At the Bank of Consequences there are no overdraft facilities, and debts are called in as soon as they are noticed”
―
Crime Does Not Pay
Month: March 2019
Me2
I don’t know, my favorite was always witch weather. That moment that in a gust of wind or in the rumbling sky or at the edge of a fog bank where suddenly, you feel different. A restlessness, a sense of longing for a place that does not exist. I don’t know if anyone else has felt the electric tense changing of that moment. It calls the magic to your skin. For a moment, you feel ancient and powerful and lonely, as if you forgot something important. Witch weather. For some reason, in that wild instant, you remember you are alive, and that means some part of you belongs to the everlasting.
~GoodReads
Ladies, We Have a Choice
By Galina Singer
“You look tired!” was the first thing my friend said to me as she opened the door to let us in for dinner.
It annoyed me. I actually thought I looked pretty good that day, given the circumstances.
As much as I try not to let comments like that affect me these days, it did wake up the dormant monster of self-doubt. With each year, the pressure to “do something” to stop the inevitable signs of aging mounts.
My friend wishes well. But she simply cannot understand why I don’t get with the program. Most of my peers and even women much younger than me have already included anti-aging regimens into their maintenance routines, although most stop at injections and fillers. They’ll tell me, “It’s basic hygiene—it’s like brushing teeth!” in an attempt to make it easier for me to understand how low I’ve fallen.
Having “work” done is now the norm, so I stand out from the Botoxed crowd like a dinosaur. According to Psychologist Ros Taylor:
“The availability and accessibility of cosmetic procedures, the lack of stigma about having work done and the rise in women’s disposable income has meant the gateway is clear for this to become normalised. And it is only going to increase.”
Still processing the fact that six months ago I turned 50, I know I’m not invincible to the pressures women my age face. I also believe in having a choice.
However, I am concerned.
I am concerned, because over a relatively short period of time, what is considered normal in terms of “routine maintenance” for women has changed dramatically. It has changed due to the increasing emphasis we place on appearance in our social media-ruled lives.
As we navigate this new world, our image often takes precedence over our real achievements. The search for the forever-out-of-reach level of surface perfection leads us to confuse our values and do things out of social pressure—exactly what I teach my teenage daughters not to do!
An article in Time magazine makes me feel scared and powerless, as it states:
“You’re going to have to do it. And not all that long from now. Probably not a full-on, general anesthesia bone-shaving or muscle-slicing. But almost definitely some injections into your face. Very likely a session of fat-melting in some areas and then possibly moving it to some other parts that could use plumping.”
Not having work done is apparently now the new shame: “You’re going to get a cosmetic procedure for the same reason you wear make-up: because every other woman is.”
Women are succumbing to cosmetic enhancement because we feel pressured to. It’s the same reason that women used to wear corsets and had their feet bound and undergo female genital mutilation: because society demands it.
But, ladies, this is 20__ and we have a choice!
We have fought a long time for the right to choose and take ownership of our appearance.
When we inject our faces with stuff, it’s not coming from the same place as putting on a colorful lipstick to freshen up our complexion.
We are manipulated by the multi-billion-dollar cosmetic industry’s slogans urging us to be “the best we can be” and to strive for our “best selves.” The manipulation works because women have been known to readily succumb to pain to fit in and often confuse self-love with self-hate. We are steered to do whatever it takes because we’re told we’re “worth it”—implying that if we don’t, we only have ourselves to blame for “letting ourselves go.”
I find it unfair when the conversation veers in that direction. It implies that I neglect my self-care. And that is simply untrue. Having recently and finally freed myself from the unattainable, constantly moving target of perfection, I now take better care of myself than ever before through yoga, meditation, and working on fulfilling my potential.
Ask yourself: When we succumb to invasive procedures to look younger than our age, what are we trying to accomplish, exactly? Are we trying to turn back the clock?
Surely it’s not injecting poison into my face and paralyzing the muscles out of their natural movements that will slow down the passage of time for me and make me forget my age. And I just know that melting the fat out of my bottom to inject it into my lips will not make me feel any younger, either.
Whom are we trying to deceive? What are we trying to say? Or rather, what are we trying to silence?
Is it rude or anti-social to show up for dinner looking my age? To have my face reveal what I feel? Do I ruin the appearance that all is perfect in the world?
Am I too much of a mirror to my middle-aged friends, reflecting the real state of where we are in our lives—our age, our children growing and leaving, our long-term marriages in which the impending departure of children from home may dissolve the glue that held it all together for years?
Are we trying to pretend that while everything changes, we stay the same? That we are not aging? That we are not getting closer to the unspeakable, the ultimate: death?
Because that’s another pressure we need to face up to—the pressure to wake up. To stop running away from the truth and face the fact that time is precious and fleeting. That life is fragile and that we need to somehow change our relationship with it, before it becomes too late.
So, ladies, we have a choice.
Which pressure will you succumb to?
I am personally looking for a more sustainable path to aging gracefully.
As human beings, we are part of the natural cycles of life. The sooner we accept that essential fact, the sooner we can reconnect with the truth and, hopefully, accept where we are in our lives.
There is nothing ugly in nature. All of nature’s manifestations have a reason for being and serve as part of the miraculously-working whole. Change and transformation are part of life.
I am so done with the need to be perfect. It leads to tremendous pressure and isolation. It causes people to pretend and to hide and breaks down sincere communication.
We shall not stay young forever. As sad as it sometimes is for me to accept, that’s the only truth.
The point is not to look younger for as long as possible. Tampering with our looks does not change our physiology. What does help us to look and feel better is being mentally and physically healthy, while we live lives filled with purpose.
Let’s go beyond the surface. Beyond the temporary. Beyond glossy images of pretend life.
Let us go deeper. Accept the reality. Be grateful. Find our inner potential. Inspire others. Live according to the natural laws. Give back.
Ladies, we have a choice!
Expect The Unexpected
It’s raining steadily for three weeks now but that’s not the problem. What makes it so difficult to go outside is the accompanying wind of 100/120 km per hour. Trees are falling, roofs are flying, cars, heck even trucks turned over on the road, what’s happening? And it doesn’t stop there. I never have seen a combination of hail, melting snow, rain/storm thunder, and lightning punctuated by intense sunshine you’d think it’s high summer all in one day for weeks! No wonder plants are confused they become bonsai image of their former selves.
Emergency numbers are blocked. They are getting as much as 78,000 calls a day. Firemen and other social workers are at the end of their wits, so are the people who are affected by this strange weather. Where do we go from here?
Places that never saw snow are witnessing this strange phenomenon. I heard that in my country of origin they are expecting longer days and shorter nights. The previous summer is still fresh in my mind when no single drop of rain had fallen for three months causing vegetations to die and wild animals to perished. Now, this…
If we can only know in advance.
But__
You Know what they say__
Who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.
When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.
Right?
climate change isn’t an “issue”
We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of fucking Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that someday in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet will be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”
Plastic… asshole.
―
Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart
I’ve failed and made some major mistakes in my life, but that’s what happens when you’re out here trying new things and pushing yourself to the limit. I’ve always wanted a great life and was willing to work hard to get it. I’ve tasted the bitter taste of defeat and it makes victory that much sweeter. Quitting was never an option for me. When you have a spirit that never quits you are a champion.
Spring Is Here
“Now is the time of fresh starts
This is the season that makes everything new.
There is a longstanding rumor that Spring is the time
of renewal, but that’s only if you ignore the depressing
clutter and din of the season. All that flowering
and budding and birthing— the messy youthfulness
of Spring actually verge on squalor. Spring is too busy,
too full of itself, too much like a 20-year-old to be the best time for reflection, re-grouping, and starting fresh.
For that you need December. You need to have lived
through the mindless biological imperatives of your life (to bud, and flower, and show off) before you can see that a landscape of newly fallen snow is THE REAL YOU.
December has the clarity, the simplicity, and the silence you need for the best FRESH START of your life.”
―
Aphorism And What Have you
“Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.”
“Those who believe it is all right to tell little white lies soon grow color blind.”
The above quotes are both from
Care to try anyone?
Listen To Me Woman
If you grow up the type of woman men want to look at,
You can let them look at you.
But do not mistake eyes for hands,
Or windows for mirrors.
Let them see what a woman looks like.
They may not have ever seen one before.
If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,
You can let them touch you.
Sometimes it is not you they are reaching for.
Sometimes it is a bottle, a door, a sandwich, a Pulitzer, another woman –
But their hands found you first.
Do not mistake yourself for a guardian, or a muse, or a promise, or a victim or a snack.
You are a woman –
Skin and bones, veins and nerves, hair and sweat
You are not made of metaphors,
Not apologies, not excuses.
If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,
You can let them hold you.
All day they practice keeping their bodies upright.
Even after all this evolving it still feels unnatural,
Still strains the muscles, holds firm the arms and spine.
Only some men will want to learn what it feels like to curl themselves into a question mark around you,
Admit they don’t have the answers they thought they would by now.
Some men will want to hold you like the answer.
You are not the answer.
You are not the problem.
You are not the poem, or the punchline, or the riddle, or the joke.
Woman, if you grow up the type of woman men want to love,
You can let them love you.
Being loved is not the same thing as loving.
When you fall in love,
It is discovering the ocean after years of puddle jumping.
It is realizing you have hands.
It is reaching for the tightrope after the crowds have all gone home.
Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of woman men will hurt.
If he leaves you with a car alarm heart.
You learn to sing along.
It is hard to stop loving the ocean,
Even after it’s left you gasping, salty.
So forgive yourself for the decisions you’ve made,
The ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night,
And know this.
Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours.
Let the statues crumble.
You have always been the place.
You are a woman who can build it yourself.
You are born to build.
– Sarah Kay
What Are We Waiting For?
After living in the dark for so long, a glimpse of the light can make you giddy. Strange thoughts come into your head and you better think’em. Has a special fate been calling you and you’re not listening? Is there a secret message right in front of you and you’re not reading it? Is this your last, best chance? Are you gonna take it? Or are you going to the grave with unlived lives in your veins? ~Justine
It made me think of a horse that had been let out the corral after being held in there for so long.
It reminded me of myself when I feel “good” and want to do everything before my expiration date.
I compare it to people who worked and lived for mortgages, education of their children, bills etc. and at 65 found themselves free of obligations at last and try to cramp their dreams and fantasies into that little time left before it is too late not realizing it really is because the things you can do in your 20s you can impossibly do in your 60s and the experience is not the same.
You simply cannot wait to live.
So, what are we waiting for?
You know what they say…
Better late than never.
Paper Boats Forever
“We are what we remember. If we lose our memory, we lose our identity and our identity is the accumulation of our experiences. When we walk down the memory lane, it can be unconsciously, willingly, selectively, impetuously or sometimes grudgingly. By following our stream of consciousness we look for lost time and things past. Some reminiscences become anchor points that can take another scope with the wisdom of hindsight.
Some details in life may look insignificant but appear to be vital leitmotifs in a person’s life. They may have the value of “Rosebuds” of Citizen Kane or “Madeleine cookies” of Marcel Proust or “Strawberry fields” of the Beatles. People regularly walk down the memory lane of their early youth. The paper boats of their childhood are recurrently floating on the waves of their mind and bring back the mood and the spirit of the early days. They enable us to retreat from the trivial, daily worries and can generate delightful bliss and true joy in a sometimes frantic and chaotic life.
When the shimmer of the past is melting into the presence, spreading a scent of attentiveness and inquiring ness, our mind may ask for a new reading of the story of our life. An innocuous flicker from a hazy sequence in our memory lane can affect our current awareness, making us raise questions, throwing new light on our expectations; crafting an airy vision of the future.”
―
I am An Indigo
Indigo is a very rich, deep midnight blue colour mixed with violet which gives it a very regal shade. Indigos relate strongly to intuition, wisdom, spiritual knowledge and telepathic communication.
The brow/sixth chakra also known as the third eye, which is located at the centre of the forehead, relates to the colour purple. An Old Soul or Indigo personality will be able to see things from their higher self, rather than for the purpose of the ego or for financial or material reward.
Often the easiest way to be able to tell if someone is an Indigo is by asking if they resonate with the colour indigo. Even if indigo is not the favoured colour choice, it will very likely strike a powerful resonation and no explanation is needed as to why this is—it is an intuitive connection based on the vibrations of energy in our surrounding auras.
Indigos have an inner knowing that is far more powerful than psychic abilities. Rather than thinking, Indigos use feeling to make sense of the world. They observe the electromagnetic vibrations that everyone sends out and then have the ability to translate the energy to understand it.
Indigos take responsibility for their own lives and also use their intuition to follow their intended path. They are desperate to find the meaning of their life and the missing answers that are found within the hidden and subliminal messages that everyday life delivers.
Indigos will literally feel as though they have been born on the wrong planet. They will feel alien-like while in the company of others who do not resonate with their experience.
Indigos may feel as though they are the black sheep of the family or that they are the lone wolves of society. This is because they do not gel with others well, unless they are vibrating on the same wavelength.
Indigos will often recreate their own families by forming a bond of friendships with those who are similar. They often refer to those they resonate deeply with as their soul families or warrior tribes or something similar.
Authority will be an area that Indigos struggle with and this will likely start within the education system. Rules and regulations will not make sense and Indigos will easily manage to weave their way through systems paying little regard to social norms and unwritten rules.
An Indigo often does not need to gain formal educational qualifications to prove their intellect or abilities, and instead will find their own path to their own kind of success. Success to an Indigo will begin and end with their soul being nourished and providing service to others. Everything else that comes from their success is seen as a by-product and will hold very little value compared with the rewards that are soul-deep.
One of the main traits of Indigos is a strong intuition and psychic ability and many are clairvoyants, even if they are not fully aware of this part of themselves.
Indigos wish to create harmony. They want to feel at one with the earth and long for all humans, animals and all living organisms to unite in peace. An Indigo’s soul finds it difficult to rest and fully relax whilst there is suffering here on earth.
Many additives that are added to foods and drinks will be intolerable for an Indigo. Sensitivities to chemicals will be very likely and the only substances that settle well in an Indigo’s system will be natural ones. This is also the same for cosmetics, or cleaning products, causing the skin to flare or react badly when it comes into close contact with these things. All of these intolerances are ways of seeing what the world needs to change to create a better world for future generations.
An Indigo will have an innate desire to serve humanity and to jump to the defense of anyone or anything that is in need. They fight for equality and will go to any length to support those who may need help or assistance in any way.
Indigos thrive on honesty and integrity and anything else will feel like a stain on their soul that they will work to remove. They make mistakes, tell lies and trip up many times, however, they have a very strong sense of what is right and what is wrong and when they do fail to make the right decisions they will do whatever they can to reroute their journeys so that they do not fall over the same obstacles time and again.
Indigos are on a mission to clear the cobwebs away from illusions and even though it is often painfully blinding to view reality they will adjust their perception continuously until they see things with the greatest clarity possible.
Indigos are the rebels of the world; they are the game changers, the curious ones, the philosophers, the truth seekers, the daydreamers, the creators, the unconventional ones, the peacekeepers, the mystical and magical ones, the quirky ones, the warriors, the free spirits, the feisty ones with tender hearts and tough unbreakable spirits.
They’re the charismatic old souls whose wise eyes give them away as they fearlessly look straight through you and deep down into the dark vortex within.
~ Author Alex Myles via Relephant
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“I feel too much. That’s what’s going on.’ ‘Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?’ ‘My insides don’t match up with my outsides.’ ‘Do anyone’s insides and outsides match up?’ ‘I don’t know. I’m only me.’ ‘Maybe that’s what a person’s personality is: the difference between the inside and outside.’ ‘But it’s worse for me.’ ‘I wonder if everyone thinks it’s worse for him.’ ‘Probably. But it really is worse for me.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer
MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO 
You must be logged in to post a comment.