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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137303332014-03-18T22:57:39.100-07:00The Manifest Song of FaerieFinding the ecstatic in the ordinaryMertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-45143263913405958372010-05-13T18:21:00.000-07:002010-05-13T18:28:54.735-07:00ComusNew review up at The Juggler. Comus is an obscure folk-rock band from the early Seventies that presaged entire genres (progressive rock, goth, dark metal) which came thereafter. Good stuff.Mertsegerhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-31923208744581360002010-05-08T19:37:00.000-07:002010-05-08T19:40:17.256-07:00Going In CirclesI have a review of Pamela Ribon's novel of marital estrangement and contusions (it's a comedy!) up at The Juggler.Mertsegerhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-26993998030502891152010-05-01T10:08:00.000-07:002010-05-01T10:19:10.028-07:00I'm Blogging at a New Pagan Pop Culture SiteI happy and proud to announce that we have blaunched a new site which focuses on popular culture from a Pagan perspective. The blog is called The Juggler, and is largely the creation of Jason over at The Wildhunt.

My first post (a brief retrospective of Siobhan Magnus' run on American Idol) is now up. I plan to continue this blog, and will announce post here as I write them so that my Facebook friends can be notified.

Happy Beltane everybody!Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-26205942305097101222010-03-05T12:59:00.000-08:002010-03-05T13:05:25.856-08:00Friday poemConjure waffles
Conjure sunshine
Conjure palm trees
Conjure sex

OK
I'll tell you how:
Mix the batter
Heat the iron
Or go
To the Egg Shop
And buy a goddamn waffle

There is no mystery
Magic is embodied
In life
In healthy lust
And every aspiration attempted
In every fleeting win fulfilled

Conjure waffles
Conjure midnight
Conjure failure
Conjure pain

Yeah
Life flails and decays
"The centre cannot hold"

So what

I am Shiva trampled
Better for having flared
With passion
And lost
(So many, many times
--- Does poetry ever help?)

Conjure waffles
Conjure sweetness
Conjure power
Conjure hope

We are the making
We are the righting
We are the healing
We are the convergence

The spirit manifest in the physical
The agents of wise and compassionate God
The angels of restoration
For each other
For each other
In the broken ways we can

Conjure waffles
Conjure sunshine
Conjure palm trees
Conjure sexMertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-17712734357775057382010-02-20T12:59:00.000-08:002010-02-20T13:16:45.827-08:00Addison HouseI found the following poem as I was checking to see if I had any other material on Jane, and now that there are at least four of us from Addison House on Facebook, I thought it might be fun to post it up and tag the group on it. I wrote it in 1992, a couple of years after I moved to So. Cal:

Addison House

 Once a month
 (Or, at least, that's what we'd hoped)
 We'd form a hug circle and listen.

 It was a time for asking and appreciation.

 It was a spider-web beautiful pattern, negotiated and cherished
 Like every kind of love
 Really.

 Do I miss that?
 Are you kidding?

 Oh, there were the rough times.
 Terri's window pane shattered exile.
 Laura's enmeshment and severing.
 Jim's retching in the bathroom from so much back-pain.

 And then there were the absurd times.
 Charles asked for something and I said,
 "Only if you stand on a chair and sing a song from 'My Fair Lady' in a high, squeaky voice."
 And he did!
 (You have to know Charles.)
 Or discovering amazing connections with Scott.
 Or the panic that swept the house
 When Jeanette's brother killed a woman in San Jose.

 But, mostly, I miss the talking
 To Jim
 To Susan
 To Nina
 To Charles
 To Terri
 To Scott
 To Tad
 To Meredith
 To Laura
 To Jeanette
 To Lori
 And the home we made together.

___________________________________________

At this point I have no idea what "Laura's enmeshment and severing" meant. Forgotten in the mists of time.Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-82790107243702826132010-02-03T12:05:00.000-08:002010-02-20T10:08:03.538-08:00The Final Fragment/Young Love Part 11And, at last, we reach the final gem:

Untitled XI

 Unasking and surprised,
 You gave me your touches, laughter and conversation
 I asked for love
 You took back your touches
 I asked for touching
 You took back your laughter
 I asked for friendship
 You took back your conversation
 I have nothing left to ask
 You have nothing left to take

Aw, Little Mertseger!

 But…

 You gave me friendship
 I gave you pain
 You gave me attention
 I gave you pain
 You gave me nothing
 I gave you pain

Well, no. You are being melodramatic, LM. You gave her mild discomfort and awkwardness in a tight living situation. You were, essentially, a rash. You could be ignored except for the occasional flare-ups.

 You can give me nothing less
 I can give you nothing more

 Why?

 Because you and I could not be an us
 Because I was too self-possessed
 Because you were too afraid

No, not really. She was just uninterested and hoping that avoiding Little Mertseger would not be too much of a hassle in the short-term.

 Because I expected too much
 Because you felt too little
 Because you and I were too young in many ways

Actually, that's reasonably accurate

 And so?

 You and I can grow from this
 If we let

And that's where it all ends, fragmentary and incomplete, like many such sagas.

I had a meeting Berkeley today. Here's where the whole tragicomedy occurred:

I found solace in music that horrible last quarter playing on the streets of Berkeley with a group called (yes) The Troubadours.

Tim changed universities after that quarter, and Jane and he broke up. A year or so later (okay, I'll kiss and tell) Lisa Nakamoto gave me my first kiss (which may amuse any of my high school friends who might find this post up on Facebook). I asked Lisa out a couple of times immediately after that, but she did not want to take it any further. Two year later I had my first real, albeit brief, relationship.

I did see Jane a few times thereafter. I had a hot tub party at my folk's place three years later, and both Jane and Tim came (I got to see Jane in a one-piece! More fuel for the fire.) Jane and I went out twice alone together in the years following: we went to the SF Zoo right after she graduated, and I had lunch with her on one visit to So Cal (I bought her a dozen safely yellow roses, but did not give them to her.)

Seven years after the mess, I took a job teaching at Cal State Fullerton while I finished up my PhD.,and gave her a call from my depressing institutional, windowless office once I was settled in. I caught a huge whiff of the "you may be stalking me" vibe from that conversation, and, finally, let it go. In following year I started dating in earnest.

I have my regrets, and the whole episode was embarrassing. However, it opened me up in a lot of ways, and I do not, for all that, regret the poetry. I do not regret the aspiration and the lust. I do regret the dorkiness and lack of anything remotely resembling cool. However, it was a step on the way, and the message in the end is that it does get better. For all the mistakes, it does get better.

...sigh...Jane.

UPDATE:

Danny has thoughtfully provided a picture of many of the participants:

From left to right, that's Chris, Danny, Some Guy From Another Floor Who We Really Didn't Like And Did Not Want In The Picture, Yvonne, Jane, Me, and Eric B. (explicitly not the same as Edie's boyfriend at the time, Eric H.) This was taken near the end of the year, and I was happy for the moment being next to her. That's probably Danny's bed we're all on. I don't know why Jane had a pillow with the word "Bullshit" on it.Mertsegerhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-38106921457547162662010-02-02T07:42:00.000-08:002010-02-15T16:46:41.256-08:00The Divine Oracle of False Hopes/Young Love Part 10Back in the second quarter before the end of life as I knew it, things had gotten marginally better, and Jane was not avoiding me entirely

Untitled IX

(When I converted all these poems to HTML years ago, I gave the untitled ones a number.)

 To revel in the inexplicable
 To find delight in swirling confusion
 To laugh while facing the intractable
 To smile at deception and illusion

Mottos that I still try to live by.

Unfortunately, Little Mertseger did not think these things were good at the time.

 Do you want me to care and not to care?
 Do you want me to play and stay away?

Did Jane give me some mixed signals? Well, when your every action and expression is being monitored like it's an oracle of the Goddess Aphrodite, then mixed signals are inevitable. Any mixed signals were purely a matter of LM's interpretation.

I carried a torch for Jane for way too long. At one point in grad-school I sent her a mix-tape(!) and letter lightly wishing we could go nude bowling on a tropical island somewhere (!!). She replied with a friendly letter, much to my surprise. The perfume on the otherwise innocuous letter was enough to make me pine for another two or three years. Did she intend to put perfume on the letter, or did she not wash her hands that morning?

 I can't know and remain unaware.
 I want to understand you. There's no way.

No, LM, you do not want to understand. You do not want to accept a clear and direct rejection. You want to cling to false hopes.

 I've watched the beauty play across your face
 Happy to be talking to you again.

I wish I could have just enjoyed those moments. But lust demands more, does it not? Sigh...

 Do you want me to help you find your place,
 And yet not want me to help at all, Jane?

Because it's her interests that I really have in mind. What bullshit.

 I guess I care too much and not enough
 Why does this friendship have to be so rough?

No, LM, Jane awoke in you a good old animal rut, and from the moment you declared your love for her and she said no it could never really be a friendship, not while your desire remained overwhelming.

Just one more poem to go in the grand saga of....sigh...Jane.Mertsegerhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-41356738079315052612010-02-01T08:42:00.000-08:002010-02-15T16:48:56.628-08:00Martyrdom for Idiots/Young Love Part 9It was the last year of quarters at Cal: next year they would switch to semesters. I returned from winter-break in full wallow mode for the second quarter. I thoroughly given up the ghost that I was writing for Jane, and so these last three poems were written with no expectation that she would ever see them.

A Second Rather Poor Love Sonnet Written 'Midst a Typical Crush

I'm sure you will be pleased to know that there is no third one in the series.

 Pound it down, the nail beaten into flesh:

Wait, is Little Mertseger really going to compare his unrequited love for Jane to ...

 Every time I see your smile I'm hung
 On a cross-spanned moment, feeling the fresh,

As Pamie said, "Jesus."

Literally.

 Daylong torture until my spirit's sunk
 In a stormy hell of frustrate desire.
 My every strand of hope has unraveled
 And burned in the unnoticing fire

Which is it, crucifixion or immolation? Make up your mind, LM!

 Of your eyes from which I cannot travel.

Now that is an awkwardly constructed sentence.

 Dead, I am not God to rise and heaven find,
 And so my soul treads the long, awful miles
 To the Last Despair, my body left behind

Ah, yes, the Random Capitalization of deep significance. Unfortunately, I still use that device.

 An empty husk crucified by your smiles.

"Crucified by your smiles" is good. Probably not good enough to build an entire sonnet around.

 Only your touch will warm these cold remains,
 And until that time I will Rest In Pain.

The deepest irony here is, of course, that while I was perfectly aware that I was being a martyr and that I had enough detachment to connect my unrequited love for Jane to earlier crushes on women who I had never really interacted, things were not really as bad as they could be and things were going to get worse.

In the second quarter of quarter of my junior year I took the hardest class of my college career: Mathematical Analysis. The course essentially takes all the results you might be taught in your first year Calculus course if you're a science or engineering major and proves them rigorously. IIRC, we started off with the axiom that 0 does not equal 1, and proved 1+1 = 2 in the first problem set. The take-home final had us prove a version of the Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem (every continuous function of a compact set to itself will map at last one point to itself) which sounds remarkably esoteric until you learn that it's very much on the same line of reasoning that results in the Nash Equilibrium of A Beautiful Mind fame. Fueled, in part, by the sublimation and avoidance of whole...sigh...Jane crisis, I got one of my three A+'s, the one that I'm most proud.

After picking up my grade that afternoon I asked Jane's roommate Yvonne if Jane and Tim were a thing. She said yes, and I became some form of the walking dead as I headed into spring break.

I suppose it could have been worse. I never heard sex sounds coming from their rooms, nor even saw them kissing. They were considerate of my feelings and discrete. But when the last episode of MASH screened that spring, the rest of the floor gathered in Tim's room to watch, and I went to watch in the lounge on the ground floor sad that she was watching in his arms as Hawkeye went insane.Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-12094089010337008412010-01-29T09:10:00.000-08:002010-02-15T16:51:45.165-08:00The Bitter Sweetness/Young Love Part 8

On Love

Yes, I'm sure this sonnet will last for the ages as one of the definitive expositions of love. Oh, yeah, right up there with Will's and Edna's.

In fact, after this episode of unrequited love, I made an effort to avoid using the word "love" in my poetry even in the sonnets I wrote for later girlfriends and my wife. "Love" is weak. Oh, It's a powerful concept, a powerful emotion, but it's a weak, weak word. Vague. Incapable of bearing the specificity of this individual, this moment, this rising tide of pulse and affection.

And I do not, by the way, find the distinctions between eros, amour, and agape all that useful. That taxonomy seemed like such a revelation when I first learned of it in my church's youth group. But now, mostly, it just seems to be a tool for repression and sublimation.

Gah! It's okay that you want to fuck her. Really. It is. You certainly don't have to act on that fact, nor, even express that desire to her. The usual social boundaries are perfectly necessary. They largely work at keeping people emotionally and physically safe. Learning to negotiate those boundaries does not have to be disaster (though, for almost all of us it will be at one point or another). That's okay: there is grace, healing and life goes on.

Agape is nice, in its tepid way. Compassion and service and working for justice are all worthy things. Go and do them. But agape is no substitute for good, healthy lust. For it is in lust that we are most engaged in life, in that marvelous, miraculous chain of creation and renewal.

However, I am a sucker for amour, and I'm not sure that it's entirely good for me. "To love, pure and chaste, from a far." Hell, I probably sang "The Impossible Dream" in the shower while this whole mess was going on. Thing about amour is that it can be entirely one-sided. You can carry it with you no matter what happens, no matter what the other person feels or wants. It's beautiful, but it can be a trap. It can be perfectly safe, in a way that would have appalled the troubadours who invented it. The idea of courtly love was meant to subvert the dominant social paradigm. It was meant to be dangerous and cross socially acceptable boundaries.

 How can I describe the hurting, the bliss,
 The lonely hours laying awake at night,
 The confusion about what was amiss,
 The despair that it would not work out right,
 And the blinding rush of hope that maybe
 – Just maybe, in spite of the odds – it would?

I'd probably describe it now as a perfectly normal part of learning to love that I should have confronted years earlier.

 How can I tell of my having to see
 You laughing and sorely wishing I could
 Share even that small joy with you again?

After she rejected me, Jane tried to avoid me to the extent possible given that our rooms were two doors away from each other. But, inevitably, I'd encounter her, and her face would fall, and she'd bail. It got better, but remained awkward.

 The good feelings and all those painful ones
 Are both, I believe, part of love. And, Jane,
 Love does not diminish once it's begun.
 And so, despite the pain, I still love you
 And hope that someday you will love me too.

It was the fall of 1982 at Cal, and so I had the additionally surreal experience of getting to sit next to Jane after she rejected me at the Big Game which concluded with The Play. See, a last second triumph was possible! I'd just keep lateraling and refuse to be downed as I ran through the Stanford Band of her rejection.

And so I wrote these sonnets and bought a box of fancy gray Crane stationary, carefully typed up all seven of them on my electric typewriter and put them in a nice black report binder to give to her for Christmas! (Gray and black? How romantic.) Thank goodness I chickened out about giving them to her.

I did write three more poems about her that year, and so we are approaching the end of the story.Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-88144973280251052932010-01-28T08:13:00.000-08:002010-02-20T10:04:58.746-08:00Shall I Compare Thee/Young Love Part 7At last we reach a poem that is a bit more like a love sonnet in that it's a tiny step in the right direction towards being more direct. It's still a failure in many ways, though.

On You

Yes, let's focus more of my unwanted attention "on you". I'm sure that will help.

 I want to say how beautiful you are.

I want to say how beautiful you are, but, instead, I will only speak of it indirectly.

There are two pertinent facts here. Jane is gorgeous, but back then she had all the normal insecurities of any other college freshman. Since men are behind the curve in our social, emotional and sexual development, most guys can not address that tangle at that age. I certainly did not have the tools. Most guys learn not to go there until we're well within in the safety of the make-out zone.

 I could write in some really schmaltzy style
 About your soft raven hair or the star
 That flashes in your eyes when you smile.

My particular issue for a long, long time was a lack of immediacy of my feelings and their expression. I'd only figure out I liked this girl when the date was over, and I had a chance to process it. And then all the emotions would pour out upon the page, by which point the girl assumed that nothing was there and had already moved on.

I would have been better off had I written directly about how hott she was. She would, almost certainly, have been incapable of hearing it amidst her anxiety about her freshman two, but, at least, doing so would have been more honest.

 But the beauty that overwhelms me so
 Is, instead, an inner glow of caring.

No, Little Mertseger, Jane sympathized with you once in a friendly way. She was no saint: just a nice, normal young woman. That glow you're seeing? It's a healthy and wonderful part of your self that your overlaying on your image of her.

 You've much inside of you to give, and, though
 I may never be a part of that sharing,
 I hope that you will open up to someone

Oh, oh, oh! Little Mertseger, be careful of what you wish for! If you think it's bad now, wait until she starts seeing Tim two doors down that hall.

Ow.

 So that you may know the same joy I felt
 Once the vibrations of love had begun
 To warm me and make my icy core melt.

As Maude says, "Oh, Harold... That's *wonderful*. Go and love some more. "

 Your beauty lays in what you have to share,
 As well as in your eyes and body fair.

No, not really. I mean, Jane, was nice enough. She was a little depressive for perfectly reasonable reasons that it is not my place to share. No, her beauty, as I knew it, was all from wonderful, healthy, superficial reasons. Fantastic cheekbones, large captivating eyes, a tall, mesomorphic frame, great legs, and full lips that were quick to smile. Sigh...Jane.Mertsegerhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-8643965869323992702010-01-27T09:57:00.000-08:002010-02-01T17:16:28.962-08:00My Superpower: An Ineffable Capacity to Bore/Young Love Part 6Okay, so maybe whining is not the answer to winning Jane's affection. Maybe if I apply my vastly greater perspective as a JUNIOR, I can help her with her problems:

On College

 What is college life really about, Jane?

As you can see from the fact that I ended a line with it, her name really is Jane. I shan't reveal her last name, but it would not matter much if I did. The name she had in college does not seem to show up on the web, and so I presume she got married at some point.

 Problem sets, boring lectures, GPA's,
 No time to sleep, intellectual strain,
 Declaring majors and long final days?

I managed to sleep ten-hours a night in my college days (to the envy and disgust of my floormates). I never could understand the ritual of going to a library for hours each night, talking to each other, and avoiding actually doing the assignments and then complaining about not getting enough sleep. I'd work on the problem sets in the afternoon, and if there were any problems I could not solve, I'd review them before sleeping, and then, more often than not, wake up with the answer.

 The important part of college involves
 None of these, for beneath the constant strife
 You will find that most people need to solve
 The dilemma of an undeclared life.

And that remains true.

 You must discover yourself and your needs.

Know thyself!

Is this the least romantic love sonnet ever written?

 You must find out what is important to you.
 And after you know yourself well indeed
 You will know, at last, what you want to do.
 But unless you learn that, all the knowledge
 You've gained will be worthless after college.

Yes, yes it is.Mertsegerhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-45808981648968739392010-01-26T10:25:00.000-08:002010-02-15T16:56:55.024-08:00Neediness and the Anima/Young Love Part 5The details are hazy to me after all these years, but I apparently presented the previous three poems to...sigh, Jane. I probably copied them from the lab-book in which I wrote my poetry back then to the blue stationary I used back in those pre-internet and e-mail days using a blue, erasable ink pen. We join the program already in progress:

After That Black Friday

One week after we saw Pink Floyd: The Wall she rejected me. The exact way and location has been, thankfully, expunged from my memory at this point. I do know that she felt bad about it, and that at least it was not the more usual, "We can still be friends." speech.

 Please don't shut me out, I need to talk to you.

Yes, please: I'm sure the puissant force of my neediness is exactly what can turn this relationship around.

 I'm sorry about what happened last week.
 I see now what I was trying to do:
 Forcing you to become THE ONE I seek.

Is this the point where we talk about projection?

Robert Bly calls THE ONE "the golden-haired one" in Iron John, and makes the case that guys project the "perfect woman" on the first woman we fall for when, in fact, that perfect woman is an idealized part of our own psyche (the anima). Most woman will, naturally enough, flee at the first whiff of such expectations. Women go through similar issues with their animus, though Bly makes the case that there are some differences in how men and women go about integrating these other sides of their personality.

 You said you couldn't be "special" to me,
 And for days after that I raged inside
 Like some spoiled brat deprived of his candy,

Well, I am an only child, and pretty used to getting my way.

 A wise friend's letter came to turn the tide.

Here's where I must say that my friends really came through for me during that time. John wrote me lovely letters of encouragement during the weeks of this little drama. Then over Christmas break all my high school friends helped me commiserate.

It was a couple of years later, after he came out to me, that I learned that John was going through a similar, but far more difficult, crisis over his straight roommate at the very same time. I am extremely grateful and amazed that he would support me while his being in the closet prevented him from seeking similar support from me.

 It's you I like, not what you can give me,

Bullshit.

 And I write because I enjoy writing,

Truth.

 Not because I expect you, Jane, to be
 Part of something "special" and exciting.

Bullshit.

 Even if you give me nothing, you see,
 You are already someone special to me.

And bullshit, yet again.

Yes, Little Mertseger, she was special to you, but you were not attractive to her. It's really that simple. The loftiest poetry in the world (let alone this screed of neediness and bullshit) could not change that fact.Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-69043459538108642432010-01-25T10:54:00.000-08:002010-02-20T10:02:47.781-08:00The Agony and...Well, the Agony/Young Love Part 4Okay, so here's where I reach the peak of squirm. We still have four poems to go in this first part of the...sigh, Jane saga, but I came to my senses and never gave them to her. This one though, this one is the one I regret giving her. It would be a fine poem to save and present later in a relationship, but...

The only jury I ever sat on was for an indecent exposure case. A delivery driver was dropping off paper at a local company, and thought he was getting powerful signals from the cute receptionist. She had, for instance, shown him the storage closet and stretched a bit from her morning of sitting at the phone, and he took that as the universal bow-bow-chika of a porn scene, apparently. In any case, when she turn around at her desk to sign the invoice, there he was with his pants down around his thighs. She objected, he fled and by the time he had returned the truck that day, he was fired.

He did not contest the facts, and so the case was whether his intent met that of the indecent exposure law. He took the stand, and had the following exchange with the prosecutor:

PROSECUTOR: You had delivered paper to that company several times before?
ACCUSED: Yes, Sir.
PROSECUTOR: And you had seen the receptionist at least some of the previous times?
ACCUSED: Yes, Sir.
PROSECUTOR: And you found her attractive?
ACCUSED: Yes, Sir.
PROSECUTOR: Did you ever ask her out on a date?
ACCUSED: No, Sir.

And we in the jury were like, "You know, you might just think about that before you pull your pants down next time." We deliberated a whole fifteen minutes trying to find any way to interpret the intent of the law in his favor, but we found him guilty.

And so it goes with Little Mertseger: could I not have just asked Jane out again before writing:

Thank You

 In this last poem I'd like to say thank you
 For the hours we've spent this past week talking,
 For caring when I felt depressed and blue,
 For telling me so much after walking
 Back from the movie that cold Friday night.

Apparently, I'd share my sadness of being a lonely guy, and she'd shared her sadness over of being away from home and the crunch of the studies at Cal. And we had said some words of encouragement to each other.

 Because, believe it or not, I do care
 That you can see the joy and delight

That line should read more towards "I do care/whether or not you can see..." but the usual squeezing into ten syllables squeezed out some sense.

 That permeates this world. I'd like to share
 The secret of the happiness I feel

[DALEK VOICE]: CLICHE ALERT! CLICHE ALERT!

 Even in the deepest pit of depression:

Ugh: I usual at least try to avoid them.

 It is the knowledge that no one can steal
 From me such moments of confirmation
 That there are people who care like you do,
 And so I say thank you and I love you.

And so that's it. My great squirmy shame: the first time I told any woman that I loved them was in a sonnet after a single, perfectly chaste, kinda, sorta, if-you-squint-the-right-way date.Mertsegerhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-69669563853319440242010-01-25T10:53:00.001-08:002010-02-15T17:00:28.973-08:00The Patriarchy Strikes Back/Young Love Part 3We talked a bit into the night after watching Pink Floyd: The Wall. Jane was a freshman at that point and a bit overwhelmed by college life and the challenges of Cal. A beautiful women confessing her flaws? Like catnip. Ogg man. Ogg fix things for you. Ogg make all better. Take you to cave, Ogg will, and

…ravish you?

Nope. Write another sonnet:

Second Thoughts

See what I did there? It's the second sonnet in the series. Face meet palm.

 Maybe you don't like sonnets – I don't care.

And here we see the violence inherent in the system.

At this point even Little Mertseger is dimly aware that Jane might not want sonnets written for her at that particular point in her life from this particular guy. But he's going to write 'em for her anyway because that's what a man does. A manly man gives due consideration to what a woman wants, ignores it, and then does what he wants anyway.

Mary Daly died a couple of weeks ago.

 Sometimes a poem is the only way
 To say something. Because you have to dare,
 If you want to communicate, O.K.?

Just who am I trying to convince here?

 Jane, you are not a husk but a cocoon.

And what woman would not want to hear that she's not a husk, really?

 I have seen the butterfly in your smile,
 Heard it in your laughter saying, "Soon…soon…"
 And watched the wings flash in your eyes a while.

Have we thoroughly ground the butterfly metaphor into a messy pulp yet?*

 But you mustn't be so hard on yourself.

That could be my job, if you'd just let me in.

 You've got to open up your curtains, Jane,
 And let your sunshine out, not leave it shelved

"Let your sunshine out" is probably the only slightly redeeming twist in this poem.

 In some musty corner smothered by rain.

But exactly how does one shelve sunshine? And how can rain smother anything, let alone musty-corneredly shelved sunshine?

 You've got to see the butterfly within
 Before you'll feel your soul fly with the wind.**

Oh, the overarching sentiment of the poem is not horrible. Jane feels bed, and I'd like to be there for her. But I probably thought of myself as a feminist at that point, but was thoroughly lacking in any self-awareness about how that might matter in, you know, dating women.

*No, we have not.

**Now we have.Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-55859021110884255362010-01-25T10:49:00.000-08:002010-02-15T17:03:48.979-08:00The Threshold of Doom/Young Love Part 2It would be easy to blame Edie and Eric, but they were only the trigger, really.

The real question is why in my junior year at Cal I decided to apply for a coed dorm floor after two years of listing no-preference and being assigned to all-guy floors.  My guess is that I just wanted to be on a coed floor because everyone else wanted to be on a coed floor.  In any case, it was on the fourth floor of Freeborn Hall at UC Berkeley in the fall of 1982 where the whole disaster took place.

See, I had been perfectly comfortable as an observer of the whole love thang.  It was safe and easy to keep it at a distance and watch while it happened all around me.  I was, like many mathematicians, comfortable in spaces of interiority and seeing the angst and roil of the hormone-fueled couplings around me merge and purge with and air of faint amusement.  How droll it all seemed.

But then, Edie and I were in Eric's room and we decided to go see Poltergeist still playing that fall at the Grand Lake Theater.  Neither Edie nor Eric knew that it was their first date, to be fair.  But they were holding hands by the time we were seated.  And macking intensely by the time Carol Anne in the film announced "They're here."  Meanwhile, I broke in two, forgotten in the sidecar next to them.

And so I climbed up the hill to my sacred grove and cried.  It was finally time to admit that I was human.

And so, couple weeks later Yvonne and Danny were orbiting closer, and I had gotten to know Yvonne's roommate…sigh…Jane.  That Friday we went over to the California Theatres where Danny and Yvonne went to My Favorite Year and Jane and I went to Pink Floyd: The Wall.  Which we bonded over hating.  (Writhing maggots lose me every time).  So, of course, the obvious thing to do while she was away that weekend was write her three sonnets and then ("No, Little Mertseger, don't do it!") give them to her.

Here's the first one:

Saturday Afternoon

Because it is ever so important to know exactly what I did in the hours following our talking together.

 Poets, lovers, and joggers – I missed you.

Not a bad sentiment, really.  But which of these three things is not like the other?

 I went into the hills after you left
 To take in the sunlight and enjoy the view.

Fair enough.

 And to write.  But words, no matter how deft,
 Just cannot describe how happily green
 The grass was as it pushed against the dry
 Brown of last year.  I wish you could have seen
 The awesome blue of that warm winter sky.

California is weird.  It's the winter rather than the spring when life returns to the hills after the first rain falls.  Of course, it was the green of lust pushing against the brown of my repressed desires that was really the issue here.

 And all around people walking in pairs;
 People running up hills, while I just looked.

Here's where I stop "just looking" … and start writing?

Oh, well, at least it was a step towards interacting with another human being.  A horribly embarrassing, uncool and misguided step, but a step nonetheless.

 But, Jane, I don't want to jog, and, I swear,
 I rather take you than my poetry book.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge: say no more!

 For I would try to make you see
 The wonder and the possibilities.

"make you see" is rather problematic, in't it?  I would be her knight in shining armor rescuing the fair damsel from her own issues.  Would were it ever so easy.

It's not a bad little poem, but it is pretty indirect.  However, we'd had one chaste, semi-agreeable, sort-of date, and I was writing sonnets.  And that's the issue right there.  I'm sure that…sigh…Jane had no idea whatsoever that this was coming.Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-678537067730352532010-01-20T09:31:00.000-08:002010-02-01T17:21:48.729-08:00Pulling off the scab/Young Love Part 1So Pamie has found a journal she wrote when she was fifteen, and is presenting entries with commentary of the rage of hormones that is being fifteen, perpetually crushing, and wrestling the pain to the page. It's delightful, often hilarious, and you should read it.

It's great because it is so universal and specific at the same time. She's a pro, and the over-wrought language of her young love was, most likely, a necessary part of the development of her craft and her person. It's beautiful, beautiful stuff.

I can match her, phrase for embarrassing phrase, and so in the spirit of internet camaraderie and terrible memes, I will present the sonnets I wrote for...sigh...Jane. All my poetry is already up on the web, and you can read ahead starting here (press the red ball to read earlier commentary).

Boys develop later than girls, of course, and my emotional development was later than most, and so I really did not fall off the cliff over someone I actually interacted with until my junior year in college. Let's, however, back up a bit to the safety of a crush over someone to whom I literally said two words ("Harvard Co-op", if you must know).

A Rather Poor Love Sonnet Written 'Midst a Typical Crush

See, even as I wrote the piece, I knew it was just another crush.

 I'd write a sonnet every day and so
 Wrench the sun to this page, if it would light
 Your cheeks in the ancient vernal glow
 That shivers me when you fill my empty sight.

Because, naturally, writing sonnets is what gets women hot.

Perhaps it's a writer thing in which it's far safer to pour your feelings out on the page rather than actually talk to someone.

I do like the phrase "ancient vernal glow": in other words, "horniness".

 But you're encased in the amber distance,

Who's encased here? Certainly not this fine young coed who doesn't even know I exist.

 A frozen span that lets me neither speak

Ah, yes, me that's who.

 Nor know whether behind your bright laughter glance
 There's a woman who'd understand these weak
 Words, or whether your soft spring-shine smile hides
 A void of thought, spirit, hope or passion.

Because this girl I'm lusting for is either capable of understanding, you know, English or is a vacuous zombie. Those are all the options. Yup.

 For love in all its forms will not abide
 Solely upon a body's attraction.

No, it requires peanut-brittle as well. Or something.

 You attract me deeply, but I must know
 That you contain a heart, a mind, a soul.

Did I go there? I went there. Little Mertseger was a pig. Or just stupid.

Ah, well, as you can see LM had a lot of growing to do, and it was going to get worse, much worse, before it got better.Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-80267559200982858782008-10-06T07:38:00.000-07:002008-10-06T10:09:34.584-07:00The Wicker Man: a Rock Opera about the Ultimate SacrificeThe first thing you need to know about the current production of The Wicker Man as a rock opera currently playing in San Francisco through Oct. 25 is that it is essentially a community-theater production of the original film. I like community theater, but it has its limitations. In this case, those limitations include a postage-stamp-sized stage, and no scenery beyond a reasonably deft faux stained-glassed window which is covered up after the first scene. Given those limitations, the production is a qualified delight.

The venue is The Dark Room, a seedy bar in the Mission which has been somewhat converted into a seedy theater. The bar remains along the left-hand wall serving as the home of the light and sound boards. Surprisingly, the sound system is audiophile-level superb and effortlessly and accurately delivered the casts' voices. The theater seats maybe a hundred and a BYOB (beer mostly) crowd of, maybe, forty showed up for Saturday night's show. I sat immediate in front of DAN FOLEY's (Captain, Harbormaster and Photographer) affable Mom and Aunt.

The script is quite faithful to the 1973 movie. I'm guessing that roughly half of the dialog is taken straight from the film. The setting has been moved "an island across the Bay", and the period is nebulous. The time-line is compressed a bit, as is the running time (maybe 85 minutes here from 100 in the movie). Minor changes to the film occur throughout. Summerisle's (STEFFANOS X) first name is "Lord", for instance, and May Morrison (ERIN LUCAS) is a tailor. The imaginary Wicker Man is placed prominently in the middle of the village green. Essentially, this stage production is The Wicker Man (1973) minus the music of Paul Giovanni plus the music of Jim Fourniadis.

The music is serviceable and suggestive of rock operas of the era (Hair,Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar) though a bit less ambitious. The rock-combo orchestrations are pre-recorded but the cast and sound-guy easily hit all the cues. The first song, a brief sermonette on a passage from Job sung by the lead, FLYNNE DE MARCO (Sargeant Neil Howie), and the finale, a contrapuntal piece between the chorus of Pagan islanders and Sergeant Howie, are both pretty good (I'm a sucker for polyphony). "The Landlord's Daughter" from the original is sung in its entirely, and a verse of "The Tinker of Rye" is sung by DAN FOLEY in an awkward scene transition.

The performances are enthusiastic and fairly broad. DE MARCO anchors the show reasonably well. He had some pitch problems in the first song, but his nerves seemed to settle thereafter. His Sergeant Howie references Woodward's fairly closely. STEFFANOS X's Lord Summerisle is suitably charismatic, and KHAMARA PETTUS' Willow is pretty and appropriately burlesque (probably the only reasonable choice given the lack of nudity or, you know, even stage walls). The various bit players generally suit their roles. Props to MIKL-EM for gamely playing the role of an eight-year old girl (Myrtle Morrison) in addition to the Grave Digger and the Doctor.

All in all, the show is well worth the price, and I recommend Bay Area Pagans checking it out. If you like the 1973 film, then this show is a lively and small variation on the same material. Be sure to bring a beer in a brown paper bag (or you will feel horribly out of fashion) and enjoy the romp.
________________________________________________

Here's some textual criticism of the show from a Pagan perspective. Both the show and original film are largely unaware of Neo-Paganism (the show includes a invocation of the elements at the sacrifice which is not present in the film suggesting some additional familiarity), and that's okay. Do we, after all, really want to be portrayed as a community capable of conspiring to human sacrifice? Been there, done the Satanic Panic of the 80's. However, I do feel that the show misses some opportunities in its update.

Sergeant Howie's Scottish Presbyterian evangelicalism is quite a different flavor to that we are more familiar with in the US. Howie's faith is stern, austere, and ascetic. It might be more interesting to explore the character as a more scary kind of US evangelical: outgoing, compelled to witness no matter how awkward the situation, and utterly convinced that there existed a golden era of traditional, Red-state values no matter how little evidence there is that such an era actually existed. I expect that the character of Sergeant Howie would relate much more to the sufferings of Paul than Job, for instance.

Similarly, it might be more interesting to tie the Summerislanders closer to California, if that's where you wish to set the play. California was the home of The Peoples Temple and Heaven's Gate, after all, and a bunch of us go out to the desert every year to burn a giant figure of a man. FBI Agent Howie at Burning Man? Am I wrong or does it almost write itself?

But, of course, that would not be the Wicker Man. Nevertheless, the show might be a spicier if it incorporated more of the languages of both modern evangelicalism (WWJD, Jesus is my boyfriend, etc.) and modern Paganism (theoretical support for polyamory, anti-patriarchal rhetoric, fanatical Green lifestyle, etc.).Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-87936470788641896952008-07-21T12:23:00.000-07:002008-07-21T20:50:03.625-07:00Thoughts On DuotheismSo, back when I was in the fifth and final semester of training for The Third Road, I somehow got into my mind that I should write an ancient holy book. And so I told a couple of my oldest and dearest friends that I was doing so, and asked them what they'd like to see included. They both happen to be gay, and so one said "gay marriage". It was 1997 and I was reading The Witches Bible by the Farrars as I rode across the Bay on a ferry at dawn because BART was on strike.

The Third Road is an off-shoot of Feri Tradition, and so duotheism does not play as central of a role as it does in Wicca. In Anderson's Feri Creation Myth (a version of which can be found in Spiral Dance) the Great White Goddess splits of into two other Goddesses and then three other Gods, one of which (Dian Y Glas) becomes Her Consort and partner.

The question I had to address as I worked on The Book of Nub was how could placing a heterosexual couple at the center of everything not be biased against non-monogamous, non-heterosexuals? I came up with several possibilities and used at least three in the piece.

First, there was this idea of transformation that is already inherent in the Feri Creation Myth. Perhaps, the sexuality of the Gods is fluid. Affirming that viewpoint would allow the pair of Gods to be at the center of everything, and, thus, their relationship could be the mythological basis supporting all homosexual and heterosexual pairings. But, then, why only two? I could imagine the Gods splitting and interacting in ways that support all healthy human interactions. But, then, why human? Was I really going to have to tell a story that would cover the thousands of mating types of some fungal sexuality? Going down this path was getting messy. I intuited that the myth was losing power.

So how about putting Goddess and God back at the center of everything, and argue that even if gays and lesbians could not relate to their relationship, they could at least acknowledge that they were the children of one man and one woman? Bleh. I want my passion for my lover and not the passion of my parents to be reflected in the passion of my Gods for each other. However worthy my parents' passion is for each other, it's not my passion. How could I accept less for homosexual brothers and sisters?

Why did I find the sexual passion of the Gods for each other as so affirming of our existence? Why did I find it so powerful? The Wiccans use the term "polarity" to describe the forces that drive the universe. The attraction of oppositely charged particles and, indeed, all physical forces are seen to be mythologically connected to the sexual attraction between Goddess and God. There is a huge, powerful idea in there that I wanted in my book.

The one thing that every healthy sexual encounter has, no matter what its stripe, is that it is one being reaching toward another. The thing that I found most powerful in Wiccan duotheism is that idea that this raw connection between my self and an other in sexual intimacy reflects and encapsulates the similar intimacy the greater Powers that drive the All That Is. Every human could certainly relate to their self interacting with an other (or others) in that dance of sexual attraction. Thus, the first pervading version of duotheism in The Book of Nub is that between Self and Other. We are Selves striving for that intimate connection to the Goddess as Other, and She reciprocates and epitomizes and fulfills that attraction in Her relationship to God and to the Universe.

But what is the best way to express how God and Goddess are intimately interconnected? Francesca (my teacher) saw the Goddess as the darkness between the stars and the God as "...the light that emerges from the darkness to fructify it." That is, They are a mutually arising pair of opposites. I thought about Mother Earth and Father Time, and thought that another way to think of Them is as space and time, providing the ground for everything to be and become. And so this second approach to duotheism that I incorporated into The Book of Nub.

But, still, even though I spent an entire chapter showing how the God and Goddess' relationship affirms all committed human relationships, I did not feel that this fully affirmed good gay sex. And so I brought in some lesser Gods and Goddesses to show how purely gay and lesbian relationships might drive our world as well. Thus, Nub 8: 10-12 reads "The beautiful Goddess of Shore lies naked before Her lover Goddess Ocean. The romance of the Full Moon excites Them, and the Ocean licks deep the sacred hollows of Shore. In wave after wave of delight They come together, and the roar of Their Passion never ceases." (As a typical heterosexual male, I must say I find those lines hot, if I do say so myself. Oh, why must we fetishize the lesbians?)

And so to summarize my duotheistic ontology, I believe that the center motive that drives our Universe is that reaching out between Self and Other. The Goddess brings others into being that She and we might experience that longing, that lust and that love. The Goddess and the God are the exemplars of that Passion which drives the All That Is, and, indeed, it is within Them as space and Time that we have our being. Between us and Them are myriads of being including other powerful Gods and Goddess whose lust for each other drives particular systems within this Universe as well.

After all this material was worked out and written down, Francesca coincidentally afforded my fellow students and I the chance to do a small ritual with Fred Lamond who was one of Gardner's initiates. He's a lovely, lovely gentleman, and after the ritual we got a-talking about Wicca and thealogy, as one might hope. I read for him Nub 4: 1-2:

The Goddess delights in Darkness as well as Light, in silence as well as sound, in the transformation of death as well as the growth in life. The Goddess darkens like the Moon. She is the silence of mystery. She enfolds you soft within Her arms at every transition of Life to Death and Death to Life. For all meaning is rooted in contrast, and She is the Mother of Wisdom.

She is the trellis upon which the vines of being grow. Everything is rooted in the same material and clings to the same structure as it reaches toward the Light of its Godhood. Her manna is your uniqueness discovered in your isolation from the Other. Her nectar is the oneness you find in your connection to, immersion in and embracing of the Other. You eat and are, in turn, consumed, "for all things feed one another."

Truly, there is but one polarity: that between Self and Other, and any other duality is merely a lesson about that polarity. Love and Hate, Man and Woman, Light and Darkness, positive and negative electric charges are merely signposts on the path to Godhood. When you claim your Self, you claim the Universe.

We then talked about polarity in Wiccan terms, and he politely disagreed with my ontology. Theirs was a fertility religion, he said. It's a sexual energy between a Goddess and God which drives everything. And so I do not think that I could convince any Wiccan that my vision is correct. Nevertheless, it was an extreme honor to get to talk to him about the topic.Mertsegerhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-26425645481726215322008-05-03T20:34:00.000-07:002008-05-03T20:54:35.413-07:00Least Read Book MemeThis meme started at obake, but I learned of it at Montykins.

Bold: Read.
Underlined Read for school.
Italic: Started but never finished.
Asterisk*: Liked well enough to reread or recommend.

The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys*
Angela's Ashes : a memoir
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune*
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault's Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity's Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver's Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : a novel
The Hobbit*
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell*
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon*
Moby Dick
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
1984
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King*
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Oryx and Crake : a novel
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Time Traveler's Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West*
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into valuesMertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-42828050905494701302008-04-29T09:01:00.000-07:002008-04-29T09:07:37.197-07:00Recommended Science Fiction and Fantasy BooksI wrote this list several years ago and ran out of steam towards the end, but it's a good summary of my favorites.

1. Shockwave Rider, John Brunner

 Distopian vision of a time not too far from now when the rate of change has gotten too high for most people to cope. The main character is an ultra-talented hacker searching for wisdom. He finds it in a small Utopian Californian town from whence he launches a digital revolution using computer viruses. Written before the advent of PC's.

2. Stand On Zanabar, John Brunner

 Distopian vision of a time not too far from now when population pressure has gotten too high for most people to cope. The novel weaves together many styles. It has two main plot lines and a raft of secondary characters which flesh out this remarkable vision.

3. Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card

 A truly remarkable novel about prejudice, redemption and cultural misunderstanding. The main character, Andrew (Ender) Wiggins from Enders Game is a socio-religious sleuth trying to explain the deaths of several people in the small human settlement on a planet containing the only other sentient race we have found but haven't exterminated. Chock full of unexpected revelations that lead to healing.

4. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

 Andrew (Ender) Wiggins is a young boy with a talent for military strategy who is being trained to stop the threat of alien invaders. Will he be trained in time to make a difference? A gripping read.

5. Dune, Frank Herbert

 The one source for the drug that allows faster than light space travel is the planet Dune. Political intrigue about the control of Dune in an interstellar empire revolves around the son of a star-lord. The novel explodes into a struggle for religious and ecological salvation.

6. The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis

 Fantasy for young adults about a magical place called Narnia that you can to get from here. Right and wrong are obvious, and the children who find their way to Narnia become better people from the experience.

7. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

 There is a great evil in Middle Earth threatening to conquer all. If the evil Sauron can recover His One Ring, then all will be lost. If the forces of Good can destroy the Ring, all will be saved. Dwarves, Elves, Hobbits, Troll, Wizards and Orcs all inhabit a tale full of deception, betrayal, valor, rebirth, desperation and struggles against long odds.

8. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov

 An interstellar dark age is coming, and one man (Harry Seldon) has the mathematics to prove it. Will his efforts and those of his successors be able to minimize the darkness?

9. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester

 People have figured out how to teleport themselves around, but their range is limited. Can anyone figure out how to jump further to interplanetary distances? The answer rests in the mind of a deranged man suffering from synesthesia.

10. Norstrillia, Cordwainer Smith

 Drugs providing the indefinite prolongation of human life are produced only on one planet from giant diseased sheep. With the help of an heirloom battle-computer one boy corners the market on the immortality elixir and buys Earth and everything on it. He goes there and receives the psychological healing he seeks from the wisdom of a cat-man and the love of a beautiful cat-woman.

11. The Lensman Series, E. E. "Doc" Smith

 Good Guys vs. Bad Guys in a militaristic showdown which spans two galaxies. The Bad Guys have a ruthless, compassionless hierarchy. The Good Guys have a ruthless, compassionate hierarchy. An arms race between the two advances with each book in the series. Oh, yeah, and the Bad Guys sell drugs.

12. Stranger In A Strange Land, Robert Heinlein

 The only survivor of a expedition to Mars is a boy who was conceived on the way there and is subsequently raised by Martians. He returns to Earth and discovers what it means to be human and establishes a polyamorous, love-without-limits cult.

13. Jesus On Mars, Philip Jose Farmer

 Reviewing a photographic mapping of Mars, scientists discover a human-sized door on the surface with the letters Alpha and Omega inscribed on it. An expedition is sent and discovers under the surface a human settlement of Jews lead by a being claiming to be Jesus. The conservative Christian leader of the expedition has to grapple with the difference between his version of Christianity and that being practiced by the settlement.

14. Time Enough For Love, Robert Heinlein

 Lazarus Long was born at the turn of the 20th Century and has lived a couple thousand years. He has become bored and depressed. In searching for something he hasn't done, several stories of his long life are told. Ultimately, to cheer him up, scientists figure out how to send him back in time where he lives out an oedipal fantasy with his mom.

15. The Centrifugal Rickshaw Dancer, William John Wadkins

 The Lagrange Corporation owns Earth as well as the habitations orbiting the Earth. A revolution is fomenting in the Grand Sphere, the largest of the habitations in space. This cyberpunk predecessor is full of inventive language and plot twists.

16. Going to See the End of the Sky, William John Wadkins

 Urdon Wee is dead and leading the revolution against the Corporation. He achieved enlightenment by being kissed by a beautiful woman, being punched in the face by a strong man and drinking a powerful drug within seconds of each other. Now, his vision of the future of humanity conflicts with that of the man who punched him, and their struggle is played out through the control and influence of the lives of three children from Catchcage.

17. Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart

 The children of the village have all simultaneously fallen into a mysterious coma. Number Ten Ox seeks the help of Lee Kao (who has a slight flaw in his character). The master and the young villager sleuth their way through a series of adventures which not only saves the lives of the children but also corrects a wrong which has troubled the Heavenly Emperor for centuries.

18. Out On Blue Six, Ian MacDonald

 Computer programs have evolved to be smarter than people, and so people's lives are benignly controlled by software gods. A very few are dissatisfied with being defined and controlled, and a young yuppie-caste cartoonist follows her dreams of something more into a rag-tag group of guerrilla-theater actors and into the arms of an incarnated software god. Oh, yeah, and there is an intensely loyal army of genetically enhanced raccoons.

19. The Saraband of Lost Time, Richard Grant

 Richard Grant's first novel. A haunting and strange story of a war that nobody really understands.

20. Tex and Molly in the Afterlife, Richard Grant

 Tex and Molly die at the end of the first chapter, and their adventures begin. Can they save a forest in Maine from the introduction of a genetically ruthless species of conifer designed by the evil forestry mega-corp? Will their ecological protest group survive their disappearance? What do the mites have to do with all of this?

21. Startade Rising, David Brin

 It seems like every chapter in this novel introduces an idea that would normally be the basis for a sci-fi novel of its own. Let's see. The nearest five galaxies, including our own, are thoroughly populated by an ancient intergalactic culture. Planets are generally allowed to go fallow once a species has ended its life-span and new species are uplifted to sentience by the old. The prestige of a species is measured by how many species it has uplifted. Earth was somehow forgotten, and Humanity is an unheard-of "wolfling" species. We have the audacity to question the way things are done and foment an intergalactic power struggle by discovering artifacts that are possibly those of the First Ancestors. The ship which made the tempestuous discovery is mostly crewed by dolphins uplifted by men. The novel plots their efforts to elude the armadas which are chasing them and reach a political accord in which humanity won't be destroyed.

22. The Mists of Avalon, Miriam Zimmer Bradley

 A retelling of the legend of Arthur from the perspective of Morgana. Thoroughly feminist and pagan.

23. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

 The novelization of the outstanding comedy-sci fi radio series. The Earth gets destroyed in the first chapter. Arthur Dent is mostly the only human survivor. He and a strange group of beings seek the reasons why. The mice, after all, were very upset about it.

24. The Restaurant of the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams

 Arthur Dent's adventures continue. Arthur and his friends (?) are blown-up and find themselves at the end of time where there is a really posh restaurant ("It's not so much an afterlife as an apres vie.") Oh, yeah, and Marvin, the paranoid android, repeatedly sticks his head in a bucket of water.

25. A Mask for General, Lisa Goldstein

 Post-apocalyptic Berkeley is the setting for a novel about how Art conquers all.

26. Dangerous Visions, Harlan Elison, Ed.

 Still the greatest sci-fi short-story collection of all time. It includes Farmer's "Riders of the Purple Wage", a fantastic novella about what it means to be an artist; Leiber's "Going To Roll The Bones", a surreal fantasy about dicing with the devil, the choices we make and taking the long way home; and Sturgeon's "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister", a novella about the relativism of morality.

27. Rite of Passage, Alexei Panshin

 The children of a huge interstellar ship are admitted into adulthood only after undergoing a survival trial on a planet. A lovely novel about the process of becoming an adult.

28. Door Into Fire, Diane Duane

 A sword and sorcery adventure in a land with no homophobia, and where the Goddess is known and loved by all (literally by a few lucky adventurers). Centers on a man who has the gift of magic which is rare for men there. In addition, to an on-again, off-again relationship with a handsome prince, he falls in love with a fire elemental.

29. So You Want to Be a Wizard?, Diane Duane

 A young girl learns to defend herself from bullies after she discovers a magical book in the public library which teaches her how to be wizard. But every wizard must confront The Adversary, an embodiment of the entropic forces of the Universe.

30. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle

 A magical novel about the joy of individuality. A group of normal Earth children confront an oppressive, conformist culture on a distant planet.

31. The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper

 The seventh son of a seventh son is introduced to magic in an extremely Celtic adventure in a modern setting.

32. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clark

 Mankind's saviors are aliens that look like the classic depiction of the Devil. They stop the warfare and bring advancements, but what are their true intentions?

33. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

 The main character is killed in the first paragraph. He awakens on an earth transformed into one long, meandering river along with everyone else who has ever lived. How the heck did that happen and why?

34. The Darkover books, Miriam Zimmer Bradley

 Darkover is a planet that was settled in an early colonization effort. Isolated from the rest of human interstellar culture for a long time, it has developed a unique culture of its own, a patriarchal feudal culture lead by psychics. The books explore themes of feminism in an extremely patriarchal culture and the impact of technology on indigenous cultures.

35. The Once and Future King,, E. B. White

 The full Arthurian cycle in the form of a twentieth century novel.

36. Dahlgren, Samuel R. Delany

 A strange novel about what it means to be an artist. Set in a mildly futuristic city somehow cut-off from the rest of the world in its own private apocalypse.

37. On Wings of Song, Thomsa Disch

 With the help of electronic stimulation, some people can liberate their conscious from their bodies. However, the vast majority of the United States has become oppressively conservative and so "flying" is taboo except in the decaying liberality of the cities. The story of a small town boy who never learns to fly but sparks a cultural revolution by singing about it.

38. The Thomas Covenant Trilogy, Stephan Donaldson

 Thomas is an author in a small American town who has contracted Hanson's disease: Leprosy. He hits his head and finds himself in a fantasy world where he is instantly healed. He can not afford to believe in the reality of the world he finds himself because he would lose the diligence necessary to survive with the disease. And yet everyone looks to him to be a hero. An innovative fantasy trilogy with an ending that avoids being clichéd.

39. On a Pale Horse, Piers Anthony

A suicidally depressed man in a world of technology and magic attempts to shoot himself, but instead accidentally kills Death who was coming for him. The man becomes Death, but decides to be a compassionate one in the face of temptations from the Devil.

40. Pilgrimage and No Different Flesh, Zenna Henderson

The People crash landed on the Earth at the turn of the century. Most live in an isolated, insular settlement on Mount Baldly but a few got scattered in the crash. The People seem to be human, but have psychic powers like flight and telekinesis. Cited in the English translation of the Nag Hamadi Library as a modern literary work exhibiting gnostic themes.

41. The Bast Mysteries, Rosemary Edghill

Bast is the magical name of a neo-pagan New Yorker who repeatedly finds herself in the middle of another mysterious murder. The best exploration of the modern witchcraft movement and its culture to date.

42. Lord Valentine's Castle, Robert Silverberg

43. Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolf

44. The Illuminatus Trilogy, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

The ultimate paranoid conspiracy and Erisian fantasy novels of all time. The governments of the world are controlled by layer after layer of secret organizations and nefarious cabals. At the center of the web are the Illuminati. Strongly influenced by the Principia Discordia, and brilliant in its own right.

45. Lord of Light, Robert Zelazny

46. The Earthsea series, Ursula K. LeguinMertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-37154376851775235592007-08-13T13:28:00.000-07:002008-12-08T23:43:39.161-08:00St. Cuniculus Ab AsciaFrom our most recent Shipmeet in Berkeley:

Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-29997623923711955492007-08-10T19:48:00.000-07:002007-08-10T19:50:14.905-07:00A New Pandora BlogNow that pandorastations.com has finally died, I've created a new blog devoted entirely to Pandora. Welcome to PANDORA Review.Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-60004103132423173632007-07-19T15:14:00.000-07:002008-12-08T23:43:40.175-08:00July Listening TestsHere is the chart showing the performance of my Pandora stations through July, 07:

Mertsegerhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-38336003216417374262007-07-10T13:17:00.000-07:002008-12-08T23:43:40.267-08:00Simpsons Avatar Self-PortraitMertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-13730333.post-18409422336497209822007-04-05T07:44:00.000-07:002007-04-05T07:57:17.917-07:00A Review of Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality by Ken WilberI wrote this review several years ago for a bunch of my fellow initiates in The Third Road. I brought the book up in discussion in another forum, and thought it might be useful to post the review here as well.

I finished slogging my way through Ken Wilber's 1995 book, Sex, Ecology and Spirituality (hereafter, SES), a couple months ago and have been thinking about its relationship and relevance to our spiritual tradition.

SES, mired as it is in the my-metaphorical-penis-is-bigger-than-your-metaphorical-penis academic pissing contest prose that makes a morgue out of Western Philosophy, invites a kind of critique that points out every fault and fallacy that the reviewer comes across as he or she makes her way through the material. I shall try to avoid doing so as I write this review.

Wilber has a handful or so really good ideas buried in the 800+ pages of this book. The book would be more accurately titled "Holistic Philosophy" although I'm sure he's sold many more copies having the word "Sex" in the title. (Even the title invites criticism since he largely means "gender" instead of "sex". He talks a lot about gender bias and inequality, and his only real mention of sex itself is to dismiss Western Culture as sex-obsessed.)

The first of his really good ideas is shift of paradigm from the reductionist idea of "things" to the idea of whole/parts or "holons". The idea is that the Universe contains no isolated parts and no isolated wholes. The Universe, instead, consists of whole/parts or holons potentially nested within other whole/parts potentially nested within other whole/parts ad (according to Wilber, at least) infinitum. This is best understood with examples of which he provides many, and here's one: atoms are contained in molecules are contained in proteins are contained in cells are contained in tissues are contained in organs, etc. The more inclusive and dependent a holon is (like say, a human body) the more significant that holon is. The more basic and depended upon a holon is (like atoms), the more fundamental that holon is. Anything which threatens more fundamental holons is also a threat to the more significant holons which depend on them (but not vice-versa: eliminate all humans and you'd still have their atoms). Wilber outlines roughly "twenty tenets" which define the minimal properties of all holons.

The second of Wilbers really good ideas is a map of holons called "The Four Quadrants" (see here for a pretty diagram a bit down on the page). The lefthand side of the map contains the holons of interiority, that is, those whole/parts which are necessary to experience the Universe as a subject. Conversely, the righthand side contains the holons of exteriority, that is, those whole/parts which constitute the Universe perceived as a collection of objects. The top half of the map explores individual holons and the bottom half collections or groups of holons. The triumph and tragedy of the Enlightenment in the West was, according to Wilber, a belief, a mistaken-but-incredibly-useful belief, that everything could be reduced to the upper-right quadrant of the map. That is, to understand the Universe we just need to know how all the individual pieces perceived as objects work. Sound familiar? It's called Science.

More recently Science has begun to see the fundamental importance of the lower-right quadrant in such fields as Systems Science and Ecology. However, the right-hand side by itself remains an incomplete picture of the Universe that Wilber labels the "flatland".

On the other hand (so to speak), it is the left-hand side, particularly, the lower-left-hand side of the map there we find many of the things that interest us as witches: magic, myth, rationality, and "centaur-vision" (whatever that is). Wilber levels a sharp criticism against post-modern movements (of which Neo-paganism is most definitely included) because of his understanding of the lower-left quadrant. It is fairly clear, he argues, that in the Post-modern era we have reached the limits of what rationality can accomplish. Furthermore, the limits of rationality appear to be potentially fatal both physically in terms of various possible ecological catastrophes and spiritually in terms of the god-is-dead consequence of everything being reduced to the materialistic upper-right-hand quadrant of flatland. Therefore, the call-to-battle for post-modern movements is "no more rationality". That is, in an attempt to go beyond rationality in our collective consciousness, we have often been tempted to regress and embrace pre-rational, more fundamental but less significant holons like magic and myth as the "solution" to the problems of rationality.

WIlber believes it is a mistake to long for cultures which were dominated by these more fundamental structures. Mythic-dominant cultures were often the most prejudiced and gender-unequal societies, and tribal, magic-dominant cultures, while possibly more matrifocal prior to the development of the plow, were perfectly capable creating of their own more-limited ecological crises. He believes that we have to transcend rationality rather than regress from rationality in order to address the problems of modernism.

And so what is beyond rationality? SES outlines at least three stages of collective consciousness beyond rationality: centaur-vision, non-dual and causal. Apparently, these stages can only be understood and communicated between people who have experienced them, but the theory is that there are people who have experienced them and techniques for achieving them. And so, if my understanding is correct, centaur-vision is experiencing a one-ness with nature (hence, the centaur: a union of man and animal). Non-duality is experiencing a consciousness beyond all forms, and casual is an experience of the whole matrix of reality and its cohesive evolution. Should we say Goddess? Perhaps.

A third really good idea is, strictly speaking, not Wilber's but Plato's which was expanded by Plotinus. Our consciousness is capable of assent through these levels of cognitive development to touch and unite if briefly with Godhood. At the same time, God's consciousness descends into nature and pours out through it via all of the holons in all four quadrants. Our conscious is a channel of the Spirit, and the more we develop our consciousness the more of that Spirit that can pour through us. We can achieve Enlightenment and, in fact, states beyond Enlightenment (ascent), but, ultimately, must return to live in this world as it is (descent).

Wilber dismisses magic as infantile and myth as childish, and so it's easy to feel defensive as a witch when reading SES. Furthermore, since his chains of holons are portrayed as monolithic and linear in each of the quadrants and because he presents meditative techniques like those developed in Zen and Yoga as the only routes to non-dual and causual consciousness, it is easy to feel that the Craft has no hope of achieving the transrational states he values as being of greater significance than rationality, myth and magic.

Actually, I think the Third Road training is a valid path of ascent and descent as delineated in SES. Wilber points out that often when a new stage of collective cognitive development is achieved, the previous stages are initially denied. Thus, mythic cultures (like Christianity) have repressed and denied the validity of magic, and then modern rational cultures denied myth (God is dead). Ultimately, however, these earlier ways of seeing the world are more fundamental, and so they must be integrated rather than repressed if the new level of development is to stabilize. Faerie Trad, in general, seems to have a good map to the integration of magic and myth into rational consciousness and, I believe, beyond. We do not, for instance, hold any one myth over all others as being the literal truth, nor we believe that magic is a way of instant wish-fulfillment without consequences. Myth and magic are the instrumentality of consciousness. We use them along with our rational mind consciously to achieve interior transformations that we know will have exterior consequences as well.

Do we achieve transrational states in our practices? I think we fairly consistency achieve oneness with Nature and her various Spirits. I think we do peak beyond that state occasionally, but such states seem so vaguely defined (at least to me) that it's hard to agree or disagree with Wilber as to what's out there.

If nothing else, SES provides an interesting set of vocabulary for talking about holistic philosophy. I found myself disagreeing with the details of virtually everything he presents in the book, but, as I say, that seems to be a consequence of his presenting his ideas in the competitive framework of academic prose. (He spends thirty pages in one end-note, for Goddess sake, setting up straw men and then knocking them down one by one to make a point that no one but a small coterie of obscure professors could possibly even care about.) In general, I liked the big ideas contained in SES, and while I'd hardly suggest that this book is a must-read or a can't-put-it-down classic, it does provide an interesting integration of a broad range material.Mertsegerhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com


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there is this guy and he just got out of a relationship at least a month ago... he looks kinda interested in me. he just wants to hang out ...what exactly does this mean boys?
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What Guys Said 2
he's not ready for another relationship for a little while and is giving you a heads up (that's pretty considerate)...
I'm in the same boat, and I am looking for someone to have fun with and see where it goes from there (it is dating, more or less, but I don't like it to be called "dating"..i just got out of a relationship and "dating" is associated with a that and I want nothing of it).
Just have fun, go out, experiment and try new things..eventually he will get over his broken relationship and get serious with you (ask you to "date" lol).
Or, he will realize that there is really just physical attraction (no chemistry) and continue to just have fun (you will know when this happens..)
Or, he will realize that there was really just physical attraction and move on (you will know when this happens also..)
I say "hang out" if you are on the same page/are patient and understanding of his feelings...if you are on the "I want something serious and eventually bear your babies" page, try having fun for a while (you will wish you did once you get knocked up)..
this is all assuming that you're into the guy..00|00|0
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Homeless introduction essays
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Essays - largest database of quality sample essays and research papers on Self Introduction Speech Outline Oct 17, 2012 · Read informative essays & articles on many topics relating to sexual violence, most authored by Pandy's members Homeless Statistics within the USA is often not visible mainly due to the wide expansion of wealth throughout the majority of metropolitan areas.
Free homeless families papers, essays, and research papers. Harvard Guide to Using Sources A Publication of the Harvard College Writing Program
1. PALMS (Ladoni) 1993 - Russian - Artur Aristakisyan, director. The greatest and most difficult (in an artistic sense) of all homeless films.


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BizStore » Books » Monet
List Price: $14.95Manufacturer: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Our Price: $10.86
You Save: $4.09 (27%)
Availability: N/A
Publisher: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Author(s): Yvon Taillandier
Product Description:
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: Revised
Item Dimensions: Array
Label: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Number Of Pages: 92
Publication Date: 1988-12-12
Publisher: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Release Date: 1988-12-12
Studio: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Editorial Review:
Another title from The Crown Art Library, the most useful monographs available on a wide range of significant artists. Each volume is written by an internationally recognized authority and is generously illustrated with full-color reproductions of the artist's paintings and two-color reproductions of sketches and line drawings.
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|Message view
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|eric b <eric.bach...@free.fr>
|Re: [CODE] issue 118576: Crash on close
|Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:24:09 GMT
Le 7 nov. 11 à 09:51, Andre Fischer a écrit : > Hi, > Hi Andre, > I have news on this, but not good news. > :-/ > The crash is not directly caused but triggered by the fix for issue > 112786. That issue fixes the config manager singleton to actually > getting destroyed when the office closes. Not destroying it is not > nice but, to my knowledge, causes not observable problems. That's probably why Caolan workaround uses boost shared_pointers. I adapted his patch to OOo, and there is no observable problem on Windows so far. > > Now that the config manager is destroyed, it checks whether there > are still any registered config items. There should be none at this > point but in reality there is one when no application is started > and about six when for example the writer is started and closed > immediately. I didn't know the Writer case. Thanks for the info. > > Not wanting to leave anything behind the config manager destroys > the lingering config items. Because the office is already half > down and the infrastructure for destroying the config items is not > in place anymore, that causes the crash. Indeed. > > So, every remaining config item causes its own separate crash. Each > has to be fixed on its own. Some even cause secondary crashes when > a config items in its destructor tries to destroy the resources it > still holds. > The root cause here is that the config items are registered but are > not unregistered. Yes, so why not use shared pointers ? the refcount looks more clean, is automagicaly managed, and works apparently well. Or maybe I misunderstood something ? > Fixing this issue means finding the owner of the offending config > item and make it properly unregister and destroy the item. > > Fixing this is a time consuming process. Indeed, and will force to manage more precisely every item. > I have one item fixed (see the patch for issue 118576) and a > second one in the making. That means that four are still open. As > there are more important things to do right now, like getting the > conflicting IP stuff removed, I suggest to remove the patch of > issue 112786 and fix this properly at a later point in time. > Waiting, what about adopt a compromise, using the patch I wrote (or a better one) instead ? See : http://ftp.educoo.org/home/ericb/patches/ apache_ooo/configmgr_windows/configmgr_fixed.diff Another question coming to my mind is now: can we integrate the patch, or must we write another solution ? (I tried to discuss with Caolan on IRC, but no answer yet) Thanks in advance for any suggestion :-) Regards, Eric Note : I manualy added the changes, since the patch Caolan provided uses deep changes in cppuhelper, not directly compatible with our code imho. The orignal link of the fix is : https://bugs.freedesktop.org/ show_bug.cgi?id=31494 -- qɔᴉɹə Projet OOo4Kids : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page L'association EducOOo : http://www.educoo.org Blog : http://eric.bachard.org/news
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The clean, simple and modern design makes the Nebula trainers perfect for every occasion, especially ideal for your child's free time. With a navy blue fabric upper, suede inserts and contrasting sea-green detail, they have a light EVA sole that is flexible and cushioned for easy and comfortable walking. The rubber tread ensures durability and grip, while the Velcro and elastic-lace fastening makes them quick and easy to put on. The rubber toe also provides greater protection for the foot.
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Amusing getting to know Apps assisting human beings With Autism Spectrum ailment. Fun Learning Apps Helping People With Autism Spectrum Disorder. Children with autism spectra ailment often front rigor in processing information that involves the 5 smells. Smells , interferences, and bright beacons often dishearten them. These are initial signalings that small children may be autistic. But thankfully, fun hearing apps like" What's the Expression" and "Make Sentences" have made a world-wide of gap to autistic offsprings by helping them with sensory and engine abilities .
These fun educational apps had now become much-loved read manoeuvres for autistic offsprings. Devices like the iPad, smartphone, and invoices have opened up a new read horizon for children. Autistic offsprings often have a high level of digital readiness. Device-based hearing is often a second nature to most of them .
Autism is a complex brain development ill. Harmonizing to a recent survey in the US, one in 45 teenagers aged between three to 17, have autism range ill .
Children with autism often struggle in the following cases .
Social interaction: How do parties relate to each other? Institutions, arrangements, and settles take root in small-minded and gigantic radicals, and in on-on-one status .
Repetitive demeanors: Autistic offsprings are known to showing repetition demeanors. These may include front banging, pas fluttering, and rocking to and fro .
Communication detriments: Exchange of information between two persons can take place without communicating. Non-verbal clues include pas gesticulates and body language. Autistic offsprings front rigor in recognizing these signalings .
Fun hearing apps like" What's the Expression" and "Make Sentences" can help autistic offsprings spy the nonverbal communication clues. These apps also aid teaches, mothers, and therapists .
Enthused by the success of the" What's the Expression" and "Make Sentences" educational apps, many companies have started developing their own apps which they believe are potent implements to reach out to autistic parties .
What should certainly come to the help of autistic offsprings, is the simple availability of the technological manoeuvres on which these apps can run. Smart phones, invoices, and iPads are within the reach of most people, compared to the hugely expensive assistive communication manoeuvres. The modern digital manoeuvres have come as a boon for children with autism range ill .
The fun hearing apps for teenagers have helped autistic children in many ways. Most importantly, they facilitate special needs kids to construct sentences and establish the expression to a specific reply. These educational apps is also possible customized according to the specific needs of the child since no two autistic teenagers are the same. The fun hearing apps are truly proving to be helpful .


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shaunagibbs Review
Great for the money!
This bed-in-a-bag is very attractive. Love the colors! I was expecting the comforter to be a little poofier than it is, but none the less, it is still extremely warm. Comfortable material. Aesthetically pleasing. Some loose strings when I pulled out of the package, but it is money well spent!
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Old Street - Steven Castellino Review
My first RYN dinner for a good few months was a rather pleasant one...
Easy to get to if you're coming from Old Street station (national rail or nothern line) just a 3minute walk. You can also walk from Shoreditch High Street (London Overground).
As this Nando's branch had only revently opened, it was exciting to see what was unique and different. The decor was notably brilliant, we were seated downstairs and the wall was made off a load of wooden knobs which was very unique and impressive.
As we were seated, we had most of the downstairs as there Weren't many others. Great variety of complimentary chicken wings and pitta put on by the guys, so thanks for that. Struck luck in the raffle, and won myself a £10 voucher so got a butterfly chicken with spicy rice, peri-salted fries and two sides of halloumi! The Nandoncas were really helpful and brought over any food which had been left off the order. They were also interested in the RYN events and gave us some recommendations for future events which I thought was really helpful. I also loved the new electronic drinks machine! Great touch.
The quiz was good this week, very tasking, but Blayne, Liv and I somehow managed to win it!
Another cracking event, thanks Marc and James once more!


text:
Our Objectives
To train and ordain spiritual leaders within the five-fold ministry
Regional and National Level
To continuously enhance the effectiveness of ordained spiritual leaders
To facilitate the mobilization of appropriately identified alumni for specific, local and national projects.
Five-Fold Ministry Training
Training believers in the ministry of helps to serve in the local church
The programme will provide a platform for ordination
Curriculum is divided into teaching and practical training
1. Church Administration
2. Five Fold Ministry
3. Hermeneutics
4. Homiletics
5. The Minister and the Family
6. Problem Solving in the Corinthian Church
7. Counselling
8. Pastor
9. Ministerial Ethics
10. Church Planting
11. Fulfulling your Call and Vision
The fourth year programme is a school of ministry in which we focus on five fold ministry training.
Upon successful completion the Degree will be certified and issued by the USA - Heritage of Faith Bible Institute
Forth Year Curriculum - School of Ministry [Bible School]


text:
Zombie Remolding: Final Goals
Defensive zombies are the only ones capable of the Undead skill and it will take a level 44 remolding to even unlock this. Battery costs reduce back to 10 at the start of each new day but as you progress higher levels will cost more points than the previous one. Before choosing this path be