18 November 2002: Pinky Ball

Ritual labs, acid trips, and other such vertical excursions act as psychic depth charges, or perhaps like fertilizations, the deep penetration and incubation of some secret seed.  The Secret Seed is one of the faces of the force represented by the Hermit card, which is the letter Yod, the Hand of God.  God's secret touch, planting seeds, planting time bombs that explode into poetry, into dance, into ecstasy, into fractal flowers of knowing.  The seed of God in the womb of Mary.

Incubation feels like depression sometimes.  Before the uncoiling, there is a recoiling, a contraction.  Since the Trinity Lab, I have been contracting, lately even feeling slightly depressed.  Minimizing contact, producing little, rarely exercising, never dancing.  Incubating.  Curled tight around the Secret Seed.  Now it has sprouted.  Now the blossoming begins.  I am back in touch with my power sources, tapped in in a whole new way, a whole new groove.

The Word, the Dance, and the Clasp.

For the past three days, I've known what to say.  Speaking, writing, I feel the Word in me like I used to feel when I stood up to speak in Quaker meetings, like I felt the time that Penguin was holding a razor to her wrist and her and I and everyone else in the house were on acid and I talked for ten minutes and she put the razor down and cried and laughed and lived and gave birth to Bonkydog's daughter but not right at that moment and I don't remember what I said because the words were written in my brain in letters of fire and they vanished as I spoke them like the spells inscribed on magic scrolls.

The night before last, I dreamed that I was doing a dance that was a bit like tai chi, and a bit like chi gung, and a bit like the dances I did in the Trinity Lab and the Dreaming Lab, and a bit like the dances that I developed in the Tragos rehearsals.  And I woke up and made love to Dragon Lady and then she left and before I went to aikido I danced like I'd danced in my dream.  And it tapped me back into the Dance, back into all my power and grace.  And then I went and taught a really good aikido class.  The last couple of classes, I've felt again like I'm teaching magic.

And then there's the Clasp.  More contact with friends.  Made it through the always difficult three-month point with Dragon Lady, broke through fears and resistances and into a deeper trust.  Feeling the Quickening.  Good community growing on the Moot Zoo, some real love and warmth in the latest conversations.  Relative harmony at work, a staff meeting tonight that was full of laughter and clear communication, and ended early.  Brainstorming with Argus about his book and our related future projects this evening, deep in collaberative artistic glee, playing the intricate retcon games that we used to play with our roleplaying campaigns all the time, that laid the groundwork for so much of our subsequent art.  Home-cooked dinner and a movie expedition last night with The Khan, Speaks Like Silence, Sister Sisyphus, Zebra, Centaur, and Lexicat.  Beloved friends, O so lovely to see them all.  Hadn't seen Lexicat for too long.  But this will change.  Soon she will begin hosting regular Sunday gatherings, and I will attend.

New Quirk: often holds and squeezes rubber Pinky Ball.  Remember Pinky Balls?  Those pink balls of solid rubber, about the size of tennis balls?  Heh... I almost wrote, "about the size and shape of tennis balls." 

I decided I needed something to hold and squeeze, because I experience these Touretic power surges in which I am prone to doing destructive twitchy things with my hands, like clawing deep gouges into the flesh of my head and face.  Side effect of a semi-awakened kundalini, I suppose.  Downside of fast-forwarding my mystical work with psychedelic chemicals and ritual labs and such.  So.  Something to do with my hands that will strengthen them and keep them busy (idle hands are the Devil's playground, as my mother would have told me if she were the sort of mother who would have told me that). 

So.  Went to the huge drugstore-that-sells-everything, a block from my house, and looked for some kind of hand exerciser squeezy kind of thing.  And lo, all of the options were overpriced and kind of sucked, and were for people with much weaker hands than mine.  And then I passed by the Pinky Balls.  Didn't even know they still made them.  Ninety-nine cents.  Pink rubber ball.  Fuck all those expensive yuppie anti-carpal-tunnel-syndrome gadgets.  Pinky Ball.  I remember reading that the Merry Pranksters always had Pinky Balls around.  Sitting around talking?  Every now and then, toss a Pinky Ball to someone.  To make sure they're staying in the NOW. 

And Pinky Balls bounce.  And they're balls, so I can play catch and handball and stuff with them at my job.  So I got one.  And now I'm carrying it everywhere.  And I will hold it and squeeze it and I will call it George. 

Or Fred.