Early monday morning, the moon transited my natal sun and the 4th point of the septile. I played Nova by VNV Nation, Everlasting Light by The Black Keys, Patterns by Band of Skulls, and Endless Reverie by Azam Ali. I have a cluster on my ascendant including the sun, so there's a lot going on with that point, it's always been hard to get a grasp of. Frankly I don't know if "the rules" say it's the cluster as a whole or just the sun itself, but whatever, I'm making this up anyway.

Keeping up my sunset meditation streak. I'm just noodling around sampling different youtube videos, trying to keep it to about 15-20 minutes. Like anything these days, there's a lot of drek, but it's free drek and if you have the patience to hunt you can find the little vein of gold. I found a "meditation for chaotic times" by East Forest and it's a bit chatterboxy but seems to hit the spot right now. Meditation seems to be going well.

I've come to realize there are certain parallels or coincidences between my headaches and the P3. I get visualization disturbances when my eyes are closed with the headaches, like an afterimage with a bright light. Generally it's a disorganized chaotic pulsing of different colors and the more frantic the tempo and patterns, the worse the headache. Sometimes they swirl or flash, sometimes it's like static on an old TV. I know that P3 can increase blood pressure, and my headaches have a blood pressure component, so maybe that influences a similar experience. If I had a lot of money I'd stick myself in an MRI machine and figure this shit out, but ...

Sometimes when the headaches get bad, I lay in bed with something over my eyes and all I do is visualize the inner areas of my skull and try to relieve the network of little pressure pockets causing me pain. Just relaxing all the tiny muscles or bits of whatever is up there, easing the intensity, bleeding off the pressure, sort of committing myself to nothing but that. Shutting down the frantic thoughts that make me tense up and makes it worse. I have to maintain a pretty strict focus or it doesn't help, but sometimes it's the only way I get relief. I know it does something because I'll get rewarded with a little trickle of drainage down the throat or a tiny shift and pop in the sinuses when I get it right. The patterns in my vision calm down and fade. I've done this for many many hours over many many years. I've hovered in that place where the body both exists and does not. So I'm hyper attuned to the minute sensations in my brain area and the top of my spine, and the weird little energy shifts and bursts of chemicals doing whatever it is they are doing. The P3 physically feels like some of the same sensations I get with my headaches, minus the pain. There's some odd gentle pressures that rise and fall and perhaps a sense of stimulation in different areas. I find myself cued into falling into the mental groove I use for headaches, except there's no pain, it's just dropping the brain into almost a sublevel of thought where awareness dissolves.

The first time with the P3 I sugar bombed myself and got a headache the day afterwards (just because it's bad for me doesn't mean I won't gobble it up sometimes). This last time I stayed away from the sugar and I got the sinus congestion and ear stuffiness afterward, but no real headache. It's hard to describe but it's like a warm pressure and heaviness concentrated in the middle of my skull. Not behind my eyes, not in my sinuses, but in the back arch of the upper throat where I imagine the sinus passage ends and the throat begins. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was like brain blue balls. Kinda like when you want to orgasm, but your body isn't cooperating, and you end up feeling swollen and vaguely incomplete. Not painful, just a sensation of awareness and a process that didn't finish. Nerves in the head are not trustworthy, but that's what it feels like.

Past couple of days I have wondered if my intense focus on quashing my headaches has created some kind of energy constipation in my body. I don't pay any attention whatsoever to the rest of my body. What if I've aggravated an energy imbalance, like only exercising my right arm and ignoring the rest. So I'm focusing on my heart when I meditate now, imagining a flower planted in my heart that slowly opens as I breath in and slowly closes as I breath out. Trying to bring that same awareness I have been using on my skull to my ribcage and chest. We'll see how that goes. I suspect pondering the chakras on the next moon-septile go around will be telling, if that's what it is.

Either that or allergies. Could be allergies. I didn't have allergies until we moved here. Ugh, there's so much mold - and it has been snowing lately, creating dampness. I'm taking my allergy meds but they don't seem to be doing a damn thing. My head and ears are still stuffy.

I want to try one full P3 before we move, while spouse is safe at hogwarts and I have the maximum amount of undisturbed peace and calm. After we move things will get more complicated and I'll have to make arrangements to do a solo overnight camping trip or see if there's a meditation center that does retreats. I can't do the P3 in the house with the potential for spouse to wander in unexpectedly, nope. That fucker knows how to recognize and test for intoxication and then my careful plots will be blown. I've been to the Shambala Mountain Center in Colorado a couple times (everybody should go see that stupa once - it's magnificent). They have (had?) a communal sort of setup for hosting visitors and it was really nice. So perhaps a zen or Buddhist organization like that, or an intentional community, where they have an open room I can stay for a night. I'll just tell spouse something-something astrology, something-something "artsy hippie cult", something-something "commune with nature" (and there's no lie at all, that's exactly what I'm doing). It's not a bad thing to have a solo holiday now and then and I suspect spouse won't mind having the house to himself and getting a golden ticket to do whatever he likes for a night, too. Order that triple meat lovers I don't like. Go see those bottom tier movies I am too snobby to watch. Host a one-shot and have over those gamers I won't play with anymore 'cause they are raging murderhobos.

Since I've been focused on septiles I have been seeing certain patterns in the numbers and I'm starting to wonder if the number 7 and 13 aren't connected to a sort of "irrational" natural connection that is invisibly embedded in our "rational" ways of marking time.

Check this out:

7 days in a week, right? Easy.

365 days in a year. 360 degrees around the zodiac.

365/7 = 52 weeks a year. 52 days for the sun to move 1/7 of the way around the zodiac.

(I'm overlooking the decimal leftovers, so sue me, I'm not trying to calculate precision escape velocity here.)

The moon takes 27.3 (28) days to make a complete orbit of the earth, or 29 days complete the cycle of moon phases. The moon moves 13 degrees over a 24 hour period, also making 13 orbits of the earth in a year (but only 12.5 complete moon phase cycles).

13 degrees times 4 is 52. It takes 4 days for the moon to travel 1/7 of the way around the zodiac. There's also 13 weeks in a quarter of the year.

A regular menstrual cycle is assumed to be 28 days (4x7) or synced up to the moon cycle. Mine runs a bit short at about 26 days. Generally 4-6 messy days and then exactly 3 weeks break. I used to look at the moon transits of my chart to see if some astrological link would explain my headaches, but I never found anything. Given the discrepancy of a few days between my cycle and the 29 day moon phase cycle, I'm not going to be synced up to a certain moon phase. But 26 days is twice 13 and half 52, the number of days for the sun to travel a septile.

It's probably too late for me to pretend I'm above the guy with the corkboard covered in pushpins and yarn strung all over it. But I haven't noticed the 7 and 13 connection before and I find it interesting. It's an irrational secret thing in plain sight. 7 being a traditionally lucky number and 13 being unlucky. It has a certain whimsy and humor, doesn't it? We took the moon (and nature) out of our western way of marking time with our dumb uneven 28-31 day months, as if to purposefully snub it. Popular culture doesn't mark the solstice, and seasonal changes are merely annoyances where you flip from heat to AC and back and convince yourself you need a new coat or a new swimsuit. The full moon means nothing but werewolves and witches and PMS and madness - half the people on the planet have a menstrual cycle and the powers that be want no acknowledgement of it, no mercy offered, and we're all so busy trying to kowtow to the standards they suckered the penis-bearers into and prove we're "just as good" at being workhorses that we internalize the burden of secret shame. Only very recently did I see a commercial for feminine hygiene products that used red liquid. RED!! My whole life it's been blue, like we're descended from horseshoe crabs, like we're aliens. We BLEED, motherfuckers. Every month. Past time to acknowledge that truth.

Maybe it's not such a bad idea to reconnect with the planet we live on by thinking about and marking the (irrational) natural rhythms. What even is christmas anymore, anyway? An excuse to get the christians furious about the existence of non-christians and sell them jesus branded stuff? Everything is just plastic and sugar, plastic and sugar. Want some plastic? Want some sugar? Let's all celebrate plastic and sugar. Hey it's Valentine's Day. Want some RED plastic? Want some PINK sugar? Better buy enough or you don't care about your SO. Oh this fucking world. What a madhouse.

I found my bluetooth headphones and miraculously they still hold plenty of charge after being abandoned for 18 months. They were a splurge when I bought them, with good noise cancelling, good battery life, and best of all they're in my very favorite shade of teal. They're at least four years old because I remember whacking my head when I was loading the moving storage box in anchorage. The point being I am now listening to more music and stuff. I hate playing stuff through the phone speaker and casting videos to the TV is extra steps and frustration, and then I walk away and miss things. I'd been taking spouse's computer speakers to the bedroom for music and that's not ideal, so I eventually got annoyed enough to dig up the headphones. They do still work great, they always were very nice and I had forgotten how much I liked them and how useful they are.

So I've been listening to some lectures by Terence Mckenna off youtube. That guy was a visionary, and I wouldn't use that word lightly. He died in 2000 of brain cancer. I started listening out of curiosity for one thing, and then I realized this guy is really talking about the underlying fabric of our civilization as humans, the broad picture, a much larger, deeper scope than I anticipated when I queued up the lecture. He skews romantic idealist and sort of radical creative progressive, he jumps around to this and that, but the bones of what he says are True and that's why people respond to his words. He's like a counter culture motivational speaker, he makes you want to help collective humankind and not just boost yourself.

“We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”

(from "how to ask the universe for what you want") Question: "Can you give us some good ammo against culture?"

Answer: "Media is the big issue, obviously. My attitude toward all of that is, the culture is toxic. Like probably mescaline(?) is the place where the idea was born that there are healing images. That you can heal your body and your mind with the images that you hold in your head. But I've never heard a really intelligent discussion of the implications of that. If there are healing images, there are destroying images. There are sickening images, there are toxic images. And you can bet which are being purveyed in the mass culture. The purpose of capitalism is to imprint its products in your mind and shock is an excellent way to do it. And the two areas as a primate where you can be gotten at most quickly is in the area of sex and violence. So these things for commercial purposes are just played like crazy. So my response to all of this is to say it's a meme war, is what it is. It is a struggle over how shall the world be seen and felt. And as long as you are just consuming the memes coming down through the toxic distribution system, you're a victim and a mark. So what we have to do is produce. Produce, send stuff up the wire. And that's why I think the web is so fascinating and as I said, I think of it as a 16 million channel TV. So whatever your bent is, you should put your message out there, and we should all produce as much art as possible.

"I think the leisure and indulgence that is permitted us, the super rich of this world (and we all are in this class, the upper 5% of the earth's population), you can't live with yourself unless you give something back. And the thing to give back is to share your art, share your soul. The reason we are so controlled and abused and misused by our institutions is because we are divided from each other. They have divided us, by race, by class, by sex, by political style. All of these ways. When in fact, it's in everybody's interest to have a future, to build a world where children can be raised with some reasonable expectation that the world can be preserved. So these mass media things, radio, television and newspapers that have arisen in the last couple of hundred years, this is where a very small group of people literally set the agenda for millions and millions of people. It's called 'top down' or 'one to many' communication. What the web holds out, is this thing called 'any to any' communication. You and I can form a secret society, we can form a secret society of ten people. I can send email to ten thousand people, if I want. The playing field has been tremendously leveled. And then, the quality of what we produce can tip the balance still further, and the tools that are put in our hands now, director, photoshop, all of these things make it possible to communicate outside of these print created monolithic institutions. We can't really imagine a world like that. There hasn't been a world like that since late roman times. The roman hegemony was quite cohesive. If you were living in a village in Armenia ruled by the roman proculator(?) it wasn't touching you very heavily.

"I think the idea of the citizen is arguably toxic. The idea that we all are participating in some enormous policy works against individualism. If you try to nail me to my politics people can't figure out whether I'm a right winger, a left winger, what I am. I'll tell you straight out, I'm an anarchist. I'm an absolute anarchist. I believe in people, more than abstractions or institutions. I will always rely on people, perhaps to a level uncomfortable to you. I remember back in the 60's my line was, if you come upon a mob, you must join. Because the people understand far more than you do about what is going on. That kind of radical commitment to freedom is going to be necessary to dismantle these very very rigid power structures that are being shoved down everybody's throat. So the new culture I think is a dispersed virtual culture on the internet that is not product oriented. Aesthetics should rule the world and the best ideas should win. But we all have to stop being consumers. We have to redefine who we are. It's a much more courageous role.

(...he talks about living in a remote place in hawaii...)

"If you're smart you should buy real estate in extremely remote areas, because soon there will be no remote areas, from the point of view of the 'net. Just a different kind of world is coming into being. It's not a good time for organizations, for massive hierarchical structures that depend on managerial control, and they know it. The corporations don't seek to grow to the size of nations because it's highly inefficient. No corporation has a welfare class built into it. What corporation has a component inside itself that it sends out checks to every month for not working? Well, the executive class! That's the answer to that. Not supposed to say that."

In the lecture, he was so hopeful about the internet and the possibilities for positive cultural change and collective awareness. It was painful to hear, knowing what an abomination it has become. From the year 2022, you can see how a beautiful thing got twisted and corrupted. As bad as he thought things were then, they are almost unimaginably worse now. (And yet, twenty years after this guy died, I am able to instantly access a video and hear him talk in the past, like magic. As they said in The Budapest Hotel, "You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.")

So I'm listening to this guy and I'm gathering my own oddball ideas and I'm merrily pied piper-ing myself off the road and into the woods, aren't I? Like that moment in the Fellowship of the Ring, when Sam stops and says, "If I take one more step, I'll be the farthest from home I've ever been."

I don't know exactly where I'm going, but here I am.