Mary Jane's Farm

When picking the second to the last cucumber last week in the early evening, I discovered what Cruiser and Spit must be hop, hop, hopping after at night in the grass. It is frogs! The one I saw was little as brown as dirt. You would think my cats could catch those, but I'm sure all the fun is in the chase.

Yesterday morning I got up first thing and started that painting I said I would do for Mary Kay. That is how I get done those things I resist, start them first thing in the morning before I have time to think about them. By 10 am I really hated it, but decided to try to push through it. By 11:30 I still hated it and gave up. I tried, but what she gave me to work from is really not my style and I tried to treat it like an experiment, but it was one of those loose graphic primitive watercolors and those are really harder than you think. I am sorry it took me so long to try it and to admit I don't want to do it. Now I have to call Mary Kay and ask her if she can chose from something I already have.

So by noon I am traumatized by wasting half of my Saturday on this really ugly, spiritless painting, besides wasting a quarter sheet of paper, so I thought I better quick do something I like and get over it. This is another study of Katherine Alberson Park last autumn,



Today I whipped that ugly painting off the board and into the trash and stretched another sheet of paper. The trash man will come tomorrow and that painting will be nothing but a bad memory.

My friend sent me a link to Mary Jane's Farm,

http://www.maryjanesfarm.org/

I want to go to farm school! The one week intensive includes food preservation, seed saving, chopping wood, I can even learn how to start a bee hive. I would stay in an outdoor tent, like they use for their Bed and Breakfast, check out the B&B pictures. It just sounds super. Mary Jane's farm is in Paloose, Washington, that is just north of Moscow, Idaho. The University of Idaho is in Moscow, which is six hours north of Boise. I think University of Idaho has an extensive agricultural program and they also have a large arts program, much bigger than BSU. For now I guess I will just subscribe to the magazine. Thanks, Darcy, for the tip.

It would have been better if I agonized over that painting today, since yesterday was nice and sunny and today it has been dismal and raining all day. The sun should be back out tomorrow in time for me to go to work.

Cherry Blossoms

When getting over artist's block, flowers are a good choice. Flowers are forgiving, you can make lots of mistakes and they can not turn out like you planned at all, but still look good,


I think these are flowering cherry and the trees were spectacular last May.

In my adult life I do not think I've been to the same dentist more than twice, except in Vegas, when I actually had dental insurance for six years in a row. No one likes going to the dentist, but after at least four years of not having my teeth cleaned, I was pretty excited to go last Monday. Since I have such long breaks between dentists, I am always amazed at how much dentistry has advanced while I was gone. This time I left with before and after pictures of the back of my bottom front teeth, before cleaning and after cleaning. I suppose that is so the hygienist can show off. I also left with pictures of my two cavities and all of my metal fillings that need replacing. The metal fillings have cracks in the teeth under them and one is supposedly about to crack off part of my tooth. That one needs half a crown and is not covered by insurance, but I get to go back and have the rest done quick, while I am insured.

Today was my boss's last day at work. Of course, not that that worry is over, I am on to other worries. I am temporary and can only work so many hours as temporary which gets me to mid-January. We are under the Feds and there is a hiring freeze, which does not look like it will let up soon. I am also tired of financially just getting by. But Boise is a small town, if I start applying for other jobs, my current job will know. Would they understand? I also like the office and the administrator and that is hard to find. I am feeling conflicted and wondering why I can't just enjoy the absence of my old boss for a few days. Or maybe I don't get to just stay in one job, but am meant to go from job to job, eliminating bad bosses, like Kung Fu.

The Trolley House and Hell, Michigan

My very busy friends wanted to meet for breakfast at 8 am this morning. Way to early to get up and be somewhere on a Sunday. This is the Trolley House,


It was small and old time looking inside and they have a patio, although we are past patio weather. We were the first ones there at 8 am, but the place was almost packed by the time we left at 9:30. After eating fresh made butter, buttermilk pancakes yesterday, and eggs benedict this morning, I can feel my arteries hardening as I sit here. I had one of the last cucumbers for dinner.

Sarah gave me free tickets to the Fall Harvest Festival at the Idaho Botanical garden. This includes the Scarecrow Stroll, where people built scarecrows and you go around and vote for your favorite. I went this afternoon, but I did not vote on any scarecrows, they were really lame.









Some of the flowers were still looking good, though, I was surprised. The English garden was really done, but there was metal work like the tower in the English Garden all through the gardens. That is the Old Idaho Penitentiary in the background, with that low wall and tower you can believe how many escaped. The lederhosen guy was having a pretty good time, despite the outfit. Sarah says she liked the Fall Festival better when it was an Oktoberfest, maybe the outfit is left over from that event. I bought some fresh salsa, I miss salsa, you can't go to a cheap Mexican restaurant in Idaho and still get great salsa like you can in So Cal. It was a beautiful day to be out, not too many more left.

This is probably the last weekend for garden chores. I turned off the auto sprinklers a week ago and I mowed the lawn for the last time today. The green peppers are looking wilty, but I am leaving the vegetables alone until they really freeze, which will probably only be a week or two. Sarah gave me some of her last raspberries.

The sudden temperature and season change is making me super tired, and all I wanted to do was go home and drink hot tea, but I went out last Thursday after work anyway to a charity event at the Elks Rehab, which is an art show of work done by some of their patients. Two did work in glass, which was nice, and there was one watercolor artist who is paralyzed from the shoulders down, whose work was nice also. The event made me sure I do not have any reason to be unhappy. Boise people are big on supporting charity and they bought up most of the work by the time I left.

Yesterday I rotated my clothes. Summer put away, fall and winter pulled out. There are always those things that I pull out that I am really happy to see, oh yea, I remember this sweater. I pulled out my red coat to go to that charity event because it was still raining, and I tell ya, I did not feel happy to see that red coat. It just has not been long enough since I last wore it.

At breakfast my friend said, take a good look at Shelly's neck because pretty soon you are not going to see it and you will forget she has one. For the first five months that she knew me I was always wearing a turtleneck (and that red coat). Perhaps I will be more hearty this year.

Oh yea, I almost forgot, a woman at work has a summer house in Hell, Michigan. We asked her why they call it Hell, which everyone who lives there must get all the time, but here is the good for Halloween story,

http://www.hell2u.com/content/long-history-hell-mi

Making Butter

Some Idaho bear humor,


The temperature plummet happened in one day, by Tuesday night early evening it was in the low 50's. My friend called me, "What are you wearing?" She said in her most sultry voice. "A thermal, sweat pants, and I am about to put on warm socks," was my reply. Pretty sexy stuff. She knew I would be caught off guard by the early cold. I asked her what she thought the difference was between laziness and resting. She thought it was your attitude. We are going to have breakfast on Sunday morning with another friend recently diagnosed with cancer. We are going to the Trolley House on Warm Springs, one of those very old Boise great place for breakfast places.

http://www.thetrolleyhouse.com/

Today I do not think it made it to 50 degrees. Both cats run outside and wonder why I closed the door behind them and then want to come right back in again. Then Spit remembers, oh, this is the time of year when I get insistent about my evening brushing.

Did you know you can make your own butter? I read it in the Idaho Statesman last week, that is the kind of thing they write about in the Idaho Statesman. I thought you had to have a butter churn and that it took hours. I do not eat lots of butter, but it is one of those things I have to have enough of in the fridge. Making it yourself is not a cost saver, unless you have a dairy cow, but making it was really fun. Two cups of cream makes one cup of butter and about half a cup of buttermilk. I used a food processor, but you can use a jar with a lid and supposedly it does not take much longer. I'm processing and the cream turns to whipped, then to really thick whipped and I'm wondering how long this is going to take and maybe this won't work and all of sudden the butter separates out from the buttermilk, like magic. The buttermilk is thinner than I thought it would be, I'm saving that for pancakes this weekend. Then I washed the butter in ice water until the water comes clean. It is light colored, no yellow die, and it tastes really light, like butter you can have in a really nice restaurant. I had some on toasted raisin bread that I made last weekend for this occasion and everything was right with the world.

They had free flu shots at work this week. Me and the used-to-be-pregnant girl seemed like the only ones that did not get our free shot. Her opinion was that we would be the only two left that would not turn into zombies, she is in to zombie movies and knows all about what to do if confronted with one. Honestly, she is more of a conspiracy theorist than me and I am sure she's done enough research on immunizing her kids to have a negative opinion about flu shots. My doctor gave me a hard time about not having one two years ago, but I said I can't remember the last time I had the flu. She said don't cry to me when you get the flu, and I didn't because I did not get the flu. All you need is a strong immune system and I'm pretty sure a flu shot is not good for your immune system. And speaking of getting something for free, who is really paying for that free shot? The Feds? Even better reason not to get one.

My boss quit this morning. You can't imagine how difficult it was not to jump up for joy. She got another job with the state where she will supervise ten people. God, help them. In a way I thought she got off easy, now she will not have to take responsibility for terrorizing me, but this way is just fine.

The King's Garden

When overcoming artist's block, it is important to start with something familiar and something you are a bit excited about. Do not start your life-defining piece and do not start with that painting that you don't really want to do, but think that you should, which probably caused the block in the first place. I started with something I thought would be fun but familiar first thing yesterday morning and painted half of the day until I finished the background, which is about 3/4 of the painting. What a relief.

It is warm today, but the temperature is set to plummet 30 degrees to a predicted high of 54 on Wednesday. I can feel my air pressure change headache coming on already. The cold temps should be enough to start the dramatic fall color changes, then we get back into the 70s for the weekend.

I do not know if it is the change of seasons, or the spirit of that Hebrew still floating around, but the animals all around are busy and loud. The squirrels are fighting and running back and forth across the fence, alley cats I've never heard before are fighting in the alley, dogs that I've never heard before are barking half of the day. Tia does not bark much, but neighbors moved in next door to her and the neighbors have a kid and a dog. The kid plays with his dog and poor Tia runs back and forth across the fence wanting to play and barking nonstop. Then my neighbors cats decided I am their friend again, since I fed them for four days, and they keep coming over into Cruiser's yard. Cruiser caught Pierre in our garage the other night and kicked his butt, something Cruiser was immensely pleased about for the rest of the evening, but the next day Pierre was right back trying to get into the yard. I came home from work, and there is Cookster in my backyard, with Cruiser having a fit on the inside of the door. Cookster wouldn't go out the gate, he just hissed at Cruiser and hopped the fence.

Almost makes me wish for winter.

I don't know why it took me so long to read those Robert Johnson books. I reread She, The Fisher King, and The Handless Maiden. The Handless Maiden included a part where I went, oh duh, and I could hear my friend Darcy reminding me to rest.

I want to start with a disclaimer here, the mythology is about the inner feminine and inner masculine, both men and women have both. I'm also not going to try to retell too much of the myth, take a look at Johnson's books, they include great background and interpretation, or find them somewhere else, the myth in She is the myth of Eros and Psyche.

The Fisher King is the familiar myth of the knight who goes looking for the Holy Grail to heal the wounded King, travels far and wide searching and slaying dragons on the way, only to find out that it was right where he started, he just needs to ask the right question, Whom does the Grail serve? The masculine healing story is about a journey in consciousness. The Kingdom of God is in you. Interesting that the story of masculine healing is so simple, although it requires courage. It is also interesting that another version of the myth, originating from the same period of time, is the King Arthur myth, and in that myth there are two women who represent the inner feminine gone very wrong, Guenevere and Morgan, no one finds the Grail and the Kingdom is lost. In the masculine myth the knight doesn't seem to need much help from women, but he is warned to stay away from the bad ones.

The general inner feminine myth of Psyche is very complicated, it includes many tasks and levels and Psyche has to be careful not too stay too long on any level and she also needs to follow masculine direction, sorry, but logic and focus are male traits. That complicated dream that you have with lots of levels and people and tasks? That is an inner feminine dream. I had one over and over years ago that started with me trying to hide my daughter from danger and then going to look for a way out. There were many rooms at different levels and people with cranes building things and and one point I entered a hall with something like a fashion show going on and the hall was full of beautiful people and clothes and the designer was trying to get me to stay. That is the Persephone level, where Persephone tries to keep me with her living on my outer beauty alone. How many people do you know stuck on this level? At the end of that dream I go back to find my daughter and send her to safety, but I can't find her.

In the myth of the Handless Maiden, the miller sells his daughter's hands to the devil in exchange for the technology to grind more grain. In the miller's defense, he does not do this outright, he just isn't really paying attention to what the devil says he wants. In a more horrible version, the devil wants the miller's wife's hands, but she offers her daughter's instead. The idea is that the wounded feminine has lost her ability to be useful. The message of the Handless Maiden is that every time you accept something without paying the price, it is trickery and you wound the inner feminine. Promiscuity is a great example, but today the examples are unlimited. Free healthcare, food stamps, our current US President, are more. One good example of someone honoring the inner feminine is Thomas Edison. He paid the price, 1,000 tries it took him to invent the light bulb, no devil dealing or trickery there.

So, now the miller has lots of money for servants to do for the maiden, but she finally leaves in despair, has a good cry, and lives in the forest. In the forest she crosses a treacherous river (which has to be the river Styx/hell) and finds the King's garden, where she rests.

And there it is, that is what I saw in my soul retrieval, the medieval woman with the gyrfalcon (the falcon of Kings) is in the King's garden. Go rest in the King's garden the vision says. In both the Handless Maiden and She the inner feminine sometimes needs to rest, to be quiet, to store up reserves. When I was at my Dad's my friend told me to stop cleaning and rest. Now my Dad's ranch is a great King's garden and a good start, but I'm thinking the King's garden cannot achieve the same purpose when it is also your Dad's garden, something weird for the psyche there. I must have figured Idaho was a good King's garden. Since not much is happening I figure I must not be done with that resting.

Next the King discovers the maiden in his garden (because she is eating his pears, that are carefully cataloged and numbered), marries her, has some silver hands made for her, and for a while she is happy and then she is miserable again. How many people do you know stuck in a life of silver hands, beautiful, but not useful? How many men are out there baffled, but I made you these beautiful hands, why aren't you happy?

The maiden takes her baby and runs off for the forest again, where she has a good cry and rests. She does alright with no hands for a while, until the baby falls into the river and will drown if she doesn't save him and she puts her no hands into the river to save him and comes out with new flesh and blood hands.

The inner feminine is healed by an emergency. She is made useful and she is ready, because she took the time to rest, to build her strength in reserves. This ending has always seemed a bit obscure to me, but Boise is a wonderful place to rest and I really did survive a beating over a long period of time, it is not surprising that the rest period would be long.

Dreams and Symbols

In my dream I am climbing stairs. The stairs are made of white tubing and they are very open to the blue, sunny sky all around me. I can't see the ground, but I don't look down. There are other people climbing, too, but I don't recognize them, except for one person that I recognize, but don't really know. Every so often there is a set of white cushions to rest, but I don't stop and rest, I keep climbing. The stairs are so open, like scaffolding, and I finally slip and fall. As I fall, I see the letters YHVH in white light and something tells me to keep looking at the light and not to be afraid. As I look at the letters they grow brighter and when I hit the ground and I know I am dead it does not hurt and I am enveloped in white light. Then I wake up and am very much alive.

In dreams and in life, there are universal symbols and there are symbols that are specific to you. I can dream about a particular person and sometimes they are just a person and sometimes they represent what that person represents to me.

So, the climbing the stairway to heaven seems like a pretty obvious spiritual journey symbol, as does the tempting white cushions that I do not use. The white letters are an obvious influence of reading The Source, but that I immediately pick this up as a true representative of God is a bit baffling to me.

YHVH is the Ineffable Name or Unutterable Name of the God of Israel.
You can read about YHVH here,
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Names_of_G-d/YHVH/yhvh.html

Dying in your dream often means the end or death of something, so that something new can start.

Then there has to be the influence of the end of The Power of Now, where Tolle suggests that when we die we have a brief opportunity to look into the light, or to see God, but most people are too unconscious and look away in fear.

Or, maybe the energy of some Hebrew was passing by and found me receptive, since I was feeling a bit joyous and understanding past events and had a hard time falling asleep.

And the guy that I recognized in my dream? I asked someone about him after my dream, since I expected him to have just died, and they said he is living in a home and ready to go join his deceased wife, but he is still living and I just saw him today.

I was too preoccupied with the dream and my terrible boss, so I moved on to easy reading and The Lost Symbol, which I quickly finished, but which just made me feel weirder. It is a fun story with great references to symbols and texts and I like stories about the Knights Templar and the Masons, but the story was so strikingly masculine where the main woman character was really a dope. (This opinion reminds me of my Dad's opinion of the movie Contact which was that the most implausible thing about the movie was believing Jodie Foster was a heterosexual.)

There is all of this technology, all of these puzzles, protecting the Ancient Mysteries. Technology is masculine. Then there is this smart, successful woman from an old Mason family who sits right across from the bad guy having tea and nothing tells her to get away? A woman with no intuition, no inner feminine whatsoever. Then there is all this stuff about the Ancient Mysteries revealing the true power of the mind. The Kingdom of God is in my mind? A masculine idea again.

Does Dan Brown have any women in his life? He needs to go over and ask Elmore Leonard how to write women characters. I suppose there was enough spirituality in the book that I believe to be true that the idea that men had all of the keys was irritating.

All of this writing about technology reminded me of my dream where I make chocolate truffles in my kitchen with Mark Zuckerberg, which is clearly a bringing feminine aspects to technology dream, so I picked up my Robert Johnson books again. Johnson's books are categorized as psychology, but they use mythology to explain men, women, and relationships and they include The Fisher King & The Handless Maiden. Everyone knows the Fisher King, that is the wounded masculine, but the Handless Maiden is much less known.

Dan Brown could benefit from reading some mythology, in mythology there is always a duality and partnership between masculine and feminine, something that seems to have been lost.

In the myth of the handless maiden, the miller sells his daughter's hands in exchange for the technology to improve his mill. Pretty horrible start, there. When I last read the book in my 20's I did not understand what the myth suggested to heal the inner feminine, so I will have to reread it, but for now, as my brother Dave says, I have spent too much time with my shadow. I went out all afternoon and spent some time with my friends.

Jewish Pioneers

You think I'm kidding, right?

Last night I took my camera on my walk to take pictures of the 115 year old synagogue down the street. The front of the synagogue faces the sunset, so looking at the back of the building the sunset was glowing through the windows,




The last photo doesn't even capture how beautiful the warm glowing windows were last night.

"If you have no family or friends to aid you…turn your face to the Great West and there build your home and fortune"
-Horace Greeley, New York 1841.

"On to America. No relief has been brought to us…. Because servile hordes and sordid minded people have not understood and do not understand the spirit of liberty, we have to suffer… Let us go to America!"
-Leopold Kompert, Jewish Author, Vienna, 1848

"I lived among trappers and Indians, but always as a Jew. Did I need grander temples to worship in? In the murmurs of the pines I hear the psalms of David: the fragrance of the incense is as of old, the winds speak to me in 'His Voice."
-From The Sounding of the Shofar – sermon, Rachel Frank 1892.

An estimated 200 Jews fought for Texas freedom and at least three Jews died at the Alamo. Wyatt Earp's girlfriend/wife was Jewish. They worked on railroads, came with everyone else during the gold rush, and were frontier scouts. Levi Strauss came to California via Cape Horn in 1848 to invent Levis jeans. This is all from Jews and the American West,

http://www.jewishmag.com/84mag/usa7/usa7.htm

Last Friday I was sitting in a meeting and the topic someone brought up was one of those that can easily go really wrong, which was intuitively knowing the right thing to do. The story was someone knowing the right thing to do, not really doing it, and then it being clearly too late. My thought was that the topic should be regret, which is a resentment against yourself, but it turned out to be spirituality, which quickly turned into religion. I quickly slipped into my favorite character defect, judgement, and could hardly sit in my seat, I was so irritated.

So, Monday morning, I get some payback. I hate when someone brings up a topic that I decide to judge and then within a few days it applies to me. Joe had not told me to do much more than bring in packages, he gets lots of packages, and feed cats. He did not talk about the cat box, or if there was more than the one downstairs, but by Sunday I thought I should clean it out. They use that funny cat litter that looks like green pellets in a huge, tall box, but it looked hardly used, but I did not investigate too hard. I let their cats in early Sunday evening because it started to rain. I do not know if they had a party Sunday night, or if they had already done some damage, but Monday morning I guess they came home to a huge mess, cat pee everywhere. I know this because I thought they were to be home Sunday night, but they were not, and I tried to call Monday morning and left messages, but did not hear from them, so I went home on my lunch on Monday to feed the cats if they still were not home. They were both home cleaning.

Now I feel like a bad cat sitter. I did as they asked, but I knew I should do more, and it wasn't like I was too busy, I was a lazy ass all weekend. I got raspberries and a gift certificate and they got a wrecked house, although I think their cats are happy, Pierre was sitting on my porch to greet me when I came home for lunch Monday.

Anyway, the topic is still regret, the source of the knowing doesn't matter, and I know what to do with regret. My theory is that regret is a resentment against myself, something that I did not do that I know I should have. I can make an amends to my neighbors, but I also need to make one to myself. Everyone deserves a break for a while, but mine has gone on way too long, and it is past time to get busy doing the things I know I should be doing.

The only thing I have been faithfully doing is the Five Tibetan Rites, every day for almost three months, and they are really starting to pay off.