Then spoke the poor dead thistle,
"But I, how shall I dance?"
Let your heart fly to the wind
We said.

Then God spoke from above,
"How shall I descend from the blue?"

For Those Who Do Not Dance - Gabriela Mistral

THE FULL TAURUS MOON: It has arrived in all its round glory, ready to deliver on all promises. Taurus, the bull, is the ruler of appetite. It’s not a coincidence that the Taurus full moon falls around Thanksgiving. The most basic meaning of the word “appetite” pertains to the desire for food or drink. The bounty of the harvest season is served up to great effect during this time, as Taurus is always sure to present things in a sensually stirring light. The mouth starts to water just thinking about it! And now it’s also time to think about your appetites that go beyond the meal. What is it that you crave out of life? What glowing prize makes the struggle worthwhile to you? Taurus energy is strongly determined and will aid in the attainment of any goal. Taurus teaches us that there is great power in being still and getting focused. Think of the calm, massive, seemingly immobile bull standing in the pasture. His mind seems blank, and that is the key. The same creature is capable of running at top speed with immense power to spear any obstacle in the way of his target. Empty your mind and gather your power.

Islands in The Stream by The Constantines and Feist[at soundlab in bflo dec 4, fyi, just as wilco will be in rochester . . . ]

for virgo this week: For many people, 10:30 a.m. is the single best time of day to come up with fresh insights and new ideas. But that won't exactly be true for you in the coming week. I mean, 10:30 will be a time when you're likely to be really smart, but then so will 11:30, 1:05, 2:37, 3:46, and 4:20. For that matter, 6:35 may also bring a gush of high intelligence, as well as 7:27, 8:19, and the last ten minutes before bedtime. What I'm trying to tell you, Virgo, is that you're in a phase when being brilliant should come pretty naturally. [perfect timing]

We love life if we find a way to it.
And we plant, where we settle, some fast growing plants, and harvest the dead.

--Mahmoud Darwish
(translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah)

jadoo - tantric body reprise

I'm trying to learn "grounding meditation" for which I've been counseled to seek the aid of music, especially patterned music, bells on repeat whatever . . . I dunno, either this stuff just makes me horny [aside: 'horny' is a stupid sounding word], or meditating just makes me horny, or when I meditate I notice more that I'm horny or something like that, then eventually I'm just irritable and overtired. Is that 'grounded'? I dunno that I've ever been 'grounded', except earth-sign-wise, so maybe it feels like you're tied to the ground with ropes of fretful horniness . . . that'd be just my luck . . .

self help reading + music

djfree&lewis - chakra rhythm (you're welcome) (especially the mixed lyre? that starts up apx 5:15) - if you hold still and do nothing but listen to this once through, your heart rate slows 10 beats per minute. it's 10 min long

extollo : to praise exaggerate / decorate, adorn. extollo : to lift up, raise up, erect / elevate, exalt. extorqueo : to twist, wrench, dislocate / extort by force. extra : (prep. + acc.) beyond, outside. extremus : outermost, last, extreme. exturbo : to drive away, thrust out. exulto : to exult, be joyful. exuro, exussum : burn down, burn, set on fire. exustio : burning up, conflagration.
Ffabula : fable, story, tale, play. facile : easily. facilis : easy, agreeable, affable, pleasant. facillimus : easiest, most agreeable, pleasantest facina -oris : bad deed, crime, villainy / deed, action. facio : to sacrifice, suit, help, be of service. facio : to give permission / to experience, suffer (troubles). facio : (trans.) to make, do, act, perform, cause, bring about. factum : deed, accomplishment, work, act, achievement. facultas : power, means, opportunity, capacity, ability, stock. facundia : facultas : feasibility, opportunity, resources, abundance. facunditas : fertility, quickness or readiness of speech. faenum fenum : hay. falsus : false, deceptive. fama : talk, report, rumor, tradition. familia : family, household. familiaris : belonging to a household / friendly, intimate. famulatus : servitude, slavery, service. famulus : servant. fas est :: it is right, it is fitting, it is lawful. fas : divine law or command / fate, destiny Infinity (symbolically represented with ∞) comes from the Latin infinitas or "unboundedness." It refers to several distinct concepts – usually linked to the idea of "without end" – which arise in philosophy, mathematics, and theology.
In mathematics, "infinity" is often used in contexts where it is treated as if it were a number (i.e., it counts or measures things: "an infinite number of terms") but it is a different type of "number" from the real numbers. The precise origin of the infinity symbol, , is unclear. One possibility is suggested by the name it is sometimes called—the lemniscate, from the Latin lemniscus, meaning "ribbon". Another theory implies that its origin derives from the respective paganistic symbol, which is supposed to symbolise the total of numbers; its shape is said to represent the repetition.
It is also possible that it is inspired by older religious/alchemical symbolism. For instance, it has been found in Tibetan rock carvings, and the ouroboros, or infinity snake, is often depicted in this shape.
John Wallis is usually credited with introducing as a symbol for infinity in 1655 in his De sectionibus conicis. One conjecture about why he chose this symbol is that he derived it from a Roman numeral for 1000 that was in turn derived from the Etruscan numeral for 1000, which looked somewhat like CIƆ and was sometimes used to mean "many." Another conjecture is that he derived it from the Greek letter ω (omega), the last letter in the Greek alphabet.[3]
Another popular belief is that the infinity symbol is a clear depiction of the hourglass turned 90°. Obviously, this action would cause the hourglass to take infinite time to empty thus presenting a tangible example of infinity. The invention of the hourglass predates the existence of the infinity symbol allowing this theory to be plausible.

chinmaya dunster - purnima namashkar (crown chakra, or thousand-petalled lotus)

about 10 days's difference in the backyard autumn canopy

keb mo - america the beautiful

I take it to heart: change one material thing and everything changes incrementally but inexorably from there. Just one thing does it, because that is the law of physics, the law of Everything.

what I'm listinging to:
Wilco- Please Be Patient With Me mmmmmnnzgl

"I cannot reconcile myself with things, were each moment to wrest itself out of time to give me a kiss."--E.M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

[If each moment were to wrest itself out of time to give me a kiss, I'd be fine. I could make ears toes whatever and be perfectly happy.]

hornsome playlist:

Lonesome Lover Blues Kenny Dorham, trumpet, vocals; Jimmy Heath, tenor sax, baritone sax; Walter Bishop Jr., piano; Percy Heath, bass; Kenny Clarke, drums

Todd Snider w/ Patty Griffin: Fortunate Son (harmonica) - if you want to download the tracks of the album, you have to go to the site and get em for free - "Ponce of the Flaming Peace Queer" is worth the form-fill-out annoyance (to me)

Tuatara - The Streets Of New Delhi greeky, ie spastic around the edges, but good

Girlyman, My Sweet Lord (orig. George Harrison) [no horns, but I love this]

in the afterlife, you could be headed for serious strife

(for your halloween mixes)
nick cave and the bad seeds - red right hand
bonus: squirrel nut zippers - hell la la la, high rec - great horns

Elizabeth Mitchell, Goin' Down The Road - lovely Grateful Dead cover, high rec [and merle saunders died]

where can you find a legless dog?
where?
wherever you left him! [gigglegiggle]

this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Devil's_Hole) happened down the street, on 3rd over the fence at the bend in the road

Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right”

Mulling: [maybe] I'm gonna start a new blog, and I'm going to call it The Asshole Planet; its intended audience will be persons to whom I often have Nothing to say - I could even have co-contributers, people who also have Nothing to say to any number of people . . .

beck - paper tiger

Update - I remembered that I forgot to include a shot of the tree that'll be the main support post as you walk in the door of the bale house and supporting the upper loft. It reminded me of something, though I couldn't say what. The second shot is the Christ at the Fatima Shrine (from previous photo shoot), which is also in a prone position. I'm just struck by the heft of symbolism any stripped tree evokes ya know?

It's getting cold and wet outside. So of course it's time to plaster a bale house! Ya can't get bale street cred if you don't freeze your joints nearly to cracking, after all. I gotta figure out how to get a wide enough angle on this puppy to get the whole into one shot. But just the fact that I can't easily do so deomonstrates the difference in scale between this one and the one from last year.

[that's Bale-D and the owner, Carrie, whose new digs are comforting her for the loss of her 2 Familiars]

[my fave shot, what will be the view left-askance off the sun porch]

for virgo: "If you could ask everyone you met one question, what would it be?" A reader named Ty Sassaman emailed me with that query. As I thought about what my response would be, I considered questions like "What's the one thing you most want to accomplish before you die many years from now?" or "What could you do to bring more intelligence into the way you love?" But ultimately I decided on "What is your soul's code?" How about you, Virgo? What would be your prime question? I suggest that in the coming days you ask it of everyone you encounter. You're in a phase in your astrological cycle when focused curiosity is a kind of superpower.

Buddy Guy- One Room Country Shack

bonus track: "Comfort You (Van Morrison cover)," Denison Witmer

Ane Brun - 'The Treehouse Song'

bonus track - Middleman (web) -The Things We Fear

I should remember to link to websites and to put buy-it links with artists bla bla. I figure there aren't enough people paying attention to me to bother with it. But I know this guy, he runs the music store in town, so you should probably buy shit from him or whatever you're supposed to do so I don't feel bad about ripping the song here. It's listed incorrectly in the playlist on that site, so consider this proofreading rather than illegitimate file sharing whatever. (And if anyone can figure out how to get the cover of Heart of Gold off his other site . . ? . I think you need a myspace page for that, and I just can't go there. Obviously I'm doing a little better w/the 'being open to people thing' if I know this guy and some others in town at all, but I'm not ready to be "friended". [Or NOT either - friending, not-friending, any verb form of the noun 'friend' makes me squint and hold my breath.])

Anyway, I like that store - you can rant about the election in there, for instance. If I had a buck for every time someone has lowered their voice and said to me "I wouldn't say this to everyone around here . . . " followed by a confession of liberal leanings, I'd have about $5 so far and I've only met about 5 people. I like that I occasion such confessions from Whiteytonians - in Buffalo, I hardly stood out as someone to whom you could entrust a rant. On the subject of the debate, I'm with MusicGuy that the funniest moment was about autism, as if that's close enough to down's syndrome cz hey a retard is a retard. And yeah, what's with McCain's eyeballs? I feel like I'd like Hugh Laurie to enlighten me as to what all that might be a symptom of - ?? How does 'little white man syndrome' manifest in the nervous system as eyeball popping? Is that physical code for "God Damn It! God Damn It!" - ??

If that little bastard pulls a Truman, I'm going to find myself having to pray for the health of him lest that Alaskan Lunatic gets behind the wheel - I like the world to be upside down, but NOT LIKE THAT.

"Organs On The Kitchen Floor," The Jealous Girlfriends

Nikka Costa - Someone For Everyone

for virgo today: The planets have a nice surprise in store for you today and although you don’t like to be passive you should allow yourself to simply enjoy what comes your way. Someone close to you thinks that you need a little pampering and will be going out of their way to oblige so just sit back and relax!

huh. mercury goes out of retro today. it rules communications and it rules my sign. [upshot: fair warning]

Theory: if you (any person, that is) belonged to a context (a ‘world view’, so to speak) in which there was not interpersonal violence, then in your language, words would be free of such violence and they’d run around in your head like little suffering-free buddhas and you could take your pick of em willy nilly whenever you had anything to say to anybody without fear of lurking potentially harmful or annoying consequences. [I am looking for a way to test this theory.]

"Alone Again Or," Love

update, for virgo: With the help of a Norwegian space facility, the Frito-Lay company has used radar to beam a commercial for its Doritos tortilla chips to 47 Ursae Majoris, a star 42 light years away. Astronomers believe that habitable planets circle the star, so any creatures living there will eventually get an invitation to enjoy the crunchy corn goodness that so many earthlings have sampled. I'm making this vignette your metaphor of the week, Virgo. May it inspire you to formulate an "advertisement" for yourself and your specialties that will spread far and wide, reaching a new audience and activating your future potentials.

Huh. A way to let people know on other planets that I have crunchy corn goodness. Why didn't I think of that? I'll be sure to "spread far and wide", the news that is, now that I know my potentialities might reside on Ursae Majoris, where they might speak a language that I can translate and the utterances don't all seem to mean Not Much.

She used to ask herself, What more could I wish? But she always distrusted that question, becasue she knew there were limits to her experience that precluded her from knowing what there was to be wished.
--Marilyn Robinson, Home

Maxayn - You Can't Always Get What You Want

I keep telling myself: do something else. So what in 24 hours do I do, besides try not to think about it?
I went to this and spent most of a day learning about vermicomposting from the mother of a man I met last year when I was helping Bale Dave on that job site I posted pics of [and speaking of pics, he finally uploaded some of his roof onto his BaleonBale website] - she’s about 100 years old and wheelchair bound and has oxygen up her nose the whole time and she wheels herself around like she’s on a dirt bike and she’s a worm whisperer in a thick Bavarian accent. I thought she was going to pop a wheelie any minute as she whipped through her routine, “Get the Ved Vigglers (red wigglers) not ze urthen verms who are vat and lacy (not the earthworms because they’re fat and lazy)!”
"Nobody Waits," Track N Field [the flutething at apx 2:15]

last night's antidote


Zero 7 - In The Waiting Line (Koop Remix)

[I'm getting crumbs on the keyboard.]

Agreed.

Theory: as soon as you have a desire, you should try to assuage it asap so that you can quickly outgrow it. You could just try to get over it, but you might get stuck still-wanting it whereas if you’d gotten it then you’d know it was most likely just shit and you could move on. Like once you probably were 13 years old and you wanted to fall in love so that you could call into a radio station and dedicate a song. Imagine still having any of that desire left invisibly clogging up your arteries like plaque.

"Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)," Stevie Wonder

The Moondoggies - Changing

I'm Marge Simpson. (Of course I am. [Sigh.]) Who are you?

"To Be Gone," Anna Ternheim