The Emperor Wears No Clothes

The Emperor Wears No Clothes
Collage
8.5" x 11.00"
kgr 2007

IV-The Emperor: (Traditional meaning) Represents the male side of nature. usually shown seated on a throne, dressed in formal robes or armor, signifying material wealth through inner strength. He is an authority who holds power and represents the desire to take control of life. He has the ability to organize and structure, to create order out of chaos, and to realize goals through the courage of convictions.

Symbolism:

3 Stages of Man
Boy, flying high in the sky, in perfect trust and faith
Father, Naked in his Truth, Splendid in his Being
Elder, “Growing old is not for sissys”

Eagle: Soar with Great Spirit, Take Heart, Follow Joy
Stag: Gentle Warrior of the Hidden Glen
Bear: Go within to find the answers
Salmon: Rejuvenate, Regenerate, Re energize, Rebirth
Lion: Take Proper Pride in Your Self
Frog: Cleanse and refresh with your tears in the rain
Goat: Climb the mountain of your ambitions
Chanticleer: Sing in the new dawn
Turtle: Be at Home in water or land, Be grounded on Mother Earth
Beaver: Make today count towards manifesting your goals
Skunk: Attract what you need in order to grow
Snake: Transmute old poisons & shed the skins of the past
Peacock: Be the Jewel in Crown Chakra
Key: Hope, Imagine, Believe: Open all Possibilities

Blessed Be!

Thoughts on Elephants

I was doing some spring cleaning, going through a bunch of old schoolwork in Amber's room. In a typical homework session for the first grade, the final assignment was to write one sentence about elephants—in the zoo, at the circus, whatever. I flipped to the last section, where she had neatly printed her sentence,

“I have nothing to say about elephants.”

Just for today

Just for today
I let go of anger,
knowing I can gently express my inner needs
I let go of worry,
choosing to trust that I have been heard
I am deeply thankful,
to a kind and benevolent universe
I am focused on my work
in creative & productive ways
I am kind and loving,
to myself and all beings.

Blessed Be.

The Blogging Blues

Woke up this morning
With nothing to say
Woke up feelin empty
Nothing to post today
Woke up wondering
What am I to do?
Woke up this morning with
A bad case of the
The blogging blues...

Have nothing to comment
Not even a reply
Nothing to say
To that polyamourous guy
Have no pics to upload
Not even a quote or two
Woke up this morning with
A bad case of the
The blogging blues...

Nothing to google
What can I say?
Even my new jokes
Seem so rusty today
The truth is that nothing
Has seemed just right
Since you left my blog
Since you left my site
Can’t think of a limerick
Or even a haiku
Woke up this morning with
A bad case of the
The blogging blues...

Saw I had a new watcher
Found it hard to care
Cuz it’s not your hairy eyeball
Giving me the stare
Someone signed my guest book
But I just want to link to you
Woke up this morning with
A bad case of the
The blogging blues...

kgr 2008

The Power of Journaling

The Power of Journaling - notes from lecture, Spring 2004

“The most important promises are the ones I make to myself.”
- Maryanne Radmacher

• I use tarot & astrology as a daily meditation tool, to focus on my career, my relationships, and my creativity. They serve as moment in my journey where I look at the map of my life and decide which direction to take. But I don’t just stay stuck looking at the map - journaling is one of the steps I take to put into action what I have been contemplating.

• You can have many different kinds of journals, that you write in at different times of your life. Just as your checkbook is a record of your spending habits, journals can reflect your patterns and serve as a reminder of the positive “emotional deposits”.

• Kinds of journals: Business notes, daily affirmations, dreams (night and day), poetry, sketches, coloring books, blank books or notebook paper put into a binder, a photo album or scrap books, engagement calenders.

• Who is your audience? Well, you, of course, but it also could be your children, your spouse or lover, your business colleagues, your therapist, your best friend.

• Privacy: there is so much temptation to read someone else’s journal. When my lover read mine, i stopped writing for 5 or 6 years. When getting divorced, I read my wife’s journal and found out things I really didn’t want to know. Talk about Pandora’s box.

• There is a lot of power in writing in your journal (or on loose leaf paper) all your thoughts and feelings, and then burning or otherwise destroying them. Recently I drew a horrible picture of myself being controlled by my last lover - it was quite a relief to destroy it.

• Time: even just five minutes a day can grow into a disciplined practice (like flossing your teeth or exercise). This is time for YOU, time to focus on achieving something you desire. keeping a little notebook in your bag is helpful for those odd moments of standing in the bank line. Putting the TV on mute and jotting down thoughts during commercials can reactivate your brain waves.


• Your other favorite tool is your PEN: do you like blue or black ink? Pencil? Colored pencils? Markers? Paints? I highly recommend crayons...

• Or blogging? Having an online journal is a whole other lecture unto itself...

• To quote from the 5 of Wands card - Keep your expression flowing. Stop editing yourself and let go of concern about what comes out. Be playful. The openness of play allows for inventiveness and newness in a way that high expectations do not. (from The Tarot of Transformation by Willow Arlenea & Jasmin Lee Cori)

• You are writing your story and you can change your story - one exercise I did was to divide the page into columns and in the first write a sentence that begins “I wish...” the second column is the same sentence that starts with “I will”. This takes you out of wishful thinking into your will power, because it pushes you to the next step of figuring out HOW to achieve your goal. Examples:

I wish I had more money to I WILL have more money
I wish I was friends with my ex to I WILL be friends with my ex
I wish I had more tome to write in my journal to I WILL have more time to write in my journal

• Other exercises:
- Goals in the next month, year, five years
- List what you are afraid of. Burn it.
- List what makes you happy. Keep it.
- Pull a tarot card, medicine (animal) card, or angel card. Sketch it.
- Cartoons of you
- Songs, poems, quotes by others that inspire you
- Same as above, go from “I fear...” to “I wonder...”
- Pure color (finger painting)
- Create a couples journal, or a friendship journal
- That letter you would never send
- Who am I?
- Love letters to yourself

• Some book recommendations:
Earth Art Critters coloring books by Sue Coccia
The Coloring Book for Big Girls by Sudie Rukusin
When Your Heart Speaks, Take Good Notes: The Healing Power of Writing by Susan Borkin
The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity -- by Julia Cameron
The Creative Journal by Lucia Capacchione

“Turn your wish bone, daughter, into a back bone”
- author unknown

Journal samples from google

Being in the moment

It is a sunny Friday morning, sitting at the Windmill Coffee spot, spoiling myself with a hot, buttery croissant and a fatty mug of creamy mocha over my usual frugal breakfast of a small coffee. This week the theme seemed to be “enjoy the moment” - I laugh, because as I was driving Amber to school I kept thinking about being in this cafe blogging, instead of enjoying our car moment together. When my goodies arrived, I wanted to start blogging - “I’m doing this right now”- but was I? I pushed the laptop away, took the time to dip each buttery morsel into the chocolate tinged whipped cream, and contemplated the particular burgundy the walls are painted, the sound of reggae from the kitchen, the quality of the early springtime light out on the dappled deck.

How do we enjoy the moment, stay in the moment? What the hell is “the moment”? This second/minute/hour that I write? Or is it the second/minute/hour that you read this?

I can see a black raven, then it is gone. I have a moment when I question myself - did that really happen? - my mind filters the importance of this fact or fiction, the meaning of a real bird, the personal symbolism I attach to ravens and I chuckle - raven says, don’t over analyze.

The sooner I fall behind
The more time I have to catch up

I was sick with the stomach flu for five days last week. I feel like I lost a chunk of my life, and that I’m playing the “catch up” game. I have to say, I love my lists. Lists help me me efficient & organized, and end up with huge chunks of time doing absolutely nothing. The ability to create a list that allows one to continuously re-prioritize without having projects fall through the cracks is one of the greatest tools I think I have at times. I have a “List of Lists” file is my computer that includes my daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly lists; spreadsheets of schedules for both Amber & myself; Long term goals and vision statements; house rules; and various business plans.

The Tao of Homecaring
Time to dust again
Time to caress my (space)
to stroke all its surfaces

I want to think of it as a kind of lovemaking
...the chance to appreciate by touch
What I live with and cherish.
—Gunilla Norris

Wednesday I spent the day doing chores: trash and recycling, dishes & laundry, cleaned the bathrooms & kitchen, vacuumed out the furnace and went for a gorgeous walk to buy a new filter. It was one of those “being in the moment” moments, or as Dr. Z would say, “being in the puddle of my miracle”. I was so deeply in love in that moment - I was loving Santa Cruz, the color of the flowers in the field by the railroad tracks, the sound of distant traffic on Mission street, the fact that there still was a local hardware store. All day I floated around, loving my house, loving my body, getting things done in a joyous way so I never felt like I worked my chores, just played house instead.

Little bird, little robin
Help me build my nest
Little bird, little robin,
show me your breast
Little bird, little robin
Help me build my nest
Little bird, little robin
You bring out my best

Coyote came a knockin,
Seven years ago
Coyote came a knockin’
Seven times now
Coyote came a knockin,
Seven years ago
Coyote came a knockin’
Seven times now

Little bird, little robin...
(kgr 2005)

In true Santa Cruz fashion, it is now raining. I have that moment of wondering who am I writing for, who is my audience. Do I write for myself, simply spewing out my thoughts in pixels instead of my old journal as part of my own introspection? Do I write for you, the disembodied other, who seems a million miles away and perhaps as fictitious as the raven. Do I write for an imaginary audience of adoring blog fans, who somehow derive comfort or insight from my ramblings, from the quotes of inspiration that have lit my own way so far.

It has been an interesting medium, the blog, as it spirals out like some sort of endless ticker tape, seemingly linear in form. Yet with links, comments, replies.... the ticker tape begins to widen and weave, split from itself and return, more mobius strip or endless double helix folding back on itself . Then there are postings of things I wrote, in the past or music lyrics in particular , how they seem to reflect my current situation.

Language is a virus
Transmitted orally...
-Laurie Anderson

This moment, this right now, this cafe, this is all so reminiscent to my being in my twenties, staying in Berlkeley for a couple of weeks with my best friend Ilana, between jobs, between houses, between lovers. How I relished that between time, spending my mornings browsing the used bookstore for fiction by African American women authors; spending the afternoon in one of the cafes, nursing my latte as I read an entire novel, or scribbled fragments of poetry in my journal, agonizing over all that a twenty year old agonizes over.

Osho writes that we experience bliss in the moments of transcendence, whether during sex or meditation. Our suffering comes from wanting that feeling to last forever...

On Monday we sat at the end of the wharf, watching the sunset, and I knew I was so deeply in love with you, with the moment, with the seals, with the teenagers hanging out at the corner, with my tears because I knew it was not going to last. When I’m with you each moment is so bittersweet, because I want to enjoy every last savory bit of bliss, but the longing to have it last forever overshadows me at times. I thought of every sunset I had watched with every lover, and felt so incredibly blessed to have been so loved in my lifetime, by so many people. And the truth is I much as I wanted each one to last forever, in that moment I could feel how the love is what is eternal, no matter what the form, no matter who I am with, as long as I enjoy the moment for exactly what it is: a moment.

Life can make you bitter,
Life can turn you cold
It seems I’ve spent most of my own
Just trying to crack the code
But if I die tomorrow
May the last words that I know
Be praises,
Praises for the world...
-Jennifer Berezan