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cry wolf!
(exploring a night-time dream)
so, what is it you need to explore, to talk about today? i ask as we both settle in over tea in my consulting room...she seems blunt, almost angry, eyes fierce...at me? i insecurely wonder, silently to myself, of course, hiding behind my doctor's degree...it couldn't be about me, could it? i am the therapist, sorta good, sometimes, i think, i hope...a client angry at me? anchor yourself, i say to me in my head...oh yeah, it is her session, i silently remember...she's offering a sacred projection...
then she blurts out: i want to be able to live without always having to have a man in my life!...oh my, it is about me, sorta, cause i am a man and she hired me, a man, to help her live without a man! oh, the necessary twists and turns of deep psychotherapy...she's brave to say this, certainly desperate...and angry, very angry, which she needs to be for the battle to save her soul...we reflect on previous sessions...how this has been her major theme, her goal...
you want to be able to live without always needing a man? especially the kind of man that you have often had...who end up being losers ( i am kinda blunt, too)...and you end up hurting and disappointed...yes, she firmly states...and we are silent for a while...
somehow, somewhere in this space of wondering...i ask if she has remembered any dreams...well, yes, just the other night i had one...it was stupid and weird...i was with my nephew (she deeply loves her troubled teenage nephew and often is the only adult in his life who truly "sees" him)...and we were in this house and we were looking out the window and we see a wolf running across the pasture toward our house and it kills our dog, rips it, and then it just runs off, back across the pasture...then my nephew and i are suddenly in a camper somewhere, camping in the mountains...we are with a person from work, a friend of mine who is always funny...and my nephew and i are getting ready to go to denver to the airport to take a trip...and that's it...that's the dream!
is this one dream? i wonder, or, as often happens, as dreams get jumbled together in our waking world, is this two separate dreams? no, it is the same dream, she says firmly and with a smile...h-h-h-m-m-m, weird, i agree...
i reflect and project...sometimes wild animals in dreams are about our wild untamed side...and domestic animals are about, well, our domestic side (i'm so brilliantly obvious)...do you dream about wolves often, about animals? no, never...see how weird it was, she says...and this wolf just rips, kills your dog?...and just runs off? yep...
i'm thinking/projecting/wondering...and the camper in the mountains... and going on a trip...this dream is so seemingly disconnected...and yet it has come to you to help you...wild...angry...killing...domestic...camping...do you go camping in waking life? no, never...well, i would sometimes if i was involved with a man and he wanted to...
ohhh, if he wanted to...
we keep reflecting... the word "adventure" comes to me in a kind of weird, pre-concsious way... why?... and what is it about this seemingly cruel wolf killing her dog and just running off? why would a wolf kill a dog?...
how do you have adventure, you know, have fun? well, i don't...i just work and go home, sometimes i go out with my girl friends, never go out alone...i'd go on some trips if the man i was with wanted to, but i'd never go alone...
wow! you never would go on a trip alone? without a man?
no.
so, you want to live your life without always needing a man? and this untamed wild, independent wolf side of you comes and kills your tame, dependent domestic side?
and, when the domestic, dependent side is killed, you are suddenly on a camping adventure with people you love and admire...you are free to take a trip, to fly away...without a man...
h-h-m-mm, nuff said.
Candidates, take note. This proposal, written by one Republican and one Democrat, is real bipartisanship. Practical answers to tough questions that cover the concerns of both parties. In this case, an offshore (and ANWR) drilling proposal that funnels the cash to clean energy research:
To achieve a huge net win for the environment, the federal revenue from future oil and gas production should be placed in a trust fund and used to foster a clean energy future for America. This must supplement, not replace, other environmental commitments we have made. We should jump-start the necessary federal investments for this secure energy future by immediately issuing bonds (perhaps called Energy Independence Bonds) against this expected revenue. Issuing such bonds would guarantee that our remaining oil and natural gas revenue is actually used to establish energy alternatives. The bonds would have to be repaid with that revenue.
They also suggest that the states involved will receive enough economic benefit from new jobs and additional tax revenue, and that all the royalties should go into this federal pot. Obviously this won’t be popular with the states affected, but I agree with the authors that “we are all in this together” and therefore national interest trumps further windfalls for individual states.
Seems like a no brainer.
Well, yesterday was fun! I attended a funeral in the morning, rushed to the airport and hopped a plane to Heathrow, grabbed the express train to Paddington Station, where I met up with the lovely tysolna . We proceeded to get me organized with day tickets for the tube and trains while I am here and, then headed to Soho to meet up with a few British knitters who had organized a dinner meet-up for some of us out-of-towners. It was great! Good food and great company! Pictures will be posted when I have a minute to breathe. You see, this morning, tysolna and I are headed off to I Knit Day, where we will meet up with more knitters, buy yarn and generally have a great time! BTW, idahoswede , she got me here just fine. I really appreciate you letting me take over your place for the weekend. I'm sure, however, that you are enjoying yourself in Italy just as much as I am enjoying myself here! I left pressies on your dresser! TTFN
Today I realized that I've crossed over from "older gal" to "old lady." Here's how I knew: upon getting dressed this morning, I realized that I am more frequently letting comfort win over style. On a regular basis, I'll know something looks bad or silly or utterly awful, yet I still wear it due to sheer comfort or practicality. I'm like the old lady who wears the plastic rain hat or the grandpa whose polyester slacks are too short. I'm like the man on vacation who wears socks with his sandals on the beach. Black socks. I've taken to wearing these litte peds with my loafers (peds are like the little socks at the shoe store you use when you are trying on shoes, only they're not disposeable). These peds stick out, they're ugly, and they unmistakeably qualify me as an old lady. But they are very comfortable and without them, my feet and shoes smell awful. Okay, so the shoes themselves aren't all that hip either but they've got great arch supports, and do you know what a flat sole does to my heel spurs? Heavens to Betsy!
These are my links for September 5th from 10:36 to 16:01:
Whether you agree with the message or not, you have to admit it’s powerful. This is the artwork of Emily Duffy, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, CA and a friend of mine.
Go to her site and read the description and look at the detailed pictures. She’s put a lot of thought [...]
From a “getting to know you” survey my son filled out this week:
I admire:Â my dad
I feel embarrassed when:Â my mom dabs at my face with a napkin
For some reason this looked like a woot ball to me this morning. Maybe I've been looking at woot.com too much.
Orbee-Tuff balls that speak your dog's language. These super tuff Orbees are sure to last for even the toughest chewers. They aren't textured like the original Orbee balls, but instead have a smooth exterior and raised lettering. Is it time to play yet?? What exactly is Orbee-Tuff?
Woof. Ball on Amazon.
I've figured out how to transcode videos for the Samsung Instinct using ffmpeg. The initial problem I had is the standard Ubuntu version of ffmpeg does not include aac support. Fortunately Medibuntu has an ffmpeg package with everything enabled. You'll need to add the medibuntu repositories to your system first. ffmpeg didn't want to upgrade, so I used apt-get to remove it and install it. Be sure you have libfaac installed too.
To verify that you've got the right ffmpeg, run 'ffmpeg -version' and look for –enable-libfaac. If you don't see it in the listed configuration then the following won't work.
Once you have the right ffmpeg you can transcode a video with something like this:
ffmpeg -i BeerBot.avi -acodec aac -ab 128k -vcodec mpeg4 -b 1200k -qscale 4 -async 100 -s 320×240 BeerBot.mp4
Throw BeerBot.mp4 into the MEDIA directory on the SD card, and it will appear in TV/Video, My Videos, Sideloaded. You may need to change the scale (-s flag) if your video has a different aspect ratio. You can go up to 432×240 for wide screen videos.
If you are curious which video I was converting, you can see a version of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDN-OSffLAE
"Poor Marny, one of your oldest friends. She meant nothing by it, just an innocent comment. She's probably the last person in the world who would ever be insensitive, but see, you're always ready to fight. You've got that single-parent rage, that black-single-mother defensiveness, combined with your own naturally ready-be-indignant/aggressive tendencies, inherited from our mom. I mean, tonight, when you finally go to bed, you'll lie there and think of things you'd do to people who would come in here and do me harm. You'll picture all manner of murders in my defense. Your visions will be vivid and horrifically violent, mostly you and a baseball bat, with you taking out on whoever would invade our sanctuary the cumulative frustration you feel from all of this, our present situation, the walls and parameters set up already, the next ten, thirteen years laid out, more or less spoken for, and also the general anger you feel, have felt not just since Mom and Dad died--that would be convenient if it were true--but it began well before that, you know this, the anger coursing through the marrow of kids growing up in loud, semi-violent alcoholic households, where chaos is always...
[...]
"And best of all, for you at least, you finally have the moral authority you craved, and have often exercised, ever since you were very young -- you used to go around the playground chastising the other kids for swearing. You didn't drink alcohol until you were eighteen, never did drugs, because you had to be more pure, had to have something over the other people. And now your moral authority is doubled, tripled. And you use it any way you need to. That twenty-nine-year-old, for instance, you'll break up with her after a month because she smokes [...]
"...but it's the way you'll tell her, the way you'll sort of shame her, mentioning that not only did your parents die of cancer, your father of lung cancer, but that you don't want the smoke around your little brother, blah blah, and it's the way you'll say it, you'll want to make this poor woman feel like a leper, particularly because she rolls her own cigarettes, which even I admit is kind of doubly sad, but see, you want her to feel like a pariah, like a lower form of life, because that's what, deep down, you feel she is, what you feel anyone tethered to any addiction is. And now you feel that you have the moral authority to pass judgment on these people, that because of your recent experiences, you can expound on anything, you can play the conquering victim, a role that gives you power drawn from sympathy and disadvantage--you can now play the dual role of product of privilege and disenfranchised Job. Because we get Social Security and live in a messy house with ants and holes in the floorboards you like to think of us as lower class, that now you know the struggles of the poor -- how dare you! -- but you like that stance, that underdog stance, because it increases your leverage with other people. You can shoot from behind bulletproof glass." (>>)
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