Giddy Up Oom Poppa Omm Poppa Mow Mow

Happy birthday..............and unpleasant dreams!

Cassandra Peterson (born September 17, 1951) is an American actress best known for her on-screen horror hostess character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.  With heavily-applied pancake horror make-up and a towering black beehive wig concealing her flame-red hair, the transformation from Cassandra Peterson to the sexy “Elvira” was so drastic that no one ever recognized her out of costume.  Elvira reclined on a red Victorian couch, introducing and often interrupting the movie to lampoon the actors, the script, and the bad editing. Adopting the flippant tone of a California valley-girl, she brought a satirical, sarcastic edge to her commentary without ever being crass or mean-spirited. Like a macabre Mae West, she reveled in dropping risqué double entendres as well as making frequent jokes about her eye-popping display of cleavage.

In an AOL Entertainment News interview, Peterson revealed, “I figured out that Elvira is me when I was a teenager. She’s a spastic girl. I just say what I feel and people seem to enjoy it.”

Her name is Cherry
We’ve just met
But already she knows me
Better than you
She understands me
After eighteen years
And you still don’t see me
Like you ought to do
~ lyrics Amy Winehouse

 

 

Image sourced from Joyce’s Take ~ from the heart of Downtown LA, 5 posts a week on political & social commentary and satire.

Patsy Cline: A Honky-Tonk Angel

Remembering Patsy ~ 8 September 1932

Image source: mobijoy ringtones  

 WINCHESTER, Virginia — For all the nights my crazy old mother sang Crazy while she did the dishes, I wanted to visit the house where a poor Virginia girl named Virginia Hensley grew up to become Patsy Cline.

What I found was a shrine, not to Patsy’s enduring, haunting voice — only silence plays in the little white cabin on South Kent Street, lovingly restored and opened last week to tourists — but to a family’s endurance of the sort of grinding, numbing daily travail that may become our children’s fate if this calamitous summer heralds the dawning of a second Great Depression. (read full article written 20 August 2011)

Further Exploration

Aquarius Papers ~ Astrology Past, Astrology pressent – 2011, 2012, 2013 – it’s the 1930s all over again!

The Golden Wattle of Imbolc

Imbolc is usually celebrated August 1^st /2^nd in the Southern Hemisphere and the start of February in the Northern Hemisphere.

The actual Moment of Imbolc/Lammas – the cross-quarter between Solstice and Equinox – is at 20:37 UT (“Universal Time” as it is called) on the 7th August. That is 6:37 on the 8th August at my place – EST Australia.

Photograph by A J Campbell of a woman amidst the blooms of a Cootamundra wattle Acacia baileyana

In Australia Wattle day is also celebrated around this season, and is a highly appropriate use of flower for Imbolc as the land bursts into this bright, joyous and abundant flower. This rich maiden time is often used as a time to bless the home and garden, let go of the old and prepare for new growth. Herbs, mixed with milk, honey and white or yellow flowers are used to bless the garden and traditionally young girls in white would bless the fields.

We stand on the threshold of another Australian Spring – a particular time when the whole land is in beauty, arrayed with Wattles all abloom in the most exquisite tints and tones of yellow, and there from is ascending like a continual oblation, an invisible cloud, the soft, sweet perfume of pure wattle incense. (read full article here)

Saint Mary of the Cross, (15 Jan 1842 - 8 Aug 1909)

Redfern artist John Jewell holds an unfinished bust of Mary MacKillop. Photo: Steven Siewert

Winter-Spring Earth Wisdom

By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The Early Spring/Imbolc celebration is traditionally a time of dedication to the nurturance of the New Young Being. Once again, this is no wimpy task: it is for the brave and courageous, whether one is committing to the new being in another or in one’s self. The Great Goddess Brigid of the Celtic peoples is traditionally invoked for such a task. She has been understood for millennia as the One Who tends the Flame of Being: a Brigid-ine commitment is one that is unwavering in its devotion to the central truth of each unique particular self. The stories of Old speak of Brigid in three primary capacities – that may need spelling out in our times, as they are almost forgotten skills: She is imagined as Blacksmith, Physician and Poet … all three.

Blacksmith is one who takes the unshapely lump of raw metal, melts it, then takes the fiery hot form and shapes it … this is no stereotypical “feminine” act: the Goddess of Old is not bound by such patriarchal dualisms. She is spiritual warrior, shaman – this is Her eternal Virgin quality, never separate from the Mother quality or the Old One quality, and no need to characterize such power as “masculine” or dissociate it from “nursery” activity.

Physician is one who understands the “physics” of being, of matter … how a body relates within itself and within its context, functions harmoniously and thus may heal/whole. In this role, Brigid is scientist, healer … none of it separate. Her physics is biologically connected – an understanding of dwelling within a whole and seamless Universe.

Poet of Old is one who speaks the metaphors, the stories of cultural knowledge, the sacred language of Creativity – one who “spells” what may be so. It is a power of spirit: the voice enabled by air, resonant with the winged ones – the birds – whose perspective transcends boundaries. The ancients knew Poetry as a sacred and powerful task – that with our words, we do create what is so. Brigid’s “motherhood statements” are statements of the Mother/Creator, Who once again is never separate from Her whole self – the Young One and the Old One – represented in the Triple Spiral dynamic.

The coming into Being that Winter Solstice and Early Spring celebrates, is an awesome thing. It takes courage and daring. It has taken courage and daring – always. In these times of change, it is perhaps particularly so. Our times require the melting down of so much that no longer works, that will not carry us through. These times require the re-shaping and speaking of new realities – an aboriginal magic of new connections, with what is already present within us, if we can but plumb it, open to it deep within. This is a great seasonal moment to get with the plot of Creativity, to align ourselves with our Native Wisdom …the Wisdom that in fact brings us all into being. We may re-spond to the gift of being by receiving it graciously – and thus become re-sponsible. Though we may feel inadequate, we are not – and we need to begin.

Sometimes it has been a useful exercise to re-write prayers or songs learned perhaps too well as a child or later, to re-speak them and imbue them with new understandings. It is a way of spelling one’s self, of changing one’s mind – to articulate with each word and phrase what one truly believes to be so. And besides, many of the prayers and praises that are found in patriarchal religions of recent human history are often founded upon the expressions of some earlier Earth-based Goddess religion that is now unmentioned and buried. So any re-writing and listening to one’s own interpretations of the pattern of the prayer may end up being closer to its original sense, as well as speaking a new moment.

I offer the following, addressing the Universe as Mother:

Our Mother
Who is with us,
Holy is our Being.
Thy Kin-dom is present.
Thy Desire is felt throughout the Cosmos.
We graciously receive your infinite daily abundance.
May we forgive each other our lack of skill and insensitivity.
May we understand our inner guidance,
and perceive each other’s needs.
For Thine is the Kin-dom, the Power and the Story,
forever and ever.
Blessed Be³.

© Glenys Livingstone 2008.

Hanging on the Telephone

Quilted Labyrinth by Barbara Shapel

Labyrinth I pattern available here Barbara Shapel Contemporary Fiber Artist

Planetarium
by Adrienne Rich

A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them

a woman ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’

in her 98 years to discover
8 comets

she whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind

An eye,

‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
from the mad webs of Uranusborg

encountering the NOVA

every impulse of light exploding

from the core
as life flies out of us

Tycho whispering at last
‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’

What we see, we see
and seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet I stand

I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep
so invo-luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me
And has taken
I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.

May the Fourth be With You

Image Credit: OrangeIntense

Of course, yes, I spent years——-if not DECADES———working on what I like to think of as my delicately layered portrait of CARRIE FISHER——–that tragic, dual celebrity offspring/issue——-who went from intergalactic off center fold to  drug addicted cinematic side kick to bi polar one time bride of bite sized brilliant song writer to not so semi autobiographical novel scribbling mother of that beautiful child, fathered by that oops did I forget to mention I was bisexual and ever increasingly influential agent to everyone who is anyone in the Industry, to scream writing script doctor friend of that guy who turned out to be dead when I woke up next to him the morning after my ex’s star studded Oscar party……. to that nut house hopping, weight gaining bon mot mumbling one woman show running round the US, eventually winding up on that great white way for in excess of four months, a performance for which I was NOT nominated for the Antoinette Perry “Tony” Award today———-of all days——-May the forth——–which, for many lisping intergalactic devotees will always or never be remembered as the May the Forth—–yes………may the forth be with you—— and you and you and…………even you…….way out over there………that’s right…….YOU………[Osmotisized from Carrie Fisher’s Blog]

So I’m not a total Geek yet, because I didn’t preknow about the Fourth of May. There’s been so much else going on in the world that I think my Taking the Mickey bellybutton might have been cosmically removed. I shall, however, l have Star Wars Day etched into my full metal diary from this day forward, until death do I fart.  Pardon.

The Fourth was definitely with me yesterday which has me musing on the Force of the Fourth House in astrological parlances.  The Hero/Heroine’s journey and all that….the clothes we were made to wear.

The Heroine’s Journey is multi-faceted, like a multi-level parking station at the Maul……you know we have to do it backwards, wearing high heels, and in get-ups like the above.

I did watch a DVD yesterday, after I was all fourthed out ~ Postcards From The Edge ~ about the War Between Stars ~ Carrie Fisher and her mother, the-woman-whose-husband-dumped-her-for-Elizabeth-Taylor. (Sorry, Liz made me do it)

I grew up watching Hollywood Musicals and a lot of Ginger Rogers. Was it  because I was so young and impressionable that the movies seemed much better then, or were they really that much better then?

Now dancing. I learned ballroom dancing as a teenager. Was my first social community away from my parents ~ pretty big deal. Then I learned beledi when I was 19 and living in New Zealand, which upset my then-partner, because he believed beledi was one-step away from prostitution.  I was working as a bartender, which most people believe is one-step away from prostitution, and I’m a qualified Massage Therapist, which most people believe is prostitution.

I could have made a truck-load of money in my younger years.  I am real sorry I wasted the pretty. If I had known I was going to have so much bad sex, I definitely would have made sure I received better compensation.

Yup, the Fourth is with me.  When I was a kid, I wanted to be Irma La Douce, or maybe just Shirley MacLaine.  I dunno. I think both happened anyway a long time ago…in a galaxy far, far away.

“I’ve got enough nerve to do anything!”

– Ginger Rogers in “Swing Time”

The Past Supper

The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago is an icon of feminist art.

Image Credit: The Salvador Dali Society

The Dinner Party represents 1,038 women in history—39 women are represented by place settings and another 999 names are inscribed in the Heritage Floor on which the table rests. This monumental work of art is comprised of a triangular table divided by three wings, each 48 feet long.

Broken dishes

Image Credit: Red Crow Arts

The principal component of The Dinner Party is a massive ceremonial banquet arranged in the shape of an open triangle—a symbol of equality—measuring forty-eight feet on each side with a total of thirty-nine place settings. The “guests of honour” commemorated on the table are designated by means of intricately embroidered runners, each executed in a historically specific manner. Upon these are placed, for each setting, a gold ceramic chalice and utensils, a napkin with an embroidered edge, and a fourteen-inch china-painted plate with a central motif based on butterfly and vulvar forms. Each place setting is rendered in a style appropriate to the individual woman being honored.

Wing One of the table begins in prehistory with the Primordial Goddess and continues chronologically with the development of Judaism; it then moves to early Greek societies to the Roman Empire, marking the decline in women’s power, signified by Hypatia’s place setting. Wing Two represents early Christianity through the Reformation, depicting women who signify early expressions of the fight for equal rights, from Marcella to Anna van Schurman. Wing Three begins with Anne Hutchinson and addresses the American Revolution, Suffragism, and the movement toward women’s increased individual creative expression, symbolized at last by Georgia O’Keeffe.

Georgia O'Keeffe place setting, The Dinner Party

Image Credit: Brooklyn Museum

The Dinner Party rests upon the Heritage Floor and is comprised of 2,300 hand-cast porcelain tiles and provides both a structural and metaphorical support for The Dinner Party table. Inscribed in gold luster are the names of 999 mythical and historical women of achievement, who were selected to contextualize the 39 women represented in the place settings and to convey “how many women had struggled into prominence or been able to make their ideas known—sometimes in the face of overwhelming obstacles—only (like the women on the table) to have their hard-earned achievements marginalized or erased”.

The Shadow of Your Smile….

Elisheba Rachel 1959-2011

Anne Revere (Mrs. Brown): What’s the meaning of goodness if there isn’t a little badness to overcome?

Elizabeth Taylor (Velvet Brown): I want it all quickly ’cause I don’t want God to stop and think and wonder if I’m getting more than my share.

Anne Revere (Mrs. Brown):That’ll be a dispute to the end of time, Mr. Brown: whether it’s better to do the right thing for the wrong reason or the wrong thing for the right reason.

Mickey Rooney (Mi Taylor): Some day you’ll learn that greatness is only the seizing of opportunity – clutching with your bare hands ’til the knuckles show white.
 ~ Memorable quotes, National Velvet 1944

Begin the Beguine

The very marvelous one.
The Not Understood.
Most Innocent of the Daughters of Jerusalem.
She upon whom the Holy Church is founded.
Illuminated by Understanding.
Adorned by Love.
Living by Praise.
Annihilated in all things through Humility.
At peace in divine being through divine will.
She who wills nothing except the divine will.
Filled and satisfied without any lack of divine goodness through the work of the Trinity.
Her last name is: Oblivion, Forgotten.

~ How Love names the Soul by Twelve names

by Marguerite Porete (1260?-1310)

Not much is known about the life of Marguerite Porete (also known as Marguerite of Hainaut) other than what is recorded of her heresy trial in Paris — which eventually led to her death by being burned at the stake.

Marguerite Porete may have been a Beguine, like Hadewijch of Antwerp and Mechthild of Magdeburg, but this is questionable. Her accusers called her a Beguine, but apparently meant it as an insult. In her own writings, Marguerite lists the Beguines as being among her critics. ( read more)

Further Reading:

Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother

Side by Side

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker & Clyde Barrow

 

A couple is a conspiracy in search of a crime. Sex is often the

closest they can get.

~ Adam Phillips

 

The Story of Bonnie and Clyde

You’ve read the story of Jesse James
Of how he lived and died;
      If you’re still in need
      Of something to read,
Here’s the story of Bonnie and Clyde.

Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang,
I’m sure you all have read
      How they rob and steal
      And those who squeal
Are usually found dying or dead.

There’s lots of untruths to these write-ups;
They’re not so ruthless as that;
      Their nature is raw;
      They hate all the law
The stool pigeons, spotters, and rats.

They call them cold-blooded killers;
They say they are heartless and mean;
      But I say this with pride,
      That I once knew Clyde
When he was honest and upright and clean.

But the laws fooled around,
Kept taking him down
And locking him up in a cell,
      Till he said to me,
      “I’ll never be free,
So I’ll meet a few of them in hell.”

 

 

The road was so dimly lighted;
There were no highway signs to guide;
      But they made up their minds
      If all roads were blind,
They wouldn’t give up till they died.

The road gets dimmer and dimmer;
Sometimes you can hardly see;
      But it’s fight, man to man,
      And do all you can,
For they know they can never be free.

From heart-break some people have suffered;
From weariness some people have died;
      But take it all in all,
      Our troubles are small
Till we get like Bonnie and Clyde.

If a policeman is killed in Dallas,
And they have no clue or guide;
      If they can’t find a fiend,
      They just wipe their slate clean
And hand it on Bonnie and Clyde.

There’s two crimes committed in America
Not accredited to the Barrow mob;
      They had no hand
      In the kidnap demand,
Nor the Kansas City depot job.

A newsboy once said to his buddy;
“I wish old Clyde would get jumped;
      In these awful hard times
      We’d make a few dimes
If five or six cops would get bumped.”

The police haven’t got the report yet,
But Clyde called me up today;
      He said, “Don’t start any fights
      We aren’t working nights
We’re joining the NRA.”

From Irving to West Dallas viaduct
Is known as the Great Divide,
      Where the women are kin,
      And the men are men,
And they won’t “stool” on Bonnie and Clyde.

If they try to act like citizens
And rent them a nice little flat,
      About the third night
      They’re invited to fight
By a sub-gun’s rat-tat-tat.

They don’t think they’re too tough or desperate,
They know that the law always wins;
      They’ve been shot at before,
      But they do not ignore
That death is the wages of sin.

Some day they’ll go down together;
And they’ll bury them side by side;
      To few it’ll be grief
      To the law a relief
But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.

— Bonnie Parker

 

 

Further Reading:

The Life and Crimes of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow

First Wives Club: She Who Saves

Green Tara

Sculpture by Barbara McLean

The Atisha Centre is a calm and peaceful Buddhist retreat and educational facility, nestled in the native Australian bushlands of central Victoria, 15 minutes from the centre of  Bendigo and 2 hours northwest of Melbourne.

Currently this statue is a work in progress at Studio Hampton. This image is near completion and the elaborate adornments are being made separately. These will embellish the final complex sculpture which will then be hand-painted. When installed Tara will be sheltered in a glass walled pagoda, designed to be clearly visible for making offerings and meditation, in the garden of  the Atisha Centre dedicated as a memorial to Lama Thubten Yeshe.

This is one of the first sites where Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa taught in Australia.  Their great vision for the future of the Centre includes the Monastery, the  Atisha retreat and teaching centre as well as The Great Stupa (in progress) and a future Nunnery, Aged care facility, School and a lay community.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche has given much advice on the importance of holy objects such as:

” Holy objects only leave positive imprints, no negative imprint. When we watch TV or go sightseeing in the city many of the things we see can leave a negative imprint on our mind, depending on how we look at them. But the benefit that we get from looking at holy objects is like the limitless sky.”

Read More: The Statue and the Sculptor

 

An Old Tibetan Wives Tale

Long, long ago when the world was young and the tiger walked with the deer, there was a rich king who had four wives. The king loved his  fourth wife the most and adorned her with riches. He also loved his third wife and was always showing her off to neighbouring kingdoms. However, he always feared that she would leave him. His second wife was kind and considerate and his trusted confidante and advisor in difficult times. Wife number one was devoted and loyal and although she loved him deeply, he was not as interested and tended to ignore her.
   
One day, the king fell ill and the truth dawned that his life was soon to end. He thought of the luxurious life he had led and feared being alone when he died.
   
He asked his fourth wife, “I have loved you the most, endowed you with the finest clothing, showered gifts upon you and taken great care over you. Now that I’m dying, will you follow me and keep me company?” “No way!” she replied and walked away without another word.
   
The sad king then asked the third wife, “I have loved you all my life. Now that I’m dying, will you follow me and keep me company? ” “No!” she replied. “Life is too good! When you die, I’m going to remarry!”

   
He then asked the second wife, “I have always turned to you for help and you’ve always been there for me. When I die, will you follow me and keep me company?” “I’m sorry, I can’t help you out this time!” she replied. “At the very most, I can help with your funeral.”
   
Then a voice called out to the king in his sadness: “I’ll leave with you and follow you no matter where you go.” The king looked up and there was his first wife. She was so skinny and undernourished. Greatly grieved, the king said, “I should have taken much better care of you when I had the chance!”
   
In truth, we all have four wives in our lives. Our fourth wife is our body. No matter how much time and effort we lavish in making it look good, it’ll leave us when we die. It’ll be burnt, buried or chopped up for the vultures and wolves or feed the worms.

Our third wife is our possessions, status and wealth. When we die, it will all go to others. It will be divided up.

Our second wife is our family and friends. No matter how much they have supported and loved us, the furthest they can stay by us is up to the burial site. Even if they enter the portal of Death they and we must walk alone into the Bardo Thodol.

Our first wife is our mindstream, often neglected in pursuit of wealth, power and pleasures of the ego. However, our mindstream is the only thing that will follow us wherever we go.
   
The moral: Care for your body and keep it healthy so you can live life to its fullest. Enjoy your possessions, the pleasure and the comfort they provide. Cherish your friends and family and the love they provide. Don’t forget to nourish your mindstream as it is the source of all your life and will prove to be your most faithful friend.

~ Wive’s Tale pinched at Yun Hoi Wing Chun Kuen