04.24.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:31 pm by Athena
Wow! Step away from an internet connection for two days and all sorts of crazy things happen, like you get outside and remember what natural light looks like and things don’t have a funny pixilated fuzz around the edges and your bald head gets battered by the sun.
Huh.Who’d have thunk it? There’s a whole other world outside the interweb….
So I haven’t blogged because I went out into the light and well, I, um, bought a jeep. It’s a fabulous fun story with lots of pictures, but I’m still hyperventilating so I’ll catch you all up tomorrow when I’m not getting worked to death by my boss.
He’s trying to make my last week memorable by running me in circles.
Stay tuned. Tomorrow shouldn’t suck.
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04.20.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:09 pm by Athena
I’ve been paralyzed of late because of my lack of clarity in having an objective. When trying to decide what I want, I find myself doing this…
I want freedom. I want adventure. I want to discover myself and set further boundaries. I want to meet people and try new things. I want to explore my world. I want the wind in my hair and the sun on my face and dirt under my fingernails. Mwah hah hah. I want it all!
I know, it’s a lot of “I wants”. That’s sort of the point though. After years of finding reasons to starve myself of the things I wanted – I’ve come to wonder why I’m not taking responsibility for my happiness and going after what I want? Raised to believe Sacrifice and Obligation were the only ways to be a real member of a team or society, I’m just now starting to wonder if I’m not a better team member as a whole and happy person – couldn’t I contribute to society by being what I really want to be? I mean –wouldn’t that be better for everyone? And if so, why are there so few people doing it?
When he said, “You’re just a housewife. You’re a nobody. It’s time for you to become a productive member of society.”
I very nearly put his teeth through the back of his skull. How dare someone say that a housewife is not a productive member of society! But more importantly how dare anyone judge my capacity- my productivity on their own personal scale.
Which brought me to a funny point of internal questioning, “What is my productivity?” “What is my Role?” Although I knew he wasn’t anywhere near being right, I did start to wonder if I had been wrong. Wrong in the line of thinking that I had adapted myself to someone else’s needs – become their team player, coach, and mother – at the expense of my talents and my desires. Don’t misunderstand, I’d do it all over again, because I was in love and had a fabulous decade of being married, but is it possible that by choosing that life of “productivity” according to the rules of my upbringing and my society, I had negated my true ability to contribute and thereby to some degree- gave him validation for his comment?
The Bliss Quest is a search for my Holy Grail. Joseph Campbell referred to the Holy Grail and the Grail mythologies as the “Search for self.” An inscription above the door at the Oracle at Delphi translated into “Know thyself, know thy place.”
It’s not a ridiculous comparison that in the Matrix when Neo visits the Oracle, the same inscription is above the doorway in the kitchen. “Know thyself.”
Anyway, what I’m rambling about is this… When it comes to something like the search for the Grail, your own Holy Grail – or the Goddess within, should it be all out bust, or should it be a reserved and tentative inquiry?
There’s a moment in the movie, The Never Ending Story, where the world of the imagination is collapsing and the character Noah has to give the Empress a new name. The battle he goes through internally to not just whisper the name, or even speak it – but to rush to the window and scream it at the top of his lungs into the storm, tells so much about the state of our ability as creatures of this paradigm. We are educated not to choose with strength, to act with boldness. We are trained not to stand up with conviction and scream out our wants, state our opinions, or shout, “I know what I am. I know what I want.”
Ultimately, I have no idea where I’ll end up, or how I’ll get there, but I want to be able to shout with absolute conviction.
I am Athena.
Then contribute to the world at my greatest capacity, not diminished for the ease of someone else’s ego, not softly because of another person’s fear. I want to be whole and happy and give of that center with joyful enthusiasm.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lighting they
Do not go gently into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
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