just went up on myspace due to the insistance of my roomates

http://www.myspace.com/floatinginthesea

Love After Love
By: Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each with smile at the other's welcome
and say sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you,
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows your heart.

Take down the loveletters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
feel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Well some of you may be thinking, here we go again, another Michael Moore propaganda piece. But man after watching Sicko, it made sick to my stomach and sick to be an American honestly. Here's a real-life example of the types of issues he brings up in his film.

http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/161795.html

This situation definitely reaffirms my hope to make my acupuncture practice an affordable place for all types of people, the logistics of how to survive doing that will obviously have to be worked out, but it is already being done through those involved in community acupuncture.
http://www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org/

Oh the possibilities of it all!! Its overwhelming at times, yet so important to think about how we can all live as concientious citizens in this society, how can we all do something that will make us proud to be human, to make us feel connected to those around us, to eliminate the mental physical social and psychological barriers that seperate us
-from the smelly person we share the seat with on the bus
-the methane addict who looks us in the eye and asks for our change
-the guy early sunday morning on haight street picking up trash left behind by last night's partyers
- etc etc etc

But you know the only thing i can do right now is make those baby steps to remind myself that i am not a selfish egomanical wasteful human being...because if i try to do it all, it is just too overwhelming, if i try to compare myself to those people out there who breathe righteousness in like the passing air, then all i will do is wallow in my own self-pity which replicates the cycle of being caught up in my own shit
how many hours a day do we waste worrying about shit that just does not matter!!!
what a luxury we have, or what a shame it is we are left with too much time for thinking, it is like the prison of freedom, it comes with a price, and that price is losing perspective...perspective on whats important on what really matters, we know longer worry about survival on a day to day basis, safeway will always be there, our rice krispies will always fucking be there...
and what about choices?? freedom to make way too many mundane choices, now that takes up too much precious time, too many calories, too much fat, too many carbs, now how about that protein...ill just have an apple thank you very much

-

Acupuncture the evidence

Acupuncture is a treatment growing in popularity in the UK and the programme demonstrated an experiment being conducted by Hugh MacPherson, Senior Research Fellow at the University of York. This mapped the effect of acupuncture on brain structures with both MRI and MEG scanners at the newly opened York Neuroimaging Centre. kathysykes.jpg (2129 bytes) Kathy Sykes the presenter The team found that superficial needling resulted in activation of the motor areas of the cortex, a normal reaction to the sensation of touch. But with deep needling, the brain’s limbic system, which is part of the pain matrix, was deactivated, a result that could not have been predicted from what we know about neural pathways. This line of research suggests that the deactivation of the pain matrix may explain in part the mechanism by which acupuncture has an effect when used to treat chronic pain.

a fijian love song....
for the tune, you'll have to ask me to sing it

vorolaki kece noqu dodomo
niua lako voli va kamataboko
sega mada niu kila nomui tovo
ko sa vakavuna noqumai kavoro

noqu dina veiiko mo nanuma
ai loloma mai utoqu mo kauta
ni sai otioti qo ka ni gauna
mo na mai talevi iko tale buna

rogo ca nai lo lo mai...utoqu
ni sa na oti na dodomo ni yalonqu
ni dau soli au meu i noqu
noqu masu mo na bula vakacegu

you look at me
with those WIDE eyes
do you even know me??

you are so naive
you are so....you
you don't know any better

And That Is Why I Love You

i want to be naive
i want to be me
i want to be US

I want to
live love
love love
be love
see love
feel love
make love

Let's make beautiful babies
Let's raise them to rise
Rise above the horizon and float on clouds

free their minds
free their bodies
free our love
free our souls

Let's live in the woods
Let's live on the sea
Let's walk between stars
Let's float thru the grass

How about that?

Let's go on a dream quest, a journey
don Juan is our spiritual guide
It's about time to re-discover your dreams

the following is excerpted from The Art of Dreaming by Carlos Castaneda
its gonna take awhile for me to record it all, the book is dense and beautiful

Explanations always call for deep thought.
But when you actually dream, be light as a feather.
Dreaming has to be performed with integrity and seriousness,
but in the midst of laughter
and with the confidence of someone who doesn't
have a worry in the world

Welcome to the seven gates of dreaming
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first gate is a threshold we must cross by becoming aware of a particular sensation before deep sleep. A sensation which is like a pleasant heaviness that doesn't let us open our eyes. We reach that gate the instant we become aware that we're falling asleep, suspended in darkness and heaviness.

To cross the first gate we must be able to sustain the sight of any item of our dreams.
In order to diffuse the evanescent quality of dreams, sorcerers have devised the use of the starting point item. Every time you isolate it and look at it, you get a surge of energy. Start out slowly recognizing a few items in your dream and gradually increase the number. As soon as you feel the images begin to shift and you feel you are losing control, go back to the starting point item and start all over again.

Upon reaching the first gate, you reach the energy body. Dreaming is the art of tempering the energy body.

How to gain energy is known as the sorcerer's way. They intelligently redeploy their energy by cutting down anything they consider superfluous in their lives.
There are two ways of facing our being alive. One is to surrender to it, either by acquiescing to its demands or by fighting those demands. The other is by molding our particular life situation to fit our own configurations.

When sorcerer's talk about molding one's life situation, they mean molding the awareness of being alive. Through molding this awareness, we can get enough energy to reach and sustain the energy body, and with it we can certainly mold the total direction and consequences of our lives.

Self-importance is not only the sorcerer's supreme enemy but the nemisis of mankind.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You reach the second gate of dreaming when you wake up from a dream into another dream.
You should only wake up when you are naturally through with dreaming, but while you are dreaming, you should dream that you wake up in another dream. In other words, to change dreams in an orderly and precise manner. Another way is to use the items seen within a dream to trigger another dream.

The true goal of dreaming is to perfect the energy body. And luckily a perfect energy body will act as a safety valve which will stop the dreamer from using their dreams for indulgence. Then at a given time their dreaming attention must make them surface. Thus you are able to distinguish between dreaming and being awake.

A Native-American legend:

A long time ago there was a great wailing heard in our Nation.
So much pain and sorrow and so many tears.
Because of greed and power, our men were fighting and killing each other.
The women were weeping for the loss of their husbands, fathers, uncles, and sons.
As each tear drop hit the earth it made a sound that was heard throughout the heavens and beyond.
Our Grandmother Moon listened to the pain of the women of earth and went to our Creator to ask for help.
Creator, as always, listened and said, "I too have heard the wailing of the women and felt their pain. I shall send them a gift to help in their time of need.
Tell them, Grandmother, to gather at the light of the full moon, bring their drums and rattles. Build a great fire under the light of the moon and around the sacred fire, dance, sing and pray for your men."
Grandmother Moon sent Creator's words to the women on a gentle wind and all the women heard.
And so it was that they gathered with their drums, rattles, songs and their prayers.
They danced around the sacred fire under the light of the full moon and prayed for the blood shed to stop and the dying of their men to cease.
They prayed, danced, and sang until the moon went to sleep and the sun awoke.
Their prayers were heard and their gift was given.
From this day on, because your prayers were so powerful and so filled with love; you, the women, will be given the blood of life, so that the blood of violent death will cease.
Each month you will shed the blood of life, begining at the age when you will take a husband and from this blood human life will be born.
When your children are grown your bleeding will stop because you have given enough and you will grow old listening to the laughter of your grandsons and granddaughters.
The women were happy again.