Stunning and Strange

So many issues. So many thoughts. So many, as my son says, ideas that it makes you go aaargh.

Yesterday, COSATU marched in all major South African cities against eTolling and Labour Broking.
Now, labour broking I straddle the fence on - some labour brokers are unrepentant scumbags, to be sure, but if I were an employer, I'm not sure I wouldn't welcome someone to handle the risk of employing people for me. There are, as usual, far more than 2 sides to this story.

On the proposed electronic tolling of the highways, I have only one opinion: hell no, we won't pay! Those are our roads, you thieving bunch of bloodsuckers (sorry, mosquitoes, I had to pick on you didn't I?) and you will not be enriching yourselves personally at our expense. I'm only surprised that no-one has yet attempted to dismantle and/or blow up the evil gantries so far. Those are Kevlar jackets on that optical fibre you know, metal stealers. And all sorts of expensive electronic components. Instead of swiping the brass numbers from my gate, why don't you do us a favour and start stripping those gantries? In any case, I seriously can't see the government getting this one to fly - not when South African citizens, almost to a person, are vehemently opposed to it. Good to see us all facing the same way, for a change.

The sun is about to go barmy, I understand. This could get interesting: we've already had an unexpected lightning storm breaking just at peak-home-time yesterday, and a Full Moon is culminating in Virgo as I type. But I can attest to the presence of a disturbance in..well, shall I call it the ether?..since last week, causing widespread stranger-than-normal dreams and an increase in the feeling of standing on the edge of time and space. For myself, I experienced a very odd episode on Monday evening, which frankly panicked me for a couple of seconds, until I let the feeling ride. It felt a lot like I was being whacked around the head, repeatedly - and all of a sudden, out of nowhere. I totally lost my internal gyroscope, and even sitting or lying down didn't help. I have no idea what that was, but I'm keeping an eye on the physical body a bit more than I usually do. It could, as Warren believes, be a return of my excessively-low blood pressure, which hasn't bugged me for a decade now.
Whatever it was, I was left the next day feeling as if my brain had been reset and reformatted once again. I'm not saying I can't do with it: my last total brain reformat was 12 or 13 years ago - I'm sure I'm due for a new one. The main effects of this apparent reformat is a lack of desire - and I don't mean that in a particularly sexual way. I mean, the day after I slipped my gimbals, I experienced a marked lack of wanting  - a cigarette, a cup of coffee, more sleep.. anything. It was almost as though my biological component had popped out for a moment, leaving me without the normal demands of the body.

And talking of that, I consider myself becoming increasingly stretched in these latter days. Between, as it were, Earth and Sky.
I don't so much oscillate between immanence and transcendence as I feel both pulling at me, ever more strongly. The Earth receiving my material body, myself becoming more and more aware of my animal component - and at the same time, an increase in instances of sheer spiritual transcendence, when I can feel the Field strongly, urging my upper chakras into, for want of a better image, the sky. Feeling a bit like a Gumby woman, but not at all uncomfortable.

I wandered out onto the balcony a moment ago, and there, obscuring the increasingly grumpy sun, was a huge cumulo-nimbus cloud, behind which, peeking out at the southern edge, a formation of cirrus clouds looking for all the world like M31. Stunning and strange.

And then, of course, I've been kept busy wondering whether I'm the reincarnation of George Sand. Well, not so much kept busy as actually pausing for a few minutes as I stare into the eyes of a 60-year old Sand and get the distinct impression that I'm looking into a mirror. An elderly french lady once, about 25 years ago, felt moved to remark on the likeness to me, a complete stranger - I forgot all about it until yesterday.Stunning again and strange.

Lastly, I've been wondering to myself why on Earth I ever put down William Irwin Thompson's books. I have Coming Into Being and The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light in my library and every so often will open one or the other of them to receive some - stunning and strange - words of pure illumination. This man has been speaking very clearly to me since I discovered him a few years ago.
Listen:

"In the interval between each thought, in the interval between each heartbeat, in the place where there is no breath, we recall what we always knew."

May we continue to re-member ourSelves from here on into the final fury of the sun.

Pic: M31 from APOD