A Queer Mobile

Gardening season begins!

We headed to our favorite nursery after our weekly pilgrimage to our Co-op in Coralville. I want to get seeds started before I head off for California on Wednesday, and I went with supplies in mind. I got the goods and John bought two large yellow bamboo plants for our developing Japanese garden in the back of the house.

After lunch the two of us hit the garden. Three hours later - and two large garden sacks and two yardies filled with detritus - I finished pruning the rose hedge and John pruned away brush from our pear tree.

Here's proof of spring: crocuses (or is it croci?) are up and blooming all over the garden. We sprinkled about 150 bulbs around the front last fall and we've been waiting for some action. Finally we've got it!

I reported before the snowdrops were already up. I promised a picture, and here's one.

Getting my priorities ordered

Sonia Choquette's book on using your intuitive sense at work has an exercise that stymied me. She presents this list of life areas:

• spiritual
• home
• relationships
• creative expression
• work
• possessions
• health and body
• finances

and then wants you to put them in the order of importance to you right now. Being the cantankerous sort I can't put a priority on just one thing. So I did a map instead:

(Click on the image to get a better view.)

What makes me tick is my inner life, so I suppose the spiritual side is the most important. But spirituality overlaps with my creative work, my relationship, and my home. That's why I can't just put one area above another one: they interact. So where am I?

I've evolved a spiritual life that's increasingly rich. One of the poles of that life is my relationship with John. Now we don't do spiritual work together, like meditation. What we do is what I call the alchemical marriage.

There are those who say you can't be married without a ceremony. Those folks are wrong. There's a marriage of spirit that can happen, and when it does no external validation is needed. The alchemical part comes from my experience of intense internal transformation through our intimacy. The other spiritual work I do - meditation, ritual practice, and writing - pale in comparison.

Creatively I've been wrestling with the notion of right livelihood. Don't get me wrong: I like the computing work that I do. But doing my regular work no longer resonates deeply inside me. I envy John in his work: he creates from his essence in what he does. There's a phrase in Lord of the Rings that I've always remembered: We put the thought of all that we love into all that we make. It's not mass-produced, or scheduled, or optimized, or managed. It comes out of love. That's where I want to head next with my life.

I have stuff happening outside of work that excites me. My work designing a new Tarot deck has occupied me for about a year so far. I've largely given up my photographic work because I spend so much time doing digital imaging in service of this new deck. I love it, and I love being able to express my understanding of esoteric matters through my art. (And I'm getting better at it, too.) I'm excited about my new website, too, CosmicTiming. I've created an astrological website that presents daily information in a way I've never seen before.

 

Getting into spring - even if it might snow

The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours... but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.

-- "Walking", Thoreau

At least we've missed the brunt of the major storm that swept through Nebraska today. We might get up to an inch of snow overnight.

But it's spring, and I celebrated tonight - and last weekend. John and I took our Sunday morning trek along Indian Creek. The ground turns green. With no leaf cover in the forest canopy the sunlight turns mosses, lichens, and bits of grass emerald green. We have snowdrops up all over our garden (they won't mind tonight's snow) and crocus are up, too. Out on the trail the willow tree has the barest bit of green that seems to coat every branch. Buds swell but hold back for a bit more light and warmth.

I set up an impromptu ritual for spring this evening that turned out exquisitely. I lit candles for Lord and Lady and four more for the seasons. Then I dragged out my often abandoned zafu and sat in rapt meditation as the light played around the room. The meditation was unexpectedly peaceful, but it pointed me to my push this season to keep making my dreams into reality.

Over the weekend I read through a great book that's unfortunately now out of print. It's The Walker's Companion, a guide printed by The Nature Company - a business whose sale some years back I still lament. Mostly I leafed through the sections on tall grass prairies like you see around here. We've planted so many Iowa natives that our garden is rich with the same wildflowers you see in untrammeled prairie.

I think there are two ways to encounter a place: one by space and one by time. Encountering a place by space emphasizes what you can see by moving around: here a pasture, there a willow tree. Encountering a place by time requires going back - almost living there - so that time, not space, becomes the factor that changes. It's a bit like watching a time-lapse movie - except that the time unfolds naturally as the lifecycle of the year reveals itself. All it takes is patience.

No matter how familiar the route, there is always something new to see: a mariposa lily just opened, a fresh owl pellet, a pad of moss half emerald green where it caught the dew...Such keen scrutiny sharpens your observation skills... and brings you an unexpected gift, a sense of "being home".

The Walker's Companion, Ann Zwinger

Just got my MacBook Pro

I did an end-run around the Apple Store. MacMall sent me a sale email about having 2GHz MacBook Pro's in stock, ready for immediate shipment. The Apple Store, where I'd had an order since the day after my birthday (17 Feb) was quoting delivery next week. So I canceled the Apple Store order and had MacMall drop-ship me one 2nd day air.

Now I have it in my hot little hands. It's a fabulous machine: probably the best laptop I've ever owned. (And I'm usually a ThinkPad T40 kinda guy, so that's considerable praise.) I've had complete compatibility with all my old software. Photoshop runs like molasses, but nearly every other application is incredibly sprightly. The display's actually better than my iMac G5, which was my last benchmark for display quality. The keyboard is the best laptop keyboard I've ever used.

I lusted for the machine when it first appeared, but I held off a bit. Then my taxes turned up enough refund to pay for the box and I figured, why not? My killer application is to be able to do my 3D graphics development while I'm on the run out west. Right now I put my imaging work on hold a week each month while I'm working in California. Now I can take it with me, and that tickles me quite a bit!

And one more thing: Front Row is much better than I anticipated it would be. I often take a handful of DVDs with me when I travel and watch stuff late in the evening. My little DVD player is OK, but I think I'll be very pleased with the video performance in the new box.

Part of the fun of an Apple product is unwrapping it. John hung around to see how they'd packed it. "You know, Apple's styrofoam is cooler than most products," he said.

Qigong and biofeedback

Last week I commented that qigong practice has helped me tremendously. Here's a concrete example.

I've loved the Wild Divine games. The base game ships with a biofeedback device that tracks galvanic skin response and heart rate. The Wild Divine folks licensed technology from HeartMath to track heart rate coherence. A healthy heart has natural changes in rhythm. Under high stress the heart rate locks into an unnaturally fixed rhythm. Heart coherence occurs when the heart's rhythm and electrical output is highly ordered. The breath and inner attention both affect heart rhythm.

The Wild Divine games use biofeedback to control game play. I've loved both of their games; I've learned more about my response to meditative states playing these games than I have in weeks of meditation. I was working through their new game, Wisdom Quest. Several of the biofeedback exercises are very tough, and I had trouble mastering the control needed to complete the event.

About that time I started working steadily with qigong by following Ken Cohen's new training set. Three weeks later I returned from a trip to California and decided to start up Wisdom Quest again. I breezed through the set; I had the control I needed to achieve sustained relaxation while being able to manipulate other parts of the game play with my mouse.

One other factor in my success involves Focused Intensity Training (FIT). This is a weight training system that involves breathwork and inner focus as part of the exercise routine. The combination of the breathwork from  FIT and qigong was my key.

More about FIT and my experiences with Integral Life Practice a bit later.

They're alive!

Meaning the bulbs in the garden! Snowdrops are popping up everywhere. Pictures tomorrow...

A surpassingly beautiful day lured both of us into the garden. I hacked away on the rose hedge while I listened to podcasts. John worked through all the beds cleaning up the remnants of last year's growth. And the taxes are done! I'm getting more than enough back from the Feds to pay for my new MacBook Pro (assuming it ever ships) and John escaped serious damage.

More brainstorming

The batteries in my Bluetooth mouse died about the time John came in from his evening movie. "Cookies!" he said. He dug out some Newman-O's (like Oreos but from the Newman folks - no trans fats!) and I dunked two into a glass of milk. Now I'm back writing. It's the first real thunderstorm of the season outside, and bits of hail and rain keep time as I write.

I finished Sonia Choquette's Trust Your Vibes at Work. Along the way I did another of her exercises. For conceptual blockbusting around goals, list ten or so things you really love to do. She believes you'll attract your right livelihood if you choose what you love - much as Joseph Campbell said when he preached "Follow your bliss." So I did. Here's my list:

• Encountering transcendence. For me this encompasses different ways inside. Mindfulness meditation; standing qigong; art that stops me cold; sudden beauty in the world; the energetic rush of ecstasy with John. Maybe what's important to others is what I can bring back from these trips.
• Gently exploring the world. Some friends never understand why I want to walk the same path every day. (Not true of John; he's run the same path for the past twenty-three years...) What's important to me is to deepen my experience of the world-at-hand. Every day the light looks different in the cemeteries around us. Every day our garden's different - even when it's frozen. John reports on the eagles that fly by him on his runs, and we spot them when we walk down by the river on weekends.
• Punching through conceptual walls. I escaped from fundamentalist Christianity through hard-headed philosophical thinking. Punching through things isn't just about breaking down technical blocks at work. It's Nietzsche's description of encountering the dragon with scales engraved with the words "Thou shalt". Punching through means leaving that dragon to rot. This is what being queer - not gay, not homosexual - means to me.
• Building things of genuine utility and elegance. This is what I do for money. I build software. Too often the elegance gets lost in the maze of conflicting requirements and internal politics. (Sometimes I don't get it right, too.) That's what I'd love to escape, and why I'm doing this exercise. I still mourn my startup's death in 2001: I loved working with those folks.
• Meeting others. I don't mean casually. I want to encounter people for real. That meeting opens a relationship where support and healing can emerge.
• Living in the creative zone. Three things - creative environment, creative effort, creative goals. I'm part-way there. My environment here at home is completely supportive; it ignites my spirit. Effort sometimes; goals less so.
• Working with bodies. Back to the 80's here. I did bodywork - particularly Jin Shin Do acupressure - for about five years with friends and folks from an AIDS support group. I'd like to renew that work. Surprisingly enough John's not a bodywork kind of guy, so I don't do much massage here at home.
• Opening other people's eyes. This is photography and image manipulation for me. I love to create images that give others the same aesthetic arrest that I described above under encountering transcendence. Here's the Dimensional Tarot.
• Opening other people's minds. I don't do enough of this. I do lots of training at work, but I've never opened to teaching in my esoteric work. Maybe it's time to start...

Breathe to change your body-mind

In November I splurged and bought Ken Cohen's Essential Qigong Training Course - a Sounds True production on three DVDs and five CDs. It's a masterpiece and I've benefited enormously in following the practices he teaches so ably.

I started working with qigong in the late 1980's after I took a course in taijiquan from a Chinese master then living in Palo Alto. I was never very good at taiji because my knees aren't very stable: standing one-legged doesn't work too well for me. I bought several books on qigong, including Cohen's wonderful treatise, The Way of Qigong. But I never took the time to study with a master. Nevertheless, qigong standing meditation has been part of my morning meditation ritual for many years.

Enter Cohen's new training course. He recommends one hundred days to learn the practice and presents all the steps and techniques on the DVDs. Within a week I was standing better and breathing better. I've not followed his training schedule religiously because my travel often interferes. I have, however, developed a twice-a-day standing meditation routine when I'm at home. I'll do some opening breathing exercises, an energy cleansing routine, standing meditation, and some self-massage before I start my day. Then at night I'll repeat the standing meditation and add some of the other routines that he presents.

The big win for me is in energy balance and greatly improved breathing. I'll post shortly on my experiences in biofeedback before and after qigong: the effect is tremendous!

Flotsam and jetsam

One of Sonia Choquette's bits of wisdom is to clear away junk in the environment. Intuitive vibes are subtle and it's easy to swamp them with clutter. So I did. After filing away books and clearing out all the financial stuff I have focused better. Tonight Hovhaness's Celestial Gate (his Sixth Symphony) haunts me as I write this.

I reserved last night for meditation but the Oscars intervened. I didn't watch the whole thing, but blipped in at points. John (who hung out for the whole affair) filled me in on the parts I missed. I was disappointed that Brokeback didn't win Best Picture - but, hell, I've not even seen any of the flicks up this year. Maybe when stuff shows up on DVD...

A Chinese Fortune Cookie keeper:

• Force is too much. Effort is too little. Being is just right.

It's goals time...

Sonia Choquette's Trust Your Vibes At Work got me thinking about my own goals short list. Quite wisely she says you can't go for something that's ill-defined. I followed her advice to list no more than ten goals. Some of mine aren't so short-term as she'd probably like, but they're important to me. And they're not what you might expect from me.

• Realize the alchemical marriage. I've felt this one more and more strongly over the past year. For me, the alchemical marriage is when two lovers create of a completely new energetic level where personality begins to dissolve and creativity blossoms. How John and I are with each other has been transforming in just the right ways.
• Be healthy and sexy. What I really mean is to be attractive to John; no one else really counts. I've been exploring new meditation and energy balancing techniques - some of which are traditional exercise. I think this one is moving, too.
• Be a healer. This one has tons of baggage for me. I think I missed my real calling to be a physician; I went into research instead and hated it. Computing is great fun, but I want to be tied more closely with people.
• Manifest right livelihood. I've brooded on this. I'm beginning to grow out of computing as my life's work. I'm certainly not interested in corporate politics - and that's endemic regardless of where one works. So I'm starting to think of working for myself again. Which brings up...
• Be independent financially. I'm a long way from this goal but I'm making progress. Moving to Iowa and living smarter and simpler took me light-years from where I was in California. I can do better.
• Travel less. If I'm still traveling monthly in a year I will have been going cross-country once a month for ten years. It's getting to be time to stop. In aggregate I spend three months a year away from home and from John. I don't like that.
• Build a vital on-line spiritual community. This is what I'd love to do for a living. I'm getting started on this, believe it or not. Years ago I designed and built a site for doing astrology on the web. That site's no longer up, but I've morphed it into something I think will be appealing. Check out www.cosmictiming.com for details.
• Finish the Dimensional Tarot. About this time last year I started working on a new Tarot deck based on my understanding of the Western Mystery Traditions and my interest in computer-generated imaging. I've now completed the Major Arcana. My aim is to finish the deck by the end of this year.
• Explore alchemy and the Western Mystery Traditions. Here's my real core. I've studied Buddhist meditation and philosophy, but my heart is in the Western Tradition.