The Movie of My Life

Rachel's Great Song List

2007-08-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

These are some of the songs that I wish everyone could take to heart. Not that it's a bad thing if you're just not into music like this, however. It's just that...well, songs like these speak to me like nothing else, and I feel sometimes as though the lyrics and chords of a few of them have even helped me to live my life in a more positive fashion, and do the things I do best, such as writing and painting. This list of songs inspire me.

1.) "Heart of Gold", by Neil Young
2.) "Broken", by Seether featuring Amy Lee
3.) "Freak on a Leash", by Korn featuring Amy Lee
4.) "Crystal", by Stevie Nicks
5.) "Sunny Came Home", by Shawn Colvin
6.) "Building a Mystery", by Sarah McLachlan
7.) "Kylä Vuotti Uutta Kuuta", by Värttinä
8.) "Glycerine", by Bush
9.) "A Long December", by Counting Crows
10.) "Prison Trilogy", by Joan Baez
11.) "Diamonds and Rust", by Joan Baez
12.) "California Dreamin'", by The Mamas and the Papas
13.) "O Christ, King of Glory", by the Tallari Ensemble
14.) "Hunting the Devil's Ell", by Heikki Laitinen
15.) "Samson", by Regina Spektor
16.) "Apres Moi", by Regina Spektor
17.) "Lady", by Regina Spektor
18.) "Half Acre", by Hem
19.) "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", by His Infernal Majesty (HIM)
20.) "Fade to Black", by Metallica
21.) "Ghost of Corporate Future", by Regina Spektor
22.) "On the Radio", by Regina Spektor
23.) "Poor Little Rich Boy", by Regina Spektor
24.) "Us", by Regina Spektor
25.) "My Immortal", by Amy Lee
26.) "Angels", by Within Temptation
27.) "Nemo", by Nightwish
28.) "Coffee Song", by the Tallari Emsemble
29.) "The Forsaken Young", by the Tallari Ensemble
30.) "I Need Some Sleep", by Eels
31.) "Girlfriend", by Avril Lavigne
32.) "Bitch", by Meredith Brooks
33.) "I Need", by Meredith Brooks
34.) "Ironic", by Alanis Morissette
35.) "Standing Still", by Jewel
36.) "Umbrella", by Rhianna
37.) "Almost Lover", by A Fine Frenzy
38.) "Chop Suey", by System of a Down
39.) "Susan's House", by Eels
40.) "The Times, They Are A-changin'", by A Whisper in the Noise

More songs to be added soon!

Amazingly Good Instrumental Pieces:

1.) The soundtrack for M. Night Shyamalan's The Village
2.) The soundtrack for M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water
3.) The instrumental "Fade to Black", by Apocolyptica
4.) The soundtrack for Terry Gilliam's Tideland

Rachel's Movie List

2007-08-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of different flims that I absolutely adore. A few synopsises may come a bit later, when I have the time to actually write synopsises that really do some of these movies justice.

1.) The Dark Crystal, directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz
2.) Labyrinth, directed by Jim Henson
3.) The Crow, directed by Alex Proyas and Brandon Lee
4.) The Village, directed by M. Night Shyamalan
5.) Lady in the Water, directed by M. Night Shyamalan
6.) The Cuckoo, directed by Aleksandr Rogozhkin
7.) Jerusalem, directed by Billie August
8.) I Am Dina, directed by Ole Bornedal
9.) The Secret of Roan Inish, directed by John Sayles
10.) Silent Hill, directed by Christophe Gans
11.) The Education of Little Tree, directed by Richard Friedenberg
12.) Dreamkeeper, directed by Steve Barron
13.) Hero, directed by Zhang Yimou
14.) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, directed by Ang Lee
15.) Apocalypto, directed by Mel Gibson
16.) Brush With Fate, directed by Brent Shields
17.) 28 Days Later, directed by Danny Boyle
18.) Princess Mononoke, directed by Hayao Miyazaki
19.) Spirited Away, directed by Hayao Miyazaki
20.) Kiki's Delivery Service, directed by Hayao Miyazaki
21.) Shrek 2, directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury and Conrad Vernon
22.) Gone With the Wind, directed by Victor Fleming
23.) Practical Magic, directed by Griffin Dunne
24.) Tideland, directed by Terry Gilliam
25.) Mortal Kombat, directed by Paul Anderson
26.) Ever After, directed by Andy Tennant
27.) A Knight's Tale, directed by Brian Helgeland
28.) Dragonheart, directed by Rob Cohen
29.) Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Frank Oz
30.) The Rocky Horror Picture Show, directed by Jim Sharman
31.) Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, directed by Stanley Donen
32.) One Million Years B.C., directed by don Chaffey
33.) O Brother, Where Art Thou?, directed by Joel Cohen

Children's Movies:

1.) The Sandlot, directed by David Mickey Evans
2.) So Dear to my Heart, directed by Harold Schuster
3.) The Halloween Tree, directed by Mario Piluso
4.) Pete's Dragon, directed by Don Chaffey
5.) The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick
6.) The Corpse Bride, directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson
7.) The Three Lives of Thomasina, directed by Don Chaffey
8.) The Hunchback of Notre Dame, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise
9.) Mary Poppins, directed by Robert Stevenson
10.) The Princess and the Goblin, directed by Jozsef Gemes
11.) The Prince of Egypt, directed by Brenda Chapman, Stave Hickner and Simon Wells
12.) Oliver!, directed by Carol Reed
13.) Fairy Tale: A True Story, directed by Charles Sturridge
14.) Hocus Pocus, directed by Kenny Ortega
15.) The Secret Garden, directed by Agnieszka Holland
16.) Pinocchio, directed by Steve Barron
17.) An American Tale: Feivel Goes West, directed by Steven Spielberg
18.) The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming
19.) 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, directed by George Pal
20.) A Little Princess, directed by Alfonso Cuaron

Mm-hm, and there are several additional movies, children's movies, and television series that I could also put to the list, though I for some reason can't seem to think of any more of them right now. Wow, I really did list a lot of filming projects, up there! That means that I need to think of a few more books to add to my book list, since I really do read a lot more than I watch television.

Rachel's Book List

2007-08-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

Hm! I just realized that I've never actually made a real list of the kind of books I usually read, many of which I would definitely recommend to anyone else who loves good literature. I need to make such a list right now, I think, even though it's 11:39 at night, and I'm very tired from jogging two miles with my mom on the Oakley Elementary race track a bit earlier this evening. The books in this list of mine are marked in no particular order. I recommend every single one of these stories for great reads, and I really don't think that any one of them is any better or worse than the last.

1.) The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
2.) The House With the Blind Glass Windows, by Herbjorg Wassmo
3.) Dina's Book, by Herbjorg Wassmo
4.) The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
5.) The Kin, by Peter Dickinson and Ian Andrew
6.) The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M. Auel
7.) The Kalevala: Or Poems of the Kaleva District, by Elias Lonnrot and Jr. Francis Peabody Magoun
8.) Faeries, by Brian Froud and Alan Lee
9.) Spirit Fox, by Mickey Zucker Reichert and Jennifer Wingert
10.) Gathering Blue, by Lois Lowry
11.) The Giver, by Lois Lowry
12.) The Moorchild, by Eloise McGraw
13.) This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn, by Aidan Chambers
14.) Fudoki, by Kij Johnson
15.) The Alchemist, by Paul Coelho
16.) White Oleander, by Janet Fitch
17.) Tideland, by Mitch Cullin
18.) Bones of the Moon, by Jonathan Carroll
19.) A Northern Light, by Jennifer Donnelly
20.) Shiva's Fire, by Suzanne Fisher Staples
21.) The Rice Mother, by Rani Manicka
22.) Born Confused, by Tanuja Desai Hidier
23.) Homeless Bird, by Gloria Whelan
24.) The His Dark Materials Trilogy, by Philip Pullman
25.) Witch Child, by Celia Rees
26.) Guardian of the Balance, by Irene Radford
27.) Matilda Bone, by Karen Cushman
28.) Widdershins, by Charles de Lint
29.) Waifs and Strays, by Charles de Lint
30.) Moonlight and Vines, by Charles de Lint
31.) Spirits in the Wires, by Charles de Lint
32.) The Blue Girl, by Charles de Lint
33.) Greenmantle, by Charles de Lint
34.) Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection, by Charles de Lint
35.) The Onion Girl, by Charles de Lint
36.) A Taxonomy of Barnacles, by Galt Niederhoffer
37.) Jerusalem, by Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof
38.) The Thin Place, by Kathryn Davis
39.) The Midwife's Apprentice, by Karen Cushman
40.) Troll: A Love Story, by Johanna Sinisalo
41.) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
42.) Mister God, This is Anna, by "Fynn", Rowan Williams and "Papas"
43.) The Frozen Waterfall, by Gaye Hicyilmaz
44.) The Song of Hiawatha, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
45.) The Wind on Fire Trilogy, by William Nicholson
46.) Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

Children's Books:

1.) Witch Watch, by Gillian McLure
2.) One Wintry Night, by Ruth Bell Graham
3.) The Rag Coat, by Lauren A. Mills
4.) The Surprise in the Wardrobe, by Val Willis and John Shelley
5.) Pumpkin Moonshine, by Tasha Tudor
6.) Astrid Lindgren Books
7.) Elsa Beskow Books
8.) The Story of the Root-Children, by Sibylle von Olfers
9.) Zen Shorts, by Jon J. Muth
10.) C.S. Lewis Books
11.) Under the Snowball Tree, by Ellie Kirby
12.) Seven Wild Sisters, by Charles de Lint and Charles Vess
13.) A Circle of Cats, by Charles de Lint and Charles Vess
14.) Madeleine L'Engle Books
15.) Zen ABC, by Amy Zerner and Jessie Spicer Zerner
16.) Clockwork, by Philip Pullman
17.) Green Angel, by Alice Hoffman

Interesting Religous Texts, Not in Italics:

1.) The Bhagavad Gita
2.) The Torah ("Genesis" - "Minor Prophets")
3.) The New Testament ("Matthew" - "Revelation")
4.) Book of Mormon
5.) The Vedas ("Rig Veda", "Sama Veda", "Yajur Veda" and "Atharva Veda")
6.) The Upavedas: The Post-Vedic Texts ("Aryurveda" - "Sthapatyaveda")
7.) Bardo Thodol: The Tibetan Book of the Dead
8.) The Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Main Scripture of the Bahá'í Faith)
9.) The Gnostic Gospels

That's all the books, for children and adults alike, that I can possibly think of right now! I plan to keep on adding books to this list as I come to think of them. But for now I'm going to make a list of my favorite movies and their directors.

"Weikko Wirtanen"

2007-07-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at the computer right now...Of course I'm sitting at the computer. If I happened to be sitting anywhere else but the computer, how would I ever manage to be compiling this new post? Ahhh...Anyway, to begin with, I just wanted to say that I've checked my e-mail a total of sixteen times so far today alone, and as always, my Inbox was deviod of anything other than spam. And the spam wasn't even that interesting kind of spam, which I occassionally recieve. There was a short offer from Hanna Andersson, talking about some kind of sale on last season's clothing, and one of those "Do Not Reply" messages that was sent to let me know that the reasonably cheap ash-gray hoodie I ordered from www.fat-pie.com, portraying a rather ghastly portrait of the cartoon character called Salad Fingers, was well on its way to my place in Asheville. I was happy to hear that.

I just finished inking in a few little pieces of the sixth Weikko Wirtanen comic Janne and I have made together. We're going to try to get the series published, I guess. I certainly hope that they do get published, anyway. That would be just ever so awesome. The Weikko Wirtanen comics have been our very first collaboration, and Janne and I are quite proud of them. I really think that they look pretty nice. They've been done entirely in black and white, since black and white comic stips are generally easier to sell, and we've used a lot more of the black ink, especially, in our aim to inbue each animated panel with stark, three-dimentional effects done to the very best of our ability. Janne and I have decided to portray our dear Weikko Wirtanen predominately as an extremely shy, withdrawn and reed-thin person with thick, unbecoming spectacles and a large floppy winter hat. Weikko Wirtanen's facial features are an andrologenous mix of boy-girl looks, and indeed, we created him intending for him to be seen as a fourteen-year-old homosexual boy, though throughout this first series of comics in which Weikko is the main character, Janne and I have made it a point for Weikko to never go out and actually say this about himself. We've planned the various monochrome comic strips featuring Weikko Wirtanen in such a way that the true sexuality (or true sex, for that matter) of the main character is never known for sure, and at the most, only lightly explored. Weikko Wirtanen, as a comic strip character, is modeled more or less after a funny alternate personality of the opposite sex I purposely delved into back sometime around Juhannus, when I was very drunk and running my mouth to a girl who was partly the inspiration for Eva-Lisa, another one of Janne's most beloved animated characters. The kind of conversation I wound up having with the girl at Juhannus consequently became the basis for the first six-panelled comic strip that ever featured drawings of Weikko Wirtanen and Eva-Lisa sitting together in a dreary, unidentified coffeehouse possibly located somewhere in the Helsinki-Vantaa area.

In Which I Emo Not

2007-07-08T15:20:00.001-07:00

I wonder: How can I be considered "kind" in any way, when I'm so filled with hatred? There are so many aspects of my existance that I love. There are perhaps twice as many aspects of my existance that I hate and can never seem to get off my mind. I've been told time and time again that I am not bipolar, and yet I experience mood swings that sometimes surprise even me. They threaten every aspect of my existance and cause me to turn fully upon myself in rage. And I...I don't think that there's any way that I can ever really put an end to it. I'm beginning to think that my moods might very well put an end to me one of these days. I think it's more than possible that the process of this has already begun to unfold, and I am so very afraid. I can't sleep, though last night I did, amazingly. I can barely eat, and whenever I do eat, I feel an overwhelming depression that I can't describe. It makes me want to be sick after each meal, and on occassion, I flirt with the prospect of actually making myself vomit, even though I know that I could never do such a thing to myself, for obvious reasons. I've never been one to inflict physical punishment upon myself; back in the day, I used to play around with putting little red nicks in my ankles and such with my pocket knife, but I never got any real relief out of it, like some people do. I guess you could probably say that wreaking emotional havoc on my own mind and turning my own mind against itself was more my style. And how utterly horrible that must sound! As you can see, I don't need to be made to lie down and waste every single penny I earn on a fucking psychiatrist. An exorcism performed on me might lend far better results.

I have a lot on my mind right now, if me saying "a lot" can even approach the true sum. At the moment I'm mostly thinking about two people who are most dear to me: Janne and his sister-in-law. I love them both so much! Only God knows how much I love them, and yet I'm no good for them. I would honestly like to spend the rest of my life living with Janne, but I feel as though that would be almost selfish of me, for try as I might, I cannot satisfy him enough to satisfy me. (Does that also sound kind of selfish, in a way?) I love that man, and I tell him so quite often. And all he says in return, usually, as if in awe, is, "You're so kind. So kind." But what he never seems to understand is that I am not trying to be kind. My love for him is not something that he's had to earn, during the year and some months in which I've been properly acquainted with him; nor is my love some kind of holy blessing that I bestow for his goodwill, though, once again, God knows that I pray daily for his goodwill. I simply love Janne because I love Janne. My love is not based on his looks, or on his career, or even on his astonishing mental capacity as far as things like religion and art and writing go. But Janne doesn't know this. That's where his dreams and imagination come to an end, because he doesn't love himself as much as I love him. (Indeed, I believe that we both might be, at least in our own minds, unworthy of one another. But as I think of Janne right now, I find that I absolutely couldn't care less.) And then there's Janne's wonderful sister-in-law, whom I've known for the last five-going-on-six years, and whom I look up to and respect immensely for reasons of my own. I realized in a computer message she wrote me today, only a few hours ago, that I have wronged her without ever meaning to do so, in a most complicated and rare way (thought maybe not so very rare, as far as I'm concerned). God has blessed this young woman and I with the unique ability to truly communicate, meaning very precisely that she and I have always been able to share our problems and secrets without embarrassment so that we find ourselves able to talk about almost anything to one another...And today perhaps one of the most inconcievable things happened between us, though when I put the matter into words, the new burden this hands me becomes seriously downplayed. The truth of the matter is, to put it rather bluntly, that I've allowed myself to seem like a total idiot in front of her, due to an unfortunate combination of relatively common words, which I flatly decline to type again here. Oh, my dear, dear friend...What a fool she must think me, now. I honestly have no idea of what I could ever do or say, at this point, to save face. I am so fucking stupid! It is exactly 1:37 in the morning where I am right now, and I can't sleep. I'd love to sleep, but I don't know if I really even deserve to sleep. However, on the other hand, I also have quite a bad headache from staring into the wall of this enormous over-bright computer monitor, and I'm more than sure that I deserve it.

I cannot handle this. Especially not right now, when I have so many other awful things to worry about. It's currently the ninth day of July, and I have a train ticket to get hold of, sometime soon after this upcoming Thursday, and another friend of mind to contact even before that happens, so that we can figure out the best possible time for me to go through the process of acquiring the train ticket in order to come and visit her for only two or three days at the most. I shouldn't even mention the fact that the train ticket I purchase will be very expensive, most likely something of about forty euros, because I don't have the student card necessary for getting the great discount. But aside from that, I also can't stop worrying about what's going on with my dad who lives over in America, and my dog. We have five dogs, and only a few weeks ago, one of them was shot by one of our neurotic asshole neighbors, who claimed that Thunder was growling at his little girl when he was out walking with her to the mailbox. And it doesn't surprise me whatsoever that this particular neighbor of ours made several attempts to lie about shooting the poor dog in the first place. (His slack-faced teenage son shot another one of our dogs about two years ago, "just to see what would happen", and Steve tried to lie about that happening as well.) The dogs survived, thank goodness, though at great medical expense, but now my dad seems to be terrifyingly intent on getting rid of the youngest of our dogs, which is mine, simply because she likes to bark. If Dad tries to hurt Golda, or if he tries to get rid of her, right out from under me...I don't know what I'll do to him. There's really nothing I can do, or at least nothing I can think of. I think that his threatening to get rid of Golda might be Dad's childish way of getting revenge on me for leaving him again this summer to go to Finland, rather than have to stay home, work my ass off, make his meals and clean his house and clean up after him when he gets shitfaced with his friends every night. As far as I'm concerned, Dad can do all that for himself, and go to hell afterwards. But he'd better not attempt to get rid of Golda. My dogs are just about the only good thing I've got waiting for me when I have to go back to America at the beginning of August, and all five of them had better be at the house, where they're supposed to be. Dad mentioned something about giving Golda to Mom, but I learned that it was safer to distrust and disregard Mom when it comes to taking care of anything a very long time ago, when my youngest brother was born.

Jäässä

2007-06-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

"Olen jäässä," is a phrase I seem to catch myself uttering more and more often these days. Those two words are exceedingly strange words, ones you can't translate into English very easily, except for maybe the olen part, which simply means, "I'm". (Minä olen is how you say "I am".) Jäässä is definitely one of the most difficult Finnish words I've ever encountered, as far as means of translation into English go, and even here in Finland, there are only a handful of people who ever actually use the word in their everyday speech. While the word obviously comes directly from the Finnish jää, meaning "ice", as in jäätelö, or "ice cream", the true meanings of jäässä are almost myriad. To make things as uncomplicated as possible, you might just say that jäässä is a state of mind in which the mind for whatever reason has become frozen solid like ice, and therefore is quite incapable of forming even the simplest of words and basic sentences, no matter how strong the will to speak and socialize may be.

I can proudly say that I have been deeply trapped in the jäässä state of mind at least twice today. The first time I experienced the true glory of jäässä was when I woke up very early this morning with a rather bad hangover. A friend of mine, whom I consider to be a colleague in both art and film happened to be sleeping beside me, and he was snoring noisily. This pissed me off, although it shouldn't have, and so I snapped my fingers right in front of his face several times in an attempt to force him awake without freaking him out too badly. But when I realized that Janne was very deeply asleep, and that he had no way of knowing that his snoring wasn't helping my hangover one little bit, my mind became frozen to escape the harshness of reality. I was like a child's robot that was running out of batteries, or a prickly black-faced hedgehog that had been mauled in the wee hours before dawn by a neighborhood cat and was perhaps about to die; I became a very quiet and depressed individual, and in doing so, I became the very essence of the meaning of the word jäässä.

That probably makes absolutely no sense. I promise to write more on jäässä later when my mind finally thaws and I am more able to fully articulate my thoughts.

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 8)

2007-05-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

So, I want to make one thing quite clear before I truly begin today's lesson concerning samadhi: Sanskrit, like Finnish, is one of those languages in which there are hardly any of those awful words that are spelt and pronounced in similar ways, only with entirely different meanings, such as the English words "hear" and "here". The type of samadhi that is spoken of in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is an ancient Sanskrit term meaning "to establish" or "make firm". This definition of samadhi is to be in no way confused with the samadhi which is the Sanskrit word for the kind of structures that are errected for the sole purpose of commemorating the dead after cremation, similar to those old crypts and mausoleums you find in places like New Orleans, which may or may not contain the body of the deceased. Samadhis like this are often built to honor certain individuals regarded as saints and gurus. Pantanjali's definition of samadhi is widely recognized as a Hindu and Buddhist term that describes a totally non-dualistic state of conciousness, in which the very conciousness itself becomes one with the object that is being meditated on. True samadhi is an extremely complex and many-layered part of yoga philosophy, and I don't even know of I have the right to even make an attempt towards teaching it. I am no one's guru; I'm just an unusually thoughtful girl. I suppose I could say that I'm an unusually thoughtful yogini, but, after much meditation and deliberation, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not even sure if I have the right to call myself that. I've probably mentioned several times by now, throughout this entire blog, that I want to become a certified yoga instructor. Yoga is almost my number-one priority in life. But how can I do that, when aside from being thoughtful, I'm also unusually weak, clumsy and silly? I am absolutely nothing like the real yoga teachers I've had in the past. I'm pale and twisted and half-blind. That's the reason why even though I love to read various books and manuscripts on the subject of yoga, I don't even have anything like yoga magazines delivered to my house, even some of those are actually quite cheap and easy to get hold of, nowadays.

Maybe this kind of mentality just proves that I don't really have "yoga", in a sense of the inner power and balance that I've always thought I had before. Because, didn't Pantanjali himself say something important about having confidence in your own yoga once or twice in the Yoga Sutras? It could very well be that I truly am bipolar, and that this unhealthy disconfidence I feel entirely trapped in right now is only a momentary thing, and that an hour from now I'll have my yoga mat laid out on the floor of my mom's bedroom, enjoying my daily ritual of surya namaskara and feeling really great about it and my own body's ability to be even doing such a good and holy thing. For, even though I am an exceedingly thoughtful girl, I'm also an exceedingly troubled girl, and yoga brings me elation and bliss. Really, I swear it does. In the past I always felt as if doing yoga was like being in church, and that I shouldn't be smiling or thinking of anything silly while I go through vinyasa. But then they invented something called Laughing Yoga, and it became clear to me that there was absolutely no harm in smirking, grinning, or even laughing during a yoga session, at least provided that I wasn't disturbing anyone else in doing so. If anything, the act of me grinning happily during the flow of asanas was a nice and healthy addition to my daily yoga practice, both on and off the mat. Laughing is said to partially detoxify your body, anyway. (And detoxification seems to be exactly what I need more of, seeing as I actually had to quite my Master Cleanse a damn seven days early, after all the citric acid from the organic lemons made me sick as a dog.)

I think I definitely have yoga, at least in my own sense then. I'm going to be ninteen years old this year, and I feel that more than ever, I know exactly where I stand in the world. I feel and understand my place in the cosmos, and with this comes a secondary feeling of higher individuality. Despite my troubled mindset, which seems to have high and low tides like the ocean, I feel that I've actually got quite a lot going well for me. I am going to be a yoga instructor, if I can only find the teacher-training program that works best for me. I don't expect this to happen for the next few years, and maybe not even in the next ten years, however. It needs to happen after I'm able to totally complete my clinical certification thing at the North Carolina School of Holistic Herbalism, and I haven't even begun the first part of that yet, which is called Fundamentals. (I did actually get accepted into NCSHH, by the way, thank goodness.) The Fundamentals program at NCSHH begins March of 2008, which is still a long way of yet. After I complete the Fundamentals course, which lasts several months and several hundred hours, I'll have to wait a few months more and then move onto the next level of clinical herbalism. And after that, I'll have to wait even longer before I begin the real thing, which will allow me to legally practice herbalism in the United States.

Ah, but whatever! I began this essay on yoga philosophy thinking that I was going to only lecture on the definition of samadhi, and look what I've done. This essay has gone absolutely everywhere, from yoga philosophy, to be doing and teaching yoga, and possibly being bipolar, to my ramblings that involve my future studies at NCSHH. All this can mean only one thing: I do have yoga, as we all do at one awesome level or another, but that my attainment of basic samadhi is going to be something I will obviously have time to deal with in the years to come. Or maybe it won't really be attained at all in this lifetime, or even the next. Only God in the cosmos knows!

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 7)

2007-05-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

Last night I did something that was quite weird: I randomly contacted this girl I know, who was my best friend for many years, and kind of like a foster-sister to me for a while, as well. She and I met in the sixth grade and hit it off almost immediately. However, a few nasty things happened during seventh grade that caused several very sad and tearful fights between us, which resulted in an enstrangement that lasted for nine or ten months. We began to experiment with hanging out again and having fun during about the midpoint of eighth grade and eventually succeeded in rekindling the great and true friendship that had once been ours. And I was absolutely elated when that happened, of course; I thought that it would last forever, or rather, I hoped and prayed that it would last forever. However, the second part of the awesome saga belonging to Jenni and I only lasted until about our second year of high school, during which she was in a lot of bad relationships with guys and my way of life at home seemed to be further deteriorating. To explain things very briefly, I'll just say that we left each other's company and concentrated on the separateness of our own paths with only short, possibly hour-long intervals of bland and awkward communication. Because of this, and because of Jenni's apathy and the indifference I sought to force on myself, our relationship became stagnant and painful to even reminisce on. Jenni and I grauduated from Reynolds High School in May or June of 2006, and up until only late yesterday evening, we hadn't spoken a single word to one another. It was me who called her, of course, but I shouldn't be glorifying in that and thinking of it as a way to prove, once again, that I was always the one who tried to keep us friends when she was out running around with all these horrible guys who cheated on her and did drugs. In truth, after something else that happened to me last night suddenly inspired me to put aside my pride and give Jenni a ring, I flipped a penny on the matter to help me decide if I should try to call her at all. I said that if the penny landed one way, then I would call Jenni, no matter how angry I still felt towards her. If the penny landed the opposite way, I told myself that I would go for another solid year without attempting to speak to her. But dharma, it seems, intervened in my desperate divinination by penny-tossing, and I found myself facing the coppery profile of Abraham Lincoln before I could chicken out and change my mind. I gave Jenni the call, and her mother answered, not even recognizing the sound of my voice on the phone. I think I must have been near to tears at that point, anyway, and maybe I subconciously pitched my voice slightly lower so that I could hide it. Thus began my planned rendesvous with Jenni, which lasted for about three hours downtown under the bright, blistering sun. She did most of the talking during our brief get-together, as I knew and hoped she would. I just walked by her side as we passed Lexington, Broadway, Chesnut and pretty Holland Street.

When Jenni and I were walking the dusty, mica-flecked length of that street that Malaprops is on, we came upon a small knot of people in straw hats, orange and white robes that reminded us of the Buddhist monks of Southern Asia. However, these people were all Hindus, and when Jenni and I got to talking to them, we found out that most of them had come straight from some city in Germany, or at least two of the women had. Those girls were hardly older than us, I think, and they had the kind of pollen-like yellow paint on their foreheads that those who consider Shiva to be their personal diety usually wear. However, instead of Shaivites, they were members of the ISKON (International Society for Krishna Conciousness), and therefore aspirant devotees of Krishna. These people were standing on the edge of the street with books about Hinduism and their philosophy, asking for donations. Depending on how much of a donation you gave them, one of the women would give you some kind of a book in return, as a ploy to spread the philosphy. Jenni handed the woman handling the books a dollar, and she handed us a couple of small copies of a rather well-made illustrated pamphlet called Beyond Birth and Death, by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivendanta Swami Prabhupada, who is the founder of the International Society for Krishna Conciousness. All right. So, when it was about time for Jenni and I to be leaving downtown, we got into the red car she drove us there in, and she shoved her copy of the pamphlet at me, claiming that she just didn't want to have anything to do with "any of that really religious stuff", though, only about an hour and a half before that, Jenni had claimed that she was "no longer an atheist, by any means". Whatever. Jenni drove me to my mom's house back in Oakley, and I left her car carrying both copies of the pamphlet, as well as the yellow disposable camera I'd been taking pictures of certain places in the city with, to show people when I go back to Finland here in the next couple of days, and barely said good-bye to her. I didn't hug her or anything, as I'd thought I might like to do, earlier. I know how that one additional year will go by before I ever speak to Jenni again. It's easy to see that she and I come from completely different worlds. And this is something very complex, which I must definitely think on, carefully and extensively.

Which, of course, brings me directly to tonight's essay, which is on dhyana, or an aspect of meditation having mostly to do with thought and conciousness itself. Dhyana's beginnings are traced back to Hinduism in ancient times, when it was a concept considered to be an instrument used to gain self-knowledge, seperating this from reality, or the reality of others in order to attain eventual enlightenment. In the Bhagavad Gita, which is a holy text thought by some historians to have been written at some time between 400 and 100 BCE, dhyana was mentioned in correlation with Lord Krishna's in-depth explanation of Raja Yoga. The definition of the art of dhyana is also mentioned several times throughout Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. The concept of dhyana also exists entirely in Buddhism. Dhyana is only possible through the complete transendence of five earthly hindrances, which are listed in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras as being craving, aversion, sloth, agitation and doubt. Any one of these hindrances that are not transcended cause the person meditating to be totally incapable of discursive thinking; but when all five of these earthly hindrances have been entirely transcended in every possible way, the mind of the person meditating becomes empowered with the unshakable ability to penetrate into the deepest truths of our existence, and the existence of the universe in which we reside. These are the six steps towards enlightenment through the process of dhyana, listed according to the teachings of Patanjali:

1.) Vitakka: The movement of the mind onto the object.
2.) Vicara: The retention of the mind onto the object.
3.) Piti: The joy that comes with meditating and growing closer towards enlightenment.
4.) Sukha: The extreme happiness and bliss that comes with attainment of piti. (It just keeps getting better and better after this.)
5.) Ekaggata: One-pointedness.
6.) Upekkha: Finally, total equanimity with the meditative state.

Dhyana in Jainism is known as samayika. That's all I have to say.

Coming Soon: The last part of my essays concerning yoga philosophy, and what it means to me, though certainly not the last part of my posts having to do with the way I see yoga philosophy in general. This one will be about the eighth limb belonging to Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, called samadhi. I'd really like it if everybody actually read this essay, very closely, and tried to understand what I'm saying, even if it sounds like I don't even really understand what I'm saying. Trust me, it's important.

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 6)

2007-05-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

This evening I plan to write rather extensively on the subject of dharana, which is a Sanskrit term used mainly in the philosophies of Ashtanga Yoga, meaning, "holding steady", or "to take hold of" in reference to the practice of deep meditation, though which the object meditated on is held in the mind with full, unwavering conciousness. So, I find myself at least attempting to meditate in this way quite often these days. I can definitely see myself doing it a lot more often in the future, too: In only eight days, I'll be forsaking Asheville once again, as I've done twice before during the last four years, to spend a few months living in Finland again with friends I have there. And because it takes a good eight hours to fly from any point in New York or New Jersey to Helsinki, you can be sure that I'll be spending a great deal of that time in some level of deep meditation, if only as a way to conquer the ceaseless boredom and restlessness that comes with long plane flights like that, sleeplessness, oncoming jetlag and the anxiety that will surely flood my heart as soon as I touch down in that other country.

If you happened to read my Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 1) post, you may already know that dharana is listed as being sixth of Patanjali's eight principles having to do with Ashtanga Yoga, which is mainly the kind of yoga I choose to explore when I'm home by myself or teaching one of my occassional "classes". The ancient yogins, male and female, from back in the day in India, state that dharana proceeds a pair of other, secondary terms that are meant to break down the theory of deep meditation so that more people can understand the complexity of the technique. While dharana stands for the object of meditation, dhyana is said to be the meditator himself. Samadhi is the name given to describe very act of meditation, in itself. The yogins of India said that to understand these three sacred words is to understand what deep meditation is. You might say that these three words are even like stepping stones, or stairs descending into a dark and mysterious basement...You go deeper and deeper into the deep form of meditation, so deep that in the end, it's said that even the concept of "self" dissolves, leaving only the meditative mind and memory. That sounds pretty freaky, now, doesn't it?

In the world of today, I really find that there are more things that I concentrate on, or else, need to concentrate on, than were there for me when I was a little girl living in Fairview. However, I don't mean to say that I never concentrated on anything at all when I was young. I think that one of the main reasons why my eyesight is so bad today is because of my habit of questioning the world around me in quite a different sense than most other children, and certainly most adults, do. When I was a kid, instead of just wondering why the sky was blue, I wanted to know what the air was made out of. And when I was four or five years old and found out that the air was, in fact, made up of myriads upon myriads of invisible, yet forceful things called "atoms", I then graduated to wondering what sight was made of. I would stand in the yard on an overcast day and squint into the gray horizon, taking notice of the fact that everything we see is actually made up of something not totally unlike pointalism, only far smaller and more refined. My parents always told me that my eyesight fell downhill so fast because I drew and read too much, or that I did it with my face held too close to the paper for too long. But really, I think they were both wrong, and that I'm so myopic now because I was studying the atoms of the air and their components too closely...

Mm, but I digress, and I seriously shouldn't be doing that, especially when I'm trying to discuss something as important to a highly meditative yogini like me as dharana. There are many methods of practicing dharana, ya'll, but one way that I particularly enjoy is through mantras. Whether they know it or not, nearly everybody has created a mantra at one point during the course of their lifetimes, which they've either lived up to or not. When I was a kid, one of the mantras I commonly used was "If you don't like what I'm cooking, get the hell out of my kitchen". That one was really directed towards self-defense, though, as a way to stay above those who constantly ridiculed me for my "weird" ideas and theories on the universe. To me, my mantra was telling the others that if they didn't like what I was saying or doing, then they should simply stay out of my life. But nowadays I'm acutely aware of just how childish that must sound, especially coming from someone like me. I've always labled myself as being very anti-social, but I'm really not. I love to have people around me. I love to have a lot of friends and friendly family members. As far as mantras go, there is one manta stemming from the holy Sanskrit language, which a lot of people are already aware of: OM. Upon hearing this mantra spoken or sung, you might get a mental image of an order of orange-clad Buddhist monks in their seemingly-eternal chant of "OM, OM". But what most people don't know is that the mantra of OM actually has four syllables and a thousand, or even a million, different meanings. I have a bright red tattoo of that symbol in the center of my left shoulder blade, to show what the all-encompassing mantra means to me, personally. But when I'm meditating, it's very rare that I choose to employ the sacred OM as my mantra. There are countless additional Sanskrit mantras out there to choose from, anyway, and when choosing a mantra to use for your own meditation, the declaration or prayer has to be something that you feel comfortable with doing. Also, you should know exactly what the Sanskrit words mean when translated into English, so that you can truly live up to the meaning of the holy words. OM is considered to be a bija mantra. Mantras are holy truthful words that are handed down through generations by religious seers, yogins, monks or nuns who had attained self-realization by chanting them. Mantras are words or syllables in Sanskrit which, when repeated in meditation, eventually cause you transcend into that coveted higher state of conciousness, which is called Nirvana, or enlightenment. Sound waves echo eternally as something known as "sound energy". Sound energies, like sound waves, have always existed in the universe. They cannot be created or destroyed, and are in the command of the great power to heal you physically or spiritually, which explains exactly why you usually feel so wonderfully happy when you hear one of your favorite songs played on the radio. This is one of my absolute favorite and most beloved mantras of all time, which you may recognize, or not:

Hare Krishna
Hare Krishna
Krishna, Krishna
Hare, Hare
Hare Rama
Hare Rama
Rama, Rama,
Hare, Hare.

Coming Soon: An essay on the concept of dhyana, or, once again, meditation. I can't wait to get on it, honestly, but at the moment I feel more than a little weak from the Master Cleanse that I've just begun. I'd like to talk about that later, I think, because what it's been doing to be entire body is rather interesting, to say the least. And besides, the drink, made of purified water, organic lemon juice, organic Grade-A maple syrup and Cayenne pepper, tastes great, like an unusually spicy sort of lemonade.

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 5)

2007-05-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

So, I tend to meditate a lot. I most enjoy metitation when I'm home alone, and am therefore free to sit anywhere I want, even if I don't have a yoga mat around to use. There are many different ways to meditate, perhaps even infinite ways with each phsysical meditative position being different from the last, but however you choose to meditate, whether you know it or not, you're meditating through an ancient and rather difficult process known, in Sanskrit, as pratyahara. Unfortunately, due to the sheer complexity of its nature, there's not a whole lot I can say about the concept of pratyahara, other than that when translated from Sanskrit it means something like, "removing indriyas from material objects". Indriyas, of course, is the general name given to describe the tenacles of conciousness Patanjali was talking about in the Yoga Sutras. Pratyahara is the stage at which a human being figures out how to control these so-called tenacles of conciousness through the form of meditation. The concept of pratyahara allows men and women to achieve the ability to sense, in the subtlest of ways, the purity of multidimentional space.

In the Bhagavad Gita, which is my absolute favorite Vedic text and most likely the most well-known ancient manuscript having to do with the basic concepts of Hinduism, the battlefield reincarnation of Lord Krishna spoke quite extensively of indriyas, naming each one as the five physical sense we're most familiar with, such as sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, as well as a sixth non-physical sense he described as being the innate sense of the mind. Having control, more or less, over the indriyas you were born with is like...Well, let me try to explain it in a slightly different way, saying only that giving your full concentration on a tangeable item is not completely unlike reaching out an invisible sensory tentacle towards that object, which relays bits and pieces of external information back to other indriyas, working one way or another. That way of teaching it still might sound quite twisted and strange. I really wish I could find a better way to explain exactly what the definition pratyahara is! The concept of pratyahara is simply something that's far too complex for me to articulate; and because I'm a very inarticulate human being by nature, and also because pratyahara is such an extremely important thing in the world of meditation, I cannot find the appropriate words to fill in the army of gaps I've created by even attempting to tackle the ambiguous subject of pratyahara.

I admit defeat, kids. I hate to say it, but...This essay, which is the fifth in my series of teachings of rudimentary yoga philosophy, is several paragraphs shorter than I had originally intended it to be. I'll stop, now.

Coming Soon: An essay concerning the concept of dharana. That one will be quite a lot better than this, I promise!

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 4)

2007-04-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago when I was at my mom's house, tooling around on http://www.yogajournal.com, I happened to stumble across a pair of rather interesting community polls. The first poll was meant to get stastical numbers for magazine research, concerning how many people commonly take part in springtime rituals, not including the habitual rituals of "spring cleaning", or even the annual ritual of gardening in the springtime. It somewhat grieves me to report that I don't actually participate in any springtime rituals myself, though it probably goes without saying that I'd absolutely love to be a part of a springtime ritual, provided that it was a serious affair, and not just some silly New-Age thing involing crystals and monkish mumbling that other people are doing simply because they think they should, without thinking about why they should. (As you can tell, I question everything and put my full trust nothing and no one, at least not right away. I wonder sometimes if we should all be kind of like that. As living beings with free will, I believe that our questions should be good ones, and that trust should always be earned.) The second of these polls was asking intrigued yogins to please identify the particular time of day when they find that they most enjoy practicing series of yoga exercises. The options the poll gave for our votes were "Morning", "Midday", and "Evening". I really wish that the term "Afternoon" had been an option, back there. While I do yoga for at least twenty minutes every day, and quite often in the morning, especially on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings when my classes occur, I discovered a long time ago that my absolute favorite time to do yoga is during the afternoon hours. And I'll tell you why, now, using nice-sounding words in an effort to describe my afternoon yoga practice to the best of my ability.

To begin with, it's all about the light! There's almost nothing more purely beautiful, I think, than the warm, dark golden light that pours in wide shafts through the rafters in the ceiling near the attic, and brightens up the delicate, dusty screens of indellible cobweb, which fall in shallow folds across the ancient wood and cause the deep natural whorls in the pine to be only half-visible. The amber light of the afternoon sun seems to be teeming with life and action as tiny motes of loose colorless dust run their course in a network of fine lines. Living air, full of the weird kinetic energy of invisible atoms and dust, makes my dad cough and sneeze constantly. But on golden afternoons in the springtime, I feel as though I could go on breathing and living forever. That might be quite a good example of yoga. The warm golden sunlight, pressing reassuringly against my face as I sit cross-legged in quiet meditation on my blue mat, allows me a very real sense of my place and purpose in the world, which in turn does wonders to calm me down at the end of each day. I keep my eyes closed and breathe. I like to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, softly but deeply. I keep my shoulders rolled back and my back straight, though not to the point where the asana is in the least but uncomfortable, because this is something I usually do for several minutes, at least.

During meditation, with the practice of pranayama, I am able to find myself again, to locate my very own mindset, when an especially difficult day at work or school, or else an unusually trying experience, knocks it slightly off-kilter. Silent meditation, better than outspoken prayer, assists me in discerning my own important truths when faced with the contradicting opinions of my friends, neighbors, acquaintances, parents and teachers. In yoga, pranayama is absolutely everything; even the various asanas that follow my meditation come only second to pranayama. I mean, I seriously think of it like this: When you inhale, you take strength from God. When you exhale, it represents the service you are giving to the world. Or, you could even say it in a slightly different sense if you want, on the subject of pranayama, Krishnamacharya-style: Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and you surrender to God. I read that quote not too long ago, loved it entirely, and made myself memorize it to use in the yoga classes I sometimes teach from my house. I whispered it late last night during a yoga lesson I taught involving moon salutations at the bonfire on Arthur's property, when the sky was completely clear and the moon seemed to be shining everywhere at once.

Pranayama is an ancient Sanskrit word comprising of the root words prana, ayama and yama. The practice and power of pranayama is surprisingly similar to the Chinese concept of "chi" and the Hawaiian practice of "mana". Pranayama is a word describing the plethora of yogic breathing exercises that assist the practitioner with the control and direction of life energy, or prana. Many aspects and techniques of pranayama were codified by Patanjali in the volumes of texts of yoga philosophy and practice known as the Yoga Sutras. The term prana commonly refers to the unique pattern of breath that stems from the vital energy, or life force, of the entire universe. Yama can possibly be best defined in Sanskrit, according to Wikipedia, as "that which circumscribes", contracts and controls. Ayama, in an exact translation, is the Sanskrit word for "expansion", or "extension". Thus, the general concept of the word pranayama can be understood as being the technique for the extension and expansion of breath, as well as the control of breath in relation to the life force of the universe. It might be relatively helpful to say that Pranayama is connected through prana, which is alltogether quite different from the normal pattern of breathing you have in your physical body. The essensial science of yoga works primarily through the energy of the body through the energy-controlling science of pranayama. According to the awesome writings and biography of the yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, "Yoga teaches how, through breath-control, to still the mind and attain higher states of awareness. The higher teachings of yoga take one beyond techniques, and instruct the yogi on how to direct his concentration in such a way as not only to harmonize human with divine consciousness, but to merge his consciousness in the Infinite." A wise man called Swami Krishnanada also said this of yoga, involving the concept of pranayama: "The essence of the prana is activity. It is the prana that makes the heart beat, the lungs function and the stomach secrete juices. Hence, neither breathing nor lung-function ceases till death. The prana never goes to sleep, just as the heart never stops beating. The prana is regarded as the watchman of the body."

In your journey through the practice of yoga, it's possible that you might find quite a few yoga instructors who honestly recommend that all pranayama techniques be practiced with care. Unlike some complicated yogic asanas, which can be used on occassion as cool party tricks, some of the more advanced pranayama techniques should probably always be practiced under the guide of an actual certified yoga instructor, which...isn't me, so that's why I don't go very far into teaching my house or field students about pranayama, other than just the basic definition of it, if only because there have been more than a few past occassions, in which I've sat meditation and tried to hold my breath for up to three minutes, or something like that, and even though I can proudly say that I suceeded in this seven times out of ten, it's definitely not something that everyone can do, or teach. People have seriously gotten themselves killed practicing pranayama, and I know someone at AB-Tech who was telling me about a time when he passed out trying to do something to noticeably warp the natural pattern of his breath. So, that's my warning. Such strong cautions are also given in traditional Hindu literature, including a similar passage in every single one of Pantanjali's Yoga Sutras.

Coming Soon: An essay having to do with the concept of pratyahara. These papers on yoga philosophy are extremely important to me, and so I really hope that I can make it a good one!

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 3)

2007-03-30T06:04:00.000-07:00

Oh, snap! I think I must be bipolar, or something like that, even though I've been tested for it before and the tests always came out negetive. Psycologists say that being bipolar is only a hereditary thing anyway, and so, even though both of my biological parents are absolutely crazy in all ways, it's actually very unlikely that I am bipolar. Maybe I just tend to inherit my mom's awful mood swings, my dad's turbulence of mind, my grandmother's seemingly chronic nervousness, and my other grandmother's neurotic-ness (if that's even a true word).

You see, there's just so much I would like to do with my life! But I'm trapped. There are people I have to answer to, and personal obligations...There is something else, a hypothetical thorn in my side, which I won't talk too much about now. What began as a minor discomfort in my childhood, worrying me only on occassion, burrowed far deeper after Kristina died. Sometimes I feel as though it's deadening me from the inside out. I try not to complain or cry, however, because complaining and crying gets you nowhere. I feel rather like those hard-shelled, iridecent June bugs must have certainly felt when I caught them as a little girl under my grandfather's watchful eye, tied them to about a foot of silk thread, and watched as they zipped back and forth directly over my head. I knew even then that the June bugs wanted nothing more than to fly away and never see me again. But I still really enjoyed the act of keeping the poor creatures tethered for ten or fifteen minutes before I'd let them go, silk and all.

Next year I want to apply to the North Carolina School of Holistic Herbalism. I've been studying herbalism for years on end now, but there are just some areas of something as complex as herbalism that I could never cover by myself. I need real teachers who really know what they're doing to guide me in this field. That's one of the things I want to do at some point before I die: I want to become a certified herbalist, damn it, and not just the weird quiet girl in the neighborhood everybody comes to when they want stuff for their alleged glaucoma.

And although I usually don't like to admit it, if only because I don't feel at all qualified for such a job at the moment and people have really laughed behind my back in the past whenever I sought to explain my basic intentions to them, but I want to become a yoga instructor someday as well. They call it tapas in Sanskrit, you know, that burning enthusiasm and glowing commitment that compells me to want to teach yoga in the first place. Sometimes I kind of wonder if teaching yoga is the ultimate act of Karma Yoga, as weird as that probably sounds. I want to make it my personal mission to make a serious difference in people's lives and guide them into the ever-deepening levels of the self-knowledge yoga brings by enabling them to experience some of the truth and joy that I've found in yoga.

But becoming a yoga instructor, especially if I want to be a certified teacher-trainer, isn't easy, to say the least. If I was going to try teaching a beginner's course in yoga, or something like that, to start off with, then I would first have to obviously learn how to plan and teach a yoga class. I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I've finally figured it out that for a beginner's yoga course, I'd have to know how to do at least fifty different "easy" or common asanas, which I would then choose from to show people. I'd have to know how and when to use the asanas, and I'd have to figure out some realistic way to rate their level of difficulty. And besides that, I'd have to know the asanas so well that I could give my students tips on how to modify the poses so no unfortunate injuries should ever occur during classtime. I think the most difficult aspect of becoming a real yoga instructor, however, would be the act of deciding the sequence of asanas to use in day-to-day class. Opening a yoga class would probably be especially hard to master, and making smooth transitions between the various asanas would certainly be even harder than that. I'd also have to be fully able to decide when it is that the exercises are getting too strenuous for the beginners, so that I could shut my mouth and allow everyone to maybe rest in balasana for a few breaths. I'd have to figure out a way to end the yoga class afterwards, not to mention learn how to give very good verbal instructions and physical demonstrations.

Here's something that would most likely be a good piece of information for me to memorize: There are an infinite number of yogic asanas, but only about six hundred and eight (608) poses that practictioners of Hatha Yoga normally do. That sure is a lot! Before I begin trying in earnest to become a yoga instructor, I guess I definitely need to go through more hard-core Hatha Yoga practice, whether it be home alone or in an actual class with other people who are as serious about yoga as I am. I need to study constantly and take a lot of notes on Hatha Yoga, so that I can at least remember, pronounce and spell most of the Sanskrit names for the poses. This is a list of different Hatha Yoga asanas that I'm already more or less familiar with. I think it would probably be really handy if I could have some of the alphabetical Wikipedia notes I've already taken on Hatha Yoga posted online, in case anything weird should ever happen to the ones I have here at the house.

Adho Mukha Svanasana: Downward-Facing Dog
Anjali Mudra: Salutation Seal
Ardha Chandrasana: Half Moon
Ardha Matsyendrasana: Half Spinal Twist
Baddha Konasana: Bound Angle
Bakasana: Crane
Balasana: Child's Pose (Relaxation)
Bhadrasana: Auspicious Pose
Bharadvajasana: Bharadvaja's Twist
Bhujanasana: Cobra
Chakrasana: Wheel
Chaturanga Dandasana: Four-Limbed Staff
Dandasana: Staff Pose
Dhanurasana: Bow
Eka Pada Rajakapotasana: One-Legged King Pigeon
Garudasana: Eagle
Gomukhasana: Cow Face
Gomukhasana: Cow Head
Halasana: Plow
Hanumanasana: Monkey (Hanuman)
Janu Sirasana: Head-to-Knee Foward Bend
Kakasana: Crow
Krounchasana: Heron
Kurmasana: Tortoise
Makarasana: Crocodile (Relaxation)
Padmasana: Lotus
Paripurna Navasana: Full Boat
Parivratta Parsvakonasana: Revolving Side Angle
Parivrtta Trikonasana: Revolved Triangle

That's not too many, now, that I can think of at the moment! But I think that it's at least a start.

Coming Soon: An essay on the subject of pranayama. Namaste, kids.

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 2)

2007-03-23T19:12:00.000-07:00

This is what someone named B.K.S. Iyengar said when he was writing a book called the Astadala Yogamala: "Yoga, an ancient and perfect science, deals with the evolution of humanity. This evolution includes all aspects of one's being, from bodily health to self-realization." Yoga means union, as well as yoke. Yoga is the union of the body with conciousness and the union of conciousness with the soul. Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day-to-day life and endows skills in the performance of one's actions.

Tonight I'm going to tell you about the ten traditional niyamas as I was taught them. Just for the record, I was actually supposed to have attended a house party of some sort on Merriman Avenue earlier this evening, but I've decided not to go. I feel that the act of further explaining my yoga philosophy is infinitely more important than any weird house party, as few and far between as those happen to be. House parties, I mean. These essays are a testimony of what the yoga of the universe means to me, and my place in the dangerously turbulent center of it: Like Sharon Gannon was saying, I know that I cannot do yoga. Yoga is my natural state. What I can do are yoga exercises, which may in time reveal to me where I'm resisting my natural state.

Here is a list of the ten traditional niyamas, as not explained in the Yoga Sutras of Pananjali, which claimed a grand total of only five sacred niyamas. I'll get to those right after this.

1.) Hri: This is the first and formost niyama, which refers solely to the primal sensations of remorse, modesty, and shame for misdeeds. I've always found that I can remember this niyama a little more easily than the rest, if only because the word itself consists of only a single, sad-sounding syllable.
2.) Santosha: The second niyama, meaning, quite literally, "contentment". This niyama refers mostly to the discipline of being entirely content with the resources at hand, however meager they may seem, for this is what your karma has granted you. Santosha is supposed to function in reminding you that to attain eventual enlightment, it's important to live aesthetically, forsaking natural desires directed towards anything "more". Santosha could easily be described as the hardest discipline to master, as far as American culture and normal standards of living go.
3.) Dana: This is the third niyama, rooted in the practice of Karma Yoga. This rules of this discipline are based strongly on giving generously and performing good deeds without thought of reward.
4.) Astikya: The discipline of simple, unconditional faith. Astikya is the discpline of believeing firmly in your guru, his/her teachings, and the existence of the path to enlightenment.
5.) Ishvarapujana: The discipline centering around the worship of the dieties, the cultivation of devotion through daily puja and meditation. Ishwarapujana is the Sanskrit term for "returning to the source".
6.) Siddhanta Shravana: The niyama of scriptual listening and the studying of one's dieties and lineage.
7.) Mati: The niyama of cognition. This seventh niyama is the discipline of developing an unshakable spiritual will and intellect, perferably with a guru's gentle guidance.
8.) Vrata: This is the discipline of learning or taking of sacred vows, which can be personal vows or vows shared with another person or even a group of other people. This niyama also explores the fulfilling of such religious vows and continuing to observe the vows faithfully.
9.) Japa: The discipline of being able to recite the sacred mantras and holy passages of religious texts such as the Bhagavad Gita, Mahabharata, Ramayana and Vedic scriptures in general. This niyama is far more difficult to master than it might seem at first glance, primarily in that a great number of passages from ancient Hindu religious manuscripts boast greater complexity and deeper meaning than other ancient religous manuscripts, such as, let's say, the Christian Bible. I feel a little bad saying that, I think. I bet I sound very closed-minded.
10.) Tapas: The tenth and final niyama, set to master the endurance of opposites, such as hunger and thirst, heat and cold, standing and sitting, ect.

In Pananjali's Yoga Sutras, the niyamas are actually considered to be the second out of eight limbs belonging to the practive of Raja Yoga. You can see them for yourself in the thirty-second verse of the Sadhana Pada, as these:

1.) Shaucha: Purity
2.) Santosha: Contentment
3.) Tapas: Austerity
4.) Svadhyaya: Self-study; the study of religous scriptures
5.) Ishvarapranidhana: Self-surrender

Coming Soon: The third in my series of essays concerning yoga philosophy, meant to explain the concept of physical postures in yoga, known as asanas. Rock on!

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 1)

2007-03-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, so while there are obviously many different types of yoga practices out there in the world, this is supposed to be an overview of the Ashtanga Yoga, or the yoga of acheiving perfection through the formation of good habits of the body, heart and mind. In the future I plan to elaborate a lot more on this subject, but for right now and for the next few moments before I head off to class, I just want to give my readers something to catch their attention.

1.) Yamas: Five Restraints
2.) Niyamas: Five Disciplines
3.) Asanas: Physical Postures
4.) Pranayama: Regulation of the Vital Force (As in breathing)
5.) Pratyahara: Sense Organ Withdrawal (As in meditation)
6.) Dharana: Concentration
7.) Dhyana: Meditation
8.) Samadhi: Absorption

One hour later: Man, I feel like such an insufferable idiot! For a while there I'd been sitting in the hallway outside my General Psycology class, reading quietly, waiting for the class to get out so the one that I normally attend could begin. But it never did begin for me, because the class that I'd been waiting on all that time turned out to be my class, and...Well, my God! They need to start making sure that every single clock in this college tells the correct time, so I don't get utterly confused and think that it's an entire hour earlier than it really is. Ah, I feel so horrible, now...I think I must probably have about three absences in Psycology. I can't afford to have any greater number of absences than that. I need to start being more responsible in bringing my cell phone along to school with me every day, so that if other ways of telling time fail me, I'll at least have my own personal timepiece to check up on every now and then. How could I have possibly let this happen? Now I'm very sure of the time. It's nearly one o' clock in the afternoon, exactly, which means that I've got another three hours until my next class starts up. What can I possibly do with all that extra time, then? I'm caught up on all of my homework at the moment. I've eaten something and partially spread my cool yogic "phillia sophia" with Nanette, John, Anna, Nick and Wes. In other words I have absolutely nothing to do at the moment. But I feel kind of inspired, so what better thing to do than to continue writing on the subject of yoga?

Truly, it was very hard, finding words that would make a decent beginning to all of my previous yogic essays--none of which happen to be published on this website, by the way. Maybe someday in the near future they will be, but until then all I have is this, which thrives as I become inspired and more articulate as the days go by. But because I chose to begin this post with the yamas of yoga, I don't think there's any way I can get around explaining this part of my yogic philosophy without touching down with the yamas first.

Yama is a Sanskrit word that literally means "restraint". The yamas can be possibly best described as rules or codes of conduct for living virtuously. There are ten yamas, which are spoken of in Hindu religious scriptures such as the Shandilya and Varaha Upanishads, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika by Gorakshanatha, and the Tirumantiram of Tirumular.

Patanjali, however, listed only five yamas in the volumes of ancient manuscripts known as the Yoga Sutras. I have yet to figure out why, because ten yamas break up the concept far more evenly for me to comprehend.

These are the ten traditional yamas, as most people know them today:

1.) Ahimsa: This yama seems to refer mainly to abstinence from injury; the unwillingness to cause harm to any living creature through action, word or thought at any time. This is the first and possibly most important yama, meaning that the other nine are simply there in support of this one's accomplishment.
2.) Satya: This yama refers to truthfulness in word and conformity to "the facts".
3.) Asteya: Literally, "non-stealing", "non-coveting", and "non-entering into debt".
4.) Brahmacharya: Refers to divine conduct, continence, celibacy when single and complete fidelity when married. I hate to admit it, but in my mentality this yama seems as though it would almost function quite well as the tenth, and least, one.
5.) Kshama: Infinite patience. Releasing time. Living solely in the present.
6.) Dhriti: Refers to such virtues as steadfastedness, overcoming procrastination, fear and indecision; pursuing each task to completion.
7.) Daya: Refers to compassion, being compassionate and having compassion towards all living creatures.
8.) Arjava: Honesty and straightfowardness.
9.) Mitahara: Refers to having a moderate appetite, meaning that one should not eat too much, nor too little. Fasting is all right, I think. I've fasted for nearly three days before, but it's definitely not a good thing if you try to do it all the time, for many different reasons. It makes your conciousness feel all ghetto.
10.) Shaucha: Refers to purity, and the avoidance of impurity in body, mind and speech. In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali actually defines this yama as the absolute most important.

Coming Soon: A discussion on the ten traditional niyamas, including the five basic ones I believe I mentioned earlier. Don't miss it, readers! The niyamas are especially cool and interesting...And our knowledge of them is imperative.

Promotion

2007-03-07T08:17:00.000-08:00

I can never quite remember when I started working at Ingles. Was it October of 2006, or November? Either way, when I first applied for the job, I explicitly told Mike, Debi and Nathan that I wanted to begin working behind the counter at the deli as soon as they had an opening for me there. I had absolutely no idea that such a job would be so difficult...Truly, I'd believed that almost nothing in the world could be more difficult than working at the cash registers, where the customers are insane and mean to you beyond all reason, and the other employees are hardly any better. Now, however, as I've been very belatedly promoted to the deli area, I'm really kind of scared. Vicky and Loretta seem to have such high expectations of me, and...I suppose that I'm mostly just scared that I won't be able to live up to them. I will try to, of course, but I learned a long time ago that trying isn't always doing.

This afternoon I've got to be at the deli by one o' clock, and I leave at about nine o' clock tonight. That's eight hours I'll be working then, with only one twenty-five or thirty-minute break which will occur at whatever time they can spare me. But I shouldn't be complaining, right...? I think I'd like to work as a bartender sometime in the near future, and I know from Jaqueline in my yoga class that a bartender can be made to work for a shift of as many as fifteen or sixteen hours a day. Eight hours is nothing at all compared to that.

I just hope that I'm able to learn the rules and regulations of the deli as quickly and well as possible, so that the other women who work there won't get to thinking that I was a bad bargain, even when compared with the idiotic girl they told to leave while she still could.

Computer Sorcery

2007-02-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

I don't know why I even bother, in many of my posts, to mention exactly where I am, as I sit quietly, process my thoughts and type them out as ingelligebly as possible. Nearly all of my previous posts have been made from some computer belonging to AB-Tech, since it's quite impossible for me to keep this blog directly from home. In the log cabin there's always somebody, whether it be one of my brothers or my dad, constantly glancing over my shoulder when I'm working at the computer. It's pretty weird in our house, how computers, as well as all other sorts of reasonably up-to-date technology such as cell phones and international calling cards, are viewed and revered in an almost magical kind of sense. And yet at the same time, the boys ruthlessly screw up our Internet service by watching hundreds of viral videos at night while the rest of us sleep. Those little bastards! When Dad wakes up in the morning and goes to check the status of his WWII items on eBay, many times the computer is fairly broken with the past attempts of downloading bits and pieces of stupid erotic Japanese animation. The highly idiotic and rather badly drawn series called Hello, My Concubine, which is one of my oldest brother's favorites, is probably the worst for sending killing viruses to our computer.

Computers just aren't very safe. That's something else I shouldn't even bother to mention, since you hear it being said on the Channel 6 news in quick succession every day, and because of that must be true. However, it's not the alleged computer stalkers and crazy people I'm so afraid of these days, when it comes to computers and high-speed Internet. It's my own parents which I fear the most. It's horrifying, how even though my dad barely even knows how to send an e-mail to a friend, he has the knowledge and skills of a dangerous hacker. I'll never forget (nor forgive) the two or three different times he and his brother (who's now dead, by the way, thank goodness) somehow hacked into my old e-mail account and printed out about three hundred and fifty pages of e-mails I'd send over the course of the last three or so years to different friends I have across the world, as well as in America, too. At first they did it as a type of sick prank. But afterwards my dad used the most intimate things he read in those hundreds of e-mails to blackmail me with later, in a lot of different circumstances, and that was by far one of the most horrible things he's ever done to me. I thought the shame and pain would never end, though in time it did, exceedingly slowly. That's still not to say that I've completely gotten over the effect of it now, though. My dad should have never hacked into my e-mail account. He should have never used my own typing to blackmail me, and he should have never shown the e-mails to my grandfather.

It's because of my dad that Jesse calls me a whore so often today as a hasty insult whenever we're fighting. The boy probably only learned the meaning of that word a year or two ago, when the scandal concerning my other brother and his ex-girlfriend was still very much afoot. And it hurts me so much inside...I've told Jesse time and time again that he is allowed to call me anything in the world but that, or any word related to that, because that particular accusation is the absolute farthest thing away from the truth about me. I'm probably the most chaste girl in all of Asheville. Jesse has no right whatsoever to tell the world that I'm some kind of harlot. Oh, and Jesse's way too young to be talking like that, anyway; he's only about fifteen years old, or maybe sixteen, I really have no way of knowing. He's learned the word "whore" from my mom, from hearing her say it so much. Mom probably originally learned the word from various Republican Baptist preachers in her childhood. So, all in all, I suppose I lay the worst of the blame on Mom, and not my youngest brother, despite his anger and problems.

Or maybe I should try to cut Mom a little slack for once, and just blame the evil Repblicans and preachers. But even then, the Republicans and preachers would have most likely learned the word from the Bible, in all those passages when it talks about Mary Magdalene as a whore, and Samson's Delilah, and Jezebel, and all those other poor, misunderstood Jewish girls.

When it all comes down to it, I think the safest thing to blame accusations of harlotry on are humanity's awful insistant prudishness. Most prostitutes work as prostitutes for good and valid reasons, anyway, such as Fantine's reason in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

Second Snow of the Season

2007-01-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

At the moment it is precisely 3:20 in the afternoon, so that means that I've got exactly thirty-nine sweet minutes to spend in the library before my second go-around of Algebra 070 officially begins at four o' clock. The class will end at 6:20 tonight, by the way, which will mean that this Algebra class will be the longest-lasting one I've ever been made to take yet.

It may very well also make for just about the longest-lasting headache I've ever had, too...At least I actually know where the class will be taking place, this time. It's in Room 211B, located right at the entrance to the Elm Building, and I believe that my new teacher's name is Kindle, or something like that. I really do hope that this new person will know how to teach math a lot better than Michele Hammond ever did. I hate to admit it, of course, but I still feel quite hummiliated over just dropping out of Mrs. Hammond's class like that, with almost no warning whatsoever. I feel as though I've let Michele down, though near the end of last semester, she told me time and time again that I didn't do any such thing.

Now, in the space of only about twenty-six minutes as I compose this current posting, I can forsee an Algebra class which will be totally wrought by a teacher who will most likely be another bad one, more of that killing MathXL nonsense, as well as the continous, half-formed words of Flogging Molly's song "Laura" drifting detachedly in and out of my fatigued mind. Later this evening, once my first day back at school for this semester is finally over and done with, I'll be attempting to number the various aliens from the corner of my narrow air mattress upstairs while Flogging Molly is unhappily replaced by other half-formed things, such as waking dreams of me ringing up people's heavy groceries over at Ingles...Oh, I'm so tired, I can hardly stand it...

But the clock has already struck 3:34. How the minutes fly by in this unholy, dimly lit place! I guess I'd better be going. At least I'm not on the shedule to work today, thank goodness. For that I can be entirely grateful to Cassy and the others.

Sara's Poppyseed Crackers

2006-12-05T14:45:00.000-08:00

So, I think I just wound up making one of the most important desicions of my life, as I know it: I've just dropped out of my Algebra 070 class at AB-Tech, for good. I'd like to write for a little while about that, right now. There are so many different reasons behind why I did what I did...My mom doesn't know yet, but she'd not going to be happy at all when she finds out. Niether is my dad, but I seriously don't give a damn. I'm eighteen years old now, and I believe that I should have dropped that particular class a long time ago. I've already officially signed up to retake the entire course when next semester starts, and I can honestly say that I don't mind having to do so at all. At the moment I just have so many other things of far greater import than just one silly college algebra class, which I would have surely failed and wasted my tuition on in the first place.

Now, with the two or three weeks remaining in this current semester, I plan to concentrate fully on improving my testing skills in Thelbert Dowdy's American History I class, while at the same time really hoping and praying that I don't fail in my quest to complete that one, as well. I don't think I will, but tonight I seem to be rather highly aware of the fact that I don't think at all sometimes. I'm not a happy person, by any means, and me unofficially dropping out of my Algebra 070 course is going to take an immense toll on my self-esteem, following up to this upcoming Christmastime. I'm going to have to take matters even farther into my own hands and inform my parents of my rash and sudden decision tonight, of all nights, just to get it over and done with, for better or for worse...Maybe I'll kind of get lucky and they'll actually see that I've done the best thing I could have ever possibly done, concerning my education for the remainder of this year. But even if my parents don't understand why I've done this, I certainly know why I've done it, and I know that I've made the right decision.

That's all that matters. I wash my hands of it completely, now. When I retake Algebra 070 next semester, I'll be far better prepared than I evidently was for this go-around. I'll definitely know what I should expect with the new teacher I've been assigned, as well as with any online homework I might be given in the future, and that way I believe I'll finally succeed.

Fairview Community Center

2006-12-05T10:09:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the randomest kind of thoughts fly through my head! Like, right now, I seem to be thinking something along the lines of: "Contra-dancing is weird, and I'm never going to do it again." In fact, I believe that there's a pretty good possibility that I might swallow my pride and want to go Contra-dancing again with Anna and her family, if only because I have nothing better to do on that particular night, but at the moment I almost don't feel like dancing at all...which is totally new to me, since in the past I've always jumped at any opportunity to get up and cut some kind of shine in front of a crowd.

Maybe I'm just beginning to feel that way because it's so cold outside at the moment. It's already well into the month of December now, after all. I think my problem is just that since I haven't experienced any real wintertime weather for such a long time, I've forgotten what Decembers around here in the mountains are truly like. But I suppose that I'd better just muster up all the courage I have and deal with it, because soon enough December will be gone entirely and I'll be faced with the bone-aching chills of New Year's Day in January.

I believe that I'm actually already very much ready for Christmastime to come this year, unlike most people I know, even though I haven't went downtown yet to get any nice gifts for anybody. As if I could ever afford to do such a thing, anway. This Christmas it's more than likely that I'll simply make a ton of great food and hand that out to all the members of my family, as well as some friends instead of gifts, since I always have far more time to cook than shop. I won't mind having to cook for everybody this year if I can work out some kind of plan that will allow me to have at least half of the kitchen all to myself for a few consecutive hours so that I can listed to Regina Spektor's awesome latest CD, rather appropriately entitled "Begin to Hope", and sing along to that in peace.

This year, I'd wanted to go down over there towards the Earth Fare store at Westgate and get some kind of weird and unusual meat that I could experiment cooking with, like venison, or even a leg of lamb. If I found the time to go and get something like that, I figured that I could try and make some kind of interesting and new salad with it, like one of those Romanian salads that I've successfully put together before, which usually consist of absolutely nothing more than a head of cold, pale green Iceburg lettuce, several carefully seeded and washed bright red Roma tomatoes, half a handful of combined sea salt and pepper, and a few tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil or some kind of vinegar, if you actually enjoy the strange taste and smell of vinegar, and are into that kind of thing.

I made it a rule in my house quite a long time ago that whenever I'm making a Romanian salad, every single ingredient that does into it must be completely organic, for the best results. But that's not normally something I would tell the guests that come over to my house to eat my salads and lamb. It always seems to somehow weird them out, in a way. My guests generall have no idea of how to successfully hide the predicament I've put them in, fixing them organic foods that are prepared in very complex and weird ways. I don't know why my Romanian salads scare them so much...

At the moment, it's exactly 1:40 in the afternoon. That means that it's about nine o' clock at night right now in Scandinavia, as well as in a lot of other European countries. That's entirely aside from the point of this post, however, whatever that originally was...

Lucky Lotus

2006-11-16T10:02:00.000-08:00

You know, it's really weird, the relationships I have with some people. I can remember very clearly how back a few years ago I would have practically jumped at the chance to stick with just about any guy who showed the least little bit of interest in me, but nowadays, I find myself sometimes truly swamped with the unwanted affections of one or two guys here at AB-Tech...And I know that statement sounds awful in just about every way imaginable. I should at least try to be remotely friendly with that one particular guy who seems to like me so much, especially. I know that I should at least try to give him a chance. I've known him for the last seven years, anyway. But the fact that he's always trying to sit next to me in our Success & Study Skills class, as well was the way he's constantly trailing after me like a little lost child somehow makes me despise greatly his very existance. I just don't know what's wrong with him! And, on occassion, he even goes as far as to be rather defensive, agressive and mean about it all, as if it's just going to kill him one of these days, if he doesn't get me.

Well, he's definitely not going to get me. I certainly have no problem with seeing to that. I've always seriously hated guys like Sam. (And now, with my luck, he'll somehow find what I've written about him here and become dangerously offended. It's no laughing matter.)

I don't have any descent friends these days. I mean, I've luckily been able to make a few of what I'd call mere acquaintances with a handful of wonderful like-minded men and women this semester, but most of them are several years older than me. A couple of them are actually old enough to be considered my mom or dad, if given a chance. But now that I think about it, I guess it's really entirely possible that one or two of these people might indeed think of me in the same sense that I best relate to my current stalker. My AB-Tech acquaintences are all exceptionally talented, in one way or another, and of course nice, but they're also distant and quiet towards me in a manner that I'm totally not used to. (Not that I've ever been the center of anyone's attention in the past, mind you.)

I suppose that even though I'm legally an adult now, and whatnot, I'm still young enough to be subconciously searching for a role model of some kind, or a good and knowledgeable parental figure, if nothing else. At college I feel like I'm surrounded by many different individuals who could help me out in this sense. It's sometimes terrifyingly weird that even as I'm considered a young woman by all common standards of society, I find myself still very much prompted to locate a guru who can help me out in the areas I need resolved the most. I believe I mentioned before that I used to think that I was already as enlightened as I was ever going to be, and that this living shell was going to be my last incarnation. But I've only begun to do yoga, and I've only begun to seriously pay attention to karma. It makes me recall that old Romanian saying that I like: "God will gladly supply you the milk, but you alone have to bring the pail to carry it in." Were there ever any truer words than that, now? And does anyone reading this post actually understand? Am I going to have to explain the passage entirely?

Yesterday evening, I spent a couple of minutes intently drawing a lucky lotus on the back of my right hand to calm all of my main aggressions down. The lotus turned out surprisingly good, but of course, I kind of cheated and kept on glancing at a picture of another lucky lotus in a jewelry catalogue to do it. Maybe cheating made the magic in the good luck charm somewhat less, but I think I got the point of my prayer across to whatever absolute power that happens to exist in this tiny universe.

I mean, don't we all need a little luck in our lives?

I Swear, It's Killing Me

2006-10-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

Super WalMart: 'tis a wicked place where wicked people shop. Once in a great while I even shop there myself since it's just about the only place around where I can actually shop healthy. The apples there are very cheap and reasonably good, even though nowadays, even the smell of apples can make me sick sometimes. There's a few different reasons for that which I'd really rather not get into right now. I only mentioned my newfound hatred for Super WalMart just then because the thought had chanced to cross my mind successfully, like a little dusty periwinkle butterly on fire.

At the moment, I should definitely be in the brightly glowing glassed-in section of the downstairs computer lab in AB-Tech's Holly Library, doing some of last week's horrible online homework and studying for the big algebra-related exam we're going to have sometime later today, but I just don't have the heart to do it. I think I've mentioned before that I'm absolutely retarded when it comes to mathematics, and not too long ago as I remember it now, I actually went up to Michele, my sharp-eyed Algebra 070 teacher and suggested that she needed to freakin' come out and explain to me in normal terms how I'm ever going to have to need the kind of algebra she teaches in the future, especially since the three basic fields of study I'm heading into are parapsycology, art and novelization. I asked Michele to give me a few examples of certain jobs that might require general knowledge of such mathematics, and the poor woman couldn't even answer me. She simply didn't know. So, what good is her position as a teacher in this world, when she's spending most of her waking life teaching us information that will always prove to be completely useless to all of us? There's is not one single person I can think of in that Algebra 070 class of mine who is going to become a brain surgeon or something like that when they finally graduate from AB-Tech, if only for the reason that they won't be able to afford to study anymore after this, even with the financial loan system that this city sometimes offers.

Even so, though, Algebra 070 means a whole lot to me. I care about my current studies a whole lot more than other people seem to, including my parents. And yet I'm still just about failing the course. That alone terrifies me to no end, because if I fail math this year, I don't know what will happen to me. Everybody knows that I didn't want to go to AB-Tech whatsoever, to begin with, and for that reason, if I do in fact wind up failing the class, my parents will think that I did it on purpose. That is the way the two of them seem to hold me in their hearts, these dark and dangerous days.

Bleak Horizons

2006-10-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, so...I'm in the dimly lit latter downstairs half of the library belonging the the community college I attend every Tuesday and Thursday, wondering if it's begun to snow once again outside. Earlier today while I was walking a fourth of a mile uphill towards the Pine Buildings for my voluntary ESL (English Second Language) tutorial, I noticed that there was a real myriad of tiny, white particles whizzing around in the air, directly in front of my eyes. That as a couple of hours ago now, and it was almost unbelievably cold and windy. I actually wound up slipping in the scanty but dangerous carpet of last year's golden pine needles and crushed leaves when I'd almost reached the Pines, and that absolutely terrified me, because when I slipped I came very close to falling right into the road, where I would've certainly been killed repeatedly by all the speeding cars. I'd like to say that my entire life seemed to flash before my eyes, but somehow it didn't.

My throat's beginning to hurt a little, and I guess it kind of serves me right for trying to walk a fourth of a mile in battering wind without my scarf properly wound around my neck, even though I was trying to hold it in place as well as possible. I've got on my favorite scarf today; it's not any one of those old ones that I made back last year when I was learning how to knit for my dreaded senior project, in the high school. My friend's grandmother gave that scarf to me two years ago when I went to visit Finland for the first time. It's decorated all over with little orange and bright-yellow checks, and I think it suits me pretty well. At least I had a bandanna around my head, as well, upon my journey moving towards the Pines, because if I hadn't had anything like that on, both of my ears would have certainly been aching greatly by now.

Today Beka, my wonderful yoga teacher here at AB-Tech, mentioned to our class that she wouldn't be here next Thursday because she had a thirteen-hour flight for Japan scheduled for tomorrow morning. I thought it to be extremely random but stil surprisingly funny, how dear Beka just came out of nowhere and told us that we'd have a different yoga teacher for Thursday. I plan to write a lot more about my great yoga class later on this month, or whenever I happen to have the time for writing aside from that, because it's begun to take up quite an awesome part of my life, nowadays...

And in fact, I plan to start writing a lot more about all of the AB-Tech classes I'm taking this semester, because I've definitely got a lot to say about every single one of them, as well as the five rather questionable teachers and professors I have to deal with. Being forced to stay at AB-Tech for ten fucking hours straight every Tuesday and Thursday for months on end is no fun, people, I promise you. There's not too much to do, and since I've even forgotten the big purple binder I usually carry with me to all of my classes at home this afternoon and my poor maroon library card with it, I'm not even allowed to borrow any good books of movies to watch or read tomorrow before I have to go to work at A.C. Moore's. (I'm going to write some more about my latest job soon, too, I believe.)

At the moment, however, I'll gladly say that I've made a recent resolution to never, ever try to shop at any of our local Super WalMart faclities again, at least for quite a long time, even though I can hardly afford to shop as healthy as I'd like anywhere else, because just last night when I was in that detestable place looking for what we beginner-yogis like to call a "yoga strap", I wasn't able to find one right away, and so I asked a random blue-aproned employee that I saw there, constantly lurking around as all of the employees belonging to Super WalMart stores always seem to do, and I approached him to ask if he knew where I could perhaps purchase a yoga strap. He told me that he "didn't know where I could buy one", and then immediately afterwards called me a "dirty hippie" under his breath, behind my back. I swear, I should have pulled out my switch and had his ass right then and there! But of course, I couldn't have, because there were so many other people around here with me, at the time, including my mom and one of my younger brothers...

Yes, I'm a dirty hippie, ya'll, in body and soul alike. Of course I am. What else would I be? The only reason why I took the slightest offence when the Super WalMart employee called me that himself, was for the most part simply because it was him calling me that, of all other people on earth: a very mean-looking, short, grey-headed old man who might have been a vetran, for all anyone knows.

In that yoga class of mine that I was talking about, Beka occassionally tells us one or two things concerning the fact that to be good yogis, we should try our hardest not to violently judge others, or even ourselves, and that's where yoga gets to be the absolute hardest for me. That's where I break inside and begin to screw up, especially when I see how very clumsy I am when compared to almost everyone else in my class. Never mind the many weird and quite unusual yogaic positions we have to do, see! Me being the harsh, judgemental person that I am, especially towards myself and not necessarily even all the other chuckleheads out there, is my greatest, eternal obstacle that I need to put aside to reach total Enlightenment.

(More on how I think I've probably already reached that total stage of true Enlightenment in some ways, another day when I maybe feel a little better.)

Noora and the Witch

2006-08-23T14:53:00.000-07:00

Author's Note: This is meant to be sort of a follow-up to my earlier short story, entitled "The Troll Who Loved a Girl". It also involves Anna-Maria, of course, but this time her little sister is introduced, and goes on an adventure all on her own, during which she meets both a bog-witch and a talking magpie. Sounds kind of strange, right? Well, read it anyway, and, as always, enjoy! It's finally finished, thank goodness.

The witch’s bird wheeled high overhead, monochrome against a roiling gray sky, calling up the summer storm with rasping magpie screeches that tore jagged invisible rifts in the air, giving way to thunder and lightning.

Without warning, hail the size of marbles began to plummet down from swiftly-moving dark clouds, blown this way and that in an irregular pattern by a violent gust of wind that cruelly rattled the slender branches of birch trees and caused them to tangle roughly. But then a second wind, coming from the opposite direction, fought bravely against the other to shake the birches apart. And for a time, all was well.

It began to rain. Anna-Maria and Noora-Kristiina were caught in it where they’d been playing at the lake near their house, and they quietly suffered the harsh sting of the hail as it pummeled their heads and arms without mercy.

Anna-Maria took her little sister by the hand, and together they trudged home, completely appalled at how quickly the weather had changed: just that morning the day had been fine and clear with absolutely no sign of the oncoming gale.

“I thought there weren’t going to be any more storms this year,” Noora-Kristiina said sadly, gripping Anna-Maria’s hand even tighter. The five-year-old hated the hail, and stifled back tears.

“Ah, you never know, I guess,” Anna-Maria replied shortly. “It’s all right, Noora. We’re almost home.”

Above and behind them, the magpie saw that his work was nearly finished. He swooped low and perched on an old wooden fence, eyeing the hair of young humans with a black-eyed expression that was both wary and amused. He might have stayed on the fence a bit longer, but his witch was on the prowl, and he knew that he should probably be with her.

So the witch’s bird rose up and left. Anna-Maria and Noora-Kristiina hadn’t taken any notice of her at all. It was raining hard, but the house they lived in was finally in sight where the worn dirt back road ended, and in that moment they were too relieved to think of anything else.

The witch stood alone at the highest point of the bog she haunted and squinted into the bright, storm-scoured sky, which was like a dead man’s eye except for the menacing presence of several iron-gray streaks suspended slightly above the tree-lined horizon.

She expected to see the familiar dark shape of the magpie making his way back home through the clouds any minute now. And when the bird finally did appear, the witch could hardly keep back her annoyance.

“Harakka!” she hissed with a touch of anger, before the bird had even touched ground. “Where have you been? The storm we created was over some time ago, and yet you didn’t return. I suggest you explain yourself to me this instant.”

But the bird only cackled hoarsely and took his time in perching atop a stunted and scraggly marsh pine before adding to Inkeri’s newest argument. After a moment Harakka said in his usual crowing, cocky way, “Watching, watching, Inkeri. I was only watching the children.”

“Children?” the witch scoffed. “What children are there here, of all places? A bog is no place for heedless children, who could so easily stray off the marked paths and drown. The bog is only for stranger creatures like you and I, and for a few of those troublesome trolls, maybe—but no one else.”

“No, not so, Inkeri,” gently admonished the pied bird, ruffling his damp feathers. “The children haven’t strayed into the bog, but they’re not very far from it.” Harakka raised a single black wing and held it, fully outstretched, to point towards the forest.

The witch understood what the bird meant, then, and nodded mutely. A colony of people lived somewhere beyond that dark, serrated expanse of birches, linden, and pine; the girls were sisters, one dark and one fair. Harakka had never actually it, but Inkeri knew. She read many of the old bird’s thoughts. Indeed, their minds ran somewhat parallel to each other, meaning that once in a great while, it was possible for the witch to pick up on her friend’s thoughts and memories entirely. During such a rare time the witch was able to gain access to information that had been all but lost by the world around them. Harakka was very old, and had seen quite a lot happen in his day.

The witch made it her personal mission to be an acolyte of sorts, and learn every possible thing the old bird had to teach her before it became too late.

Neither magpie nor witch had ever known true friendship with anyone other than themselves. They were lonely, ghostly beings who reveled in nasty weather and the murky waters of their silent, green marsh, and that was all.

“Äiti,” Noora-Kristiina began the next day, when the rain had come to an abrupt end, leaving behind a vault of clear blue sky and a softly shining sun. “Can I go outside and play in the woods?”

“Yes, of course,” Noora’s mother said. “But why would you ever want to do that? Isn’t it too dark in the woods?”

“I like it better when it’s dark,” Noora-Kristiina answered with a small, uneven grin. “The sun hurts my eyes.”

“Then wear sunglasses.”

“I don’t much like those, either. They always hurt my nose.”

Hearing that, Noora’s mother laughed and brought the little girl into a tight hug. “All right, Noora. Just don’t go too far. We’d never want you to get lost in those woods. Stay on the path, and don’t try to jump off of any especially big rocks. You could hurt yourself, you know.”

“I know, Äiti,” Noora-Kristiina replied truthfully. “I won’t get lost, I promise. And I won’t get hurt, either, really.”

“Good girl,” Noora’s mother said, and she let the little girl go on her way. Besides, no actual harm could come to her in the forest, could it? The woods were as safe a place as any…

Out in the sweet-scented open air, Noora lept joyously off the porch and fell lightly on her knees. But she wasn’t at all hurt. She walked past the garden, where the rabbit hutch also was, and stopped for a while to take the quivering spotted rabbit out of his wire-faced wooden box to play with him. Noora would have liked to let the rabbit accompany her into the shady forest, but there was always the chance of the rabbit bolting away from her and being lost. So, with a bit of a sigh, Noora-Kristiina grinned at the rabbit and, stroked him one last time, and put him safely back into the hutch.

She glanced around the garden, wondering if Anna-Maria’s troll was standing anywhere nearby. Noora had never really been afraid of him, as her sister was, but on occasion he could sometimes appear out of nowhere and surprise anybody for the worse.

“Rölli, what are you doing?” Noora whispered in a friendly way, but no reply came that she could hear.

Noora left the familiarity of her backyard and began her lonesome trek into the forest, which she knew little of.

The witch had never cared to consort with humans. People weren’t good for very much. They cut down the birches, uprooted and disturbed things whenever it struck their fancy, and continuously failed to pay proper homage to the old creatures who had known this land in its earliest days.

More than once, Inkeri found herself longing to relinquish her young-womanish form for that of an orange-spotted toadstool, ahma, or bird, as Harakka himself had somehow done, more years ago than she cared to add.

But as Harakka had once mentioned to her, though a witch might grow powerful enough to shape-shift after a lifetime of extremely difficult practice, a witch could never decide on her own just what she would become after the change occurred.

Harakka had been a shaman for one hundred years before he was ever a magpie who could summon up storms and the like, and had long since came to the conclusion that he’d become a magpie, rather than a thousand other things he could have been, simply because his general personality had best matched that of a magpie during his life as a shaman.

Inkeri, however, didn’t believe herself to have much of a true personality. There was only that still kind of despair she sometimes felt about things, so she had absolutely no idea of what bird, plant, or beast she most resembled.

Right now it didn’t matter, anyway.

Inkeri’s eyes narrowed sharply as she saw the stumpy brown troll ambling up towards her, grinning mischievously from ear to pointed ear. Rölli’s long, gray-tufted tail drug the ground, only to pick up again in a low inverted arch.

“Huomenta, Witch,” Rölli greeted congenially. “What do you, if I may ask, on this dreary summer day?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Inkeri retorted sarcastically. She was, in fact, rebuilding the narrow pile of angular flat rocks that had fallen down on the edge of the marsh. All the safe paths through the marshy land were marked by such recognizable objects, so no one would ever stray off the paths and drown.

Inkeri peered slyly up from her work, meeting Rölli square in the eyes. “Was it you and Muratti who knocked this all down?” she said a bit rudely. Muratti was an old-woman troll with hair like wilting vines who sometimes liked to accompany Rölli on his gallivanting.

Rölli, however, simply shook his head at the young witch’s usual impudence, flashing that same old toothy sort of troll smile Inkeri had grown so used to over the years, and said in a very casual way, “I just came to warn you: there’s a little human in those woods right now, and she’s coming ever closer. If you see her, don’t try to scare her, and don’t let her get hurt.”

“What?” Inkeri grumbled, feeling quite ill at ease with the way her morning was already turning out. “Humans in the bog, again? Won’t they ever leave us alone?”

“Oh, learn to love them,” Rölli told her in a growling tone. “That little girl’s sister is my friend. If you remember, she was that one I told you about once, who had eyes the same color as harebells.”

“Yes, I remember you saying that,” Inkeri muttered absentmindedly, throwing herself wholeheartedly into the rocks.

She really wasn’t in a very good mood.

Inkeri wondered if the little human girl Rölli seemed to cherish so much was one of those same human children Harakka had chanced upon just the other day, during that bad thunderstorm.

Half an hour later the little girl appeared at the edge of the forest, just as Rölli has mentioned she might.

Noora-Kristiina realized with a sudden jolt of fear that she was lost. She stepped down from the low bank at the edge of the forest that lay opposite to her house, and silently began her climb up the imperceptible mossy rise of the hill, trying to figure out just how far away from home she'd accidentally gone.

The gound beneath her feet was spongey and wet. Young as she was, Noora noticed this immediately and began to place her feet more carefully as she entered the rocky moss-green and mostly treeless expanse of what she vaguely recognized as a marsh of some sort.

"Where am I?" Noora whispered timidly, thinking that no one would hear. But in quiet places like this, which at the first hasty glance might seem devoid of all manner of life, Noora was being studied by many pairs of curious and ever-watchful eyes.

Things happened very quickly.

The little girl felt as though she wasn't quite alone, and didn't like it. In the past, when she was especially small and absolutely terrified of the dark, Noora would wake up from her misty nightmares screaming wildly, and when her mother came to see what the matter was, Noora wept and told her about the creatures that just wouldn't stop staring her down, regardless of how cleverly she tried to turn away from their inevitable owl-like gaze. Her mother had tried comfort Noora by telling her that the eyes she felt were only those of angels, and that there was no reason to be afraid.

Somehow, though, that had always seemed to scare Noora-Kristiina even more. There was no escape!

Noora spun haphazardly around to meet her persecutor head on, and she encountered the witch, who had come up only seconds before to stand right behind the little human. To some extent, the witch was just as afraid of Noora as Noora was of her, and niether knew what to expect from the other.

Noora-Kristiina saw Inkeri and cried out in sudden heart-stopping fear. The witch did pretty much the same. Her hand flew to her brest, and she drew back sharply.

"Who are you?" Inkeri ventured, never once letting her guard down.

"What?" Noora-Kristiina said in surprise.

"Did you come from the place beyond the woods?" Inkeri wanted to know next. She regarded the little girl suspiciously. Her white-blonde hair was so find that it curled within the confines of its braids, but her beguilingly upturned eyes were the brackish, shadowed green of marsh water. These eyes were the only steel in Noora's nature. Otherwise, the child looked undeniably sad and lost. Inkeri couldn't help but pity her.

Noora remembered being told several times before by both of her parents that she should never tell a stranger where she lived, no matter how generally harmless the stranger might seem to be. And the little girl wasn't sure of exactly who this deathly pale, disheveled woman was. So she decided to simply ignore the question she'd been asked as to where she came from.

The witch saw no reason to ask her a second time.

Inkeri clicked her tongue, and the unexpected noise of it made Noora jump, after which the girl had to fight to keep her breath sounding slow and normal. Her heart raced tremendously.

"Can you tell me your name, little one?" the witch said waveringly, trying to be as congenial as possible, as to cause no further fear in the lost child.

"I am Noora," the little girl answered, unwillingly. And Inkeri actually felt the urge to shrink back from the girl, so that the girl wouldn't shrink back near as much from her.

"Noora," the witch repeated with some of an unaccustomed smile. "The name has a good sound to it."

Noora-Kristiina said no more of her name. She only whispered, shy of the witch's disapproval, "Please, I am lost."

"Yes, I certainly thought so," Inkeri replied quietly. "I've been watching you since you first got here, the magpie, and I--" Inkeri turned away for a moment to fling a graceless gesture towards the birch trees, where she thought Harakka might be, though at the moment, the shaman-turned bird had flown off somewhere, and was completely out sight.

"I noticed that you walked out of the forest," the witch finished accurately. "Do you live there? If so, then tell me, because you're very young, and I think that it's quite important for me to see you safely back to your home. You don't have to be afraid of me, little Noora, fierce as I look." At that, she gave a short, happy cackle and cocked her head to study Noora at a different angle.

Noora-Kristiina fixed the witch with a wary buy truly hopeful expression. "Will you really help me?" she said.

"Of course I'll help you. I've said it once before, and I'll say it a thousand times. The bog is no place for children, ever."

"How old are you, though?" Noora-Kristiina asked impetuously, not knowing quite why that particular question came to her mind and was spoken aloud. Noora hoped that the woman hadn't been offended by it.

Inkeri, however, only smiled a bit further before saying firmly, "That doesn't matter. Let's just get you home where you belong, right now."

And Noora nodded, allowing the witch to take hold of her hand as they entered the forest together.

High above where no one could see, Harakka was flying and keeping watch of things with a keen eye, as he did often.

The found a place between the darkening linden trees which Noora-Kristiina said she recognized, and that was where Inkeri left her to navigate the rest of the path on her own.

One minute the witch was still there, standing beside Noora, and the next minute she was gone without a trace.

Noora shivered slightly at the witch's strange dissapearance, but in the end stared straight ahead and began to walk purposefully, more eager than ever to finally get back home.

It seemed as though she'd been gone for hours on end, and the listless gray light in the forest reminded her strongly of oncoming twilight. But she'd never seen the pulsing orange glow of the sun dipping down behind the trees. Maybe it really wasn't that late, after all. And now, in truth, the sky didn't seem much less bright than it had been when she first went on her impromtu journey.

The little girl reached home the same way she'd left it, on the narrow, mossy path by the high stone wall of her garden. She stepped out of the woods, preparing herself for the trouble she'd surely get into for being gone for such a long time, and for going so far away from the house, as well, but when Noora's mother came to meet her at the door, she wasn't angry.

"Did you find anything interesting in those woods today, Noora?" her mother asked with a little grin, having absolutely no idea of just what sort of things her daughter had actually encountered while she was lost in the bog.

But Noora said, "No, Äiti. There wasn't too much to see out there today. How long have I been gone?"

"Oh, only about half an hour or so," Noora's mother answered, and then, when she saw the horrified look cross her daughter's face like a dark cloud, she fleetingly wondered if Noora was getting sick.

"Äiti," Noora-Kristiina breathed with a great and heavy weariness. "My head's spinning. What's wrong with me?" Her head drooped and she seemed to wilt completely. This was crazy. Noora had wandered through the forest for at least an hour before stumbling onto the marsh and finding the woman who had helped her get back home.

The woman! Noora had never even learned her name.

Nor had Noora ever actually known that she was, in fact, a witch. Such an uncanny explanation for the stranger's sudden comings and goings had never crossed Noora's young mind. And why should it have? Encountering the rare manner of witch who wishes to hold up permenant residence in a watery Lapland bog with no company aside from a talking magpie and the occasional garden troll isn't exactly an everyday occurence.

"So, when you went outside earlier today, you got past the woods?" Anna-Maria asked her younger sister later that night when it had grown very dark and they were supposed to be sleeping. Noora couldn't sleep at all, and Anna-Maria could only imagine why.

"Yeah," Noora replied. It was really weird. First, there was nothing but the kind of trees that we always see around here. And then I came to this green, marshy sort of place, where there were a whole lot of rocks, and such."

"But how can that be, Noora? There's not supposed to be anything at all on the other side of the forest! I always thought that there must just be another neighborhood around there. Nothing more than that..."

"I know what I saw, Anna," Noora-Kristiina whispered in the pitch-black darkness of the girl's bedroom.

"Well, I believe you. But it would've been nice if you'd found out what that woman's name was. What did she look like?"

"Mm, she looked...not like us. I think she had been living in that bog for a very long time, and that's what scared me most about her, I think, to begin with. Her brown hair was long and tangled, and everything about her was ragged and tattered. Her eyes were gray."

"You mean, blue-gray, like Nikki's?"

"No...I mean gray, dark gray, like thunderclouds, or something. And she was so pale, Anna. She looked very sick, and maybe very sad."

"What did she sound like?"

"Funny. I don't know where she was from. The way she talked reminded me of Rölli, and the kinds of things he says."

"That scary troll," Anna-Maria sighed, sounding very old and wold-weary for her age. "Are you sure that this woman you saw wasn't really a troll? She wasn't Muratti?"

"No," Noora-Kristiina said after a short moment. "But something about her made me think of ivy."

United States of Mexico?

2006-08-06T12:37:00.000-07:00

All right: so immigration in the United States has been a very serious and touchy subject for quite some time now, and even if the level of my basic writing skills isn't high enough to permit me to compose a full essay on what I personally feel about immigration rates and where they stand today, I would like to try anyhow, because it's not the Mexican immigrants who are troubling me. It's the American immigration officials themselves, and how a lot of the Mexican people are beging treated in this country.

This morning I was hanging out at Smiley's Flea Market, where I work on and off during the year, from about April to September, dealing mostly with the WWII items, GI-Joes, and Star Wars figurines my dad has managed to collect throughout his life. This, as you can probably imagine, is where I come off telling a lot of people who think I'm older than I really am for whatever reason that I work as an "antique dealer", of sorts. It's a job I truly do enjoy, and unlike many people, I have a genuine love for history, which is how I'm able to retain quite a bit of knowledge when it comes to objects of the Second World War, at least. I also have a great love for languages. I speak Finnish with reasonable proficiency, as well as some Swedish, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish. And with the exception of these first two languages I just mentioned, such foreign dialects can definitely come in handy when you're working at the flea market, where you encounter people from a number of different countries...

Including, of course, the Mexican-Americans, who flock to the flea market by the hundreds, whether it be to buy secondhand clothes from me, or to sell eggplants and tomatoes to me that are cheaper and usually of far better quality than any you can hope to find in a grocery store. I watch how the Mexican families walk through the rows of cement tables at Smiley's with their friends and kids, simply seeing what there is to see. Since Spanish is their native language, they speak it amazingly fast and fluently. A lot of the older Americans passing them by, who haven't had the chance to study Spanish in school as much as the younger generation has, often wonder what they might be saying to one another. And that's innocent enough. Then, however, the American people turn right around and say that they can't understand for the life of them just why there are so many Mexican immigrants, and illegal ones at that, coming into this country to "take our jobs" and such. But what I'm saying is that, how can anyone even dare to ask a question like that, and expect the answer they want as the truth?

That's what I'm trying to make my general point out to be: life in Mexico can be extremely hard for underprivledged individuals, and if they get tired of it and decide to leave the country of their birth for good, there's so much to do. None of it is easy. Immigration rights are exceptionally difficult to come by. I can tell you about this myself, because for the last three years I've been in constant contact with the Finnish Embassy of America to find out about how and when I'll be able to acquire the residence permit that will allow me to reside in Finland for more than three months. Trying to get into a country legally is just about the most nerve-racking thing a person can try to deal with. It's full of confustion, fines, deadlines, and horrible little details that are all too easy to forget, with everything else on your shoulders, as well. So, I can see why deception and running from the border control might sometimes be an option. Plus, America is such a large country, it's easy to dissapear into a crowd and never be found again. In moving to Finland, I already know that I won't be anywhere near as lucky, or else I'd probably jump at the opportunity to function as an illgal immigrant, too; Finland is a small country with a population of only about 5,000,000. I could be wrong, but I think that Rhode Island alone, which is such a small American state, has about that many people living in it, or more.

Sometimes I wish that there no such thing as "countries". I wish that there were no borders, or border controls, or anything at all like that. Wouldn't that make it so much easier for everybody? If there were none of that, but still things like airplanes and ships that could carry people to and from different places in the world, just as long as you could still pay the correct fee, it'd be pretty darn cool. I could go to Finland and stay there forever, just as any Mexican citizen who wants to come here and try to better their life could come here with ho hassling or threats, and do so, and be happy.

I have an immense hatred for all the billboards I've been seeing around Asheville lately which depict things like a Mexican flag rising over an upside-down American flag, just like I hated it this morning at Smiley's when I heard some Yankee say the words "United States of Mexico" as a stupid reference to the high majority of Mexicans at the flea market. If they don't like it, then they should leave, and leave the Mexican-Americans along, whether they've come over here illegally, or not.

At least most of the Mexicans actually care something about their kids and keep them clean. unlike many of these American rednecks and yuppies. That alone shows you that there can't be all that much wrong with them. Right?

Pentru Viktoriya

2006-07-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

Author's Note: So...um, yeah. I was rifling through some old photographs and documents of mine just this morning, and came across this poem, which, according to the date, I put together in September of 2002, when I was about fourteen years old. I'd forgotten about it until now, but it was meant to be about Viktoriya, a girl who used to be my best friend in the world...I don't know. A lot of bad things happened to her, though most of it was really her own doing...I feel, somehow, like I should post this tribute to her, since it's so near to her wedding anniversary. So, tell me what you think. It means a lot to me.

She's got some kind of demon.
And he's tearing apart her mind.
Vika fights like a dragon,
But she's running out of time.
Why aren't you smiling?
Everybody grins.
Why aren't you talking?
You'll pay for your sins.
When the worst is over
At the end of the day,
She'll remember it again
Though how she can't say.
Why aren't you eating?
I'll bring you some bread
Vika is getting weaker
And soon she might be dead.
But it doesn't really matter.
All of them are wrong.
She'll stay alive long enough
To cry after each song.
Do your friends really want you?
Vika can't tell.
There just doesn't seem to be an answer
To why her life's a living hell.