we try to relax in the places of ghosts; we superimpose, we lean back

a_renunciation @ 2009-11-06T22:01:00

2009-11-07T06:04:11Z

I was a log in the waves last time you saw me;
end over end I was thrown while I endlessly groaned,
"Hold my hand--won't someone come surf me?"
and of course no one came.
You stood and watched the wash of water edge me hopelessly into the seawall,
and there I stayed, and quickly decayed, and we all swapped molecules.
Now with a wave of my hand I command you to see me:
I'm more like a mountain this time, unmoving alpine decked in fog and concealed in snow clouds-
you're the farmer below
and if you see my face once then through 12 cloudy months you will know that I'm there behind curtains;
you'll know mountain light through thickness of night
see me

a_renunciation @ 2009-11-03T13:12:00

2009-11-03T21:16:37Z

"This mess of psyche is what puer [soul] consciousness needs to marry so as to undertake the 'battle of the sexes.' The opponents of the spirit are first of all the hassles under its own skin: the morning moods, the symptoms, the prevarications in which it gets entangled, and the vanity. The puer needs to battle the irritability of this inner 'woman,' her passive laziness, her fancies for sweets and flatteries--all that which analysis calls autoeroticism. This fighting is a fighting with, rather than a fighting off or fighting against, the anima, a close, tense, devoted embracing in many positions of intercourse, where puer madness is met with psychic confusion and deviation, and where this madness is reflected in that distorted mirror. It is not straight and not clear. We do not even know what weapons to use or where the enemy is, since the enemy seems to be my own soul and heart and most dear passions. The puer is left only with his craziness, which, through the battle, he has resort to so often that he learns to care for it as precious, as the one thing he truly is, his uniqueness and limitation. Reflection in the mirror of the soul lets one see the madness of one's spiritual drive, and the importance of this madness."
-Salt of Soul, Sulfur of Spirit

a_renunciation @ 2009-11-01T20:44:00

2009-11-02T04:46:18Z

http://8tracks.com/theairinthebranches/there-is-no-great-dark-man

heartbeats

2009-10-27T18:36:02Z

Phillihp is losing his hearing, but the vet says he's in otherwise great shape. At first I was sad, thinking I couldn't talk to him like I used to (if he can't even hear me), but now I just hold him close when I want to tell him how much I love him and he feels the vibrations and responds just as always, making sweet noises back at me.

oblique strategies

2009-10-23T03:19:02Z

Listen in total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly

Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place

Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do

Define an area as 'safe' and use it as an anchor

Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics

Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities

Don't stress one thing more than another

Honor thy error as a hidden intention

Repetition is a form of change

Listen to the quiet voice

Disconnect from desire

Mute and continue

this house is [still] haunted

2009-10-19T05:00:33Z

a_renunciation @ 2009-10-17T11:47:00

2009-10-17T18:48:18Z

Ann, Ann! Come quick as you can!
There's a fish that talks in the frying pan!
Out of the fat, as clear as glass,
He put up his mouth and moaned, "Alas!"
Oh, most mournful 'Alas, alack!'
Then turned to his sizzling, and sank him back.

your little dark house

2009-10-17T07:04:37Z

a mix about perigean spring tides and emotional lability:

http://8tracks.com/theairinthebranches/your-wanton-ways

everything is inverted oscillations, water flowing upstream, little lightning storms and dishes intentionally smashed on the floor

a_renunciation @ 2009-10-15T22:11:00

2009-10-16T05:24:10Z

What is this?

Again: telling myself (unconvincingly) that it's not "him" I miss, but an idea of him that never existed. Wanting new love, having an opportunity for New Love presented to me all wrapped up with my name on it and ready for the taking -- scorning New Love because I've none left to give, emptied of it now having spent it all pining over Old Love.
A year and 6 months this Sunday on the black moon. I stopped counting until a couple days ago, when the rains came and stirred everything up again.

just because it's real don't mean it's gonna work

2009-10-13T20:00:50Z

a_renunciation @ 2009-10-04T20:08:00

2009-10-05T03:08:04Z

At the edge of a wood, Kali met a wise man.
[...] Around him the light formed a halo, and Kali felt rising from her own inner depths the presentiment of a vast definitive peace, where worlds would stop and beings would be delivered; and of a day of beatitude on which both life and death will be equally useless, an age in which the All would be absorbed into Nothingness, as if that pure vacuity that she had just conceived were quivering within her like a future child.
The Master of Great Compassion lifted a hand to bless the passing woman.
"My immaculate head has been fixed to the body of infamy," she said. "I desire and do not desire, I suffer and yet I enjoy, I loathe living and am afraid to die."
"We are all incomplete," said the wise man. "We are all pieces, fragments, shadows, matterless ghosts. We all have believed that we have wept and that we have felt pleasure for centuries."
"I was a goddess in Indra's heaven," said the harlot.
"And yet you were not freer from the chain of things, nor your diamond body safer from misfortune than your body of flesh and filth. Perhaps, unhappy woman, dishonored traveler of every road, you are about to attain that which has no shape."
"I am tired," moaned the goddess.
Then, touching with the tip of his fingers the black tresses soiled with ashes, he said: "Desire has taught you the emptiness of desire; regret has shown you the uselessness of regret. Be patient, Error of which we are all a part, Imperfect Creature thanks to whom perfection becomes aware of itself, O Lust which is not necessarily immortal..."

-"Kali Beheaded"

a_renunciation @ 2009-09-15T12:21:00

2009-09-15T19:23:03Z

http://8tracks.com/theairinthebranches/coronary-divergence

a_renunciation @ 2009-09-11T20:11:00

2009-09-12T03:16:04Z

a_renunciation @ 2009-09-10T17:07:00

2009-09-11T00:10:18Z

I posted some pictures of my new place on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mount_weary/

a_renunciation @ 2009-09-09T15:50:00

2009-09-09T22:56:42Z

I've been sitting in a study area on campus for the last hour and a half trying to catch up on the reading for my next class, and awhile ago this insane girl came in and started distracting me by talking to herself right next to me and getting louder when I and others tried to make it clear that she was annoying us. Then she pulled out a cell phone and pretended to call somebody (she was close enough to me that I could tell no one was on the other end, and also the way she spaced out her sentences allowing false pauses was too unnatural to be believable) -- it was amusing enough for the first 10 minutes but then I started getting annoyed again, and I leaned over and gently asked her if she minded taking her "call" someplace else. She stared at me in this weird way for a moment, then resumed her fake call with even less believability than before, seemingly trying to figure out how to react to my confrontation. "Excuse me," I tried again, she still ignored me - "I know you're not really on the phone, it's obvious..." and then she got really flustered in a nervous way, pretended to end her call, apologized, and grabbed her things and fled the building in a hurry. I kind of feel bad for her now, it must be really intense to get called out on something like that in front of other people...

a_renunciation @ 2009-09-09T08:58:00

2009-09-09T15:58:48Z

The sign of Capricorn, says the Tibetan, is one of the most difficult signs about which to write and is the most mysterious of all the twelve. So we have found it. Even the symbol of the sign has never been correctly drawn, we are told, because its correct delineation would produce an inflow of force that would be undesirable; also this symbol is sometimes called the "signature of God".

At the foot of the mountain the goat, the materialist, seeks for nourishment in arid places. The scapegoat on the way up finds the flowers of attained desire, each with its own thorn of satiety and disillusionment. At the top of the mountain the sacred goat sees the vision and the initiate appears. In other writings the symbols are the goat, the crocodile and the unicorn.

a_renunciation @ 2009-09-01T19:50:00

2009-09-02T02:51:48Z

Never get so attached to a poem
You forget truth that lacks lyricism
And never draw so close to the heat
That you forget that you must eat

a_renunciation @ 2009-09-01T15:10:00

2009-09-01T22:19:39Z

Phil just gave me quite a scare; I took him outside with me while I made a 2 minute phone call, and when I called him to go back inside he didn't respond. I looked everywhere but he had disappeared! I kept calling him, wandering around everywhere he might've been, but nothing. I panicked, rode my bike around the neighborhood, called animal services and filed a police report, posted two craigslist ads ("lost+found" and "pets" sections), left a note on my neighbors' door (who live in the studio behind the house) and went looking for him on my bike again. I hadn't eaten anything and was feeling very weak from all the shouting and searching. When I came home, my neighbors had seen my note and were getting into their car to help me look. I kept biking around, ran into them on their way back to see if he'd wandered back to the house, then biked some more until they called me and told me they'd found him in a cul-de-sac. I was about to faint!
Now he's in extreme time-out, which means he's locked in the shower. He hates it in there. I only do that to him when he has to learn a very important lesson.
I just ordered two vegan pizzas and I'm going to gorge myself on those + homemade garlic potato fries to make up for all this stress.

not much

2009-08-30T21:41:02Z

I'm sick with a mean cold. I've got intense sugar cravings and a cupboard full of delicious cookies but I don't want to antagonize my immune system. It feels like a Sunday in the worst way. I'm really disappointed that Elisabeth Moss isn't James Urbaniak's twin sister, I was so sure that they were related. Same angles.
I have to read 40 pages on what an asshole Freud was and I can't make it past the second page.

a_renunciation @ 2009-08-29T18:31:00

2009-08-30T01:31:59Z

"Lost am I in light supernal,
yet on that light I turn my back."

again, again, and it's so close by

2009-08-27T15:34:29Z

a_renunciation @ 2009-08-17T11:01:00

2009-08-17T18:16:38Z

I can't wait to show off my new bedroom. I've been taking pictures with a disposable camera and I've still got a third of the pictures left, so it might be a little while before I develop and scan them. the whole house is so much fun, here's some of the features:

-a grand piano!
-an old-fashioned bathtub!
-an antique wood-burning stove
-pre-Victorian architecture
-baroque floral printed linoleum floor (in my room)
-red-painted door and window frames (my room)
-a "soul kitchen" (uncle Corky's words)
-big yard with garden and fruit trees (plums, cherries, walnuts, figs, apples, pears...)
-friendly neighbors
-the nicest landlord in the world!

plus I'm right by a quality public pool, surrounded by creek beds and pastures, and everything is flat enough to bike around with ease. last night I took Phil out for a quick walk and saw more stars in the sky than I've ever seen in San Francisco.

a_renunciation @ 2009-08-16T21:14:00

2009-08-17T04:24:37Z

Something is happening to me.
Since I've been here, my heart has been opening (though slowly, tentatively) to others. Ice is thawing. It's not really an easy process: it hurts almost, like the way a cold body reacts when suddenly placed in too-warm water. Everyone here is so kind, it's a little bit overwhelming. But as this hard rock of a heart starts to bloom, it reveals its true colors layer by layer.

I HAVE ARRIVED

2009-08-15T02:50:25Z

I just moved in to my new place and I absolutely love it. I was really nervous about it since I hadn't seen it, only had it described to me over the phone, but I took a leap of faith and it paid off. It's so perfect, like it's been waiting just for me. Pictures later. Altogether I've only had about six hours of sleep over the last 48 hours and have barely eaten anything, I feel like I'm in a dream. But this place really is amazing.

Between Two Worlds

2009-08-12T06:14:45Z

Tomorrow's my last day in San Francisco; on Thursday I'll stay at Konocti and on Friday I'll start building my nest in the dark city.
I'm so glad that the fog has come back to say farewell, I just wish it would rain one last time. I still haven't built a backyard bonfire to burn and bury some things that I'm leaving behind (a few combustible objects that it wouldn't do to toss out with the garbage) -- maybe tomorrow night.

a special commemorative mix:

http://8tracks.com/theairinthebranches/between-two-worlds

NOTE TO STEVEN:
If you're reading this, know that this mix contains major spoilers for the tapes I'm sending... listen at the risk of diminishing the experience!