Yearly Archive: 2009

“The Invitation”
Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or
have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be
careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithless
and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty
even when it’s not pretty, every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of a lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes”!

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and
despair, weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments

[stolen without permission from a friend who got permission]

Xanga Username: Mordewis.  There have been others.  It’s an old Welsh name meaning “sea-chosen”, and the diminutive form, which I use all the time, is Moss.

Xanga Birthdate: 2/4/2003

Xanga “Statuses”: I’m going to be a True Xangan someday, if they don’t keep changing what that means.  I don’t bleed green enough to afford Life Membership, but have considered it several times.  But they keep FIXING things that AREN’T BROKEN.  I want my old home page back — there are help files that tell me how to do that, but the suggestions don’t, in the end, work.

Xanga Profile Picture: HipposRUs.  Get over it.

First Xanga Friend: Not sure.  Pretty sure most of my early friends are no longer friends.  The oldest friend on my current list is Frankie… but I know I’ve been talking to Flamez longer, and she’s not even on the list…  Hey, when I joined we had Subscriptions only, there weren’t Friends.  Guess I should go look at my Subscriptions list…  yup, Flamez was the 4th person to Subscribe to me… the first hasn’t posted since 2005…

Subsequent Xanga Friends: I only have 19 people on my Friends list.  I have several times that in subscribers.  I know I’m shouting in the wilderness, but I’d love to populate that wilderness a bit more…

Xanga BFFs: Flamez is everything in the world to me.  She befriended me before I knew how much TOO YOUNG she was, and has stuck with me through everything.  That’s what Family does.

Xanga Family: Not into that so much… I just do my subs and occasionally post.

Other Close Xanga Pals: Talked too much about this already.  But Megan is a special lady, and I don’t think her name (just mentioned) is anywhere on her blog so I didn’t give anything away.

Other Xangans Worth Mentioning:

Xanga Likes: Xanga is still the easiest blogsite on the web to USE.  Screw all the add-ons.

Xanga Dislikes: Xanga is trying to be more and more things, I guess to get more users… be something they aren’t already…  I like what they ARE.  MySpace and Friendster have killed off a lot of press about Xanga, and they are NOT NEARLY AS GOOD OR EASY TO USE.

Official Xanga Achievements: My achievements are in life.  I post them to my blog.

Unofficial Xanga Achievements: ditto

Recommending Habit:

Commenting Habit:  I don’t comment enough.  I try to keep my mouth shut unless I really think I have something to say… or am in an expansive mood.

Timestamping: Didn’t even know what this was until someone else’s blog last week.

Protected Posting: I did it when I had to… but I used another Xanga account to do it, and filled that account with public posts that were really, really neat “fortune cookies” (spiritual statements).  Haven’t needed to since certain women gave up on me.

Xanga Themes: Don’t use themes. Don’t see the need for them.  Had to pay Premium to get backgrounds, using Themes would mean I don’t have to pay for Premium anymore…

Xanga Pulse: not a clue

Xanga Plugz: not a clue

Xanga Hopes: I hope that Xanga can refocus on what made it great in the first place, and cut their add-ons to things that reflect and add to those strengths.  Maybe I’m not a teenage girl or something…

Last Words: I’m old.  Leave me alone.  No, wait, I didn’t mean that…

I’m having a wonderful time so far this week (and am scheduled through the end of next week) taking a Peer Support Training class.  This class has been giving me wonderful tools in working on my own recovery, with the goal of teaching others how to take control of THEIR recovery, and includes what were probably the major missing links in why some people resist my help.  I’ll talk about that later, but the fact is, I’m too goal-oriented, here’s-what-you-should-do, controlling… I’m learning to help people become Their Own Expert, not show them how *I* would run their life.  Wow.

The company is Meridian Behavioral Services, using tools from Recovery Innovations, Inc.  RI has offices in 30 states so far, and SOMEHOW the state mental health systems are letting them get away with EMPOWERING the clients, not just babysitting them and making sure they’re taking their medications.  Meridian is the local management entity for the most-western 7 counties in  NC, and they’ve been working for the past 3 years to implement the Recovery Innovations program, which has forced them to part company with many or their former employees who could not get their heads out of the “medical model”.

On the first day, I told them that I had been successfully off psych meds for over 5 years.  In the past, this is where they would predict that I would relapse some day and need their drugs — but the group leader said: THAT’S WHAT WE WANT TO HEAR!  THAT’S GREAT!

Wow.  Something has happened here.  The world I’m living in is becoming the one I wished for, not the hell I’ve been living in for 56 years.  Sometimes I cry out of sheer surprise and joy, sometimes out of fear that I might not fit in…  but I keep moving my feet forward.  That’s the only way I got to where I am, and the only way I’m going to move ahead from here.

Recovery Innovations, Inc. Mission Statement:  To create opportunities and environments that empower people to recover, to succeed in accomplishing their goals, and to reconnect to themselve, others, and meaning and purpose in life.

Their definition of “recovery”:  Recover is remembering who you are and using your strengths to become all that you were meant to be. 

“Peer Support is about partnering with people to assist them in discovering the expertise they already have inside of themselves.”

Their training plan uses the CHEES principle:

CHOICE
HOPE
EMPOWERMENT
ENVIRONMENT
SPIRITUALITY

They have also, along with hope and spirituality, restore the word “LOVE” to treatment.  If you don’t care about your clients, they won’t care about you OR themselves.

At the end of this course, I will be eligible for employment as a Peer Support Specialist — there are 20 students in the class, and 13 organanizations coming to Graduation to talk employment (and nobody said they only wanted one person each).  I will also have 3 hours of college credit in Mental Health Peer Support AND 3 hours of college credit in Substance Abuse Peer Support, from an accredited junior college.

Again.

Wow.

Hugs,
Me
[edited to correct some misinformation in the early paragraphs]

After posting last night about my fish…

Midnight The Sequel was unmoving at the bottom of his bowl when I got up this afternoon.  Two days past his expiration date, so no refund.  I’ll just be happy with Rainbow, he’s been a really good fish.

Hugs,
Me

One of my good Xanga friends posted something like this yesterday… she stole it from one of her good Xanga friends… the object is to post a paragraph or two from your first post each month in the previous year.  (I think I should be more careful what my first posts are, LOL.)  Here is mine.

January
Pink Sky
I couldn’t sleep tonight.  I was plenty tired, and lay down for hours.  Got up and took a shower followed by a bubble bath (lavender and chamomile).  Went back to bed, read 4 more chapters of whatever I’m reading (Kinky Friedman’s Armadillos and Old Lace).  Still no sleep.

I got up and futzed around a bit.  Then I asked the important question, “WHY am I not sleeping?” followed by “What happens when I just can’t sleep?”  Simple answer – it’s snowing.  I don’t know why, but I just can’t sleep during an active snowfall event.  I had to look out the window to check, but indeed we had about 2″ outside.

I remembered back to when I would complain to Beth (now my #3 ex) about not being able to sleep.  Snowfall in Colorado Springs, combined with the street lighting, made the air/snow look pink.  I started referring to not being able to sleep due to “pink sky conditions”.  Don’t know why I forgot that for so long and remembered it when I needed to tonight.

We don’t get many snowfalls here in Asheville.  The ones we get are rarely worth mentioning, maybe 5-6 events per year, no more than 1″ each.  Today they started out predicting 3-6″ (to which I snorted, “yeah, sure”) and revised it downward to 2-4″.  Well, we definitely have 2″ or more… and I definitely can’t sleep.

It is always interesting to see what kinds of things you remember when you’ve been a few decades removed from the first experience.  And this was one of the biggest snowfalls we’ve had in Asheville in my 10+ years here.

February
As I wrote on January 8, I had been served a court order from one of my creditors.  I filed my reply with both the County Court and the Creditor.  My Creditor just sent me (and, presumably, the Court) a document stating that, since I did not dispute my owing this debt or the amount, the Court should issue a Summary Judgment.

Not only can you not get blood from a turnip, the lawyers and the Court should all know that I cannot be docked for this amount of money in any way.  Unless, as I said before, the laws changed when Bush had the bankruptcy laws changed.

Always talking about my debt.  Well, I’m proud of the way I have been working at reducing it, instead of just paying the lawyer to ask the government to make it go away.  Some day I will be debt-free, and will have done it myself (with help from my mother, who cosigned several loans and put her credit union account up for collateral).

March
Well, I’ve had a couple of weeks “off”, and now it’s back into the swing.

I have to report for jury duty at 8:45 am… those of you who know me know how unlikely it is that I will show up rested…  I have a meeting on Tuesday, a doctor’s appt Wednesday, and my usual AHN meeting on Thursday, any and all of which may have to be cancelled if I get on a jury.

My friend Mike spent 3 nights on my couch, but has found (or is trying to find) other accommodations.  He has some more options, but none of them add up to housing at the present moment.  It has been frustrating, as I’ve been working with him for two months and still haven’t found him any long-term solutions to his housing problems.  He does not blame me for any of it, for which I am grateful — it would be far too easy to beat myself up over this.

Ah yes.  I beat myself up more than necessary, I’m sure.  I will continue to get better.  And I continue to do as much work as I can, often 10% more than I can.  And I did not get chosen for Jury Duty, and missed no meetings.

April
I’m getting ready to go to the AHN meeting, taking my non-roommate with me so we can get him a bus pass and I’m taking him to CiCi’s afterward.  (Read about the AHN meeting on Asheville Homeless’ blog).

BTW, the beard is back, and looking pretty good.  Several of my friends told me they just didn’t think I was “ME” without it.

Me and my hair.  I don’t know why I care about it — I’m not doing this out of vanity; maybe it’s just oddness.  I’m having to start from scratch now…  I have about 16 days’ growth right now from shaving everything off from the neck up.  I’ll try taking some pictures every month to show the progress.  Some of my friends swear I use MiracleGro.

May
Things have been hectic, and look more hectic for next week.

I just had a minor “heart attack” (not a real one) when I got both my computers connected to the hub for Internet use, turned them on… and could not get to Ubuntu.  After several tries, I booted to Windows, which was successful; after making sure I had an Internet connexion, I rebooted to Ubuntu and IT WORKED!  (Deep sigh of relief, mopping brow, thanking all the gods of electricity and photons — Hermes, right?).

Still having many adventures with Ubuntu.  I wish OpenOffice.org would fix their bugs so I could stop using Windoze.  The Linux community is friendlier and more helpful, and nearly all Linux software is free (and most is open source — any programmer who can think of a fix can add it, so long as they contribute the amendment to the community).

June
Twenty-five Signs You Have Grown Up
By: Salma Rumman
1. Your houseplants are alive, and you can’t smoke any of them.

One of my many lists that I post.  I get more positive feedback from friends on this type of thing than just about anything else I print (including my own articles).  Funny, sweet, spiritual, or whatever, this kind of thing adds a spark to our day.

July
I had a date Wednesday night, my first in, well, longer than I can remember (usually the woman just moves in or vice versa).  It went so well… got my hopes up… they are not being dashed, but this woman moves so slowly I can’t tell she’s moving.  It will be good if it works out…  but it has been a stress on me, one more thing to think about when I needed one or two fewer things on my mind.

Life.  Don’t talk to me about life. — Marvin.  I’m not even sure A. thought of this as a date, and it’s the last one we’ve had so far.  She’s afraid her family wouldn’t accept me as I am.  Ah well.

August
I got an early jump on my next phase of removing my indebtedness through hard work, with much help and prompting from my mother.  At the end of the three years of this loan, barring any other unforeseen developments, I will have reduced my indebtedness from $17k to $6k, and will only have 3 companies I’m in debt to.  I will not be so pressed against the wall during this 3 year period either, although until it’s over with I’ll not really be eating well.  Will I be out of debt before the End of the World? (re: Mayan Calendar)  Who knows?  But I’m not going to give up.

Read my lips.  No new girlfriends.

So far, so good.  Making payments, not paying for love.  I *did* spend New Year’s Eve at a strip club… first time I’ve ever been in one in my life… but did not even RENT a woman.  Bad food, high priced beer, pretty girls, nice owner… oy.  But at least I wasn’t alone for this holiday.

September
Eternal Press Birthday Party
Today starts our week long birthday party at Eternal Press. Head over to
the blog all week for fun or free stuff. Today starts off with a short
trivia contest.
http://eternalpressauthors.blogspot.com/

Yayy, I got a job!  OK, so it really isn’t paying much yet, but I love my work and my co-workers.  I’m really spending too much time doing this, but I enjoy it so much.  Wonder how much time I’ll have after the training I’ll be receiving the next two weeks?

October
Ten Rules for Being Human

by Cherie Carter-Scott

   1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.

Yep, another list.  Another really good list, at that.

November
I walked past my fish’s bowl on Thursday, and it seemed kinda brownish… since I had just changed it on Tuesday, it seemed odd… found him decomposing on the bottom of the bowl, don’t have a clue why he wasn’t floating.  Waaaah, I loved that fish. 

The fish I replaced him with, Rainbow, is beautiful, and as attentive as any fish I’ve had.  I tried to get him a buddy, Whitey, but he died within a week.  I got a refund.  A few days later I got another fish, Midnight The Sequel, and I’m not sure how he’s doing… he spends most of his time looking like he’s hanging from the surface of the bowl by his mouth… but he does move around sometimes… I think if I lose him I’ll just decide to be happy with Rainbow, he’s such a good fish.

December
The Laws of the Pharmaceutical Industry

<http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/laws_of_the_pharmaceutical_industry.htm>

The main principles governing the pharmaceutical “business with disease.” It is not in the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry to prevent common diseases – the maintenance and expansion of diseases is a precondition for the financial growth of this industry.

The battle for Truth, Justice, and what USED to be The American Way.  Freedom is being taken from us one drug at a time.  The drug companies KNOW most of their products are barely better than a sugar pill (or not as good as) but they get us hooked on them anyhow.  I have been drug-free (except for one blood pressure medication) for 5+ years now, and seem to be becoming considered an expert on alternative therapies for bipolar disorders and depression.

Well, that’s one year.  Fragments of an online life.  Thanks, Irish, for passing the idea along.

Hugs,
Me

LONDON – 19 January – 1150 words
Jewish editor sacked for publishing article

This article was sent to Debbie Ducro, a American-Jewish journalist with the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. She published it, and was fired the next day.

Quest for justice

By Judith Stone

I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine. It was the right thing to do.

I’ve heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I’ve visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I’ve cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking.

Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler’s holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity.

“Never again” as a motto, rings hollow when it means “never again to us alone.” My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Meir even assured us that there “is no Palestinian problem”.

We know now this picture wasn’t as it was painted. Palestine was a land filled with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians and Muslims.

In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere seven per cent of the population and owned three per cent of the land.

Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at a moment’s notice. Bulldozers levelled hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.

Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to the holocaust in Europe there is a levelled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what’s left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads: “Public Parking”.

I’ve talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who hasn’t lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these ‘temporary’ camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Their grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood. The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But the victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist.

Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (30 April, 1995), “The [Jewish] children of Hebron are just like Hitler’s youth.”

We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation for homes, land, slave labour and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a Jew for supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?

The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves…politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves…The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country…”.

Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people. Its cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous people has been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of God. We must recognise that Israel’s existence is not even a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realised through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far been futile.

In Hertzl’s ‘The Jewish State’ the father of Zionism said: “We must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every modern expedient.” I guess I agree with Ehud Barak (3 June 1998) when he said, “If I were a Palestinian, I’d also join a terror group.” I’d go a step further perhaps. Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I’d hurtle a boulder.

Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not G-d’s restitution of the holy land to it’s rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn’t come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their demise as a people.

We cannot continue to say, “But what were we to do?” Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return of the Palestinian people. here.

I found this article on Slashdot.  There are lots of good comments on the site… but basically, global warming is small potatoes if geologists are right about this…