Magia Bella: bella-magic.com

Way too little sleep this week. No plans for the daylight hours tomorrow other than animal care, so will sleep as much as I can then. Should be able to get at least seven hours if all goes well. One… more… shift…

photo credit: voteprime

I forgot to bring in the soy creamer to work. The non-dairy creamer that the break-room usually has available was gone. Bah!

Made a pot of coffee anyways and poured a cup, black no sugar. Happy to find that not only do I still make a good pot of coffee (no need to “cover up” the taste with sugar & cream), I can handle drinking it black and without craving  a cigarette to go along with it. One of my most cherished bad habits of the past was black coffee and cigarettes. Sans cigarettes, I now have enough working taste buds to actually taste coffee in all it’s complexity.

Obligatory spiritually-related pablum: It would seem that giving up the palate-deadening cigarettes is similar to performing kala/purification. By clearing our complexes, we can more fully enjoy the flow of life. I’ll ponder that while I get another cup.

song: “black coffee in bed” by squeeze
at: work
wishing: I was home in bed

photo credit: Jo Peattie

The skull-cup moon happens twice in a complete moon cycle, coming and going. Tonight’s didn’t have the honey glow like the last one did. Regardless, it was still bright enough to cast bright light and dark shadows on our land, making it easy to see my way out to the car for tonight’s work shift.

photo credit: doozzle

The dust on my laptop keyboard is not from disuse. It’s from open windows, breezes, and the cream-colored limestone particles that gather in the cracks and crevices of everything in these hills. You can tell who lives on a dirt road in these parts. Just look at the rear of a “country” car next to a “city” car. The pale dust coats the back end of the country car, making the vehicle look like its’ paint job has faded, blasted by a sun flare.

I like the dust of these hills. I like the constant reminder of where I live, and that it follows me wherever I go.

photo credit: fredthechicken

Halfway through NaBloPoMo. Almost forgot to publish today.

This morning found the goose pools and drinking bowls iced over. Once the sun was up, however, the air quickly warmed. The winds preceding yesterday’s cold front have died down, but my face is still red with windburn. I prefer the windburn over the fake health that makeup tries to portray.

I guess it’s safe to say that Fall has finally arrived in the Hill Country.

photo credit: ChadBriggs

One of my fave spiritual bloggers is Dating God. She’s another whose spirituality is intertwined tightly with her entire being, and it shines brightly from her posts, full of “YES”.

Check her out at http://datinggod.typepad.com/

[Between yesterday and today, got about 18 hours sleep. Feeling much better. ]

It’s the end of the work week, and I’m very tired. During times of stress, I imagine going on retreat much like Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, spending an accumulated twelve years of solitary meditation in a cave dwelling. Ahhhh! Of course, the fantasy and the reality are very different things, but her early challenges battling the sexism of the Tibetan Buddhist monastic tradition, and her triumph in creating a modern nunnery for women, is an inspiration.

I enjoyed Diane MacKenzie’s book about Palmo, “Cave in the Snow”, and have Palmo’s book “Reflections on a Mountain Lake” waiting in the precious book space on my bedside table. I plan to read Palmo’s collected works as as time goes on. She almost makes me want to take vows… almost.

• Her biography, and MySpace (!!) page.
• Review: Cave in the Snow, by Diane MacKenzie
• The nunnery Palmo founded.
• Purchase the book about her journey, Cave in the Snow, through Alibris.
• Purchase Cave in the Snow, and other books of her collected talks through Palmo’s nunnery, and support her work.
• Check out additional feminist Buddhist books.

Latest wrench in the effort to “get things done”: torqued my back tossing 5 gallons of soiled goose-pool water from a bucket onto the compost pile. Animals taken care of, of course, but the rest of the time was spent laying prone in bed.

Had considered writing a post about reconciling with/internally composting the religion of one’s youth, but that one may have to wait until I can think past the pain in my back. ‘Til tomorrow, then!

photo credit: kellypuffs

Got home, fed the animals, put the dogs into their kennel, and walked into the house. Ignored the messy kitchen and disorganized dining/living area, and instead headed straight for the cardboard recycling corner. The goal: break down all the boxes, and ready them for taking to the recycling center. The outcome: before touching a single box, the brain came to a full stop.

No. No way. Nothing was going to get done. I can usually plow through anything, and I suppose I could have forced the issue, but something inside felt like it would snap if I did so. Instead, I closed the curtains, ignored the internal klaxon shrieks of “gotta get stuff done!” and went to bed.

Tonight’s drive into work was foggy, in the tule fog sort of way where you’re lucky to see 20 feet ahead of your vehicle. An apt metaphor for how my brain is feeling at the moment. Grateful for working a graveyard shift, where not much more is needed than being a warm body and eyes open for alarms. Will do my best to rest the brain in that tule fog, in hopes that after a day of rest, the fog will lift and I can get back to getting stuff done.

photo credit: jouste

One of the many challenging things I’ve found about Feri - for good or for ill - is the lack of liturgy and/or rituals that provide solace and comfort during times of grief. One might have a personal relationship with a Deity that will provide such solace, but otherwise AMFYOYO*.

This is another area where secular Buddhism dovetails into Feri for me, and provides support. Not solace, but support for the process of grief. You’re not going to get away from the grief (and if you try, not so healthy outcomes will occur), so here’s the tools to experience it, let it wash through you, letting the grief encroach and recede as it will. During this time of stress and grief, I give thanks to Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche for bringing these tools to those of us outside of the Buddhist lineages.

It’s been a day.

*Adios motherf*cker, you’re on your own.

photo credit: lant_70