Goddess of Love

A Thought

2011-09-07T18:34:00.002-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a simple notion:

Love is possible only for those who believe in it.

Thank you, goddess of love, for belief.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Question Those Whose Livelihoods Are Built Upon Anger

2011-08-04T22:10:00.004-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a note of caution.

We live in an age of media figures, and many of those figures have developed as their stock in trade a certain manufactured outrage. Their harangues are visible nightly on the television and audible at all hours on talk radio, and while I personally perceive them to be tilted heavily to one side of the political spectrum, there are certainly examples on both the left and the right.

It's no wonder that they deal in anger. It's a potent fare, and one that can be cultivated with relatively little expense or effort. And because it naturally disengages our ability to reason clearly, its inclusion in any messaging product makes the quality of that product much less critical. If I can succeed in making you angry about a topic, I can sway your opinion more easily than if you remain dispassionate. An unmoved listener requires more evidence to be convinced than an enflamed one does.

I bring this up not to dissuade you from one political position or another, but merely to point out that a state of anger, while potentially very motivating, ultimately undermines the impulse toward peace, the impulse toward love. The merchants of anger therefore cannot move our world in a more peaceful direction, and do not have the interests of a more loving universe in their hearts. They may actually be well intentioned, in a misled way. But they cannot inspire us to greatness -- only to rash action or impotent frustration.

The next time something on television or radio angers you, ask yourself whether you are angry at the information itself, or if the person delivering the information is purposefully phrasing it with the intention of making you angry. If the information is what rouses your ire, take that emotion and find a way to act constructively on it. On the other hand, if it is the messenger who is goading you to fury, consider whether he or she has your best interests at heart.

In any event, remember that anger is most suitable when it is a response to injustice, and that justice requires both reason and compassion. Then cool your thoughts and contemplate what can be done in a way that will better and brighten the world for those around you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to temper one's temper.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Make a Habit of Living

2011-05-14T23:17:00.002-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with advice that I have long known yet somehow dropped of late from my routine.

The state of joy is only very rarely one that is delivered to us. More often by far, it is fought for, won, and earned through effort. When we long for joy, when we languish wearily awaiting a state of delight, we should not be surprised at its failure to appear.

There are times when the doing of things does not seem worthwhile. We all experience that feeling, the lassitude that says, "What is the point?" But the sensation of ennui, of purposelessness, is an illusion. It is a mask that creeps across the world because we have allowed ourselves to disconnect from that which fundamentally drives us.

The more we act, the more we work toward dreams, toward desires -- the more we do -- then in return, the more we are alive.

Weekly, daily, hourly, we should make effort.

We should undertake.

We should habituate ourselves to action.

Because when the doing of things is reflexive, the accomplishing of things is guaranteed -- even if not every accomplishment goes as expected.

Thank you, goddess of love, for good habits.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Where We Are

2010-09-24T16:59:00.003-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with this:

There.

A point in space, surrounded by infinity.

That's important: surrounded by infinity.

Too easily, we think of what is missing, what we lack.

But infinity allows for no true void. Everything is there. Everyone.

She. He. You.

We long for that touch.

Where is it?

There.

In the sea of all that enfolds us.

Thank you, goddess of love, for everything.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Birthdays

2010-09-07T07:17:00.002-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with wishes of happiness and joy.

Although we should not need any special occasion to celebrate our love for those in our lives who are particularly special to us, it is nonetheless a gift that tradition tells us to commemorate birthdays. We get busy, we get neglectful, and we sometimes forget, in the course of days or weeks, to speak of and show our affection with the frequency we ought to. Birthdays give us a nice prod, which is something that we as human beings often need.

Today is my most exceptionally excellent friend Strumpet's birthday, and I hope that it is the absolute best that it can be, because she is a blessing upon my life.

Thank you, goddess of love, for friends and birthdays, and the chance to share with others the warmth that they both make us feel.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A Brief Time in a Garden

2010-09-06T20:16:00.002-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a scene.

I am on a bench in an enormous garden. A stream moves and speaks through the greenery behind me, speaks of the blue overhead, streaked with fragile white clouds. It speaks of beauty hurrying past me, from so far away to yet farther still. Its voice hangs there, constant and quick -- a small cousin to the mighty river a few miles distant, somehow louder in tone for all its lesser size. The air is cool. The only noise is the stream, although murmurs of birds and distant park-goers can also be heard.

Noisy, rushing, alive, vibrant -- how is a stream so peaceful when it is also all these things?

The answer must be that peace is not stillness. Peace is not quiet.

Peace is the calm that comes of doing what is your nature while the world moves on around you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the subtly spoken words of a brook on its way to the sea.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Brightness and Air

2010-07-20T19:03:00.003-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with an allegory.

Along a mountain pathway, I came to a place where the trail split. I had been climbing some time already, across rocky ground, sharp and ugly. Away in the distance, when I paused to look up, the sky and horizon showed me unreachable beauty. But close at hand, the terrain had only scrapes and exhaustion to give me.

At the split in the trail, I faced a choice. To one side the way became even steeper, but led up past boulders and jagged outcrops toward a sunlit summit, where I knew from the guidebook that green trees and a bubbling spring could be found, along with a quaint little hiker's refuge that had been built there long ago. The other path led down, straighter and easier -- into the mouth of a cave. The shadows inside had an unhealthy cast, as though even light found the air of the cave stale ... debilitating.

Who makes the choice to descend into darkness, to be shut off from any offer of comfort, just because the pull of gravity makes that direction less an investment in effort? Who picks cold, blanketing blackness over a strenuous push toward achievement, toward the splendor of all the world?

The proper choice seems so obvious, does it not?

Climb the mountain. It is gorgeous up there. You will be able to see so far.

Climb the mountain.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the path that should so plainly be taken.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Selfish or Selfless?

2010-06-16T22:00:00.002-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a need to help.

It's some years now since I started this blog, and while I did so mainly in an attempt at self-administered therapy, I've also always had a hope that my thoughts here would make themselves useful to others as well. This may be selflessness or it may be egotism -- most likely a combination of both.

Whatever it is, the desire has gotten stronger of late. As I ask myself why, the answer I come up with is that I yearn to know that my thoughts are important to others.

This is different than knowing that I am important to others. I have friends and family to whom, clearly, I am indispensable. But I also have this interior world, which is constantly churning and only occasionally given voice to those around me.

And this place within that I think of as my self wishes to be useful -- wishes to matter.

I have something inside me that finds less expression than it wants, that receives less recognition than it hungers for.

Is this impulse in some way the exact opposite of what it wants to be? It desires to help, yet that desire seems to be quite self-centered, does it not?

Recognition.

Importance.

Do we really give only so that we may in turn receive these things?

Or do we give because it feels good -- and because all too many things in this world do the reverse?

I don't have a ready answer.

If we do the best that we can, if we strive to be the best that we can, and if what we get in return does not make us sufficiently happy -- then how are we to retain any sense of worth?

And without that sense of worth, how do we go on?

Hope can sustain us, but what can sustain hope?

Perhaps a better question to ask, instead of these bleak and unanswerable ones, is, "Do others feel as I do?"

For if the answer is "yes" then the course becomes clear: find those others, and find a way to make them feel worthwhile.

Sooner or later, someone will do the same for you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to think things through.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Sigh of a Breeze Through Green Boughs, and

2010-06-14T21:45:00.003-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with two sensations that began and ended my day.

A number of less pleasant things happened in between, but I had the good luck of at least two moments of beauty, each far more worthy of being focused upon than the annoyances and aggravations that separated them.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the veil of clouds that parts just long enough to reveal our crescent moon, backlit with Earthshine and hanging just under one achingly bright planet.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

My goal of the moment

2010-05-20T21:53:00.002-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a kernel of purpose: to try to make things better.

This is what I do, and all I can do.

Try to make things better.

Try to encourage people to be nicer.

Try to have a sense of humor.

Look for smiles.

Defuse anger.

Plead the case of hope.

Remember the deepness and the breadth of love.

This is what I do, and all I can do.

Thank you, goddess of love, for meaning.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Request

2010-03-08T21:48:00.003-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a request for hope.

If you can spare a moment to pray to whatever deity you hold dear, I'd appreciate your asking, "Please let there be good news for Devotee's friend who has cancer."

Longtime readers of this blog will recognize that I have no expectations that prayers will or won't be answered.

But I'm assuming they can't hurt.

Thank you, goddess of love, for friends -- however long we have them.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Valentine's Day 55

2010-02-14T10:30:00.006-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a poem for you on Valentine's Day.

May pure desire

stride through your door

tall and dark

or with flame-red hair

looking through eyes

that see only you

speaking with lips

that tell true

May you know

within a single glance

that Fate has spoke

and not mere chance

that Cupid's bow has sweetly sung

and your heart,

however old,

is young

Thank you, goddess of love, for this day celebrating all your work.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A bit of a lecture. Listen in if you care to.

2010-01-10T11:06:00.003-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a brief and simple message.

If you wish to be cared for, you must first care.

If you wish to be loved, you must first love yourself, and then be willing to extend that love to others.

If you wish for a hero to ride in and save you, you must first be willing to become a hero yourself.

You and I -- we are the best this world has to offer. If we wait to be saved, instead of acting ourselves, then we deserve whatever disappointments that we get.

Thank you, goddess of love, for reflections -- they show us where the work must begin.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Rinse and Repeat

2009-12-27T10:07:00.002-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a sense being on a too-familiar path.

I conceived of this religion from a point of desperation, a borderland where hope for humanity and the expectation of happiness seemed in danger of falling behind me, while ahead lay only desolation.

Have you been to this place? Have you seen too clearly the warts and wickedness that people choose to show the world, while joy and decency appear only as far-off heat shimmers in a desert? Having reached and been disappointed by too many mirages, do you now doubt that the desert itself has any end at all?

Well, if you are reading this, then you have proof that things are not so bad as you fear.

I am no mirage. I am real. I care about people -- I care about how the world turns out. If you feel the same way, then we have cause for jubilation. This life is not all carelessness and hurtfulness and callous disregard for others.

You are there, and I am here, and between us, I assure you there are a thousand like us, a legion caught by our own ability to imagine a world much better than this one.

What we must do, you and I, is to stop seeing that imagination as a curse that holds us in a place ever-inferior to our mind’s green landscapes, and see it instead as a gift and a tool.

For without those who can imagine a better world, how can the world ever improve itself?

Let us step off the path that leads into the desert -- because the desert, too, is just a figment of our imaginations.

Stand with me, clear-eyed, in the real world, and remember that all our imaginings have been spurred by true things, by things we have actually seen. Having seen good, we can create better. We must simply have the will to try.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to recognize, to remember -- to rededicate.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Philosophy from a 1914 Pulp 55

2009-10-17T09:21:00.003-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a not-so-literary reference to a book that I have not actually read. Nonetheless, it is a source of wonder to me.

Pellucidar:

The interior world

Vivid ever with its unsetting sun

a realm of eternal day

untameable

wild with life of every imagined sort

and with those too

that have yet to be dreamed

Vastness

gloried and mysterious

shrouded in stone

A sky inside - impossibilities made real

Fear not

Doubt not

Find your way ...

to Pellucidar

Thank you, goddess of love, for Edgar Rice Burroughs, a man who walked a fascinating path between the real and the fantastic -- perhaps because he understood that what is real is also fantastic.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Lessons

2009-09-08T19:14:00.003-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a bit of the spring taken out of my step.

A few days ago, in another forum, I let myself be egged into saying a mean thing. I knew as I said it that it was a mistake, and yet I somehow bought into the delusion that expressing my frustrations in a mean way would make me feel better. Other people had been saying plenty of mean things, and crazy things as well, and I let myself get dragged into it, trying to show them what was what.

Predictably, the whole thing ended up with me feeling even more frustrated, disgusted, and angry than ever, but with the added benefit of feeling guilty and entirely foolish as well.

I relearn this lesson every once in a while: that it is the particular talent of real evil to suck even well-intentioned people into a vortex of anger until they find themselves infuriated with one another even though there's no good reason for it. It's a stupid thing, once you're in that vortex, to swim deeper into it. But at least in that instance, you have the excuse of already having your judgment clouded.

Far stupider is to stand outside that vortex, see the raging blatherers within it, and then dive in to tell them how ridiculous they're being.

Thank you, goddess of love -- not for the first time and probably not for the last -- for humbling lessons.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A Touch Across Miles 55

2009-09-03T21:33:00.004-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the following wish:

Be well, because the world needs you.

Be well

in body

in mind

in heart

in soul.

Be well, because the world deserves you

and you do not deserve its rough handling

its slings

its arrows.

They will strike at you.

But let them touch not

that shining brilliance

glowing

within you.

Be well,

always.

Thank you, goddess of love, for friends faraway and any chance that I have to help them.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Let Us Raise a Glass

2009-08-13T17:51:00.002-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you from those strange borderlands that lie between happiness and discontent.

It is human and natural to yearn for an improvement in our lot -- to want more of what we have that is good, and less of what troubles us. I've experienced some exceptionally good things this week, and yet I find myself chafing at the fact that these have been irregularities and exceptions, not dependable parts of my everyday existence. I wish for a life that consists more of such high points. I wish for a way to keep them near at hand, accessible upon demand -- comfortable and familiar instead of surprising and rare.

My everyday existence is perfectly fine. It mixes a considerable amount of physical, emotional and financial comfort with only a modest dash of stress and aggravation.

Why, then, does the exceptional moment so make me pine for a more exceptional life?

In part, I suppose, it is because I desire the fulfillment of dreams. I write my novels and dream of publishing them and earning a living at it. I listen to music and watch movies and dream of existing in a constant state of aesthetic satisfaction. A great deal of my life is lived inside my head, and because there are so few limits in there, I find myself constricted whenever I return to the confines of the real world.

But in part, it is also simple greed: a failure to be satisfied with the riches within my grasp.

And what does it really take to overturn that greed? I think that it can be done with just six words, if they are taken and held to and believed.

"Look at all that I have."

It's not merely a question of whether the glass is half-empty or half-full. If you think about it, all glasses are always full. It just happens that sometimes they're partly full of air. And no, you can't drink air -- but you need it to live, and it's all around us.

Do I have a full glass of sweet and blissful nectar? No. But the portion of my glass that holds no nectar is not empty. It overflows with the stuff of the world. It is filled by an atmosphere that I need to live.

Even if people occasionally pollute that air with their smoke.

"Look at all that I have."

Thank you, goddess, for a world and a life that are always full -- and for drinks that may not hold all the volume I would like, but sustain me and bless my tongue with flavor nonetheless.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Strangers in Need

2009-07-27T19:05:00.006-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a story.

Earlier today, I passed a woman crying on a bench in the Denver airport. She had her head in her hands, and for a moment I assumed this was simply another stranded passenger among many, waiting exhaustedly for a delayed flight. Then I heard her sobbing, and I knew better.

An instinct struck me, to ask if she was all right. And then, just as quickly, that instinct capsized beneath a wave of doubt. Would she be angry at the intrusion? Embarrassed? Would I do more harm than good?

I walked on. I checked in at my gate. I pondered my noble impulse and the cowardice that had tripped it up.

I walked partway back.

She still sat there, wiping her eyes now. Had she recovered from her moment of grief? I looked out the windows at planes on the taxiway.

I looked back down the hallway again. Other passengers walked by the woman. One glanced at her with a look that suggested she must still be crying.

I made up my mind to do what I knew I ought to do. I walked over and asked if she was okay. She didn't quite hear, and asked, "What?"

I repeated myself. "Are you okay?"

She nodded and said something quickly, "Yeah" or "Uh-huh," just enough to shield herself from an admission of her pain. Her eyes met mine with an uncertain mixture of confusion and gratitude, as though she couldn't quite understand why a stranger would be expressing concern.

"Good luck, then," I said, "with whatever it is that's bothering you."

She said, "Thank you."

And she meant it -- I knew she really meant it, even though she didn't say anything else.

Sometimes you can tell these things.

I hope she's okay.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the opportunity to help -- even if only in the smallest of ways.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The World 55

2009-07-17T09:12:00.007-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a quick poem.

You cannot change the world.
It is too big. Its ugliness is too ingrained.
There are over six billion people upon its ancient surface,
each of them flawed, many of them badly so,
especially some of the ones in charge.

You're too small
and too weary.

You cannot change the world ...

alone.

But we can.

Thank you, goddess of love, for help.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Masonry of Thought 55

2009-07-10T20:00:00.002-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with 55 words that I hope may come in handy.

You can make yourself believe a great many things, simply by repeating them over and over and over again.

Good things.

Bad things.

Wonderful things.

Terrible things.

Lovely things.

Hateful things.

Keep that in mind the next time you start to tell yourself something.

Is it really the kind of thing you want to stick?

Thank you, goddess of love, for positive focus of mind.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Sea

2009-06-26T21:37:00.003-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a soft whisper, like water across sand -- hushed, yet as unstoppable as the tide.

A wave, you know, is the transfer of energy. We see them breaking upon the shore, and we think that they are nothing but the ocean's indecision: forward, retreat, forward, retreat. But that is because we think of waves as moving water, when in fact water is only the medium through which the waves travel.

Each wave is its own phenomenon. It is born of wind or tide and then moves ever forward from the moment of its birth. Its swell may appear indistinguishable, to us, from the swells of its infinite brethren, but it will crest and break in its own unique way as it arrives at the shallows, and it will reach to its own unique height upon the sand as it flows and slows to its final stretch.

Our lives, too, carry energy. And move forward. And seem, at times, to be mere erratic vibrations back and forth.

But we must not fall prey to the illusion that we are mere blind repetitions of a cycle. The world is the medium through which our lives move, just as the sea is a highway to the waves.

By reaching, and reaching, and reaching -- as far and as high as we can go -- we help to give the world its beauty. To remember this is to be at peace: to know that we will end in a cool sigh upon the sand, to the sound of birds and the caress of the sea breeze, with a very blue sky high above.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the sea through which I move.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Two Choices

2009-06-15T23:10:00.001-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with something that I am normally leery of: a dichotomy.

On my jog this evening, I was listening to “Arrows from the Sun” by Therion. I can’t tell you what the song is supposed to mean -- frankly, the lyricist for Therion is pretty whacked out. But I hear the words as an ode to the light of human creativity, so it started me thinking about the choice to create.

As I jogged, I couldn’t escape this conclusion: if we do not choose to create, then we choose destruction. There is no middle ground.

The reason for this is simple. The universe operates on a principle of increasing entropy. Things wear out. They fall apart. That which is useful turns into that which is utter flotsam, if we do not act to maintain it.

It would be nice if we could simply leave things to their own devices and expect them to keep humming along, whether those things might be automobiles, systems of government, or personal relationships. But the truth is that if we don’t expend energy on a regular basis, things collapse.

So we can either choose to create -- to invest ourselves in the world around us in order to prop it up and keep its polish shining -- or we can choose decay, degeneration, and eventual chaos.

And once you recognize this fact, it’s no good complaining about it, because complaint is a destructive force, and destroying, even in an off-handed way, will only leave you empty and likely to engage in other acts of destruction.

So I choose to create. It’s hard, and I don’t always succeed at it. I backslide. I mope. I let myself coast for days at a time. But eventually the truth becomes inescapable: I cannot be happy if I am not bringing some form of light to the world -- even if it’s only cleaning my bathroom or weeding the lawn.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the spark that lets us fight entropy.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Affection

2009-06-13T10:27:00.002-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with an armful of reassurance and a strong hand upon whatever lonely shoulder you may turn my way.

It has been my experience that people are kind of lousy at showing affection. This is not true of all people, of course. My sister and mother and brother are all pretty successfully affectionate. But I have other family members whose affections have always been conditional, and I've been involved with people at various times in my romantic life who've had difficulty showing affection.

And I myself am no wizard at warmth either. I'm bad at consoling people who've had a misfortune. I can never figure out what to write when a coworker loses a family member and the sympathy card goes around for signatures. I get very nervous when saying goodbyes to people who are on that boundary between "friend" and "just an acquaintance." Do I hug them? Do I shake hands? A friend expecting a hug might find a handshake disappointing. An acquaintance expecting a handshake (or just a "see you later") might find a hug overfamiliar. This should not really be a dilemma, and yet I find it vexing on a regular basis.

Still, it seems to me that the most important thing about affection is that we try.

There is a certain good that is done to the world when a friend receives a hug at a moment when he or she really needs it, and I think that creating such a good outweighs the occasional discomfort of an acquaintance who expected only a wave and a farewell.

Yes, affection is a signal, and people can misread it, and all sorts of confusion and disarray can sometimes result. But it makes the world a warmer place, and the world could really use that.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the bravery that it sometimes takes to be affectionate, and for the glow we feel when that bravery brings light into another person's day.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Jogging

2009-05-21T22:37:00.004-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you a bit damp with sweat and in need of a shower.

I jogged tonight, instead of walking. That's because I got some crummy cholesterol results today -- my "good" cholesterol, the kind that's raised by exercise, was in the toilet, and my triglycerides had shot through the roof. So apparently just going out for a walk every night wasn't exercise enough.

I found it strangely harder to think while jogging than while walking. Maybe all the blood was going to my muscles and my heart instead of my brain. But that ended up being a good thing. Sometimes I think too much and it doesn't do me a lick of good, but when I back off and just zone out, things seem to settle into place.

The fact that I bothered to jog, and the jogging itself, and the zoning out while jogging, may have helped a little with my attitude, which has lately been unpleasantly fatalistic. I've been in a major "what's the point" mode for a while now, and although I've kept up with many of my activities, it's been a chore to do so and much less fulfilling that I would hope.

But I jogged anyway. I jogged because, even if there seems to be little point at the moment, it would really suck to hit 50 or 55 and rediscover my zest for living and then keel over from a heart attack. Even worse would be having one of those heart attacks that leaves you disabled, from a blood clot or other complication. I jogged because I want the chance to enjoy life, even if there are big chunks of my life that I'm not enjoying right now.

I'd like to tell you that I came home feeling great -- riding a wave of revelation, ready to take on the world tomorrow. But I actually just came home feeling okay. And then I sat down and wrote out some notes on the next thing I need to do in my book, which had been eluding me for some time, and I felt okay about that too.

Now I've written a nice big post here for the first time in a long time, and I'm feeling okay about that as well.

And while "okay" may not be great, it does beat the heck out of "what's the point?"

Thank you, goddess of love, for a working heart and for small victories over nihilism.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Sometimes Small Things Are All You Can Do 55

2009-04-30T23:32:00.005-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word, "Love." Here are 55 words I came up with tonight.

I have worked today. Devoted time to family. Written at my novel. I am hurt, in wrists and arms. In my psyche. I am tired. Yet I take pains, now, literal pains, to write this for you. You deserve to know someone cares. May I ask, please -- go and let someone else know it too?

Thank you, goddess, for the strength to make an effort, even if only a small one.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Goddess 55

2009-04-24T07:17:00.003-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you in a spirit of observance. I wrote the following in my journal, and when I counted it out, it was exactly 55 words without even trying, so I figured I'd post it.

She lives in every moment that joy lights the eyes. She dwells in those places of laughter, those smiles of contentment. When the heart stirs, she is there, and also when the warm glow of sleep in a comfortable bed holds us half-conscious at the cusp of awakening, while pleasant dreams wind themselves to conclusion.

Thank you, goddess of love, for serendipity.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee.

I Am Moved

2009-03-23T22:52:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a kinetic enthusiasm -- a vibrance that is born in momentum.

While out walking tonight, I found myself thinking how important it is to be in motion.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I had this epiphany while listening to “Girls on Film” by Duran Duran, which may undercut both my philosophical credibility and your faith in me as an aficionado of rock and roll. But if it’s any help, my iPod followed that with “Crush ’Em” by Megadeath.)

Few things deaden the soul so thoroughly as the sense of being inert. Stable becomes static becomes stagnant, and when we feel that we are stuck, everything else begins to turn grey -- regardless of the circumstances in which we have become entrenched. Stillness closes in on us like a trap.

Yet even as we decry our immobility, the urge to move, to work our muscles and propel ourselves, somehow eludes us once we reach that state of entrenchment. We feel that we have been deserted by our winds, abandoned by the stars that might have shown us our way across the sea. The world becomes an endless, flat sargasso, dull and hopeless, where we wait and wait for a new breeze, slowly consuming our stores of water and sustenance until we risk desperation so great that we might drink of the brine and descend into madness.

We forget, somehow, that a brisk walk creates its own wind. That our thoughts can, if so directed, travel in paths that are not circles, to reach destinations that are not bleak.

Remember this: it is better to wander -- utterly lost but determined that you should find something -- than to sit and bemoan your paralysis.

Thank you, goddess of love, for a sense of progress, and for a mystery that I can progress toward.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Seize What You Believe

2009-03-04T21:33:00.003-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a challenge that I am attempting to live up to myself.

Objects come and go. You may attain them, they may please you, and then they may break or become lost or develop a depressing malfunction.

People come and go. They may like you, they may love you, they may betray you, they may desert you.

Circumstances come and go. The job you hate may pass; the job you love may hand you a pink slip. A favorite club may close. The town you have come to know like the back of your hand may suddenly put itself in your rearview mirror.

But none of this means that life is a ceaseless parade of dangled hopes and lost possessions. The fact of transience simply is. It is not good or bad, but merely a fact.

And in one critical way, you can stand firm against transience -- against the ephemeral nature of this world.

You can believe in something, and insist upon believing in it, and hold fast to it.

And who knows? Maybe someday that adamant conviction, if properly displayed, will win you the perfect job that you can ride right through to retirement. Will carry you to a place where you can settle until the end of your days.

Will attract someone who sticks and does not leave.

But even if it doesn't, your belief alone will get you through -- if only you grip it tightly enough and refuse to let go.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the knowledge that I can be larger than this fickle, fleeting world, as long as I simply demand that I be so.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Importance of Being Unimportant

2009-02-05T21:13:00.003-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you from a whirl of chaos, left by the near passing of catastrophe. But I don't intend to write about that.

A very wise person recently suggested to me (not in so many words) that we serve our friends best by being ourselves.

We are important to our friends because of who we are -- not what we do or what we say. They are drawn to us because they enjoy the kinds of things that we naturally do and say when being ourselves.

They need us -- to the extent that they do need us -- because something about the kind of people we are calls out to them.

In good times, this principle requires no conscious acknowledgment or thought on our part. We do as we do, our friends do as they do, and through that wonderful synergy and coincidence, all of our bright lives are made brighter.

But there is a challenge to this simple truth that occurs when things are not so smooth. When a friend is hurting, when a friend could clearly use some comfort or aid, we begin to search for the right thing to do to help. This is not necessarily bad, especially if we are the kind of person who ordinarily spends a lot of time thinking about the right things to do.

However ... if we pressure ourselves, if we insist to ourselves that it is SO important to find the right thing that's needed to help, two insidious things can begin to occur. First, the pressure may cause us to drift from that state of simply being ourselves -- of behaving in the way that caused us to be important to our friends in the first place. Second, our brains may play a little trick on us, perform a little slip that takes us from thinking, "It is SO important to me to help my friend," into thinking, "I need to help my friend because I know how important I am to them."

In pressuring ourselves, we distort ourselves. In focusing too much on the importance of helping, we inflate our own sense of importance. Soon, despite having started from the best of intentions, we have moved into a mode of behavior unlike our ordinary one, a mode which may or may not bear any resemblance to the behavior that drew our friends to us in the first place.

The lesson is, be there for your friends -- but be there by being yourself. Remember that you can't fix your friends, just as they can't fix you. But if you brighten their world by remaining true to the person they find so entertaining or engaging, then you may help them find the support they need to fix themselves.

Don't worry about how important your help might or might not be. Just be as you are, and if you're the right kind of person to start with, your friends will find all the help they need in you, on their own, and naturally.

Thank you, goddess of love, for humbling experiences, and for friends who stick with you even if you go off the rails sometimes.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Celebrations of Life

2008-12-24T11:22:00.003-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with wishes of joy, peace, and generosity for this holiday season.

Christmas is ambivalent for many people. The holidays bring music and decorations that are meant to lift spirits, yet it's often reported that depression spikes upward at this time of year as well. I personally like the secular Christmas carols a lot, but have a harder time listening to some of the more religious ones.

I think that we who doubt the scriptural story of Christmas are challenged by this time of year because we see others attributing joy to a source we cannot credit.

I want to believe in peace and decency and the power of a happy heart, and so it troubles me that I see people expressing these things while ascribing to them an origin I find dubious. Alienated from the cause of their joy, I ask whether my faith in joy itself is therefore in doubt.

Then, too, it is easy to tread the path of cynicism and ask, "If peace and generosity and love of one's fellow man are so important to remember, why not remember them all year long, instead of just for the space of a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day?"

Nor is the task of accepting holiday cheer made any easier by buffoons in the media who try to fire up their listeners with stories about the "War on Christmas," full of outrage that department store chains ask their greeters to say "Happy Holidays" instead of extolling the specifically Christian message that the righteous desire to hear.

But the existence of pettiness and hypocrisy should never be allowed to tarnish that which is real and beautiful. If so many people have larger hearts at this time of year, that is an undeniably good thing, which can never be lessened by the fact that a few of them also have smaller minds than we'd wish.

When large numbers of people celebrate life, sing of hope, and give sanctity to joy, then we should bow our heads with them in appreciation, even if we believe differently than they do.

People are ugly and mean and vindictive year-round. The fact that some of them can be better during the Christmas season, and the fact that most can express wishes for a better world, should give us cause for boundless gratitude.

Thank you, goddess, for all occasions which lift hearts and encourage wonder.

Merry Christmas to all.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Revenge 55

2008-12-19T09:53:00.006-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a story of triumph that I hope will serve you well.

It surprised Pamela

that she had enemies.

Bosses.

Coworkers.

Strangers

on the road.

She tried so hard to be nice,

but

SOME

people...

ugh!

At last, though,

she finally found

absolutely

perfect

vengeance.

Every day,

she got up in the morning,

and she lived her life

as if none of them

mattered

all.

Thank you goddess of love, for the knowledge that enemies have no more power over us than we give them.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

When Grace is the Comfortable Norm

2008-12-17T18:07:00.000-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a recommendation, if you find motivation or purpose elusive.

In most large cities, you should be able to call the local ice-skating rink and find out when they have classes and what level of skaters they teach. (Don't worry; I'm not going to recommend skating lessons.) Consider taking a trip down to the rink the next time a high-level class is scheduled, and simply go in and have a seat in the observation area.

You might even have luck just going in during open skating and looking amongst the crowds of skaters for the small number of really proficient ones.

What I want you to look for, and pay attention to, is an excellent skater who is not actively practicing.

A true talent who is just standing around. Perhaps chatting with a friend.

The reason I want you to look for this, and watch it closely if you find it, is simple: it will show you how the pursuit of art changes you.

Whether one likes figure-skating or not, it's an impressive art form that requires extraordinary discipline as well as natural ability. These facts are obvious to us when we see the elaborate routines that good skaters develop and perform.

But what is less obvious is that even when not performing, a truly exceptional skater is something beyond ordinary. The typical person at the rink, whether in motion or still, remains not quite in his or her element. Even people who skate well have a bit of tension, a bit of caution in their posture, when not actively skating. They may be comfortable, even relaxed -- but they will not appear quite as comfortable or relaxed as they would be standing flat on solid ground.

A remarkable skater, though, is different.

A remarkable skater, one who has lived and breathed skating for years, appears just as much at ease on the ice as off -- perhaps even more so. They can be fully preoccupied with something else -- a conversation, or paying attention to a trainer or coach -- and still exhibit complete and effortless grace in their posture and movement.

They have become creatures at home in a strange realm, and this transformation has left them unable to appear clumsy or out-of-balance unless they deliberately attempt something beyond their skill.

In pursuing the ability to create beauty, they have themselves become reflexively beautiful.

And this is where effort takes us, when we aspire to make ourselves capable of beauty: to the place where grace needs no conscious thought.

Of course, if you're already a champion figure-skater and still find motivation and purpose elusive, I guess this post is pretty useless to you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for all those who have in some way made greater beings of themselves.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Wilderness of Your Soul

2008-12-04T21:54:00.002-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a metaphor, which I hope does not come off as too painfully overconstructed.

We have within us wild places -- frontiers of our psyche that are little explored, and also woodlands and marshes we have been to time and again, yet never managed to tame. The mind is a place rampant with growth, where our conscious thoughts are the only domesticated residents.

When we focus our consciousness outward, to deal with the people and things around us, we live in a civilized realm, or at least one that puts on a mask of civilization.

But inside, we have passions and memories and reflexes that do not answer to civilized notions.

If we shun those wild places -- if we look only outward, live only for the external events and pressures and stimuli that we encounter -- then our interior frontiers can only grow more wild, more dangerous. Sooner or later, we may be forced to venture into them, and if we have never prepared ourselves to do so, they may consume us.

But whatever the perils of our untrammeled wildlands, they have richness and beauty too. And if we seek their safer quarters, if we explore and search with the right preparation, well equipped for pushing in through trackless, thorny depths, then we can learn how to be safe and even comfortable in their fabulous and natural glory.

There is wildness inside you. Put on your boots and take up your walking stick. Make sure you have matches and a pocketknife with you.

Find the green glade splashed with sunlight where no one has ever been.

Look up at the vast blue sky.

Let yourself quiver a little at the distant growling that echoes from the shadowy undergrowth nearby.

And know that it is all you.

Do this often enough, and carefully enough, and you will eventually learn which paths through the wilderness of your soul are safest, and which fruits you can carry out of the woods to share with those beyond.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the forests of thought and instinct and, yes, metaphor within us.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

An Inner Knowing 55

2008-11-21T07:52:00.003-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a 55 that I thought better-suited to this blog than to my "other writings" one. Here it is:

Worlds open up to the heart that asks itself, "What do you want?" and then waits patiently for an answer.

It is the readiness to know the self that primes us for understanding our place in life.

This trust of what is inside, even things hidden, surpasses any pangs that might assail us from without.

Thank you, goddess of love, for questions and for ears.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Be a Spirit in Search of Beauty

2008-11-04T21:55:00.002-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word "love," and I wish upon you its sister, "beauty."

The title of this post really says all I mean to say at the moment.

Be a spirit in search of beauty.

If you seek, you shall find.

The only real clarification I need to add is, don't be a picky spirit. Don't insist on a certain kind of beauty, don't await the pinnacle of your preconceptions.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the will to look for you in all things.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Give, and Do Not Ask

2008-11-04T20:29:00.002-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a lesson that I seem unable to retain, no matter how many times I learn it.

The old saying insists that It is better to give than to receive.

There are several ways to interpret this. One interpretation is that the act of giving is superior to the act of receiving. I'm kind of dubious of that interpretation, because in an awful lot of situations, receiving just plain rocks. Let's be honest -- if a mysterious black void appeared in the air in front of you, would you rather take a present and throw it into the void, or would you rather a puppy fell out of the void for you? (Assuming you're the kind of person who likes puppies.)

This first interpretation of the phrase suggests that generosity is superior to avarice -- which is true enough -- but if that's all there is to it, then it seems like kind of a weak way to guilt us all into being more generous. I don't like it when people (or aphorisms) try to make me feel guilty, because I've got my own guilt complex to start with and I don't need any help with it, thank you very much. So that's another reason I shy away from this reading of the saying.

A related interpretation is that we should strive to enjoy the act of giving, because if we can teach ourselves to get pleasure from giving, the world will be a better place. I'm a lot more willing to buy this interpretation. But it still carries a rather lecturesome tone. Reading between the lines, one can't help but take it to mean, "You know, you're kind of a selfish twit, and you need to fix yourself. So shape up and do some giving."

But here's the interpretation that I have learned (and keep relearning) to be true.

Giving is simply a better strategy for happiness than receiving.

When you give, you are almost guaranteed to receive some form of gratitude in return. Not in every case, but in most of them. And because the gratitude you receive is unasked-for, it's a bonus.

In contrast, if you depend on receiving for your happiness, you live your life in a constant state of expectation, and every time that expectation goes unmet, you are disappointed.

So if you give, and give without expectation, life is full of bonus happiness for you, whereas if you hunger to receive, it is full of disappointment.

And if you adopt giving as a strategy, and make it a habit, and find your life constantly enriched by the gratitude that naturally flows your way in response, then sooner or later you find that, without even trying, you've learned to enjoy giving for its own sake.

And then you can give into the void and be delighted by it.

Of course, the giving life requires a lot of energy, and can take a lot out of you. And if you run into a string of ingrates who fail to respond well to your generosity, you can begin to doubt the strategy.

Which is why you need to remember to regularly give to yourself.

There's nothing in the saying that says the giving always has to be giving to others.

Just remember, when you give to yourself ...

Say, "Thank you."

Thank you, goddess of love, for generosity, for gratitude, for lessons learned both easily and through hard knocks.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Forgive Yourself

2008-11-03T08:06:00.000-06:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with cheeks recently red on a day when the sun is bright in the blue sky outside and I know that things are looking up.

If you're anything like me, you probably think, pretty regularly, "I am such a moron."

Now, you're probably not actually a moron, and you almost certainly know that you're not actually a moron, but life is weird and difficult and forces us to make choices and most of those choices are completely unremarkable and cause us no ill effects, but when even a small choice turns out to be a small mistake, we think, "I am such a moron."

In the best of cases, we think this with a laugh and it is healthy.

But in the not-so-best of cases, we think it and mean it, and in those cases it's a very dangerous thing to think.

There are two reasons why it's so dangerous.

First, our brains are self-reinforcing mechanisms. Habits of thought strengthen neuronal connections in the brain and create the patterns that are our memories and that guide our outlook on life. The more often we think of ourselves negatively, the stronger the negative connections become, and the more quickly our brains jump to those patterns when we receive a negative stimulus. This is the biomechanism of depression, and it's why depressive people can go into a tailspin at even the tiniest problem. Their brains have practiced negativity so thoroughly that the response is automatic.

The second danger is that even if we're not prone to depression, we will start to use "I am such a moron" as an excuse. It will become a shield against the need to improve ourselves. And really, even if you're not a moron (in fact, especially if you're not a moron), you need to improve yourself.

Not because it is bad to be flawed, but because it is so good and so empowering to conquer your flaws.

Own your mistakes. Forgive yourself for them. Take them in and build a better you with them.

You're definitely not a moron, and I believe in you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for self-forgiveness, and for friends who help us to practice it.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A Study in Contrasts

2008-10-31T08:14:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a listening assignment, if you're so inclined.

This is a combination that my iPod kicked up for me over the summer.

First, listen to Devo's It's a Beautiful World.

Then, listen to Amy Correia sing Life is Beautiful.

You have to pay attention to the lyrics on both songs, and I strongly recommend that you minimize the window when listening to the Devo song. The video is brilliant, but I couldn't find video on the Amy Correia song, and I think it's unfair to do a comparison between audiovisual art and purely audio art. Most of us are such visual creatures that the video will always make a stronger impression. If you really want to do things right, open both links in different windows, play the Devo song, and then click over and start the Amy Correia song the instant Devo finishes up.

It's up to you whether you want to complete the assignment now, or read on for my own opinion on the two songs, but of course I'd like you to formulate your impression without contamination from mine (... again, if you're so inclined).

My reaction to hearing these two songs back-to-back was this (taken from a journal entry I wrote at the time):

Earlier this evening, my iPod thoughtfully followed Devo's It's a Beautiful World with Amy Correia's Life is Beautiful. The contrast literally made me cry, even more than Life is Beautiful usually does. I love Devo's wry cynicism, but it was fabulous to have Amy Correia immediately demonstrate how wrong that cynicism is.

I have so many frustrations, so much angst over things of trivial importance and greater significance alike. In some ways, I feel I have been stretched and twisted to my breaking point in recent months.

Yet I have also grown more and more ready to weep at pure beauty, and I would not give up that intensity of feeling for any reduction in stress.

Thank you, goddess of love, for exquisite juxtapositions.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Trust Your Instincts but Doubt Your Judgment

2008-10-27T21:35:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you wearily but hopefully, in a certain amount of physical pain but with a spirit fairly bright.

Because I'm tired from overwork and my arms and shoulders are warning me not to type too much, I'll see if I can be succinct and to the point here.

What we feel, immediately, powerfully, when we encounter a certain situation or person, is not always correct. Instincts can lead us astray. But no matter what the eventual outcome, our instincts always tell us something. It may be something accurate about the specific incident, or it may be something about ourselves.

The point is, when you feel something nagging at you, or goading you, or enticing you, unbidden, you should explore it and see what it's telling you.

But you have to be careful about how you explore it. Because in pondering our instincts, we unavoidably activate our judgment. We weigh evidence, measure and mutter and debate with ourselves, until we reach a decision. That decision will in some way commit us emotionally, and if we make it incorrectly, the results will eventually be unpleasant.

A good question to ask would be, "Am I drawn toward this judgement because my instincts are telling me it's right, or am I drawn toward this judgment because I desire it?"

When we doubt our instincts, we become paralytic, unable to act. We have no basis for movement, and will usually follow robotically along some path that the world puts before us.

When we blindly pursue our instincts, we are just as trapped, because we are free to act, but we cannot discriminate or plan or prioritize.

And when we put too much faith in our judgment, we grow arrogant, and will undertake ambitions that are likely to hurt ourselves or others.

But when we trust our instincts, yet doubt our judgment, we become empowered to act with humility. We can say to ourselves, "I choose this course because I have listened to my heart and I think that I know it. But I also know that I may be wrong, and that I may have to correct my course as I move forward."

Well. I don't know if that's coherent, but my arms and my head are too tired for more.

Thank you, goddess of love, for instinct and judgment and a sense of balance.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Three Principles, Revisited

2008-10-14T21:15:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word, "Love."

Possibly, we all need reminders once in a while -- I know I certainly need a lot of them. I have about four thousand pages worth of journals in my closet, and when I go paging back through them I am often struck a bit numb by how regularly I encounter the same repeated problems, and the same wise lessons learned -- and then forgotten, and then relearned.

So in this entry, I'm reminding myself, and any of you who've read back to the start of this blog, of the three principles of my religion. (Most religions make a great show of repetition, so I'm not sure why I feel the need to justify this covering of old ground, but there it is anyway.)

The three principles are:

Thankfulness

Generosity

Love

I'm not going to describe them in any greater detail at the moment. Hopefully, they don't really need that much explanation anyway. But they bear repeating.

They bear being dwelt upon.

They are their own reward, and I hope that you will help yourself to them.

Thank you, goddess of love, for good things known over and over and over again.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Be Patient

2008-10-14T20:38:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with more unasked-for advice. If you're getting tired of this, have no fear: tonight I'm rounding out a sort of trilogy comprising the last three posts. Then I believe I'll be done pontificating for a bit. Here, then, is the capstone post.

You can do something well and still be unhappy.

You can know what you want, and yet find that it seems impossibly far from your grasp.

So the closing key to self-fulfillment must be patience.

It's said that patience is a virtue, but I would argue that it is something else entirely. To me, a virtue is that which in and of itself brings good: honesty, loyalty, generosity, empathy and so on. Because these things bring good, they also render us vulnerable to those who do not care about good. When honest, we put ourselves at risk of being misled or overshadowed by the dishonest. When loyal, we put ourselves at risk of betrayal from those who are disloyal. When generous we may be taken advantage of by the greedy, when empathic we may be abused by the egocentric.

Virtues, then, are noble and ambitious because they aspire to make the world better at the risk of those who undertake them. They are difficult. They are challenging. We must push ourselves toward them, because they are hard -- and because they are dangerous.

Patience, in contrast, is much more of a tool. The saint is patient, but so is the snake. Patience is the condition which lets us move through the world in search of our goals, instead of feeling adrift in it without control.

Patience is openness -- the willingness to wait and see.

So if you know what you want, but have not yet found how to do it well, be patient. Practice. Study. Keep an eye out for other things that you might want, and which might perhaps suit your talents better. A path will make itself known eventually.

If you can do plenty of things well, but do not know what you want, be patient. Exercise your capabilities. Look for new experiences. Talk. Read. Listen. Think. A passion will capture you sooner or later.

And if you know what you want, and you already do it well, and success still eludes you and leaves you stuck in circumstances that block your creative efforts and stifle your inspiration ... be patient. The moments in which you have your focus, in which you do as you wish and excel in your chosen desire -- those are treasures worth waiting for. Let yourself float through the tiresome intervals in between those gilded times. Do not resist the rest of your life, but embrace it with the certainty that it will sooner or later bring you back to the thing that you wish, give you a moment here and a moment there to progress toward whatever it is that you most fancy, and sooner or later will grant you the appropriate reward for all your many efforts.

Do not strive to be patient. Be patient so that you have the comfort to strive for your dreams.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the tool of patience and the knowledge of how to wield it.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Know What You Want

2008-10-13T21:47:00.001-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with another notion gleaned from music, and I hope for your forbearance if you find yourself unable to identify with my admittedly peculiar tastes.

I bought a CD some months back by a band called Dragonforce. I bought it not so much because I thought that it was going to be genuinely good, but because I'd listened to some song samples on Amazon.com and a video or two on Youtube, and I found myself full of admiration for the purity of this band's ambitions.

Dragonforce is not a bunch of guys who thought, "We'd like to be musicians." They're not a bunch of guys who thought, "We'd like to be rock and roll musicians." They did not form their band because they wanted to be heavy metal musicians, or, more specifically, power metal musicians.

One listen to a Dragonforce song (assuming you're the kind of person who can listen to this kind of music), and you'll be certain, as I was, that Dragonforce was formed out of the burning desire of each of its members to be absolutely the fastest power metal band in the history of rock and roll, EVER.

Now, it's debatable whether this ambition is something that anyone truly ought to aspire to. I've come across people online deriding Dragonforce as a collection of simple-minded Johnny One-notes who have managed to completely master a single narrow form of instrumental proficiency at the expense of any real musical or emotional sophistication. And I'll admit, no one is very likely to say, "Wow, the evocative nuances of that latest song by Dragonforce struck something so deep in me that I almost choked up."

But all of that is missing the point.

While I might wish that Dragonforce used a little more syncopation, made more use of varied dynamics, and explored some more experimental time-signatures or key changes, one fact is clear to anyone with an ear for a wide variety of music: Dragonforce is a group of musicians who have become successful by knowing exactly what they want to do and pursuing it with passion.

You may find Dragonforce pointless, superficial, or outright unlistenable, but you can't deny that they are sincere. And I think it takes a pretty small person to say it's not enough for someone to combine sincerity, desire, drive, talent and accomplishment in pursuit of art that others will enjoy.

Do you know what you want? Art? Travel? Spiritual enlightenment? Love? Have your efforts toward these things been directed and focused? Did you learn what it takes to be good at the thing you aspire to? Are the results something you are proud of?

If you can answer "yes" to most of those questions, then it does not matter how modest or how grand your ambitions are. It does not matter if you are Mozart, or Dragonforce, or Shakespeare, or just an anonymous blogger.

Knowing what you want and doing it puts you in the company of the most accomplished people in the world.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the path to an identity that is real and whole.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Do Something Well

2008-10-10T22:21:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a suggestion that limitations may not be such a bad thing.

Are you familiar with the theme song from the James Bond movie Moonraker? (And before you get sarcastic, yes, I'm aware of the irony of writing about Moonraker in a post titled "Do Something Well." The movie is silly and cheesy in ways that I love, but that I acknowledge are not for everyone.)

It's an amazing song, brilliantly composed by John Barry and featuring vocals by Shirley Bassey, who somehow manages to be both bold and elusive at the same time in just about every line of the lyrics.

The melody is astounding, and the singing is flawless, and both of those elements demonstrate what vast and prominent talents Barry and Bassey possess. Not many of us in this life get to be a John Barry or a Shirley Bassey, although it's a good thing to aspire to.

There is, however, another element of the song that you may never have noticed, even if you've heard it dozens of times. All through the song, steady and unwavering as the other instruments weave in and out, some percussionist is playing the triangle.

Who is he? Or she? I have no idea. I don't even have any idea how to find out. Probably, only a couple of his/her close friends and/or family members know, "Oh, yeah, s/he's the guy/gal who played the triangle on Moonraker." (Well, I suppose John Barry and the other members of the orchestra might also remember.)

My point is, it's a frickin' awesome triangle part.

Maybe you can't be John Barry. Maybe you can't be Shirley Bassey. Maybe you can't even be Richard Kiel, famous for playing a giant thug in two or three cheesy movies from the '70s and '80s. But maybe you can play the heck out of a triangle, because you have the patience and the rhythm and the ethereally gentle touch to master an instrument that most people don't particularly care about and many people don't even know exists.

Find what you can do well, and be happy that you can do it well -- especially if it brings happiness to others.

Thank you, goddess of love, for opportunities, whatever size, shape, or sound they come in.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

For Lack of Trying

2008-10-04T22:36:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you fresh from exercise of the body and relaxation of the mind.

As I started my nightly walk this evening, a nagging desire to come up with a new post bedeviled me. What to think about? What to write about? Could I apply myself and distill some essence of wisdom to share?

Stride and stride and stride went past, squares of sidewalk under my tennis shoes, the bow of the yellow moon hovering glowful above the treetops. Despite having mulled the subject for only a few minutes, I felt utterly lacking in inspiration.

And then I rebelled against my hunger to be inspired. I thought, "Just walk. It's ridiculous to try to force something that's not there. You don't have to be wise -- just be."

I felt much better immediately. But more to the point, I had not taken another five steps when the following hit me, unbidden and uncoerced:

Wisdom will come, or it won't. There's no point in stretching, seeking, reaching, searching for it, because wisdom is not a goal.

It is a consequence.

So there it is. If you must seek, then seek to have the right kinds of experiences. Learning will follow in due course.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the patience to just be.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Scents Upon the Cool Evening Air

2008-09-29T22:14:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a singular bounty of the senses.

On my walk tonight, I enjoyed the coolest of this new autumn's evenings so far, a perfect and clean-feeling temperature calm and peaceful and not quite as glorious as it might have been with slightly better breeze blowing but glorious nonetheless.

I had a thought along the way that these walks I take are a part of my effort to stay alive. Since the act of living is a thing worth doing, and worth doing well, for a long time, in good health, I walk to stay alive.

But I need also to walk a path in my soul that will keep it as clean as these physical walks are meant to keep my veins. I must remember to exercise those parts of my mind, those fibers of my heart that glow and hold happiness -- so that my thoughts do not clog themselves up with the thick spiritual plaque of resentment and bitterness and discontent.

These things will kill me. And I do not mean metaphysically -- it's pretty well documented that stress and depression have a profoundly negative impact on the human organism.

So as I walk to live, I also must hold to a course of the positive, if I want a long life in which I can not only enjoy myself but also gift others with whatever enjoyment and entertainment I am privileged to create.

All of this bumped around in my head as I walked, and then sort of faded into the background for a while. And then I passed through a waft of air that took me back to childhood -- to a fall or winter afternoon beneath grey skies outside of our little brick house where I liked to warm my hands at the vent that led from our clothes dryer inside.

There is something precious to me in that memory. The sense of being made warm by something clean, while everything around you is chill and cold. And it came back and stayed with me through the rest of my walk, thanks to that one moment of scent.

Thank you, goddess of love, for neighbors doing their laundry, and drafts of dryer exhaust that can somehow put the final brush-stroke on an understanding of how we can be happy.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

We Who Understand Beauty

2008-09-19T08:34:00.001-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you while an aftertaste of melancholy gives way to the flavor of hope.

If you are sad, take heart. Your grief is no less than a direct sign that you have known beauty. Think about this for a moment. Without a grasp of that which is good, how would you ever know to be sad?

Your soul may feel bruised, but it can only be bruised in direct proportion to your knowledge of what joy is. And if you possess that knowledge, then you can work toward possessing joy itself.

Thank you, goddess of love, for worry and woe as a meter of our connection to all that is pure, true, and glorious. In whatever degree we weep, so too do we know you and all of your kindnesses.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A New (to Me) Literary Form

2008-09-19T08:34:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you in a mood of experimentation, having recently come across a previously unfamiliar style of writing. The goal is to write a complete story in exactly 55 words, and I decided to try it.

Trouble came looking for me one day with sunglasses on and sunscreen.

(That's because I like to stay where it's bright

and make things hard on Trouble.)

I hid, and didn't feel guilty about it.

I mean, it's not like Trouble

has any difficulty finding company.

Maybe I'm wrong, though.

Maybe even Trouble

gets lonely.

Thank you, goddess of love, for new things found in blogs and elsewhere.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A Gentle Touch and a Word of Comfort

2008-09-13T22:09:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with an observation and an offering.

It seems to me that in this world, it does not happen often enough that those who have a gentle touch and a word of comfort to offer find those who need such things the most.

So tonight, by the light of a moon just shy of full, I do offer my hand across the miles to rest upon your back or cheek should you wish it, along with this assurance: whatever so deeply troubles you will pass. Step out into the moonlight, if you can. Imagine that its blue glow is the embrace that I send you. Lay your head upon your pillow as though it were my lap. Weep or laugh or simply relax, but know that I want you to feel better. And remember that the good in you is so much greater than the problems besieging you, and that all will be well as long as you make the decision to keep hope in your heart.

Thank you, goddess of love, for this opportunity to give.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Beyond Affection

2008-09-12T16:34:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a mind still struggling to digest something peculiar.

A letter arrived yesterday from my father. I guess it's the fourth letter I've had from him since we got back in touch earlier this year. Before that, we hadn't communicated since 2005.

He's a very strange fellow, my father, and we used to get along quite well, albeit many, many years ago. But not so much lately. There's a control-obsessed side to his personality, I think, that has kind of goofed things up between us. (Or there's a rebellious side to my personality that has done so, or both.)

At any rate, I'm starting to get the impression from these recent letters that he's decided to live by a principle that he and my mom repeated endlessly when I was a child: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

All of his recent letters have been very, very short.

I sent him something on his birthday this year. He responded with a letter that acknowledged receipt but made no mention of whether he'd liked it or even opened it. (That was the ice-breaker after our long mutual silence). He offered to send me a memoir he's been working on. I readily accepted and offered to send him my recent books. He sent me the memoir without mentioning my offer. I sent him the books anyway, and heard nothing back. I read the memoir and sent some notes on that (he'd asked for feedback). He sent this most recent letter, which basically thanked me for my notes and then waxed philosophical about something out of left field that I didn't really get. (I showed the letter to a friend who said it reminded him of someone's drunken ramblings. But since I could hear it in my father's voice, it didn't sound quite that illucid to me.)

My point in sharing all of this is simple: Love is stronger than affection.

I love my father, even though he gives me very little reason to feel any warmth or kindness toward him. I sympathize with him on some health concerns that he has, and I feel a sort of sad pity that he's blocked himself away from me and my siblings to various degrees.

But I continue to make my efforts not out of sympathy or pity.

I make them because I love him, and because I love the memory of the time when I did feel warmly toward him.

This is one of the dangers of love, then. It can persist beyond affection -- and if it does so, it can make us feel trapped in obligations that burden us without bringing real joy.

Love without joy is a heavy, hard thing.

But ...

In making my efforts, in responding to my father, in taking his eccentricities with the best humor that I can, I maintain a state of hope. It's not a hope likely to be fulfilled -- he is probably never going to apologize for any of the harsh things he's said and done, any more than I would fake an apology for what I perceive to be my perfectly unobjectionable behavior, which he nonetheless has somehow managed to object to.

But it is a hope nonetheless, because hope is part of love.

And while we have moved beyond affection, there is power in hoping that it might return.

Thank you, goddess of love, for my father. Please salve his bitterness, buoy his spirit, and let him be happy and bring happiness to those around him.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

And You, My Love, Won't You Take My Hand?

2008-09-09T21:57:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. May your day have had fewer frustrations than mine had!

One of the things I love about the movie This is Spinal Tap is the way it portrays its group of addled, hedonistic neanderthals as somehow managing to hit upon true beauty every once in a while in spite of themselves.

The line above, from "Stonehenge," is so wonderful and sincere, and the music that accompanies it so momentarily ethereal, that I can't help but smile every time I hear it. And it's a real smile of contentment, not just of humor. The mandolin solo later in the song affects me the same way. The rest of the song is terrific too, for its silliness and bombast. But it's that line that always strikes me true.

Thank you, goddess of love, for reminders that even in parody there can be purity, and that even the least of us has a spark of wisdom now and again.*

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

(*And by "the least," I am of course referring to the fictional band members' level of intelligence, not the talent of the geniuses who put the movie together.)

Not To Be Alone

2008-09-08T18:42:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the reassurance that you are known and cared for.

If we share nothing else, you and I, we undoubtedly share the experience of having felt lonely and apart. Some people are beset by that experience daily; others have to endure it only a few times in their lives. But if I understand anything about the human condition (and I suppose I should concede that maybe I don't), I'm fairly certain that the pangs of isolation are among the universal sensations common to all of us.

I believe it's one of the reasons we seek love -- one of the reasons our culture and literature is so rife with portrayals of love as completion, as the ultimate fulfillment.

We want not to be alone.

In one respect, all of our yearnings and strivings for connection are futile. (Don't worry, I'm not going on some kind of downer here -- stick with me.) Within our own heads, we will always have ourselves and only ourselves for company, and many of us will find that there are times -- even when throngs of people surround us, even when loved ones are at hand on any side -- in which we still feel lonely and uncared for. Because what is within our heads is too large to be gotten out, or too humiliating, or too perplexing, and so we despair of ever feeling that we are truly understood.

But to dig yourself out of those moments, when you have them, you might consider this: when you are in that place, feeling alone and unloved, you are in a place that unites you with all of humanity. So many of us are there, with you, at that same time -- feeling left out in the midst of a laughing crowd, alienated from the faces around a conference-room table, lying with a sense of unwantedness upon a bed in a small room while the sounds of a city alive at night murmur in from outside.

When you feel alone, uncountable millions of us are there with you. And so when you feel unwanted, stop and think of those millions, all wishing and missing and wanting, and understand that somewhere amongst them is someone who wants exactly you.

And probably not just a single someone.

Right now, in that place of loneliness, the odds say that the person who would "get" you, who would complete you, is mirrored over and over a thousand or ten thousand times. If six billion of us in this world feel lonely for just one day of the year, then twenty million of us feel it at any given time. Are you unusual enough that only one in a hundred people could understand you? If so, then you share your loneliness with two hundred thousand kindred souls. So strange that only one in a thousand has any hope of a clue about you? Then twenty thousand others feel just as you do right now. And if your woes and griefs are so beyond the realm of normalcy that they make you literally one-in-a-million, that still leaves twenty bizarrely lonely spirits who are in your company.

We are here. We wish for you. Yearn for you. Would live and laugh and love with you in an instant, if chance presented us the opportunity.

Don't let the inconvenient fact that we haven't met -- yet -- prevent you from knowing that you can never be alone, because we are always there with you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the power of large numbers, and for the imagination to see beyond the room in which we sit.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Possibly More Than You Want To Know About My iPod, But I'll Get To A Point Eventually

2008-09-05T22:15:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I have just come from ambling, so beware of my rambling.

I went for a walk tonight, and my ipod blessed me with the most fabulous accompaniment. It started off with "Amhran" by Leaves' Eyes, which is nice and pretty but mostly served as a lulling lead-in to a song that I'd totally forgotten was even on my ipod, "You Only Live Twice." When that song began, it was as though my eyes had opened so wide that the starlight and the bare red ghost of dusk upon the horizon poured straight into my brain. The strings go through that amazing motif, a melody like autumn leaves drifting down to the surface of a still pond, and then Nancy Sinatra starts to sing those amazing, evocative lyrics about life and love and dreams -- astonishing.

Then, as if to say, "Well, I haven't got anything else pretty enough to hold a candle to that," the ipod went to "Ravenous" by Manegarm. Now, Manegarm is really much too screamy for me, and I always suspect that if I could understand a word of the screaming, I might find the lyrics highly disturbing. But they do know how to rock, and after the beauty of that John Barry song, it was like jumping into the Pacific Ocean to swim -- and I mean the California Pacific Ocean, not some tropical part where maybe it's warm enough that it doesn't send an absolute shock through your whole body.

Even better, the ipod cleverly went on to "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You (Tonight)" by Spinal Tap. How I love the rhythm guitar hook on that song and the way it comes back and introduces the solo section! There's a fine line between stupid and clever, and when you're Spinal Tap, it doesn't matter which side of that line you come down on -- it's all brilliant.

Having given me some breathing room, my witty little device eased back into pretty music to play "Byttingen" by Lumsk. I can't actually remember for sure what language Lumsk sings in -- Finnish? -- but their vocalist has a piercing, crystal-pure beauty to her voice the likes of which I have really never heard.

The walk rounded out with two Therion songs back to back. "Three Ships of Berik (pt.1)" reminded me of the one sad aspect of song-shuffle on ipod -- if a band likes to do intros or segues that blend continuously from one track to another, you end up with an abrupt cut-off where the next song or part of the song (in this case, "Three Ships of Berik (pt.2)") ought to pick up. But the Leitmotif of the Gothic Army that runs through the song is too good to pass up even if I only get to hear half of it.

"Wisdom and the Cage" took me home, and I'm not even going to try to describe that one, except that once I reached my place I had to stand and listen all the way through to the last echoes of that hovering guitar chord that ends it.

And when I said at the beginning of this entry that the accompaniment was fabulous, I meant it in two ways, the less obvious of which really hit me during "Wisdom and the Cage."

I felt in the company of those musicians. I felt us to be kindred, and engaged in the same struggle to bring clarity and beauty to this world. And in feeling their success, I was able to accept some of my own successes in that area. I've always thought myself a pretty good writer (even back when it wasn't true), but I've lately been gifted with very good evidence that I'm not just pretty good, but really quite extraordinary. I had lunch this week with my latest reader, who had just finished the first two books of the trilogy I'm currently at work on.

She told me that I'd made her cry three times in the second book. And when she told me which three passages had done that trick, I felt more than a little bit thrilled, because those three spots make me cry whenever I reread them too. (Of course, I'm pretty weepy and easily moved to tears these days -- I cried buckets at the end of Wall-E for pity's sake.)

So I arrived home flush with a sense of belonging to a rare and exquisite group -- those whose imaginations are able to move others.

And then I went in to take a shower and got stuck looking in the mirror at my shoulders. I'm not in a particularly good position to make a judgment on whether they're as good a set of shoulders as my books are books. But they were good enough to remind me how wonderful the whole neck-to-sternum region of the human body is, male or female, front or back. The smooth curves of the deltoids reaching down to the arms, the hollows between the clavicles and what may very well be the most attractive muscle of any body, the sternocleidomastoids that run from the jaw down to the breastbone. (And no, I didn't look up sternocleidomastoid to spell it, so feel free to either be impressed if I got it right or jeer if I got it wrong.)

Biology has no equal when it comes to intricate and magnificent and glorious loveliness.

Thank you, goddess of love, for shoulders, and music, and ipods, and success, and the random twists of the world that bring all of these things together.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Imagining Your Way to Bliss

2008-09-04T22:20:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the relief that comes of finally having a coherent thought.

I've been veering about in my beliefs about romantic love for some time, finding myself by turns either cynical or starstruck with dreamy idealizations, and at last I wonder if I've come upon a notion that explains or supports both positions.

The notion is this: that romantic love is a single fantasy (or even a delusion) that happens to be shared by two people.

The power of fantasy is that it can go far, far beyond reality. So if you have a particular fantasy about what love is supposed to be, and you find someone with a corresponding or at least compatible delusion, the two of you can together achieve something like what is found in all the storybooks, because you're using the same techniques that the storybooks use: imagination, imagery, and the willful disregard for ugly truths that might otherwise intrude.

Love can fail, then, for the same reason that any other fantasy fails us and is discarded. It is difficult to keep a single idea fresh and alive for months or years, to apply the energy to maintain the fantasy in its initial form.

Love can fail also because it takes only one of the pair missing a beat on that maintenance to bring a disjuncture between the lovers' respective fantasies. When the one fantasy becomes two, they will inevitably begin to clash.

Yet if both partners realize that love is a landscape of the imagination, bounded only by the imagination, with two hands upon the brush and two sets of eyes choosing from the palette, then in a collaboration of spirits they are free to render whatever vistas of romance they choose, to range as far and as wide as they can agree upon.

This is probably why monogamy is the ubiquitous ideal of romance -- it is unlikely enough that two imaginations should have the compatibility to sustain a mutual dreamworld over the course of years or decades. What are the odds of finding three able to do so, or more? (Which is a shame, really, since anyone who's been around families with children should be able to quickly realize that as a practical matter, having a third or fourth adult in the house would work wonders for the stress levels and sanity of the parents.)

So then, unless I'm particularly full of it this evening, the trick of it is to find an imagination that can either parallel or mirror your own, and then work very hard, together with that imagination's owner, to paint a place where the two of you can live, and constantly change and update the image that you are imagining in order to keep it vibrant and new.

Alternatively, you could decide that you're not in for that much work.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the notion of romance, and for all those who are able to find it and make it work.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Give as You Can

2008-09-04T21:06:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I am very tired this week, yet I greet you with what gifts I am able to muster the energy to give.

To be precise, I’ve been updating my profile with books and music and movies that I love.

I’ve previously left these things off because I thought an air of mystery befit the anonymous founder of an agnostic religion, and because I like the notion of people filling in their idea of me in whatever way most pleases them. But I’ve hit upon no real wisdom to share in the last few days, and I’d like to share something.

So have a look at my profile if you care to, and if any of my recommendations leads you to something you like, then I feel grateful for the opportunity to brighten your world.

Thank you, goddess of love, for art of all kinds and for the wonderful spirits who create it.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Howling Toddlers

2008-08-27T22:51:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. May the world be visiting upon you nothing worse than it is visiting upon me, which at the moment is not so bad.

I went over to a friend's house this evening for the first time in probably a year or more. His children have grown appreciably, now ranging in age from about 18 months to 7 years. The younger two, both still toddlers, spent the entire evening screeching and gabbling nonsense at an unholy volume as they pattered around the apartment, chasing one another or being persecuted by their older brother. I had a technical task that I was working on, and I did not watch them through any of this, but the sound about drove me mad.

Then, as I was leaving, I took a moment not only to say goodbye to my friend and his wife, but to these two deafening blond ricochets with their wide eyes and plump cheeks.

As is often the case with children of that age, they clammed up entirely as soon as a strange adult began to address them. Clearly, they found me novel and entertaining, but just as clearly, they did not know what to make of me, and stood with breathless infant wonder on their faces, waiting to see whether I would do something terrifying or hilarious.

With their howls subdued, I could see them at last for the beautiful, joyful creatures they were, and could understand that they had been those same creatures even as they had been producing every grotesque racket that might come out of a three-year-old throat over the course of an evening.

The human animal is an amazing, wild, nerve-wracking, transcendent thing.

Thank you, goddess of love, for every demonstration of that fact that you give to me.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A Brief and Transitory Thing

2008-08-13T17:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a tale of taking contentment in small moments.

On a recent airline flight for business, I sat beside a beautiful woman who had the window seat. It was a one-stop flight for me, and when she deplaned I had another leg to go. So I took her spot with the innocent intention of being able to look out across the landscape when the plane rose again into broad, bright sky.

But -- in moving, I found myself embraced by the soft warmth that her body had left behind.

How close the two of us had been, for the forty-five minutes of that first flight. Her arm kept brushing mine, as she typed or reached across me to take her drink from the flight attendant. Though I read, and she worked on her laptop, and we spoke at most a few dozen words to one another, I nonetheless had a vivid awareness the whole time of how very near at hand she rested.

Life consists in beauty brought close. Some of it is ours to take hold of; some of it is for our senses alone to drink in.

I had a pleasant moment of surprise, on sitting back down in this vanished woman's body heat. It felt a bit as if a ghost of her remained in the seat with me, her hips and pelvis and thighs overlapping my own. Had I premeditated this, I think the experience might have bordered on creepy -- a sordid, vicarious usurpation of her lingering most private space. But because it was a surprise and not a goal, it felt fresh, and clean -- a wholesome, unshared echo of intimacy from someone who had been entirely pleasant and bright in her few words to me -- mostly apologies for inadvertantly crossing my space with her arm, or for shutting the window as I sat reading by its light.

Would she be aghast and indignant at my enjoyment of her fading personal heat in that chair? Or would she think it a natural extension of our close-set, warm, yet very limited interactions during the flight? Most likely the former; that is how our world works, with the self and the self-space carefully guarded against happenstance brushes with other selves and self-spaces.

Of course, she will never know, just as I will never know her name or what business took her from city to city on that day.

In an ideal world, I would love her anyway, and she would love me, and we would each love every other person we bumped into or glimpsed along the arcs through which our travels carried us.

But this being the world that it is, I will simply have to be happy with what has been granted me.

Thank you, goddess of love, for my tangent of intimacy with that unnamed, lovely woman, and for whatever similar ripples of happiness she sends out to others as she moves through this world.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A Mantra

2008-08-09T10:30:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. If you are feeling troubled, I would like to recommend that you try hard to believe the following words, or something similar:

I climb from this darkness of woe and grief to live in the clean, bright air.

A positive thought, repeated in place of that very human tendency to dwell on our difficulties, is a powerful tool for overcoming despair.

Thank you, goddess, for the gift of determination.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Goddess of Love Encourages Good Sports

2008-08-08T20:31:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you after a long absence with only a brief message.

If you're reading this on August 8, 2008, instead of watching the opening ceremonies for the Olympics, I recommend that you turn off your computer and turn on your television.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Goddess Bears No Ill Will Toward Those Who Disbelieve

2007-06-08T22:12:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a heart struggling not to judge and old thoughts that are amongst the hardest for me to rein in.

I had a fascinating conversation this week with a genuinely nice person who believes differently than I do. His religious views dictated most of our dialogue's path, which wound through politics, the media, morality, history and science -- but the central issue that I kept butting up against was his belief in hell.

The god who would create a hell and send misguided souls there for eternal torment strikes me as not really someone I would want to worship. Such a god may well exist (and if so, then I am in very big trouble), but it seems to me that faith in Him is inherently the result of extortion.

Now, my fellow conversationalist had of course an entirely different view, and insisted as Christian believers often do that everyone should view the path away from damnation as a loving and tender gift, rather than viewing damnation itself as an infinite crime perpetrated upon individuals vastly weaker and explicitly less wise than the perpetrator.

Given the sincerity with which he expressed this, I decided it might be a bit much to describe the goddess of love to him, and I conducted my end of the conversation from the perspective of a simple agnostic.

A whole raft of issues pushed me away from Christianity in my adolescent years: the hypocrisy, the intrusive moralizing, the intolerance for other views, the antagonistic attitude toward science, the history of violence and persecution by those who endlessly complain of being persectuted themselves. But the thing that renders Christianity incomprehensible to me today is the notion of an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful god who created a place of eternal torment to which even perfectly nice people go, by default, on the basis of our inherently sinful nature -- which is something that none of us chose in the first place.

I do not know whether the goddess of love is real in the sense that Christians claim their God to be real. But I do know this: she would never create a system in which the perfectly understandable failures of humanity were repaid with infinite torture.

As I've mentioned in previous entries, I am not here to entice anyone away from her or his own religion, nor to evangelize on behalf of the goddess. However, I will ask you this: If you believe in some deity who is cruel, vindictive, or spiteful, could you please at least consider the possibility that those characteristics have been wrongly attributed to your Ultimate Being? When we revere something that is jealous, that is petty, that engages in vicious revenge, are we not more likely to adopt those traits ourselves?

It may require you to decide that some of your scriptures are apocryphal, or that their language is purely symbolic, or that they have been written as parables of seeming paradox. But would we not all be better off if our greatest role-model for love did not visit unending suffering on lesser beings, considering that the power to rearrange the system lies firmly within his, her, or its grasp?

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Whatever Has Beauty Is Real

2007-05-25T23:38:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I wish for you only the best and ask from you nothing. (Although I hope you won't spam my comments.)

I have been away from this blog for some time, and my dedication to the goddess has gone through a period of lapse. I apologize for the absence, to you and to the goddess herself, and ask that you not mistake erratic posting here for doubt.

In part, my absence has been the result of a period of peace. Contentment more than despair has accompanied me on my path since the previous post; I started writing a new novel just ahead of that entry, and it progressed quickly and to my great satisfaction. As I noted early in this blog, my adoration of the goddess arose out of desperation as much as anything else, and I have not been so desperate of late.

But even as contentment has led me to stray from daily observances to the goddess, a sense of guilt has nagged at me for doing so. Are not good times the times in which I should be most thankful?

This, of course, is foolishness -- not that thanks are uncalled for, but that I should feel guilty for failing to give them.

The goddess gifts us with beauty -- each day, each moment, so long as we look for it. Guilt, in contrast, is one of the homeliest of human emotions. It is practical, but dour and drab and incapable of lifting anything up.

So when I feel guilty on behalf of the goddess, I am in a way casting aside all that her worship is supposed to bring.

I write here now, therefore, not out of guilt, but to move from guilt to grace. To shrug off a nagging of the conscience and replace it with thankfulness and with an attempt at giving. I don't know that you, beautiful traveler, are out there and reading this, any more than I know that the goddess is real in the traditional metaphysical sense of the word. But I wish to give you whatever benefit I can of my thoughts, just as the goddess has given so much to me.

For the notion of you is beautiful, just as the notion of the goddess rings with pure and effervescent beauty. And in bringing beauty to the world, these notions take on their own reality, since they -- the goddess, and you -- have had an impact on my life.

Be well. Look for beauty. Turn guilt to grace wherever you can.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A strange dream

2006-08-14T23:12:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a fresh sense of wonder, and wish the same upon you.

In my dreams last night I met a woman named Roza Doxxo. She had a strange, decadent innocence about her, a wide-eyed desire to explore sensuality and intellect, an uncompromising devotion to communicating her interior world of love for the human figure and obsession with its dark and visceral facets. A brilliant writer and a natural talent with pen-and-ink drawing, she showed me her ingenious work-in-progress -- an openly sexual murder-mystery novel that consisted entirely of pictures and descriptions and physical artifacts representing the clues in her imagined crime, which she had arranged so artfully that by merely looking from one piece of evidence to the next, I understood the movement of the story, the arc and weave of the lives and deaths she meant to describe.

I cannot remember ever having smelled in a dream, before last night. But I smelled Roza Doxxo’s hair in the moment she first passed close by me. And I did not just smell it -- it penetrated my senses so vividly that I could almost still smell it when I woke. Intoxicating, rich, as luxuriously human and also as deliberately constructed as everything else about her. She had worked to get her hair to smell as clean and natural as it did. But like all other things, the work appeared to come easily to her.

Entranced and amazed, I recognized quickly that the woman who accompanied Doxxo was her lover. And I also recognized quickly that Roza Doxxo found me, for whatever reason, more alluring and attractive than her current flame. We parted with a clear sense of promise, and I caught a vibration of resentment from the soon-to-be-cast-off girlfriend.

This dream spun off from a recurring stress-dream that I have: the return-to-school dream, in which I am burdened with coursework for an ill-considered revisitation of my college career. But it spun off into someplace ethereal and peculiar, as I searched in the library for a book to read and write literary criticism of. As I saw within the glass display case a hand-bound volume with a warning label applied in Doxxo’s eccentric handwriting: “Warning! XXX drawings!” As a colloquy of writers appeared to discuss the books they’d written and left on the shelves. And as Doxxo herself came strikingly into the room, raven-haired and dark in dress, her voice brash and accented.

And oh, the scent of that hair.

Thank you, Roza Doxxo. I am your humble servant.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Perfection in Imperfection

2006-06-12T23:19:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word "love."

When you see that which you do not have, the world is less than perfect. When you see that which is lovely, and yet could be lovelier, the world is less than perfect.

When you grasp that things are unfair, the world could hardly seem further from being perfect.

But there is an advantage that this world has over the perfect world: we know that we have this one.

Accept the fact that imperfection will occur. Acknowledge how rampant it is upon the face of this planet. And then, when you have come to fully appreciate the flaws with which our entire existence is wracked, let yourself marvel at how beautiful and wondrous are the beauties and wonders granted to us.

For all that the world tries to visit sickness and disappointment upon us, for all the black-hearted plots that are laid bare on the news, or malevolent banalities whispered to us by the office grapevine, there are still moments and scenes of such stunning purity, truth, and, yes, perfection for us to enjoy that we should rejoice in our hearts for the opportunity to suffer as we suffer in return for the privilege of experiencing them.

That so much beauty can exist in a world capable of such ugliness is a testimony to our minds and eyes and hearts.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to see, and for the chance to see you, in each instant of perfect and imperfect glory alike.

Lovingly yours,

A Devotee

Thank you, Goddess of Love, for presenting us with such fields of beauty

2006-06-02T22:13:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word, "love."

If you have the opportunity to attend a birthday party for a child, held at one of the various chain pizza parlours that specialize in maddeningly loud video arcades and/or animatronic musical animals, you should do so.

Look around, while there. Observe the joy in the faces of the children. See the mothers, the fathers -- pay attention to the way they look upon their little ones and upon one another.

If you open your senses correctly, even the unholy racket will sooner or later start to sound blissful.

Lovingly yours,

A Devotee

The Goddess Has Revealed To Me No Opinion On 'The DaVinci Code.'

2006-05-27T15:20:00.000-05:00

Greetings, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word 'love.'

Last Sunday as I drove around, I passed a number of churches with marquee teasers indicating that their sermons for the day intended to discuss 'The DaVinci Code.' The signs bore messages like, "The DaVinci Cult" and "The DaVinci Delusion."

In response to this, I would just like to say that if Dan Brown wants to write a multimillion-selling novel revealing a disturbing conspiracy at the heart of this website, he should feel free to do so.

Lovingly yours,

A Devotee

On Being Anti-Pronouncements

2006-05-27T00:24:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word 'love."

I just wanted to briefly note that I never at any moment presume to speak for you. As you read the thoughts and meditations here, you may encounter language that suggests otherwise, but rest assured that I use that language only out of convenience.

So, for instance, when I write, "the ability to commit is one of the most precious gifts that the goddess has bestowed upon us," what I really mean is, "I perceive that the ability to commit is one of the most precious gifts that the goddess has bestowed upon me." It just gets to be a drag, continually writing "I perceive," or "I envision," and I worry that it gets to sounding rather arrogant if I persistently write "I" and "me."

Then, too, we are all of us desirous of company, and by writing of an "us," I help myself feel that I am not alone.

So please don't think that I presume to say what the goddess has or hasn't given to you, what she has or hasn't done for you, what she will or will not mean to you. All of those things are for you to discover, or for you to dismiss, as you choose.

Lovingly yours,

A Devotee

Commitment

2006-05-25T21:26:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word 'love.'

There is no greater gift than the gift of commitment.

I mean this in two ways. First, I mean that your own personal commitment to another, or to a cause, is an act of generosity beyond any other that you can manage. This is because commitment is not singular. It has no bound at the point that it is given. Other deeds of kindness and giving have their moment and then pass. But commitment is always given with an intent of continuation.

Second, I mean that the ability to commit is one of the most precious gifts that the goddess has bestowed upon us. When we commit, we extend ourselves into the future, whether we are committing to a personal goal, to a relationship, or to a faith. By committing, we insist that there is hope, that we will continue, and that we have something to offer.

Take yourself into a time beyond 'now.' Find someone, or something, to commit to.

Lovingly yours,

A Devotee

Morality

2006-05-23T21:10:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word 'love.'

In case you need it cleared up: unlike most religions, this one makes no pronouncements about what constitutes moral behavior.

Of course, I personally have opinions about morality, about moral and immoral actions, moral and immoral people. But the point of this faith is to achieve happiness through thankfulness, through generosity, and through love. Anyone who signs on for that and makes a purposeful effort to live by these principles will probably find his or her way to morality as a matter of course.

Lovingly yours,

A Devotee

Goddess of Love, thank you for Gustav Holst's 'The Planets.'

2006-05-21T22:56:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word 'love.'

I have no wisdom to share tonight, but if there is wisdom in beauty, try listening to Holst's symphonic suite, 'The Planets.'

Lovingly yours,

A Devotee

Compatibility

2006-05-20T23:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word 'love.'

In case you're wondering, I'm not entirely comfortable with my observances to the goddess of love. Having lived a life of agnosticism, I find worries thronging at me with regard to adopting a religion, and certainly with regard to inventing one.

What if some existing religion is already correct? Agnostically, I can't deny the possibility. And it's conceivable that a deity who might have tolerated my agnosticism will take offense at my giving thanks to the goddess.

On the other hand, what if my agnosticism is fundamentally correct? Am I throwing aside a true religion to immerse myself in delusion, as I generally believe the substance of most religions to be delusional?

Fortunately, a primary benefit of agnosticism is the ability to shrug and say, "You know what? I really don't know." And given that I don't know, and that my thanks to the goddess have buoyed my spirits, I am willing to accept her even if I have no sense of her reality.

If you're contemplating joining me, and worry about whether your own religion can coexist with acknowledgements to the goddess of love, I would suggest that any conflict is a strictly one-way affair.

The goddess is not a jealous goddess. She gives, or gives not, without regard to what faith you profess. Your prayers do not entice her to give. Your thanks do not make her love you any more or any less. The giving of thanks is for your benefit. It is meant to provide a feeling of connection to her - to remind you of all that you have been gifted with.

If your current religion forbids you to believe in other gods, then I certainly can't advise you to take up the path that I have. But be aware that the goddess does not require you to abandon any belief in order to offer your appreciation to her.

Lovingly yours,

A Devotee

Three Principles

2006-05-18T07:06:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word 'love.'

I need to brush my teeth and get to work this morning, so I'll try to be brief.

There are three principle components to my worship of the goddess of love: thankfulness, generosity, and, of course, love.

I thank the goddess for everything that I can, I attempt to feel love for those around me in her name, and I seek to practice generosity in thought and action wherever I can.

There is no room in this triad of principles for self-oriented requests. I do not ask the goddess to deliver any personal benefit to me. Since I conceive that she has already given me almost everything of value, to request more would seem pretty ungrateful. Also, I don't care much for the notion of a deity who plays favorites based on prayers.

On the other hand, I do beseech the goddess on behalf of others, especially when I see them bearing looks of unhappiness or discontent. This may be contradictory to what I said above, but I'll wrestle with that some other time.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

I know of no beginning, and I know of no end

2006-05-17T23:05:00.000-05:00

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the holy word ‘love.’

I started to title this entry with a tongue-in-cheek “In the Beginning . . .” But after about half a second, I realized that to do so would be A) blasphemous and, even worse, B) unbearably trite.

Also, to say “In the Beginning . . .” would make it sound like I know something which I do not. I’d be coming across as in control, in the know, and probably insufferable. Whereas the truth is that I don’t know the truth.

You see, the religion that I’m going to describe here is an exploration, not an explanation. It is about appreciation and application, not about revelation.

(I know that I’m about two sentences away from most readers saying, “Wow, this person is a freak,” but bear with me a moment more.)

For most of my life, including all of my adult life, I’ve been a devoted agnostic. It has seemed the only sensible religion to me. At some times this has been because I recognize that my brain is entirely too small to encompass all the secrets of the universe. At other times it’s been because every other religion that I’ve ever encountered has some weird or outright creepy metaphysical tomfoolery associated with it. You know - provoking divine wrath by eating the wrong foods, having to spend a specific number of incarnations as a bug or a rat because you acted selfishly, or even just being punished through endless generations because of something utterly beyond your control that one of your ancestors did before your great-great-thousand-times-great grandparents were born.

I don’t mean to disparage the world’s great religions -- for all I know, any one of them (or several) could be absolutely 100% true. And most of them bring peace, happiness, and morality to their followers. But if you’re being realistic, you should probably admit that from the outside they all appear to have some pretty strange baggage attached.

And so I have been content to say, “I really don’t know. Someday I’ll die, and maybe then I’ll find out. But until then, it only makes my head hurt to think about it.“

Or at least, I had been content to say that.

Lately, the weight of the world has borne down upon me, and I have found myself in need of comfort. Where once I believed in the general goodness of humankind, I have more recently begun to despair that we are worthy of respect at all. While I had faith in people, I needed little faith in religion. But as my faith in humanity has lapsed, I have begun to wonder.

So if one is losing faith in the human race, both collectively and as individuals, what can be done about it? I could not seriously contemplate turning to an existing religion, for the reasons described above. But I also could not simply will myself to believe in people, when so many prominent reasons to distrust and even revile them were being thrust daily in my face, whether by the news media, by the corporate grapevine, or by my own eyes.

Embarrassingly enough, my solution derived at least in part from seeing ten or fifteen minutes of a truly awful made-for-TV movie on the Sci Fi channel. The scene that I saw while flipping past included a meeting between a living human and a goddess who’d come to Earth or to whatever bizarre mythical land the movie was set in. I don’t know why she was there, and I did not bother watching the remainder of the movie (which appeared to be nearing its end anyway) to find out. But that intimate and direct personal contact between mortal and deity stuck in my head.

Weeks or months later, as I cast about for a means to keep myself out of deepening depression, I hit upon this notion: that I should form own religion, with my own goddess, whom I could directly address in order to keep my focus upon that which is beautiful in this life.

And so I began going through my day making regular prayers of thanks to the goddess of love. Thanking her for the people around me. Thanking her for the views of beauty presented to me in the morning sunlight or in the twilight that comes at dusk. Thanking her for music, and art, and even for bad cable movies.

It has helped me feel a great deal better.

So, then - if you haven’t decided that I’m a freak - visit again from time to time and I’ll tell you more of how I worship the goddess and how that worship helps me. I make no promises that she will help you, or even that she exists.

But if you wish to love life, you must commit to Love in some fashion. This is the path that I have chosen. Walk it with me if it helps you.

Lovingly yours,

A Devotee