....and yet another great quote from Billie Holiday...

What Puts the 'Kracka' In "Ritz Kracka?" My latest FB share.

Without any thought as to the subtle implications and undertones of the post below made by "The Mind Unleashed" FB page, I chuckled at the comparison, its truth, and promptly shared it on my  page:

The Mind Unleashed - Zeppelin vs. Minaj

 A couple of hours later, it hit me, like the proverbial "ton of bricks":  the white males wrote the "meaningful lyrics" while the black female wrote the "mindless" lyrics.  And why were these examples chosen? Well, for starters, and I hate to make a$$umptions, but I think it is safe to assume that the author of  "The Mind Unleashed" is most likely white, and probably a white male. 

I believe that one's taste in music, as well as one's larger world view, its heavily influenced by the culture in which they were raised.  Sometimes this falls along color lines, sometimes not.  I was raised by middle-class white folks, in a predominately middle-class white city, went to a predominately middle-class white high school and listened to my fair share of white rock-n-roll bands growing up.  I sang along to the Beatles steadily by the age of 10, and Zeppelin was one my favorites.  It wasn't until my last year in high school, when I joined one of the premier track and field teams in the country (the members of whom happened to all be black), that i was exposed to hip-hop, the art of rap, and  R & B.  I was also exposed to my own light-skin privilege, as well as to the fact that "mean" comes in all colors. 

And so it is that my middle-class-caucasian-influenced psyche does not recognize the subtle racism (yes, I said the "R" word) inherent in the post above.  With a little thought, the examples used could have been one of my all time favorite acts, The Pointer Sisters (from Oakland!), with these lyrics from their song "Yes We Can":

"And try to find peace within
Without stepping on one another
And do respect the women of the world
Remember, you all had mothers"

or these from Billie Holiday, from her song "God Bless the Child"

"Them that's got shall have
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible says and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own"

....versus these lyrics from the pop band One Direction's song "Tell Me a Lie"

Tell me a lie
(Oh, oh, oh)
Tell me a lie
(Oh, oh, oh)
Tell me a lie
(Oh, oh, oh)
Tell me a lie!

...oh. except that One Direction doesn't write their lyrics.  And Nicki Minaj does.  And some of them, even I have to admit, are pretty damn funny.  

Gilligan’s Island: A Study in Abandonment

Gilligan’s Island was one of my all-time favorite shows when I was a child.  That and The Brady Bunch - but we will save that analysis for another episode.

Today in my bath, I was reading a book by one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott.  In this book, titled “Blue Shoe,” the author was describing the main character’s ex-husband, Nicky.   She writes:

"Nicky was like the shipwrecked Professor on Gilligan’s Island, constantly coming up with ingenious inventions made of foliage, generators made from coconut husks, ice chests made from seashells, yet apparently never getting around to repairing the SS Minnow."

And reading that description immediately took me back to my childhood, in the same strong way that a scent can trigger an old, old memory in a flash.  

I thought back... what was it about that show that kept me coming back week after week?  Each time I tuned in, my child-self hoping that perhaps THIS would be the episode where they are finally rescued and get the fuck off that island!  My child-self not understanding that, should a rescue have happened, that would be the end of it all, including a very important sense of connection I had with these characters.  

Week after week after week, I tuned in – empathizing with what I thought was a shared sense of abandonment.  Abandonment, one of my core karmic issues I have brought with me into this lifetime.  Abandoned at birth, abandoned by two foster families before being placed with the people who would become my parents, my family in this lifetime.  So there I sat, each afternoon, glued to our tiny black and white T.V. screen, wishing, hoping, longing for their salvation, and mine. 

And the Professor, well, what the fuck was HE up to???  He could make generators out of coconut husks, but could not manage to patch a goddamn hole in the side of the boat?  The “Professor.” Most smart folks I know (myself included) long to be the “smartest” of the bunch.  Do you think perhaps the Professor was – intentionally or unintentionally - sabotaging their efforts in order to remain the smartest in the group?  After all, once back to the mainland, he is only one Professor in a sea of Professors, and there is ALWAYS someone smarter than you.  Always. 

The castaways were never actually rescued during the three seasons the sitcom aired, originally from 1964 – 1967.  Apparently, there was to be a fourth season, but the show was cancelled in the 

interim, and the final episode of the third season became the “finale” episode by default, the castaways stranded in perpetuity.  Perhaps in response to consumer outrage over this anti-climactic non-ending, a movie was made nearly 11 years later, titled “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island” in which the castaways are finally rescued. I can remember watching this movie, and at the end, feeling a colossal sense of let-down.  It was over.  It was over, and so no longer did I have that shared sense of abandonment with these fictional characters…I was on my own now. 

And now, at almost 46 years old, I am finally coming to terms with this core karmic issue, this, this scary, lonely feeling I call “abandonment.” This sense that I will ultimately wind up a bag lady in Central Park with nobody to love me, nobody to care for me.  And on a good day, I can hold this feeling, that ultimately I am all alone, alongside a knowing, deep inside that none of us are ever all alone.  That we are ALL connected, “all-one,” and that it only takes my willingness to stop, get still, and sit with self that I can re-connect with this truth, and finally, even for just the briefest of moments, feel “safe.”

And then, like a flash, in the very next briefest of moments, my “safety” is gone and I am off and running again, separate from the rest, longing to come back together.  And on it goes, breathe in, breathe out, pause.  Breathe in, breathe out, pause…

"Billary"

Until just now, I was pretty sure I made this up...damn you Google!

I did, however, invent the phrase "its a free country." Myself, along with several hundred thousand other folks...

from the oM files...

....ommmmeowwww...

 

 

If cats could talk...

  "Fuk this bitch."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"MO-LOSOPHY"

NO-THING

No-thing: Our true essence.  All “things” in our three-dimensional world are actually no-thing in real-ity.  Forms become formless when we begin to break down the adam.  For the adam only appears to be of solid form due to the break-neck speed of the electrons whirling around the nucleus.  What appears to be a solid sphere is but the movement of sub-atomic “particles,” which are themselves, no-thing.

Our bodies are as vast and open as the space above our heads.  But there is something there, the as-yet undefinable “dark matter.”  What is this dark matter?  It is the glue that holds it all together, unobservable to the untrained eye.  But if one learns to look in a new way, gaze with unfocused eyes at the “empty” space in front of you, the matrix becomes visible.  This is the ALL, the channels, the vibrations through which energy (you and I) travel.

 

Since we are all connected, we too are part of this ALL; the part that we can see, our physical bodies, are just energy moving at a much slower vibration, a vibration that our eyes have been trained to see, by focusing both eyes upon  a single point.  We can learn to look with real-eyes, and finally real-ize a real-ity unbounded by the third dimensional constraints (of time and space).

No-thing: 0-1: Humanity has created the binary code through the use of perceived opposites on this dimension, 0 representing “off” or “no” and 1 to represent “on” or “thing.”  Because we often communicate with each-other through the use of this code, we have become ultra-sensitive to the illusion of duality; that things happen in pairs of opposites.   One cannot know right without left, up without down, hot without cold, good without evil.   And so it is that we tend to forget about the space that holds “on” and “off,” the space that allows both aspects to happen, the ALL.  The ALders are imploring us to transcend the world of duality, while still keeping our souls firmly connected to the here and now of it ALL.  For if one is truly ALL, then within pairs of opposites (digital thought) is revealed a spectrum (analog thought); the unity (U-N-I) within the duality.