I tried a new way of meditating today. While I was out with the dog, I was sitting in my favorite spot, a little berm in a corner of the park with some trees.

When I walked into the park, I had seen an orange-robed Buddhist monk walking, a reminder to seek for the inner peace within. As I sat down in my corner, I had a little daydream: I was following the monk, thinking "Show me the Tao of my purpose in life, the path of my True Will."

Then I thought about the idea of doing a Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram in the astral--something I've heard about, but I'm not quite sure if I am a strong enough meditator to do it (but duh, I guess I can practice and learn how--I am going to do this.)

I had done an LBRP this morning, and I wasn't facing east anyway, so I basically visualized the pentagrams that I had created this morning, feeling them strengthen a little. Then I imagined my chakras as I was sitting cross-legged, seeming to vibrate up and down. After that I saw an image of the Sephiroth, with Kether being at my head, Chokma and Binah at my shoulders, etc. This also seemed to vibrate. By this time I was feeling an intense sense of well-being.

This all unfolded like a daydream, and I am looking forward to doing it again tomorrow.

And in other news: I have decided to go back to school. With my sister setting such a good example, I am hungry to get back in the ring again. Since I am on academic "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!" status, I will have to start very slow, and I will have to go to CSM in order to build my grade average back up. So taking that into consideration, I have decided to take the telecourse "Introduction to Philosophy" and augment it with something called a "Learning Community"-- probably an informal discussion group--called "Philosophy & Psychology in Contemporary Films."

Also, I have been fiddling with my website a little. It is slowgoing, but eventually it will be something really neat.

Friday Kinda Stuff (on Saturday afternoon)

EXOTIC FOREIGNER ALIAS = Favorite Spice Last Foreign Vacation Spot : Nutmeg Seattle--Sounds like a guy who is a gunrunner/flies a
dope smuggling plane.

SOCIALITE ALIAS = Silliest Childhood Nickname Town Where You First Partied : Bip Millbrae

"FLY GIRL" ALIAS (a la J. Lo) = First Initial First Two or Three Letters of Your Last Name: You can call me Hermie G.

ROCK STAR ALIAS = Any Liquid on the Bar Last Name of Bad-Ass Celeb : Johnny Walker McQueen--has a ring to it.

DIVA ALIAS = Something Sweet Within Sight Any Liquid in Kitchen: Sugar Latex--could be an interesting porn name.

GIRL DETECTIVE ALIAS = Favorite Baby Animal Where You Last Went To School: Ducky Trousdale--I kinda like that.

BARFLY ALIAS = Last Snack Food You Ate Your Favorite Drink : Cracker Bacardi

SOAP OPERA ALIAS = Middle Name Street Where You First Lived: Mary Beech--sounds like someone who played someone's mom on a soap in the 1950s.

PORN ALIAS = First Pets Name Mothers Maiden Name : Tinkerbell King--will be starring with Sugar Latex in a girl-on-girl flick...

DRAG QUEEN ALIAS = First Pets Name Street Where You First Lived : Tinkerbell Beech

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I am so happy that Marion, my next door neighbor came
home from Vermont yesterday.

I was taking care of things at her house while she was gone. It seemed like every time I turned around I had to feed somebody or water something or clean a litterbox or walk somebody else.

She has two cats and a dog. I believe I've mentioned Atticus before, the German Shepherd who started me on my new career as a kanine perambulist. The cats are brand new--to her, anyway, they came from the rescue shelter.

A lovely, black puma-like creature named Alex, shy and brooding, yet very affectionate, I have taken to calling him "Alexander Attaturk." Then there is a siamese without a name yet--at the shelter they were calling her "Buffy," but Marion said she will not call any pet of hers "Buffy."

NoName likes the garden, and justifiably so. The garden is an enclave of color, with deep purple clematis, clay vases with water lillies blooming out of them, and roses and nasturtiums by the score.

Yesterday
I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, with my own errands in addition to aforesaid duties. When I finally got home at around nine, I had a horrible head/backache. Disregarding the 420 herb that Marion had left on the coffee table, (no doubt in the hopes I would see it) I went to my mom's medicine cabinet and stole a vicodin, grabbed a cold rag, and went back over to watch tv with the pets.

Marion had encouraged me to watch tv, borrow her CDs, play her Netflix DVDs, whatever I wanted (people have a
tendency to trust me to stay in their houses by myself a lot. Lucky for them I'm a trustworthy kinda gal.) She has two tvs, one in the kitchen, the other in her room facing the bed. I had been having breakfast and dinner with the pets in the kitchen while they ate, so they wouldn't be lonely, but I had resisted the urge to televise in her room on the grounds that since Marion is gay, I might get cooties (how homophobic does that make me?)

Last night I dove onto her side of the bed in front of Bill Curtis and "Cold Case Files." A cold rag on my head, a pleasant narcotic haze coming over me as Alex snurggled me lovingly in the semi-darkness.

Beastie

He roved up and down through history --- spectre with tales to tell.
In the darkness when the campfire's dead --- to each his private hell.
If you look behind your shoulder as you feel his eyes to feast,
You can witness now the everchanging nature of the beast.

Beastie

If you wear a warmer sporran, you can keep the foe at bay.
You can pop those pills and visit some psychiatrist who'll say ---
There's nothing I can do for you, everywhere's a danger zone.
I'd love to help get rid of it, but I've got one of my own.

There's a beast upon my shoulder and a fiend upon my back.
Feel his burning breath a heaving, smoke oozing from his stack.
And he moves beneath the covers or he lies below the bed.
He's the beast upon your shoulder. He's the price upon your head.

He's the lonely fear of dying, and for some, of living too.
He's your private nightmare pricking. He'd just love to turn the screw.
So stand as one defiant --- yes, and let your voices swell.
Stare that beastie in the face and really give him hell.

Jethro Tull--"Beastie"

Take the quiz: "WHAT RELIGION BEST SUITS YOU?"

Modern Satanist
Thinking yourself to be a god, realizing Indulgence as your main goal, not believing in a literal Satan, and counting stupidity as your highest sin. You are a proud LaVeyan Satanist! You might enjoy www.churchofsatan.com if you're not already a member.

Interesting. I do agree with LaVey's "Virtue of Selfishness" kind of philosophy. To look at me, you would never know. I don't dress like a goth or anything. The only black clothing I have is rock t-shirts. In fact my fashion sense is a slightly sloppier version of the "denim adept"--rock t-shirts, pants and long shirts from Goodwill and K-Mart.

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So, Monday (not this past Monday, but Monday last--that's how off the ball I am this week.) I went with Mom up to the City. They had announced on the news the night before that Bill Clinton was going to be having a book signing, and we were under the impression that anybody could just go down there and meet the President.

Of course, this was not the case, as you had to have bought the book at a certain store and gotten a ticket which they had given out all of about two weeks prior. I was so pissed off. Why does everything have to be such a stupid big money deal? I mean, he's the former president, ferchrissakes, shouldn't everyone have equal access to meet him? Meeting famous people in person is one of my favorite things. To assuage my anger I ate mass quantities of M&Ms.

At least the whole day wasn't a complete wash. Mom took her lunch hour with me and we had a nice lunch at the Embarcadero Center, where she works, and I met a couple of the people in her office. I also took the opportunity to swing by Green Apple Books and trade in some of my old books. I achieved "book shrinkage", which, when you need ever inch of bookshelf space you can get like I do, is a very good thing.

I traded in for a used Thoth deck which I am going to modify by cutting the frames off (sacrelidge, do I hear you say?) and a copy of Colin Wilson's "Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast". I had to wade through his blather about poltergeists and Montague Summers, but it was worth it for this quote from Israel Regardie's "Eye in the Triangle"

Regardie to Crowley--"Darling Alice: You really are a contemptible bitch..." So you know I have to read that book now too.

Also, I happened upon a complete deck/book set called "StarGate" by Richard Greer. This was freom the late 70s early 80s. I used to have one before, but it was one of the things I scissored into centimeter-sized shreds when I had the Xian sickness. It wasn't so much an oracular deck as it was a great tool for giving your brain a creative workout.

Then last Friday I went and saw the marvelous Fahrenheit 9/11. I noticed on NPR this weekend they had at least one Republican spin doctor trying like hell to refute the facts in the movie. One was just sputtering out of control and then said something like, "You have to remember, these things took place during the Clinton administration!"

Sorry fellas, Clinton's long gone, you can't blame your problems on him any more. Besides, just because something happened while he was president, doesn't mean that the Bush family weren't the ones who did it. I think the guy really felt like he had made a good point, but actually he was just another wonk who showed how stupid the Dubya Clan really are.

Anyway, after I came home from the movie, I was watching 20/20 and they had this segment on prominent sports figures that had been convicted of violent crimes but their teams had let them come back to play with merely a slap on the wrist for consequences. They were interviewing a sports team executive and once again I noticed the sputtering, scrambling for an answer, and even the guy himself had to admit, "How can I even answer that? What can I do?"

This, coupled with the two and a half hours that I had just spent in the movie theater, made me say to myself, "Jesus, doesn't anybody just do the right thing, not the thing that will make the most money?" I know this is being un-Thelemically overly concerned with other people's paths in life, but I am sometimes interested in what motivates people to do the things they do.

Then I found myself reading AC's Absinthe: The Green Goddess and came upon this passage that spoke to me:

"That marriage has today become a matter of convenience is the last word of the commercial spirit. It is as if one should take a vow of knighthood to combat dragons--until the dragons appeared."

It seems to me that there are a lot of things that people "get married to" or make bedfellows with--politics, career, business, money, and then wonder why it gets them into trouble.

As our friend Marilyn Manson said, "You live with apes, man, it's hard to be clean..."