Better Than Dead

Random quote of the day:

“It is vital that when educating our children’s brains that we do not neglect to educate their hearts.

—Dalai Lama, Twitterfeed, December 5, 2011

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“When there is nothing else, when all the world has gone mad, you recite poetry to hold things together, to give life order and meaning. The world is shaking, but poetry is steady.

—Aster Glenn Gray, Honeytrap

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.

—C.G. Jung, “The Philosophical Tree,” Alchemical Studies, Vol. 13

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Swimming has taught me a lot about the true chemistry of feeling good. It’s very easy to believe that levels of personal happiness are entirely reliant on all the exterior factors impinging on your life at that time—financial fortunes, friendships, relationships, ups and downs with work—but being in the water, particularly being in a large natural body of water, brings you away from that line of thinking, makes you realize how many of these influencing factors are beyond your control, and ultimately unsolvable, and that at any time your happiness can be primarily down to your immediate environment at that exact moment, if you let go and allow it.

—Tom Cox, Ring the Hill

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I have a Sun in Virgo and Mars in Virgo. I have a Moon in Pisces in almost pinpoint opposition to my Sun. I also have a Pisces Ascendant. The Pisces part of my brain spends a lot of time trying to trick the Virgo part into staying out of its way so it can get on with its creative work. One of the methods it employs is list making.

I am constantly making obsessive lists that keep track of things, from the mundane to the esoteric. Like a catalog of the books I’ve read or the books I started or the books I’ve completed. Or the first lines of books I pick up during the course of a year. Or lists of synchronicities. Or quotes–many, many quotes. Or screenshots from Postcards From the Past on Twitter of places I’ve visited myself. Or… Well, any number of lists that really no one should care about but me (and perhaps even I shouldn’t care about).

But that Virgo part of my brain is rather like the legend of the mythological monster who can be tricked into stillness by throwing a bunch of seeds on the ground so that the obsessive creature is forced to stop and count each seed before moving on. Virgo has many fine qualities but its left brain proclivities tend to get in the way sometimes when I just need to go deep and dream my dreams and put those dreams on the page. With militant Mars in Virgo those tendencies can be rather extreme. Hence, the lists.

My mother, who was borderline OCD, may also have been some influence in this regard. There may be a genetic/nurture as well as an astrological component to my obsessive drive towards list making. Lists are a fairly harmless way of curtailing that dragon. Certainly my housekeeping does not benefit from this Virgoan drive. I could wish that it did a bit more as my current environment is suffering greatly from the Pisces tendency towards sloth and distraction and love of chaos.

The housekeeping also suffers greatly from my lack of mobility, of course. With my bad legs I can have a productive day of cleaning up but the next day will most likely be taken up communing with my heating pad. Maybe more than one day. I would like to say I have resolved myself to this but I have not. I was always strong and energetic and could work my way through a lot of crap in a short period of time (after spending a longer time letting things pile up) but those days are gone. I have to find a new way of doing things and I admit that I’m still flailing around trying to find it.

I am trying to be satisfied with my mantra of “do something then rest” but it’s hard to accept limitations. Still, I don’t have much choice in the matter. Accepting limitations is not accepting defeat and I am trying diligently to teach myself that and to work within my new parameters. It is a work in progress, and like any organic WIP it’s making it up as I go, striving to reach the realization of the dream on the page.

Random quote of the day:

“The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.

―Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends can only read the title.

—Virginia Woolfe, Jacob’s Room

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“When gods spoke through oracles they spoke in a way that’s hard for humans to understand. The hardness is what makes the difference between the human and the divine.

—Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.

—Gustav Flaubert, letter to Madame Louise Colet, June 14, 1853

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“In work perfectly realized there is no thought of reward, no love of procedure, no seeking after good, no clinging to goals, whether of attainment or of God himself.

—Brian Keeble, “Work and the Sacred,” in Every Branch In Me: Essays on the Meaning of Man (ed. Barry McDonald)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.