Poppy now has a playmate, 8-mo old "Forrest." He looks much less pitiful in person. ;) They get along splendidly.

http://www.adltexas.org/forms/pet_detail.php?focus=2650

Subject: Stupendous Shopping Soiree Tonight!

Hey y'all, our Holiday Art Bazarre is here and we are in awe of the evening ahead!

Art by Brian, "Visker" Mahaney, Kim Roche, Seven Star Photography's Ira Weinschel, Dave Umlas, Iana Wi, Pixie Sunshine, Angelique Pearson, Erin Beth Donnelly, Marrilee Ratcliffe, Darren Minke, Liam Brooks, Dee Kupps, Sarah Skidmore, Rama Tiru and Jonathan Sylvan

Last year, to document and celebrate our First Night project, Ira Weinschel of Seven Star Photography made a fantastic video montage: http://www.facebook.com/l/73d03;www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNde8ajeQ3E Thursday night, he'll be debuting his latest video installment of our most recent project for the Burningman festival.

And who could shop for holiday gifts without the sounds of holiday music? We'll be playing holiday tunes you've *never* heard along with a special live theramin set from Austin based artist Nobodobodon!

We also have special guest star Dr. Sketchy hosting live figure modeling from 7:30-9:30. Original artworks of holiday beauties will be available for sale as they're completed!

While this isn't a fire sale - it is also a fire show! Fire performances all night long on the back patio - talented, daring, burn defying artists under the guidance of David Salazar.

Finally, we'll wind down the evening down-tempo. From 9:30 - 11:00, the famous and infamous Kinetic Monkey will be dropping mellow beats for browsing and dancing; pouring melodious honey on our contented ear drums!

We've got some exciting raffle prizes, ah-mazing auction items, beautiful works of art and ReAlLy wEiRd sTuFf! Sure to be fun; see you there!
Community Art Makers

My Brain on My Mind -
The ABCs of the thrumming, plastic mystery that allows us to think, feel, and remember, by Pricilla Long.

Excerpt, letter E:

—E—

Easy Problem. Philosopher’s lingo for the problem in neuroscience of comprehending the neuronal correlates of consciousness. When you see red, what exactly are your neurons doing? When you remember your grand­father’s face, what are your neurons doing? It may be difficult to parse the answer but in principle we can do it. It’s easy. The Hard Problem is the mystery of subjective experience. When long light waves stimulate our neural pathways, why do we experience the color red? And what survival benefit caused our brains to develop, through eons of evolution, an ability to experience a “sense of self,” a self able to see itself as special or heroic or smart or not so smart—as, on occasion, a complete failure?

The Witch of Portobello:on a spiritual quest/for love/for truth/but was the world ready for her revelations?

Last night, I started watching The Experimental Witch Videos

"I believe @keithpp explains better than my page _The Experimental Witch,_" stated by Paulo Coelho on twitter 24 hours before the Rome premier of the film he inspired to be created through new media.

Also this evening, I discovered Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian @ the Criminology Institute of the Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian Hebrew University of Jerusalem... whose fields of interest include: women, law and social control; women, the military, and violence; rights and identity of children and women in areas of conflict; and policing family violence.
Checkpoints and Counter Spaces

Indeed, we are living in crucial times... Neda Agha Soltan's family have continued to make clear accusations that Iranian gov't security forces are solely to blame for the death of their daughter

And in my continuing to feel the even more recent absence of yet another particularly enigmatic & ethereal being whom I felt like I never knew as well as I had wished (I was often too shy to talk with her, even though we certainly danced at the same times, and both contributed to the construction of many of the same sacred spaces), I have to wonder if there is more that I can take away from this experience... other than to cherish every moment with the people whom I love, as if it were our last? Our LA & Austin extended family communities were finally able to celebrate the life of Andrea Burden, this past weekend. And Lucent Dossier posted another heartfelt tribute to her, entitled "Be Kinder..."

This is a sentiment which always leads me to contemplate PKD's cyber-gnostic philosophy of compassion:
"It's not what you look like, or what planet you were born on. It's how kind you are."

Paulo Coelho often references that "God has a masculine and a feminine face, rigor and compassion." This is a common theme in esoteric doctrines throughout human experience. Although many dominant religions have forgotten about the divine feminine, she is beginning to reveal herself again!

However, at the same time that I am embracing the cosmos with love, I am also returning to the rigors of discipline in my daily life... I seem to get more out of my life when I not only honor the cosmic bliss of the eternal now, but also celebrate the ceremonies of the ancients!

So, on that dark note, here's a deep lecture about the philosophy of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning author, Ernest Becker... from Professor Sheldon Solomon, for which he suggests a mash-up title, "The Structure of Evil: History is a Nightmare from Which I am Trying to Awaken."

You can also download the entire transcript, but here's a profound summary of one or two of Becker's main points that I feel is particularly pertinent to this discussion:
"All right, well his argument is as follows, as articulated in the _Escape from Evil_ book. What he says is, 'Look, no matter how powerful and convincing your culture is, it is ultimately a symbol. All cultural constructs are symbolic, they’re human creations; however, death is a very real, physical phenomenon.' And the point that Becker makes very simply is that no symbol, regardless of its power or potency, will ever be sufficient to overcome the physical reality of death. It’s like mixing apples and oranges.
Consequently, and I’ve got to degenerate into some psychoanalytical language, which is probably okay for some, less so for others, what Becker says, again borrowing from William James, he says, 'You know what, therefore no matter how good your culture is or how much you believe in it, there’s always going to be some residual anxiety about death.' And you’re not aware of that, he claims, because that anxiety is repressed.
And then, using Freud’s ideas, what Becker says is that repressed anxiety is projected onto another group of individuals, either inside or outside of your culture, that you designate as the all-encompassing repository of evil, the eradication of which would make life on Earth as it is in heaven. He calls them scapegoats, and I think we’re familiar with them; they’re either in-house or external ones. Either way, Becker says, we’ve got a problem; either you run into people that are different and that’s a problem, or you declare somebody to be different and that’s a problem. Because what Becker then goes on to do, borrowing very heavily from some sociologists that we’re very fond of, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann in a book called _The Social Construction of Reality,_ what Becker does following Berger and Luckmann is to talk about the psychological processes that are instigated when people encounter others who do not share their beliefs, or encounter somebody who they have designated as different."

Regarding this scenario, I have always been a proponent of libertine philosophy in one form or another... and I particularly enjoy Frank Herbert's maxim known as the sign of profound accord:
"We are here to remove a primary weapon from the hands of disputant religions. That weapon--the claim to possession of the one and only revelation."

To conclude, I must offer one more quote from Prof. Solomon's lecture:
"Becker also insists that there’s got to be a religious dimension to any serious effort to improve the human condition. He basically said, 'You know what, there’s no way that we’re going to get out of this without dabbling in religion broadly defined.' One of my favorite Becker quotes in The Denial of Death is that 'Psychology can only take you so far, at which time it drops you directly on the doorstep of religion.'
Well what does he mean by that? His point very simply is that every one of us, whether we liked it or not, just to get up in the morning we have to believe things about reality. Every one of us has beliefs about reality. They may be religious, they may be secular, but every one of us has beliefs about reality. And if we’re honest with ourselves, there’s no way that those beliefs about reality can ever be unambiguously confirmed."

In my first reading of The Denial of Death, 20-odd years ago; I confirmed that there is something extremely valuable in ritually re-enacting the heroic stories of our ancestors (what Joseph Campbell would have referred to as ceremonial celebrations of The Monomyth) that seem to in some way account for some sort of need in this unconscious/a-rational/spiritual facet of our existence... journeying down into the underworld and up into the divine realms, or simply going outside & beyond our normal experience in order to bring back some sort of gnosis that can benefit ourselves & our people (whether or not they are ready for it, like in Plato's allegory of the cave)... and in fact, I would like to even suggest that the ultimate myths are those which benefit ALL people... for whatever different lives we may lead, we all have one thing in common... "When we have shuffle'd off this mortall coile"

In this vein, I have always been fascinated with shadow-work... whether by one microcosmic way or another macrocosmic way (however devolved)?!!! So, perhaps it's no wonder that I am curious about things like Terror management theory?

And if you prefer the graphic novel (aka "comic") medium... check out "Reapy: The Littlest Harbinger of Death!"

Astrological Notes:
New Moon in Sagittarius-24º, Dec 16, Wed. 5:02 AM MST

Sagittarius - where we connect our day-to-day thinking to a larger vision and find and define what has meaning in life, where our experience and values coalesce into a vision, an inspiration to guide us on our path.

A mutable, fire sign ruled by expansive, jovial Jupiter Sag transforms all available resources, information, opinion, facts and desires into one essential action. Think one essential arrow from The Archer's bow; Sagittarius seeks to aim it towards the highest manifestation possible. The center of our galaxy sits at 27º Sagittarius where Pluto passed through recently downloading powerful new frequencies and influences for our planet

Sagittarius/9th house/Jupiter rule 'higher mind' - not daily facts, plans, lists, but higher, abstract mind - philosophy, law, education, religion. Sagittarians love the expansiveness of travel, all that is international, foreign, culturally different, and yet familiar. Jupiter's influence colors Sagittarius enthusiastic, social, fun loving, positive like all the other fire signs (Aires, Leo), active and full of hope. They're interested in the big picture and lean towards excess in all things....much like the Sagittarian comedian/philosophers are George Carlin, Swami Beyondananda, Bill Hicks and Will Rodgers.( Read more... )

Help bring Dorothy, the fire tornado to First Night this years. By the same folks who brought you the Clock Tower and Burning Man Temple, aka Community Artmakers. The fire tornado was the "gem" inside the lotus of the Burning Man temple. It's 30 feet high and will have colored flames in a helix shooting toward the sky all night on New Year's Eve. Help us make it happen!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=119000819974&index=1

Spread the word, come to the Holiday Bizarre this Thursday, or use the "Donate" Paypal button at the bottom of this web site and give what you can to this labor of love. Note: First Night was not richly funded this year. We need your help!
http://communityartmakers.com/?page_id=540

Since we had our Mac crash, a lot of the downloaded applications were lost. I don't remember which one it was that I had on my desktop that I could upload entries with. It supported Mac OS X. Anyone have a clue? I don't want to download the wrong one. Thanks!

"Texting is the new 'lipstick on the collar."

The last few months have been a real transformative processes. While there have been alot of changes on the outside, the real work has been internal. I have dubbed the process "Synthesis"

I have been slowly turning on all the parts of my brain at the same time.
I had broken myself up into a million little pieces. I wasn't able or willing to deal with all of the truth at once. I hid like a child in the now rejecting the past and the future.

Slowly but surely I have been turning on all those parts of me that I had turned off. Connecting memories and experiences one at a time like an OS loading extensions and packages.

Sleeping parts of myself began to be introduced to eachother. Alot of the time I have felt like a Conference Committee in the legislature. The adventurous Paul and the prodistant work ethic Paul sit down in my head and try to figure out how to live together. Together they discover what has gone before, and look towards what is to come.

Reminds me alot of Rumi:

"The drunk and the madman inside me
take a liking to each other. They sit down
on the ground together. Look at this mess
of a life as the sun looks fondly into ruins."

It has been a painful process. I have rediscovered pride in myself and shame. Before, existence was unbearable as a whole. Awareness resuted in uncontrolable panic and self-loathing. Somehow, that has been changed into simple sadness. Turns out Spaulding Gray was right all along.

"I'm not really sure I want the cure. I know the cure is supposed to be the transformation of hysterical misery into common unhappiness."

I didn't want the cure either, I was very attached to my misery. I am glad that is beginning to change.

Honestly, I thought the whole thing was kinda silly. Then I saw my horiscope by Rob Brezney. Jerk makes it hard for me to be skeptical about astrology and gives credence to my internal dialog.

Sagittarius:

One of your top accomplishments in 2009 is the way you have united parts of yourself that had not previously been very well connected. It seems you decided that you were tired of being split up into fragmented sub-personalities that had different agendas. Somehow you managed to convince them all to work together in a common cause. Now I'm quite impressed with the new spirit of cooperation that's at work in your depths. I predict it will lead to an unprecedented singleness of purpose in 2010.

Hello from chilly Washingon DC! I'm here on a TDY, and just now have had the time to get near a computer. We missed the brunt of the NE winter storm; just some light cold rain. I have a 60" plasma TV in my hotel room. :) So there's my update; back in San Antonio on Friday night!

In LA, Lucent Dossier is donating the proceeds of this weekend's show to her children!

And in Austin, there will be a memorial on Sunday:
http://www.andreaburden.net/

Please join us as we celebrate the life of Andrea M. Burden
1969-2009

Sunday Dec. 13th - 2pm
Big Red Sun - 1102 E. Cesar Chavez, Austin, TX

Music By:
Kurt & Katy
Chrysta Bell
Atash
Govinda
DJ Manny
The Trim

Food & Drink Provided By:
Moonshine
3rd Base
Hope Farmers Market
Miles of Chocolate

Donations:
Andrea M Burden Memorial Fund
http://www.andreaburden.net/

I had a good morning at tai chi. I've finished the first portion of the Yang long form, and I'm just starting into the second third. Yay progress! I'm quickly going to get to the point where I know enough of the form that it will take longer to practice than my coffee will take to brew. I'll have to tweak my morning routine, and that's a good thing.

I've had further significant progress in my career. I've been updating my Facebook page, but I'm aware that many of my friends here aren't on Facebook. I recently passed my clinical competency oral exam. I had to write an extended case conceptualization paper which includes a theoretical orientation for the case, history, mental status, DSM diagnosis, and a piece illustrating how the theory is present in the work that I'm doing with the patient. There was also a section on the course of treatment and short and long-term goals. I also brought a tape with full transcript to the exam. That ended up being around 50 pages of work. My committee consisted of 1 faculty member, the supervisor of my clinic, and a student who had already advanced to candidacy. I gave a summary of the patient and his psychodynamics, and we listened to the tape. The committee members would have me stop the recording from time to time so they could ask me specific questions. I felt very prepared, and I had thoroughly thought this case through. The examination was actually quite fun for me, and I think it showed. I passed, and the faculty member said that I did a superb job and that I would make a good psychoanalyst (analysts require 4 - 5 years of training in addition to their doctoral degree. Yikes!). This exam was my third (and final) major milestone in the academic program. I'm now cleared to accept an internship position and continue my clinical training outside the program.

Speaking of internships, I've sent off 13 applications primarily to spots in California and Texas. I've received 3 rejections so far. These were sites that I had very long odds with and didn't expect anything from. 2 of these sites were outside of Texas and California so I'm not concerned about the rejections. They were expected. I have applied to many sites that have 50 - 70 applications for 2 slots. That's pretty standard odds. I've also applied to some sites that have 10 applications for 2 slots. Those are great odds. The ones that have rejected me had 150 - 170 applications for 2 slots. You can see why I'm not surprised to have made the cut.

The good news is that I received my first interview request. It's from San Antonio State Hospital. Last year they received 40 applications and extended 10 interviews. I've already made a pretty severe cut. They have 2 positions so my chances of landing there are 1 in 5. They're a full on asylum. I would be working with severe mental illness. 4 months would be with adult inpatients, 4 months with adolescent inpatients, and 4 months with forensic (legally committed) inpatients. I would receive a good deal of training on assessment and neuropsychological assessment. That's exciting to me. I really want to expand my assessment experience, and the neuropsych experience would qualify me to seek specialization as a neuropsychologist. It's something that I'm interested in, but I'm still unsure whether I want to go that route or not. The downside to SASH is that there is no stipend. Most sites have 14k - 23k that they kick down to interns. Not receiving a stipend would be a big financial hit. Anyway, it's all conjecture at this point, but I'll be heading to San Antonio in January for an interview. I'll hear about other programs who are interested in interviewing me on the 15th. Wish me luck!

The final point of note is the results of my first projective integrative assessment report. I had to give a full clinical interview, mental status exam, and give the Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test to a person. Then I had to score and interpret the tests. Finally I had to write this all up and integrate the interpretations to form a clear picture of the person and their mental and emotional functioning. It took me close to 15 hours to do. I'm assured by my professor that it gets faster as I familiarize myself with the scoring and interpretation protocols. The work was well rewarded. I got an A+ on the paper. It's extremely rare to get higher than an A in my program so the A+ is noteworthy. My professor also said that my thinking and writing is unusually sophisticated and that she hopes that I continue with assessment because I have a knack for it. That's such a relief to read after working so hard! It gives me hope that my business plan of starting with assessment to pay back loans and then integrate seeing patients down the line will work out.

So, as you smart grounded-in-reality people suggested might happen, my basil mostly died. But...mostly. The stuff in the middle of the ghetto greenhouse, the most protected stuff, still has some green leaves. So I guess we'll cut those plants down and see if they care to regrow. I'm very interested in how the fig is going to behave. It looks pretty frost burned to me, so I'm expecting it to drop every leaf and start again, but you never know. I have a couple of plants out there that looked frost burned/dead that are picking up their heads again. It's really interesting to check out every few hours, there's a lot going on out there. It's just going on at garden-pace.

Vampires and zombies, or rather, entertainment and novels about vampires and zombies which is after all where zombies and vampires reside, right?, kind of bore the shit out of me. Always have. Which leaves space for the exception to the rule. Which is, Charlie Huston's vampire quadrology. I got onto Charlie Huston through his (non-vampire, non-zombie) novel, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, which is a sweet sweet piece of modern noir/procedural, although when I say "procedural" I don't mean police or forensic procedural, it's kind of its own procedural genre, body and body waste disposal, which sounds gross, which it is, but also, fascinating. Hmmm, that's a very bad sentence but I believe I'll leave it lie.

Anyway, Charlie Huston. Writes really tight books. So tight that it will spoil a lot of the loosy goosey, not well-crafted crime fiction out there for ya. Which is half the books on the shelf. CH has the (not completely) unique ability to really visualize an act of violence or a sequence of violent crime, and to be able to write it in a completely lucid, point by point manner. Read some of that, and the lesser-written lesser-visualized stuff looks like slop. So there's a part of me that doesn't like CH, because he's spoiled a certain amount of sloppy entertainment for me. But I digress.

For some reason, better known to CH, he is interested in vampires (and to a certain extent zombies, which show up in, oh, book 2 of the 4). And that turns out to be a good thing. It's like the best crime noir ever written, with vampires instead of Washingtonians (or something along those lines). They're highly political, his vampires. Anyway, I can't recommend it enough, even if you hate vampires. Maybe especially if you hate vampires. I mean, you'll still hate 'em, but maybe not quite as much. And isn't that what the spirit of Christmas is all about?

Charlie Huston, check him out.

another star has ascended:
http://www.andreaburden.net/
she was always such a compassionate soul, and with such a talented connection between her eye & her hand... indeed, she created much to celebrate unto the artifice of eternity!
although we will miss her dearly, we can still appreciate her contributions to The Great Work, and she will live on in our hearts, minds, and in our spirit.

The Christmas tree has a new top this year; a Santa dressed in the older European style, with additions (staff, eye patch etc) to transform him into Odin. When you've got pagan beliefs and mainstream mixing, it makes for some interesting blends of culture! I'll get a picture up later.