trickster's past

from my paper journal:

January 15. Moon in Aries, Mercury sextile Venus (natal)

the car won't start
my phone tells me I have a connection failure - to check my settings.

life is never strange anymore.

Craig tells me I'm a brat - same as Edi and Alice (does that mean he 'loves me the best' too?)

I know I'm a brat - I love being a brat! I'll always be a BRAT!

why would I want to be anything other than what I am - exactly as I am?

I've been to the plastic surgeon to see about my plastic parts. He tells me I'm not as bad as I think. HA! I'm exactly as bad as I think.

I'm only ever what I think at one time or another.

I AM.

But I won't have to wait long now.

(and I may have turned into one of those people who sits in cafes staring at everyone strangely)

so, nothing.

more mercury retrograde...

from my paper journal:

June 29, 2007

Who wants to know about me? Want to hear a story - a story about a woman sitting at her desk writing? Writing and wondering about that story - what to write - what's the true story?

The Alchemical Psychologist says that all stories, all histories, are fictions. By the time we recall events from memory they've changed from travelling all those dark corridors in the mind.

Even the brightest minds can trick things around.

What's more, our perception of events is always coloured by our ways of perceiving - our thoughts and beliefs.

Coloured!

My mother always told me I had my father's duck-shit eyes. Imagine that. I've gone through most of my life seeing things through duck-shit eyes.

These days I prefer to think I'm looking out at the world through amber-flecked green or at the very least murky-pond...

My point is; no matter what story - its a fiction. I'll tell you! It might be beautiful, it could be dark and twisted, but it won't be the truth.

bibliomancy for mercury retrograde

"invitation" by Edith Chow Sinclair, aged 6

"Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel" (Arab saying)

bibliomancy for venus in gemini

'she was such a dear old duck' d sinclair '08

"Not until the moon was high did the alchemist ride into view. He carried two dead hawks over his shoulder.

"I am here," the boy said.

"You shouldn't be here," the alchemist answered. "Or is it your Personal Legend that brings you here?"

"With the wars between the tribes, it's impossible to cross the desert. So I have come here."

(Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist)

Thanks to you all for your patience during my absence from blogging. It's been a challenging couple of weeks.

Space clearing was a success - the garage is now organised after sorting through all the boxes of stuff left over from the move to this house just over a year ago. Likewise all cupboards and wardrobes are tidy and clutter free.

There's something very satisfying about giving away things that are no longer needed. Especially knowing that the items are still good and will be of use to someone else - a kind of random benevolence that has me wondering if I'll see that shirt on someone passing in the street some time.

I enjoy that someone somewhere has a need for those things and I play my part in it. Also, the simple act of giving away things of value but no further use seems to affirm just how abundant life really is.

We have so much. We're very lucky people.

Sorting through belongings showed me just how much of my money has gone into acquiring things I really believed I needed but didn't. And it had me questioning my methods of assigning value to material things. Truly an enriching experience - with unexpected results.

I was shocked when about four days into my 'clearing space for a miracle' I received the news that my baby's grand mother had passed away.

Pam had been fighting Cancer for three years and it had finally won.

It might not have been such a shock if I'd known that she was that close to leaving - I'd been spending time with her regularly so that she could enjoy her grand baby in her last days on Earth and had hoped that we'd have a few more visits before saying goodbye.

We'll miss her even though she drove me nuts with her swearing and grabbing my forearm each time she wanted to get a point across. She couldn't change a nappy for peanuts and she liked to feed my kids junk but she was a good sweet woman who loved people, and was loved in return. Seeing her one and only granddaughter grow up was important to her. I hope she's still watching, where ever she is now.

The funeral was a remarkable event - hundreds of people were bussed in from the country town where Pam and her husband have been living for the past twenty years. I've never seen anything like it. Everything was handled with style and humour and it was an honour to be there as part of the family.

The day before the funeral I received more news - my father is very ill and is in such dire straits financially that the family trust is now forced to sell the house that my children and I live in.

This phone call came on my way back from the local police station where I'd reported threats against me from a confused individual who I didn't know existed until six months ago - someone who imagines I've done something to come between her and the man she believed was her 'boyfriend' (the father of my baby).

I'm unsure as to why all of this has happened now - particularly as it's my intention to keep drama 'on the page' through writing and drawing. I live my life peacefully and soulfully, caring for my home, family and the small things I can do for the world. This is my Work.

All I can think of is that my Personal Legend (as Paulo Coelho calls it) is being challenged - and I'm called upon to draw on inner resources rather than become a victim to it all.

So I have.

Its strange but truly wonderful to find that I'm not afraid, that I'm not weak and that I can do this no matter how events beyond my control may seem daunting and overwhelming.

And if I can so can anyone. So can you.

...and for another full moon in scorpio

'a higher order of phoenix' d sinclair all rights reserved '08

"I have known true alchemists," the alchemist continued.
"They locked themselves in their laboratories, and tried to evolve, as gold had. And they found the Philosopher's Stone, because they understood that when something evolves everything around that thing evolves as well.
"Others stumbled upon the stone by accident. They already had the gift, and their souls were readier for such things than the souls of others. But they don't count. They're quite rare.
"And then there were others, who were only interested in gold. They never found the secret. They forgot that lead, copper, and iron have their own Personal Legends to fulfill. And anyone who interferes with the Personal Legend of another thing never will discover his own."

-Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

clearing space for a miracle

'unreliable ducks'
d sinclair all rights reserved '08

My apologies, dear readers - I'm not posting today or for the rest of the week while I clear space in my home and my heart for something miraculous (I don't know what it is yet, but can feel it coming).

bibliomancy for mars in leo

'I hope he does' d sinclair all rights reserved '08

"...we need ethical behaviour, or social life becomes untenable. It does matter what we do, how we treat others; it is important to challenge corruption, to make a stand. It is not good enough to put it all down to fate and turn away. But at the same time, we have to understand the deep ground of oneness out of which we and others arise...." (Diana Durham, The Return of King Arthur, p 178)

five ways to parent with soul, part two

'solar heron' d sinclair all rights reserved '08

A woman's heart grows larger and stronger during pregnancy. Biologically this is to circulate all the new blood her body has made to sustain the pregnancy and nourish the babe. Metaphorically, well, this should need no explanation.

I wonder about it from time to time though. What happens to my heart in the months after the baby is born? It grows smaller, obviously, and just when its needed the most. Other parts of me that I'd really like to shrink remain resolutely stretched, sagging and disappointed. Again, metaphors for motherhood that don't need interpretation as much as acceptance on my part as I strive to firm up and feel differently.

I've noticed how the body's message is either ignored or considered wrong. 'In symptom is soul' James Hillman teaches us, in the footsteps of Jung who said the gods are in our diseases (for want of a higher place in our lives). Our own physiology (and our pathologising) tells us about psyche - about where life settles upon us, our dis-ease with the world; our stories of who we are and how we change and grow.

We don't need to look further than the mirror or the diagnosis to see our souls. Do we though?

If we're sick we want to be healed and we go about this by fighting the sickness rather than by loving it or paying attention to what it may mean. We think of sickness and symptom as being from outside of ourselves; a foreign invader, an enemy. We have 'bouts' of illness; our hearts attack and we track the white and red armies in our blood.

Likewise if our healthy bodies are less than aesthetically perfect we might not be forgiving of those flaws. Then we diet, work out, burn fat, restrict and punish - tell ourselves no pain, no gain. We try to tweeze and wax and squeeze and scrub away our hairy, dry, clogged surfaces. So brutal. Its as if our flesh isn't our own, as if we are not in fact alive inside our skins, our cells, but trapped by them like POWs.

Some of us might give up without grace or grateful surrender to what is but with resentment, shame and loathing. We may hide ourselves under layers, behind smokescreens; stuffed down with milky, creamy sweet 'treats' telling ourselves and anyone who'll listen 'I wasn't like this until I had babies'.

Strangely enough its our children who most often want to speak up for our souls, our symptoms. My seven year old daughter is fond of rubbing my wounded belly like a magic lamp, murmuring 'beautiful soft Mama'.

What I want to say here in this second part of the series - after touching on surrendering to how things are and being still enough to allow our children to live according to their own natures - and I am really saying the same thing in different ways - is simply this:

3. Listen. Pay attention to what is being said and what you're being shown. What do your symptoms tell you? What are your children's symptoms saying? Take all those things you might otherwise consider wrong or sick and be willing to understand them in a new way. These things are your soul's language.

I'll be back with more on this.

bibliomancy for a new moon in taurus

"liar lyre pants on fire" d sinclair all rights reserved 08

"..where do I wander? Down what draughty tunnels? Where the eyeless wind blows? And there grows nothing for the eye. No rose. To issue where? In some harvestless dim field where no evening lets fall her mantle; nor sun rises. All's equal there. Unblowing, ungrowing are the roses there."

(Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts, 1941)