aerieofgrace's Xanga

from the illustrious Hazel l'Aura G. of Chicago (www.shedrums.com)

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:34:36 GMT

When the spell is broken,
you will be able
to tap into resources that you've been cut off from...
When the spell is broken,
you will finally notice 3 big, beautiful secrets
that have been staring you in the face...
When the spell
is broken,
you will slip down
off a clean, lofty perch
where it has been hard to relax
& arrive at a low, funky spot
where you will be free
to feel things you haven't felt in a long time...
When the spell is
broken
it will be because you have decided to break it...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm breaking the spell! that's what the depression was like - a spell binding me to sadness and grief and numbness. I feel awake and alive again. not sure what to say except, I'm happy

Light at the Pulitzer

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:22:14 GMT

I went to the Pulitzer last night with my mom to see Dan Flavin's Constructed Light exhibit. I was amazed at how soothing a building made of so much concrete could be. The building is kind of unobtrusive from the outside, unassuming maybe. A little aloof. You can't see where the entrance is from the front or west side, but from the east side, the entrance is an intimate, drawing-in, even while the scale of the building is large. Somehow it manages to be large (tall doors, high ceilings, expansive walls) while still feeling intimate and comfortable, manageable. When you walk inside, there's a small-ish lobby (for a museum), pretty understated and personable in a low-key way. Dan Flavin uses standard fluorescent light fixtures as his raw material for his light installations. Next is a glowing green hallway. Then, in between two swaths of the building, a very shallow pool of water outside, rectangular and long, that smells divine, like rain and perhaps vaguely of chlorine. Next, a huge hall, with stair step green and blue lights along one whole, looong wall. Then a room whose entrance is blocked by light fixtures with light facing inward, glowing peach. Windows along the huge hall look over the water pool and across to the glowing green hallway, where people's feet can be seen just from the waist down. A balcony with a semi-circle of lights, a circle of light reflecting in the glass. A door onto an outdoors balcony with a green roof, overlooking a courtyard below with an immense spiraling sculpture, which it turns out, you can walk into. The walls careen one direction, then the other creating a sense of disorientation and slight claustrophobia. Yet it is beautiful, the lines against the dusk-dark sky. Inside is spacious. The ground is sandy with layers of pebbles and rock, functioning like a rain garden. The building is filled with windows and dusk light, too. Then as we drove away, we drove past a burned out church that will be converted to a sculpture park. The first project are strings of light fixtures, and these words just don't do justice to the image. Please click below for a picture of the church and the lovely Pulitzer building:

http://www.pulitzerarts.org/events/film-poetry-other/the-light-project/

Before the Pulitzer, we went to the Sheldon where we saw an exhibit of cowgirls, women ranchers and rodeo women. It was an awesome look into a completely different world than mine, so city-bound. One picture's quote was about how you could feel God when you came up over a ridge and looked down on all your sheep. I'm not doing it justice, but it gave me a very beautiful sense of the divine.

All in all, a lovely evening. Reminded me how much I like art exhibits and culture in general. Definitely more of this in my near future!

I also got a lovely birthday card from a friend of my family's. It said: "Like flowers turned toward the sun -- when we open ourselves to God's goodness, beautiful things begin to happen. Listen for the things that make your heart bloom." Most of you know that I think about God in a very expansive, relatively de-personified way. Typing it out, the quote sounds cheesy, but it really touched me. It's where I am right now, turning myself away from the darkness, toward the sun, opening to the goodness of life, so wonder can begin to happen again in my life. And the idea of my heart blooming? Wow. Makes me tear up in joy.

I'm famous!

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:27:57 GMT

I appeared in joy_walker's dreams last night. She writes:

"you were all fiery Leo energy, wearing a yellowy-orange workout jacket, just being ON. "

what a fabulous image! I can feel myself stepping into this . . . yes!

crap!

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:36:35 GMT

I forgot to go vote! I went grocery shopping after work instead. d'oh! there were a couple of candidates / issues that I wanted to vote on and I'm always curious to see what all is on the ballot. dangit!

I do have groceries, but somehow it just doesn't compare with participating in democracy.

good grief

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:17:47 GMT

There was a featured question today about how to grieve and heal after the loss of a loved one. Reading the answers folks posted was making me cry. I miss [ex-husband] so much. Some days I wish I could be angrier with him, but I'm just not. He needed to become more himself by becoming a woman. I feel like, how can you argue with that? I'm so sad still. I loved him with all my heart and my heart is just crushed still. I don't know what's going to end my sorrow. When am I going to feel like living again? Some days I feel so dead inside. I'd rather be crying than feel dead, hence "good" grief. I make this mental move where it's somehow my fault that I was abandoned by my ex. It's the same move I learned as a baby girl when my dad violated me. There wasn't any other safe answer then. Now, I'm finding that it's just too toxic to believe that any of this was my fault - dad violating me or [ex-husband] leaving me. Too toxic. I'm so angry with my dad. I'm so sad about my ex. Enough for tonight . . .

Solar Eclipse in Leo

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:28:01 GMT

From Teri Parsley Starnes of www.starsdanceastrology.com:

Eclipses set us upon new pathways. They have the potential to be quite dramatic. . . .

Leo’s flame. Imagine knowing your self worth. Imagine being able to share your gifts with the world in perfect balance—being appreciated for who you are and what you have to give without needing to bolster a fragile ego by needing others’ approval. This is the pure potential of Leo, which we all have within us, and which I believe we all need to realize at this time of a Leo eclipse .

Hope and self worth. We live in a time when hope is fragile, when we long for change that can make a difference, and perhaps when we wonder if our individual gifts could make any difference. A deflated ego says, I can’t make a difference and an inflated ego says, a better world is up to me only. Both states of ego get in the way of the possibility of being the change we want to be. Where Leo can get stuck is in one or both of these expressions of ego. As the light goes out and comes back at this new Moon, we have the opportunity to transform our ego patterns. Sometimes we can choose this path consciously, and sometimes the universe makes the shift for us. Eclipses are like that. This month, will you make a shift in how you value yourself? Can you imagine how this might change the world?

. . . August 1 is not only the new moon, but it is also the cross-quarter holy day of Lughnasad—the time to honor our first harvests and pray that the fall’s harvest will be bountiful. The Sun is our ally of the harvest. We are also Suns. We are the allies of the future’s harvest. This is a potent time to claim our own Sun’s energy.

The full Moon on August 16 is a lunar eclipse at 24 Leo/Aquarius. This is the time to realize what energy Aquarius contributes to recovering the wholeness of self. Aquarius is the collective and it is the impulse to embrace the future. An individual can change the world but we also need to work in groups to manifest our future. The give and take between these two signs creates something greater than the sum of its parts. At this full Moon, we might reach a breaking point or crisis in the balance between these two signs. Mars square to Pluto in this chart signifies possible eruptions. Pluto’s job is to release the shadow. As the light goes out of this full Moon, look within the shadows to claim your power.

Transits of interest this month:
August 5 – Venus enters Virgo [The goddess of beauty enters the golden fields of Virgo.]
*** August 6 – Mars (22 Virgo) opposite Uranus (22 Pisces) [Pay attention to will and the desire to change.]
*** August 6 – Mercury (23 Leo) opposite Neptune (23 Aquarius) [Messenger god meets the oceanic god of illusion and dream.]
*** August 13 – Venus (9 Virgo) conjunct Saturn [Love and responsibility merge.]
*** August 15 – Mercury (9 Virgo) conjunct Saturn [Communication about wholeness.] - appointment w/ endocrinologist
*** August 17 – Mars (28 Virgo) square Pluto (28 Sagittarius) [Release of shadow, what is hidden?]
August 21 – Mercury (19 Virgo) conjunct Venus [The hermaphrodite. Alchemic merging of Mercury and Venus.]
*** August 23 – Mercury (21 Virgo) opposite Uranus (21 Pisces) [New ideas, revolutionary thoughts]
*** August 23 – Venus (21 Virgo) opposite Uranus (21 Pisces) [New partnerships and pairings, revolutionary relationships]
*** August 27 – Mercury (28 Virgo) square Pluto (28 Sagittarius) [Expressing what we have learned from the dark.]
*** August 29 – Venus (28 Virgo) square Pluto (28 Sagittarius) [Finding beauty there.]

*** indicates transits of interest to me

there's time . . .

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:08:17 GMT

You needn't worry. There is time. You have all the time in the world. You preceded time and you will exist beyond it. Age is irrelevant; more meaningless than a number. Forever, Aerie, you have FOREVER. There is no dream you now have that you will not manifest. There is no challenge you now face that you will not crush and dispose of. There is no point in spending one more second of your awesome, amazing life, thinking anything to the contrary.

Olé,
The Universe

helpful session

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:38:58 GMT

I had a good therapy session tonight. Affirmed my decision to start eating at home. Things have gotten too squirrelly with my dad and I need a bunch of space.

Speaking of squirrels, I mowed one down tonight on my way home from work. I hate running over animals. This is only the second time it's happened to me. The first time was a woodchuck. Much bigger.

I was pretty sleepy today at work, which sucks. I gotta figure out how to be awake at work. Staying up until 3 a.m. the night before last probably didn't help. It turned the tide on my depressed/suicidal thoughts, though. Or, something did.

Tom (therapist) thought it was the letters I wrote. One to each of my last two psychiatrists advising them of the issues I have with them. I think I'm going to talk to Dr. K, the Lamictal doc, mostly because I think it will feel good to confront him in person rather than just mail a letter.

OK, enough for tonight. I'm gonna get some sleep.

who am I, post [ex-husband]?

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:54:21 GMT

I was thinking about this yesterday, who am I after my divorce? I was who I wanted to be in that relationship (not completely, not always, but still in large ways I was) and then, he vanished. (He became a woman and broke up with me). How do I let go of who I was in that relationship in order to be who I am now? How am I not obliterated by that relationship combusting? I wanted what I had so much. Some days I don't know what to do except still want it.

HTF did my sense of myself get so tied up in that relationship? Because I was able to be myself, safely and cherished. My writing is not coming out very clearly and I'm not going to worry about it. I just want to be myself again. I feel like a ghost who's been haunting my life.

Some of this ghost-like feeling has to do with being on medication for bipolar II. My emotions aren't as sharp or up-front, in-my-face like they used to be. Neither are my thoughts. This was a relief at first, years ago now, to have a break. Now, I just feel lost. I don't feel lonely, just like I can't find my feet.

Enough for tonight.

44 lbs

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:14:17 GMT

That's how much weight I've released since last fall. I'm in utter amazement. It hasn't even been hard. I've made 5 medication changes that have impacted my weight.

1) I started taking Cytomel for low thyroid.
2) I started taking Metformin for insulin resistance.
3) I stopped taking Paxil which causes weight gain.
4) I stopped taking Depakote which causes weight gain.
5) I started taking Byetta also for insulin resistance.

I've also made an effort to eat less and more healthfully. I've also exercised more, but only sometimes. I weighed in at the gynecologist today, but I see my endocrinologist August 15th and he better be pleased.

I sure am.