting for M to say "let's dance!" yesterday, so when I saw the can can dress I knew immediately that would go perfectly with D's top hat. (although I didn't immediately spot the dance sync). I noticed while rummaging around for accesories that one long over the elbow black glove has vanished.

Elias and others are talking about new beginnings alot lately, and there is a good one going on here. The cottage next door with the caving in roof has been patiently waiting empty until mother was ready to move next door (and until I was ready to welcome it).  It all started when the neighbour who lived there drove me mad with crap music, but I'd just started reading Seth and decided to experiment. It took a little discipline to stop thinking about it, stop talking about it, I even told D and E to never even think about that neighbour. So she moved out and couldn't sell the house for ages, and then when L bought it, she shortly afterwards moved in with her boyfriend elsewhere. (speaking of Elsewhere, bought a 2nd hand book yesterday of that name and it's all about a girls continuing life after death. Reminds me of my Elsespace Arrangement in the group story). So that house next door with the unfortunate window that overlooks my patio has been empty ever since I tried the Seth experiment.

Another Seth experiment I tried round about then (maybe 9 or 10 years ago or so) was to stop rehashing bad memories of earlier years with my mother. That also took some discipline, because I'd been rehashing that stuff for decades, but I was determined. Well a most remarkable thing happened! She changed into another person, one I like very much and get along great with. We have so much in common.

I haven't been back to UK for 12 years and a few weeks ago decided to go in 2013. So I'm going back probably in January after mother's knee operation, which I didn't know about when I decided to go back next year. But the knee jerk reactions are all different now.

Another thing I've wanted to do for ages is take photos of snow. I might be able to after Christmas, in Wales. And see D and M in London, and maybe F too I hope, and E and S in Wales and maybe some others.

Twinkies, Gaza, and Reading Gaol

Looking for a little light relief from surreal alternating Twinkies and Gaza posts on FB, started the latest Giles Brandreth Oscar Wilde mystery book called The Murders at Reading Gaol. Unsurprisingly given the title, although it did surprise me never the less, the beginning of the book isn't so much light relief as a continuation on a theme. (Gaza, not Twinkies). I would like to ask Oscar how he managed to create this hideous experience when he'd been so focused on appreciating fun and beauty for so long. I can see how it provides a marvellous contrast, but how did that work with the lava traction. (law of attraction).
A delightful surprise yesterday on FB, it wafted through my mind that I hadn't seen an update from Ki Longfellow in awhile and wondered if it would filter through the newsfeed algorythms, then lo and behold, an udate from Ki saying the third book in the divine trilogy was on hold because she'd sidetracked and written three detective novels. The Blithe Gambol PI syndrome....
this is what she said: (I wonder if I'm observing her, always feel so connected) "

On this day, I shall tell a little story. Some time back (oh, maybe a year and a half ago) I was asked to contribute a short story to a book series of Noir. Noir here and Noir there. The here and there depended on where any particular contributing writer was essentially raised, or been born. I was born on Staten Island. I said yes and dashed off a noir tale set on Staten Island in the 1940s, ...

very tongue-in-cheek, but also very much aware of one of my favorite writers: Raymond Chandler. I mean, who doesn't love Chandler? In any case, the resulting short noir story surprised me. I loved writing it. I loved turning into Sam Russo, Private Eye. I wanted more of him. I wanted more than a short story, I wanted to write a whole book, maybe quite a few whole books. Complications with the publisher/editor arose, not serious, not important, but they did end with me keeping my story out of the collection. I do not regret it. At this moment (instead of writing the third of my Divine Feminine tales) I've written three full length Sam Russo, PI, books. All soon to be published. Oh, I forgot. For the longest time, I thought I ought to put them out under a pseudonym (more than one reason for this, I can't recall them all now), but I found I really really really didn't want to. I'm proud of SHADOW ROLL and GOOD DOG, BAD DOG and THE GIRL IN THE NEXT ROOM. With more to come if I can keep breathing. So I claim them as mine. If they stink, I did it. If they don't stink, I did it. So soon as these three are finished, it's back to rather serious stuff. But Sam will ride again. He can't help himself. He's having an awful time of it trying to be Bogart."

 

I love having new books to look forward to....