Midwestern Goddess

As proved to me, Ginny Hunt is an awesome Tarot reader.  Or, at least, she was awesome doing my reading.  It confirmed many things that I was feeling yet unwilling or unable to articulate fully (my husband just looked at me when I told him I had paid money to her to tell me what I already knew – that’s what the Tarot does.  Dear Husband just doesn’t “get it” but supports my rather benign addiction.).  I also came to an important distinction about myself.

I hate school.

I utterly, completely, totally, fully, HATE school.  If I can improve on my art in any other way – including possibly swimming naked in a pool of very hungry pariahs while on the rag – I very well will do so.  I have a complete and utter hatred of school.

I’ve been pondering since that realization why.  I love to learn.  I’m an avid reader.  I study on things I don’t know and am very much that people should improve themselves in both knowledge and reactions.  I’m fine with authority – I work several jobs where I have both heavy responsibility and a manager/supervisor to answer to.  Hell, I usually vote Democrat – and for the most part they are all *about* authority.  So that’s not it.

I think it comes down to my valuing – and therefore hating to waste – my time.  Learning random stuff – as long as it is in some way, shape, or form pertinent to what I am doing, I can tolerate.  Being told by some random Art Teacher fuck that I have to take intro classes is fine – however, being told that I have to take them THERE at HIS institution (especially when some of these classes are meaningless or redundant with what I already have taught myself) because only there will I get a WONDERFUL education because they are the BEST is lying.

Maybe I also have a problem with the outright falsehood of the higher education system I looked into.  It wasn’t an art institute, it doesn’t even have the best program in the STATE – it was just closest, and so for a variety of reasons in my life I was planning on continuing there.  I just can’t swallow the loads of bullshit that go with it.

King of Swords.

Yeah, that’s me – trying to make a heart-filled decision with logic, planning… and one just can’t do that.  I showed up as it in my reading, I am trying to plan my life as him as well.

I hate school.  I hate that Emperor card telling me “because I said so” – I don’t desire that path.  Hell, I’ve lived MOST of my life because someone else said so.  I’m now to the point in my 30’s that I am just not doing that.  Take me as I am.

And the Tarot reflected that.  Awesome reading.

Okay so I broke down and I “like” David Tennant on Facebook.

I know.  I’m a freaking nerd.  I also get a nice thrill at seeing his face everytime there is a new post.

FYI: my husband has just left the room because I’m “blogging” about David.  For the most part he doesn’t get angry anymore (part of that was through his own silliness – he agreed that if I spent a night ah-hem.. “with” David, it wouldn’t be constituted cheating since he agreed it was okay.  Then, he realized that he knows his own wife and I could very well do it!  Then he sulked awhile, but now I think he’s gotten over it.)

So the discussion was what classic movie would David excel in.

Rear Window.  I want to see him in Rear Window.  He would be AWESOME in that particular Hitchcock movie.  North by Northwest, granted, would be fun to play the Roger Thornhill role but…. I’m sorry.  David is not Cary Grant.  And, I, like David himself, am a Hitchcock fanatic.  Rear Window.

So… someone with infinite amounts of money.. get on this!  Would be awesome!  I could use more exclamation points!  And bad English!  As I watched it drooling!  And my husband could go hide!

Yeah!!!!!!

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and…

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So this morning I’ve actually had a chance to watch the video Ancient Aliens on Youtube that my friend Rick suggested,  (I know of one archeologist professor of mine from college who would be having kittens at the thought of me watching this…)  answer my facebook crap, and file and list 10 books as received via Paperback Swap.

Ahh.. yes… Paperback Swap, crack for nerds.  I love books.  I love Tarot Cards.  I love painting.  And I really love waking up to a text message letting me know this month when I will be working.  I also, sometimes, love cleaning.  Outward environment is cleaned helping the inward environment find order.

All things this fall I should have more of a chance to deal with.  If I take a college class, it will be a web class so I don’t have to actually “go” anywhere.  That will be nice.  And read.  All the tons of books that I have gotten.

So now I’m listening to Buddhist Geeks.  I have driven around to work, listening to this with great interest.  (I also like to listen to the Tarot Connection, and The Secrets in Plain Sight.)

My ipod likes to play the podcasts backwards.  It really would help if itunes didn’t totally hate my computer, then I could mess around and figure out WHAT it’s doing this nonsense at home.  I am now running to Cerridwen’s to load up my ipod on her machine.  While downloading all sorts of stuff, I shout to her “okay, now this folder just delete when I leave… and this folder….” and she just laughs at me.  Honestly, it’s her computer, I realize she’ll delete what she damn well pleases, and at the most can hope that she won’t do it in front of me and hurt my feelings.

I’m studying Buddhism since realizing that my personal beliefs mirror the tenets of that particular… path.  I don’t wish to say “belief” since Buddhism is a “doing” and not so much a “believing.”  (A good resource for this is Buddhism without Beliefs, a book by Stephen Batchelor that I have enjoyed)  I have problems with the term “belief” anyway.  “Belief” references some unchangeable fact – which I don’t believe exists.  We, everything, is in motion.  Our ideas of self are just that… ideas.  Fact, cold hard unchangeable things are at the very best extremely rare to find.  So, Buddhist Geeks is a welcome addition to some of my studies.

Tomorrow my Tarot reading is done by Ginny Hunt.  I’ll let you know what I thought of it.  I honestly don’t expect to hear about anything new.  Tarot readings are really good at telling you what you already know just in a different way that you can absorb and implement a bit better.  I’ll take from there how I will handle this fall.  I’ve already started on a new painting – enjoying it immensely – and I plan on spending some time reading and studying in some areas that I’ve always wanted to, when not depressed and feeling this immense anxiety all the time at doing something WRONG.

Gee, thanks mom and dad for that religious abuse growing up!  Now I get anxiety attacks about religion – and always have.  I think part of my coping has been my reactionary attitude towards my religious experience and taking a B.A. in college figuring out WHY people believe the way they do.

And this is part of my random, William Faulkner stream of conscious blogging.  Please return to your day now.  Perhaps I’ll be more coherent in the future after I figure out my @#$#@##@ ipod….

Well the last few days has marked a change, an actual conscious my-mind-registers-that-I’m-handling-things-different change, in how I perceive criticism.  It’s awesome.  I don’t get worked up, hurt, taking it personally, etc.  I can see “Hey they are critiquing my actions, which sucked, and are not claiming that *I* suck because of my actions.”

It’s a nice change of pace from being someone who owned criticism as an attack on my core self.  I’m not falling into a depression, not crying my eyes out, I am simply saying “She was right, I must do better.  Here are some steps I can take right now to do better.  Then, as time goes by, I can take other steps that I don’t know what they are yet, and that’s okay.  I can’t read the future.  No one can.”

Late May I started delving into a blast to my heart.  I discovered my Sensai wouldn’t know Buddhistic thought if she were surrounded by Zen monks meditating.  She would find a way to make it about HER, and HER school.  She lied to my son.  I saw her manipulating people, lying to people like Diana – on the cusp of their black belt tests and having it dangled over them in the context of “how much do you love me… how much do you WORSHIP me…”  And I did some research.  It didn’t sound right.  I had to make sense of my world.  (And yes, Sensais can do what they wish.  HOWEVER Sensai’s also got to be Sensais by “getting it.”  However, a friend put it in perspective for me – she was handed a belt and started a school.  That doesn’t constitute respect from me.)

It wasn’t right.  As I delved deeper into Buddhism and saw what it was she SAID she believed and followed but wasn’t even on the same planet (hell, she wasn’t even trying… she was getting away with the fact that no one knows what Buddhists believe in our community so whatever she says she could get away with.) I discovered why I felt aleinated from the religions I had practiced and tried to believe in.

Yeah, this is a set of guidance and principles I can live my life by.  In some ways I had been holding people to these standards and not accepting that I too could live by them.  (A mixture of low self-esteem and pure human self-absorption I suppose)  And so late in May I started studying.  I don’t consider myself a Buddhist – I think one really needs to read the teachings of the Buddha and maybe go onto a retreat for that.  Of course there are no “rules” – and I don’t have to believe or disbelieve in God.  God is a non-issue really for a variety of reasons for me.  And, since the Dalai Lama can’t meet all this stuff all the time, I am probably batting really poorly in the grand scheme of things.  However, I am hooked into a sangha (a group of Buddhists who meditate together and help each other put things in perspective) and I’ve come out to Cerridwen (who yes, did the ass chewing that I needed to have done).

And I’m dealing with life.  And not by running away.

Cerridwen made a comment to me that I have been really thinking about.  She said she let me go into raving-controlling-bitch-of our friendship mode (in Cerridwen speak it was placed nicely “you and I have different sets of rights in our friendship” which is true) because she was afraid I would leave again.  I would just run away.

But I have the tools now to deal with things as they happen and not HAVE to run away to protect me.  I can differentiate between criticism of actions and criticism of self now which I never was able to before.  And although I can either be accepted or not by people, I don’t see me leaving.  I see me taking some breathers to try to digest and figure out what I am feeling or how I want to handle things… (usually my first impulse is not my ah-hem.. “best” one shall we say) but running away I just don’t see happening.  But since that’s modus operendi from before.. hey, how is she to think otherwise?  I understand that too.

Honestly, Cerridwen.  The talk we had on Sunday would have been enough to send me running if we had our old relationship and I was my old self.  I’m not even ANGRY – which trust me I would have been before.

So thank you Sensai.  If you hadn’t been the total anti-thesis of everything you claimed to believe in I may never have figured a lot of this stuff out.

Well, it’s been awhile, but I’ve taken the plunge.

I found a reader that I feel is trustworthy and I am requesting a Tarot Reading.  Yep, for cost.  Why?  Well, damn it… cuz I am not at peace with the decisions that are coming up, and I want some idea about what the cards say regarding it.  And, I don’t trust my human tendency to really tell myself what I need to hear, as opposed to what I WANT to hear.

I’ve set myself up to go back to school.  Yet, I’ll be honest – I really don’t want to.  Not in this time of my life.  Yet, I do want to.  I know I shall be.  I believe it, I feel it.. I just do not want to be sitting in some goddamn classroom having some fucking know-it-all selling me shit-on-a-shingle trying to convince me it’s french toast right now at this moment.  Am I against instruction?  No.  I’m against jumping through hoops and busy work and spending too much money and not getting exactly what I want.  I work hard for my money and I don’t feel like spending it on what someone else’s idea of what an education is.

I guess what scares me is the knowledge it may be now or never.  I may have to put myself through hell now, if I want heaven to occur for me later.  I can’t foretell the future.  I don’t know if this may be my one-and-only chance to go back for painting.  I really don’t care.  I don’t like feeling stressed, backed up against the wall and completely scattered for SOMEONE ELSE.

Yet the looks will start.  The comments will start.  If you are truly devoted to this, if you truly WANT this… why aren’t you sacrificing parts of your life to do it?  People only truly back you if you are doing what THEIR idea is that you should do.  I remember the snotty comments when I graduated high school and wanted to take a year off before attending college, “well of course you wouldn’t really go then if you take a year off would you?”

Yeah, I’m getting that shit now too.  And I know it’s a reaction (partially) to people seeing me panic.  I’m going to be 33 this week.  I haven’t gotten this accomplished, but what if I die and I never accomplish this?  What if I’m 80 and I regret this?  Fuck, I’m over 30 and regret stuff.  I’ll learn to deal.  And most importantly I won’t stop painting in the meantime….

Isn’t it amusing how one has to go through other people’s hoops it seems to “prove” their seriousness of an endeavor?  These comments are also based on that.  I need to meet other people’s expectations.  If Astraea is SERIOUS she’ll go BACK for painting.  Non-serious artists just paint.  SERIOUS ones go through the appropriate HOOPS to get recognition.

Let me massage my tits and moan about how a degree from this insitution will totally meet my expectations.  Just like my accepting Jesus in all his orgasmic glory will mean my life is just so taken care of.

So we’ll see what my reader has to say.  And a variety of other sources and see what I really, truly, wish to do inside.  I will honor MYSELF and MY WISHES in my life.  I will not let others control my art like they had to my spiritual beliefs, marriage, and most other aspects of my life.

This is mine.

I wonder sometimes if I am a bit balmy and I will regret the path that I am jumping into.  Or if it will be like all of those late Friday nights watching Doctor Who and expanding my English Vocabulary to include British slang: making me seem a bit more eggheaded than I really am.

Not bloody likely.  On both counts.

I love the Tarot.  I fell  in love with the Tarot at age 8, and will probably still love it at age 80.  (If my astrology natal chart is accurate that is, and I die of a ripe old age overseas preferably in David Tennant’s arms…. Or hell, maybe he’ll have a son by then and I’ll be the Cougar Bitch who took him from daddy…).  My love of Tarot is something I have fought, repressed, lamented, cried about, was joyous for, and have finally now embraced.

About goddamned time, me thinks.

My blog is about bitching.  I bitch about my life.  I bitch about the hypocrisy of both friends and religious paths that I have experienced.  And yes, as I learn more in my studies I probably will bitch about the Tarot.  But not in a mean way, of course.  Just in the way of a woman who truly loves her spouse and just doesn’t like the way he waits until 5 minutes before the garbage truck arrives to actually start collecting the garbage to take it to the curb.  That warm-fuzzy-I-truly-love-you bitching that we all do and enjoy.

My main fear is I am a processing-by-talking kinda gal.  Which means I have spent hours talking about the same thing over and over again, in different ways, trying to dissect and figure it out, trying to find a way to assimilate it both into my world and into my consciousness until I keep hearing sighs from the other end of the telephone and a mysterious “Oh, that’s my dad beeping in.. talk to you later!” quick statement made by the person on the other end of the line.  Did dad call?  Or was it like my crazy sister and the Good Lord Yahweh “Daddy” gave the person a message.  Does it matter?  And who the fuck cares?  The point is, I may be talking about the same stuff over and over and over again.

And over.

And over.

And yet still some over again.

I do, as time allows barring craziness, (I am going to be going back to college this fall to pursue an Art degree, I work 2 jobs, and I am married with a 7 year old and a 3 year old, and now I’m jumping into a real study of the Tarot… time is a premium some days) I wish to make my blog a bit more visually oriented.  It’s a bit sad that I am a visual artist and I really don’t post anything visual.  I want to post pictures that I’ve both painted, and perhaps some stuff I come across Tarot-like as well.  This isn’t going to be a big, deep, philosophical endeavor like 78 Notes to Self is.  Hell, I don’t drink that much coffee to think that deeply.  (I’m more of a chocolate-covered espresso bean kinda gal, myself)  And this won’t be all Tarot all the time.  I’m a bit too multi-faceted for that and have discovered that if I wish to do something in life I need to just do it.  And not worry about having one journal for this, a blog for that, etc.  Things are all in this wonderful gumbo-soup mess that you may just have to pick up a loaf of fresh-baked bread (or God forbid, bake it yourself) and delve right in and enjoy the craziness with me.

Crazy people like me enjoy yummy bread.  So pull up a seat.

Okay I am about to jump in with both feet yet again.  I’m going to see if I sink or swim, if I can breathe or if I need gills, if in some remarkable way my legs will turn into a Mermaid’s tail….

I am collecting Tarot decks and books like mad.

I made my first deck when I was 8 out of the back of some old Maxi-pad boxes (gee, back in the days gone by and plastic sacks weren’t the “in thing” to package everything) and cardstock that I had lying around.  I remember not knowing where to get more cardstock, and I just made do.  (looking back that cardstock may have originally been my sister’s – ooops!  she’d have a fit even now if she found out I took something of hers….)

I didn’t read for a lot of people.  Imagine the mortification of pulling cards from the facedown position and the querent is looking at Always – with wings.  Imagine now being a 10 year old girl and doing it.  ah-hem.

Enter age 13 when I BEGGED for a Tarot deck for Christmas.  I actually saw an article in the local newspaper that interviewed a tarot reader who sold some in his shop.  I begged, I pleaded, I asked just for THAT for Christmas (we were dirt poor and money was definitely an issue) and I would be totally happy.

Well, I received my first Rider-Waite.  And a box of chocolate covered cherries since my mother wished to brag that she really bought me “two” presents.  Whatever.

I slept with those cards.  I read with those cards.  I pulled out my brother’s copy of Astrology and Other Occult Games (the same book from which I drew my images for making my own Tarot deck.) and read with them.  I did eventually get a copy of Eden Grey’s Complete Tarot whatever and read with that.

I tried to be Christian.  I really really really really did.  Three times.

Yet, I am a Tarot Fanatic.  I LOVE THE TAROT. I love the imagery, the symbols, the representation.  I love the divinatory aspects of it.  I love the fact that I can look at these cards as a spiritual path.  A SPIRITUAL PATH!!!! Isn’t that wonderful???

It truly is a multi-faceted tool.

And I feel grown up now enough to face that.

So to add to my last post, I think it’s important to delve into that matter.

Am I a whore?  Are we all whores?  Yes – we all prostitute ourselves (or compromise our beliefs, time, or energy) to get what we want.  In that way I am one.  I jokingly refer to myself as a cheap book whore since I work hard at my jobs during the day and love to surf ebay for booklots at night.  I am also turning into a tarot deck whore, for much the same reason.

Now do I tolerate or consent to being referred to as a whore by a sexist, misogynist who would see me barefoot, pregnant, non-speaking in a church by a man who uses misguided outdated stereotypical roles to prop up his own manhood?

Not a chance, sister.

Anyone who wants to stick someone that much in a box for who they are, what they believe, or whatever – that person is an asshole.  Live and let live.

Of course this is just my opinion.  I can accept that people are where they are and they need to be there.  It’s no longer my duty to fix the world, just to exist in my moment within it.  And as a result of my moment in the world, there are certain people and energies that are no longer allowed inside.

See, my life has been thinking that everyone is fair, loving and kind.  The exception were those certain people who were filled with hate, destruction, who wanted to do evil just for evil.

Now, I find that’s vice versa.

People as a whole are dark and self-absorbed.  Those few shining stars are those who don’t share that viewpoint, who try to be leavers in a taker culture.

Go buy a copy of Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.  Reading it will do you good.

I am not perfect.  Perhaps my referring to people as vampires or assholes is just as evil as they calling me a whore for no apparent reason.  Of course I do have a reason – experience has given me those names for certain individuals who would do my core self harm – but perhaps there really is no reason for keeping the cycle going.

I don’t know.  But part of my blog is figuring that out.

I know a guy named Ron who claims very much that he is a born again Christian.

Of course he sleeps around, lies, and calls me a whore (which is amusing since wouldn’t the term be bitch?  A whore sleeps with everyone.  A bitch sleeps with everyone but you.  And I never slept – nor had sex- with him.  Now it’s a non-issue since I’ve been married so long I couldn’t see what the use of it would be – why destroy a marriage for a quick fling?) but he’s a Christian.

He goes on trips with the Missionaries to the Preborn.  Of course reading the language on their website… filled with hate and anger… not the righteous indignation one would expect from a cause designed to support life, leads one to believe that the life of babies isn’t the issue.  The right to knock a woman up and make her carry your child so you have the ability to procreate (since no one else would have you) is.

Huh.

He may call himself a Christian but I’ll tell you what he really is – an asshole.

Ron the asshole.  (Let him find a biblical support of that.  He’d probably pull it out of the Psalms.  Christians find reasons for every goddamned thing they do in the psalms…)

But I am choosing this moment not to be angry.  He is who he is, and that is his responsibility and not mine.  I poked him with a stick in a sense, and he turned into his true nature (of an asshole) when I confronted him about his fornication.

I am reflecting on people I’ve had in my life that have reflected the need to change who I am and what I think.  Ron… Dan… Bob… Mark… pre-reformed Cerridwen…  It’s not that something was wrong with me, that is.  Just what I believed.  What I thought.  Who I was.  But… me, they would swear to the grave was just fine.

Bullshit.

I’m not a Christian.

Deal.

I really don’t care if that means I’m going to go to hell according to a religion who pulled the dualistic afterlife from ANOTHER religion named Zorastoriasm. (oops!  yeah, they prefer to say “just cause you don’t believe in hell doesn’t mean YOU WONT GO!!!!” Rather than look at the history of their belief and say “Hey, where the heck did THAT come from?”  Can I randomly pull a belief out of my ass and claim that you are held to that belief?  Why not?)  If you are going to spend time crying about me and my beliefs you are an idiot.  Instead, do a little bit of real research and discover what it is YOU believe and why.

I won’t be condemned, controlled nor placed in anyone’s “box” for who I am.  Nor will I surround myself any longer with people who need to do that to me.  Those names represent people who would have buried me given the chance. People like that scatter my energies and I really don’t have the time to waste on them anymore.  I’m already in my 30’s and I have a ton of shit yet to do before I die.

Arguing with assholes isn’t part of that.

So, if you read this and know me – if who I am or what I believe (or don’t believe) bothers you – don’t come in my house.  Let’s just end it here.  I’ve explored that path, read the bible more times than most people have toes – and really feel that it’s a nonissue.  I am going to turn into as much the goddamned viper in defense of myself as I was the scared little girl believing all the shit you vampires shoveled in my direction.

Nothing is wrong with me.  Something is wrong with YOU if you need me to be something I’m not in order to find calm and order in your world.  Why can’t you be finding that without emotionally manipulating someone like me?

That’s the question you should be asking yourself.

(and Cerridwen you and me are OKAY – I am talking about a time in my life you and I both remember reflecting a self you and I are no longer – so don’t stress over this post, k?  I Love you.)