Zero Waste Home

As I move forward with my life, I know that I'm getting way too caught up in... stuff.  As in I have too much stuff.  WAY too much stuff.  I've gotten way to caught up in the happy consumerism that is the American way of life, and frankly I'm none to comfortable with it. 

So in a valiant effort to make some sort of change I have begun looking up what it would take to have a "Zero Waste Home."  This is not an easy step.  This is getting rid of so many of the modern conveniences we have come to accept in our every day lives.  At the same time, this also means less stuff around.  More freedom to just be.  Less things defining who I am, and more me defining who I am.  I kind of like that idea. 


The whole idea of this zero waste home is to refuse, refuse, refuse and only when you can refuse no more, do you begin to reduce, reuse and recycle.  I like this.  Refusing to buy things I really don't need does mean an extra buck or two in my pocket... that's nice.  Reducing what's around me is all about energy savings.  Not to mention how much easier it will be if I ever have to move again.  Reusing... well that could be fun.  I've been meaning to make a quilt out of those shirts I never wear for years now... or wall art out of old jewelry...  and lastly not just recycling, but composting.  I've been interested in composting for years now.  I've got a great patio, and enough plants around that I could do that.  I'm almost positive my roommate would help... that could totally work...  But the first step is always the doozey.  Just trying to get started. 

So I've been searching the net for some websites to get me started.  Came across quite a few (which I will add later I promise)  and in searching for a great zero waste website I came across a green awards website... here it is... http://www.THEGreenAwards.com   

The Green Awards is going to give about $25000 out to some deserving people.  There are only about 13 more days to vote, but what a great opportunity.  A chance to directly help some very worth while causes.  To help bring people's attention to some environmental issues we should all pay attention too.  Did I vote for the zero waste family imitative, maybe.. what about the civic leader who is trying to save the biking trails in his home.  Or the school principal who is attempting to get funding to have asbestos removed from his gym.  I'm particularly fond of the guy who created a moving business that uses nothing but reusable plastic bins instead of cardboard.  Huge fan of that one.

SO I dare you.  go to the website.  Go vote.  Go Green in the most important way before St. Pat's day ever hits.

Getting Picked Last in Dodge Ball

I will admit, I'm single.  I'm almost 31.  I have been in and out of significant relationships since I started dating at 16.  I spent 5 years with someone I thought was the one.  He turned out to be an emotionally abusive dirt bag.  Less than the one and more one of many I'm finding. So at this point in my life with the big 31 looming over my head I am well and completely on my own.

I bring this up not because I'm looking for a date, to get married, or to even begin the process of dating again. I bring this up because I recently found out that 3 people I know are now engaged to be married.  This is a wonderful thing.  I'm excited for each and everyone of them.  I'm hoping to be in the weddings.  If I'm lucky I'll get an opportunity to help the 3 important people in my life celebrate the connection they have made with another human being.  I am honored at the thought of being a part of that.

In that honor and excitement there is a bit of, well, jealousy.  Again, not that I want to get married. No, not really that.  More, well, it's like being in 3rd grade and getting picked last for dodge ball.  You have every confidence you're a good player.  You know the game, the rules and you've played before. You've probably even won, made it to one of the final rounds, or knocked the last person out of the game before.  But somehow you're still picked last this time around, or every time around.  You just can't seem to figure it out.  Everyone around you is getting picked.  Even Tommy over there in the glasses, who wheezes at the thought of running, has some how managed to make it on to one of the teams.  In fact Tommy was one of the first guys picked to play.  You just can't seem to get a handle on this.  No matter how hard you try. 

Spending 5 years with the last guy I dated, was like having the dodge ball team captain start to point to you. His finger is there, you can see the look in his eye as he debates his choice and just as his mouth opens, you think to your self "here it is!"  This is the moment you've been waiting for, you're going to get picked.  And boom, his finger moves to another player, another name get's called.  You have to take a moment to think, to breath, to just be confused.  You thought you had it.  You were special enough, good enough, thought about enough to be picked to play.  Than you just weren't.  No matter how you look at that, it's a blow to the self esteem.  You could find out that it's the worst team in all of dodge ball.  The most loosing, damaging, horrible team ever, but at least you would have had a chance to play.  It can take a moment or two to recover. 

The saddest part of all is that you're not even sure you want to play dodge ball.  You've seen what a barbaric game it can be.  When one side is cruel, or even if it's just one other player. It can be terrifying.  Constantly dodging and weaving, ducking, falling down and getting back up.  It can certainly damage your backside on occasion, knock the wind out of you.  Hell sometimes when you do get to play, you get laughed at, hurt and even worse... thrown off the team.  It's tragic.  There are so many other games.  So many other opportunities out there.  Games that fall more into your style.  Like chess, tetris, or 4 square.  You could play any one of those games, but some how, it always comes back to dodge ball.

You're sitting on the side lines watching and you see that one team. They are the golden children of dodge ball.  Every player looks out for the other.  When one falls down, they all help him or her up.  When one player is hurt by someone else the team is there helping the hurt, giving the player strength when they have none, a chance to rest when they haven't, a chance to shine when they think they can't.  You sit on the sidelines and think to your self, "This is why we play this stupid game. This is why it always comes back to dodge ball."  You want to be on that team.  Or to find a team like that of your own. Some where inside of you  you find the strength, you get back up, you get back in line, and you wait.

Like me.  I'm not a team captain, though I know girls who have been.  I'm just me.  Doing my thing, waiting to get picked for the dodge ball team.

New again

I have never understood the line "The Incredible Lightness of Being" before. In the last two weeks I have come to understand this idea.

I feel like a lizard, a snake, that has too many layers of dead dry skin, that hasn't come off.  It doesn't seem to matter how much I rub up against anything, it doesn't matter how much I push or squirm I just can't seem to get this layer of crap off of me.  I feel it muffling everything that is me.  My colors, light, magic, my very voice has been muffled for years now. 

Somewhere in here there is a sense of self that has been missing for too many years now.  I am in the process of looking for a spell beyond your basic cleansing.  I'm not looking to slowly scrub away these many layers of darkness, of other's voices telling me who and what I am, I am looking for something stronger. 

It amazes me how hard it is to find the older spells.  I'm not talking grimoire of spells from the "ancients" or who ever they are.  I'm talking the spells our grandmothers did.  The ones that weren't necessarily written down because they were so ingrained in who we were and our everyday life that they didn't need to be written down.

I'm looking for a cleansing spell to help me break through the layers of abuse I have put my body, mind and magic through. So caught up in the political rat race of making sure that everyone is okay.  That everyone has their voice heard and represented, instead of remembering that by not teaching them to fight, I help perpetuate the cycle of whiny me me me selfish bull crap that we are currently seeing not only in the magical world but the mundane as well. Somewhere in the race to make everyone else's life better I neglected to work on mine.  And now even if I wanted to help others I am incapable.  I am muffled and muzzled.

As I find my spell, and myself, I'm hoping to add it to this blog. Keep on the look out.

Meditation and colored pencils

So most of my friends meditate using tarot cards, runes, candles, water, music or other similar tools.  Not me.

Thank you Mr. Roger Burrows for your book "Images:  The Ultimate Color Experience" (isbn 978-156-138-1098). Images is a book of repeating geometric designs. Simple lines and shapes that allow you to color and change and mold the images to what you want them to look like.  Making each one completely and totally yours.

And thank you Berol Prismacolor for your gazillion and twelve different shades of colored pencils.My favorite colors include "Ultramarine," "Mahogany Red," "Peacock Blue," Metalic anything, and "Imperial Violet." Not hugely creative, I'll give you but good solid colors.  Blend able colors that shade and move.

And now I will stop being a sell out and explain

My meditation comes in the simple act of coloring.  Shading, blending the colors in these geometrical patterns.  I loose myself in hearing the pen scratch across the paper.  The soft scuff when I'm lightly shading or the hard rub of deep dark colors.  Each one developing under my fingers and pencil to show the world exactly how I am feeling at that moment.  The one of circles and triangles that was done in shades of reds, oranges and yellows.  Or the squares and ovals done in blues, purples and greens.

I can tell when my mind is chaotic and I can't focus. The colors don't compliment and I can't find the pattern in the images.  Or I focus on a small detail and loose the rest of the picture.  But amazingly enough.  This doesn't discourage me or make me stop.  Instead I move to the next page, take a deep breath and pick a new color.  I stop the thoughts, and refocus.  I lose myself in the colors.

At this point meditation for me has stopped being about getting advice from the Gods or looking to my future. It's not about figuring out the meaning of today or what I should be figuring out for tomorrow.  It's about finding the now.  Salvaging the mistakes, and making them into something beautiful.  Slowing the chaotic riotous thoughts that spiral through my head. It's about seeing what's infront of me over and over again, and finding something different every time because I am different every time.

I've torn each page out when I finish.  They're lining one wall in my room. This mass of colors and patterns teaming with thoughts and actions.  Reminders of my day to day life.  Not to mention, what I think of as, beautiful art.  Color and harmony, shape and shades a visual description of my journey. A way of looking at where I have been and where I am going all in seeing where I am right now.

I also suggest coloring books and crayons for this.  I have a preference for  the princess coloring books, but that's because I love the long sweeping lines of their dresses and making the colors blend and shade until the character seem to want to step from the page... But that could just be me.

Happy meditating!

Loving for the wrong reasons.

Loving is the easy part.  This I now know as fact.  I have loved so many.  Some with passion,  some with patience, some with the ease of a spring breeze.    Loving them is easy.  Liking them is the bitch. 

Welcome to my world.

So there is something about me and movies.  I almost can't help it.  They enthrall me, always have.  Good movie, Bad movie... sometimes it just doesn't matter.  That visual representation of words has always amazed me.  The angles and the images.  The lines and the emotion. Exotic places, familiar places all of them as close as a finger tip on a play button. And today's movie was no exception to the "Bad Movie.... sometimes it just doesn't matter" idea.

Now I should say, I am in no way illiterate.  I am as passionate about books as I am movies. My current books being the Canterbury tales in old English cause it's fascinating, and Brigid of Killdare because it's the fictionalized telling of the life of St. Brigid and come on... Brigid! who wouldn't? 

What brings this post on you ask?  Why should you care?  Well in reality you probably shouldn't.  You should be off living your life instead of reading about mine.  On the other hand, I'm honored to have you here. As my favorite poem says:

How dull it must be, reading of me. 
I have no adventures, 
No fun in the clouds, 
I'm simply, quite barely, even being.
And yet, if what they say is true
You're reading of me
While I read of you. 

Today I was watching a silly movie.  Not one of Christian Slater's best... Called "The Confessor."  Slator as a priest... cause yeah, I can totally see that.  Ahh to have an image of me rolling my eyes set here.  At now being 16 years away from my Christian upbringing (save the occasional Christmas eve mass to appease the "She's still trying to find herself" denial of my parents) I am reminded by this movie of what I miss about Christianity.

My Gods and Goddesses do not ask me to kneel before them.  They wish me to stand on my two feet, strong and true to myself.  To push forward, to live a life worthy of my own passions and truths.  They ask more of me and less of me than any other in my life.   And they have never asked me to kneel.   On the other, there is something to be said for that moment when you kneel, your hands folded before you, head bowed in piety that moves me.  That ritual of mass is moving in it's own way.  The solemnity of the moment when the bread and wine is transformed to the body and blood of Christ.  It's a moment no doubt.

I had a priest once who brought joy to every mass.  He brought music, real music to every mass and encouraged even the worst of us to sing out as loud and true as we could.  A mass lead by that man was a joy to attend.  It was a time where you truly reveled in the goodness of God.  You actually for a moment believed that his was a joyful religion.  I admit I miss that feeling.

Please don't get me wrong.  I have no interest in returning to my Christian roots.  Simply acknowledging them on occasion.  They are as important to me as the path I follow now.  For they are what brought me to this path, and set my feet a moving. To honor them, and my current feelings is to honor my current path.