So, tonight was the first real frost warning and I've been telling myself for over a week now (and telling Sarah and Crissy and everyone else I talk to) since the forecast showed things getting down into the 40s that it was just the end of the season and I had to except that it was time for my tomatoes and peppers to be allowed to die because it's the end of the season and they're rarely happy when brought inside and if not now then soon -- but o how sad I was to just let all the fruits and flowers on them just die... And I've been trying to talk myself around to a state of ruthlessness....but, the thing is ruthless is osmething I'm only good at while in the flash point of my anger... I'm not GOOD at ruthless or hurting others or being the reason they suffer.....  So on Friday night Sarah gave me a bag of extra sheets for me to use to cover things overnight once we hit frost season and then tonight.... Ah tonight when the time came for me to make choices and be ruthless and let them end the season the way they're supposed to and they would if they were in the ground in a proper garden not in planters

 When Crissy got here so we could taste and split the pear cider from Genevieve, she came outside and asked, "Is there anything I can help you with out here?" And I looked at her and said, "Not unless you can help me be decisive and ruthless." She laughed, looked me up and down and said, "Nope. There is not a ruthless a bone in your body tonight." then she turned around and went inside to tlak to Sarah left me to struggle with my conscience and my practicality and TRYING to sort out who must die and who can be allowed to live a bit longer inside.....

And. Well. I just. Look. I failed. 

I failed miserably at being cruel and ruthless and accepting the senescence of the end of season nightshades because they're NOT planted in the ground, they ARE in containers and that means that if I love them enough I can bring them inside... And so leaving them outside felt like ABANDONING them and not loving enough to just do the easy thing to do with a cart and I have the space at work.... And I just.... There are things in life that I always always ALWAYS fail at and I just ACCEPT about me that I fail at them. I fail at trying to be a pessimist, I fail at knitting (even highly skilled experienced knitters fail at knitting around me start cussing at the inexplicable knots and snarls of their usually docile yarn -- I think it's personal attendant pixies), and I fail at wanton cruelty leaving things to suffer... And I just, I KNOW this about me. But I really really really thought I could do it this year, just let the autumn take them quietly into the end of their season. And yet, here I am trying to figure out where and how I'm going to keep half a dozen tomato plants and half a dozen pepper plants AND the rosemary, bay tree, lemongrass, lemon verbena, and oregano I always bring in.... And I just. Look. I'm just BAD at being ruthless and unnecessarily cruel. I just am no good at it. The moment I realize my actions could cause harm, I just run right back the other way of what I said I WASN'T going to do this time because honestly things do have a proper season and a.... But, also, it would be easier if I didn't have to hear them screaming and calling out for me and knowing that when they're in pots I COULD just bring them. If I made a very minimal physical effort...

See, it started with the habanero plant. because the habanero still has dozens of young peppers on it that will be ready in the next couple weeks if I just give them a CHANCE but if they stayed out, even under a sheet, they would die. And so it just felt like murdering all of those wee little baby peppers that could be... And so then I was talking to it and myself and saying, 'O alright, but just you because you have all these young fruits that are almost ready and you don't quite yet look ready to give up existence." And then I swear to G-d but all my damn pepper and tomato plants perked up and said, "Ah so that's what it takes to be brought inside?!" and then they all just started like unfurling and working on their fruits before my eyes (Crissy will swear by it too) and so then I felt like a mom picking favorites leaving the ones that were closest to end season anyway out there bringing in the rest of the pack... 

And I. Just. I mean. Look. I just brought everything in that there's even the possibility of bringing it in for the winter and i tucked every damn wooden planter box and remaining herb box I haven't harvested yet in under the sheets like little fucking ghost children. (Except my almond tree which did NOT want to be protected or coddled, it's planted in a whiskey barrel instead of the ground because winters here are borderline for its survival -- and so every year after it drops all its leaves in the fall, I wrap it and bag it for winter to deprive it of light and give it minimal water keep it in a cool corner of shipping until March. So the almond tree was all sorts of defiance had some OPINIONS about being covered in a sheet and swaddled up early for winter. It definitely smacked Crissy in the head and scratched her up and kept battling to be free of her side of the sheet -- and so I finally laughed and said, "Alright bébé, if you insist the cold won't bother you anyway then that's fine. You still have to drop your leaves. But you be stoic and brave and no complaints from you when I come back to check on you in the morning."

So anyway. I should get pictures of them all. because it's a ridiculous greenhouse in here now. I need to finish moving them about and cleaning up the messes of dirt/mud I made because I was more interested in getting them inside before sunset and then enjoying the pear cider with Crissy as planned and then we ordered dinner. And now I need to get back to getting my plants settled in. But also. This is a lot of plants, definite Jumanji vibes right now in shipping and the vestibule trying to navigate until I find spaces for everyone.... An absolute jungle in here, and I don't know if I have trays for all of these....

But. On the other hand. My conscience isn't eating away at me thinking about having left anyone outside all alone in the cold and the dark while all its siblings got to come inside and it was left out to suffer..... And trust me, ain't nobody can make me feel externally mediated shame, but damn my own conscience lays the heaviest guilt on me when I do something that causes suffering to another that i could have made better.... Even after the other person tells me not to feel bad, still I'll be wrestling over my guilt that I could have done better by them. Nobody outside my own soul can shame me for anything I say or do, but nobody but my own choices can free me from any guilt I lay upon my own conscience.

*sigh* But honestly, I'm just really NOT in a headspace or heartspace to be ruthless tonight. It's just not in me... And certainly not to my green babies who didn't do anything to deserve being abandoned to their fate as the first frost advisory of the season arrives tonight -- it's just that winter is coming and the North remembers...

Do you love me like you did before, before we fell apart? Tell me what to do to prove that I won't break your heart. If it's just a case of time I'll wait and hope you come around. And when the fire can't be found I'll set you free to fall again. If the fire can’t be found I’ll set you free to fall again.

 You should remember, that no matter how deep down an overthinking rabbit hole I go, I never WANT anyone other than Eric and I never desire anything more than a reunion chance for us to choose a shared life path. The only thing I want more is that Eric be able to have the happiness he seeks for his life EVEN IF that requires me accepting I have no place in it and need to let him go..... I mean, the stoic realist side of me would tell you (and remind me) that "truth doesn't give a damn about what you want, what you desire" and that I can't lie to myself just to make me believe what I want to be true IS true (or could be true.) So any systematic quest to try to discover truth lies in a process outside of guidance by wants and desires. But it doesn't matter, the wanting and the desire is always there. Even when there's no way to make it manifest into something real. Even when I tell myself that I must deny it because it's not mutual, it's just me wanting it while he's wanting something else. (I don't know what or who he might be wanting when I get to thinking that way, I'm rather vague on that, but just the IDEA that there's something/someone else he wants instead of me brings out the immediate stoic "then I need to let him go to have what he wants for the sake of his happiness.") But still the intensity of my own desire remains inside me -- even when I try to deny it or when I think it's somehow at odds with his desires. It simply IS. Always. Even when I don't let me look at him or see him, I still WANT to I just get it into my head that if I do look at him I won't be able to do what I think is the right thing by him....And it's so far been my truth that the idea that the right thing to do by him is to leave and not look at him, that idea always falls apart whenever that way of thinking gets shaken and I'm faced with the realization that actually he DOES light up different when he sees me and when he has hope that there's a way to reach me.....

Also. I don't THINK that the reason for the way the bond is and the shared dream space and having spent all my life with the past life memories associated to him is about releasing the ties between us... It's way too deep and too much an all of it is always been focused of the good and the brightness and the love within the connection. And I genuinely don't feel like release from the bond is any damn thing he wants, and I know it's not what I want. It's also not anything that's THERE in our past lives, there's only the desire and the incandescent joy that happens when we find each other and are able to choose each other. And I have lots of past lives memories of that.... (Even as a child, almost all my past lives memories were the lives he was in as well. The only other ones I have are ones that shake loose when I catalyze memories in other people.... I tend to serve as a catalyst for waking up other people's gifts just by being around/near them, even when I'm trying to be good not do anything with my own gifts. And I also can look into people's eyes and souls and see past lives within them as they surface, whatever needs healing or the times our paths have crossed before. It's a weird thing to see your past self, versions of you that you forgot you were, rise up in the eyes of another person's past life memories when you shake them up remind them... Once I see it the rest comes through -- but going back to my young childhood, the only ones that have always been awake in me organically from inside myself are the past lives where he and I find and reach each other......) I brought it up as there are only two reasons for such strong memories and knowing, and if this life ISN'T about us working through difficulties to find reunion, then the other option is that it's to heal by letting go of the karmic debts and chains. And I will need to make me face that if that's what this is....

Also also. I don't mind that a person fucks up, we all fuck up including me. For all I know, everything I've been doing regarding Eric has been me fucking up. We all make mistakes. Every single one of us. And I don't ask or even like a grand gesture of acknowledging that if the grand gesture is empty lip service. What I care about is the honesty and integrity of looking at your past choices/actions and recognizing why they were wrong and deciding within yourself to be better than the way you were.  Making atonement for a wrong and/or showing by your present/future actions you're now going to do different, not keep doing the thing you know to be wrong. It's when people continuously repeat patterns of behavior, when there's no changes, that I have to conclude either they don't care or don't see it as wrong. Everyone fucks up and everyone is capable of growing and changing to be a better version of themselves than who they were -- but it won't be by grand gestures you'll convince me you're changing, it will be about what I observe your choices and actions to be....

And also. I should remind you that I DID promise not to do anything to harm or quiet the bond because it's both of ours, not just mine. And I don't intend to break that promise. Because it's OUR bond, not MY bond. And any/every time I've ever pulled away or tried to keep him from reaching me that way he has fought and poured so much love down the bond... Even right now, every night when he heads to sleep the bond is flooded with his love, and often in the mornings when he gets up -- and other times throughout the day for reasons I have no idea why other than he just suddenly feels such an intensity of love and need and floods it down the bond.... Which if I listened to my heart more than my head would be fucking obvious enough to tell me beyond any doubt what his heart wants and what his soul is seeking. I'm just not that heart smart when my head starts thinking that whatever my heart is insisting on is somehow not true to reality or not ethically right somehow.

Um. That's about all I had that I felt a need to clarify just now. So, um here's a painting by Lucy Campbell that I love and makes my heart feel peaceful and infinite and sparkly all at once. It reminds m of a dream, of all my best and favorite dreams. It reminds me of the way it feels when I let me snuggle into his energy down the bond and fall asleep there in that place of holding each other in our love. Lucy Campbell shared it in a post yesterday about prints she's getting low on. I don't actually own a print of this piece... but given how much I love it and how much happy it brings my heart, I should. The problem is, her prints are not cheap and while this one is my favorite so far there are lots of others that tempt me as well.

I'm going to finish this pot of coffee I made with my breakfast and then take the dogs out before heading over to work now that rush hour traffic has all gotten where it needs to be so I can drop off the dogs spend the day at home with Spock. (or at least drop off Sophie because she's the one might be an issue with the cat, Audrey I give the choice of staying at work to beg for everyone's lunches or coming home with me for the day.) And once I'm home, I think I'm going to start some black beans soaking so I can cook them up later to have them in the filling for making some stuffed poblanos/chile rellenos tonight for dinner -- if not today then tomorrow. and then I intend to curl up in my own bed and get some sleep for a bit. Yeah, that's the plan. (and the coffee won't keep me awake. I can drink an entire pot of coffee and fall asleep right afterward. If my body is too tired, coffee can actually make me incredibly sleepy. Coffee doesn't really ever wake me up, but it helps me to focus so my brain isn't so shotgun scatter to every associative thought in response to everything. It's an ADHD thing -- and I definitely have undiagnosed unmedicatd ADHD, runs in my da's side of the family, but I have a lot of coping mechanisms for it including drinking lots of coffee and tea to help me focus instead of being so all over the place. And I work incredibly well in hyperfocus mode if it doesn't get interrupted; this is part of why I tend to work nights/weekends opposite when everyone is in the office for when I'm doing inputting.)

[Post Title: lyrics to the Emma Langford song Free To Fall. This is a song that I adore and listen to on repeat.  Also Emma has been one of my favorite musicians since about 2019 or so when I first discovered her playing The Snug at Milwaukee Irishfest as a part of the Dublin TradFest showcase. Quiet Giant had been on repeat a lot for me these recent years. And her newer album Sowing Acorns is also stunningly beautiful! The thing is, she chooses not to be on streaming services for ethics reasons, so if you want to hear anything other than a handful of singles on Spotify or Youtube, you need to listen on bandcamp or purchase her CDs/downloads. But I HIGHLY recommend it -- they're generally some of my favorite songs in recent years. Free to Fall does have a music video she made for it a year or so ago if you'd rather YouTube it.]

"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley."~Robert Burns (esp in the midst of Mercury retrograde, lol)

 So on the drive to the orchard, we were just outside of Johnson Creek at about quarter after 1 when I suddenly say to Crissy, "Crissy. What if the DVR doesn't record the game for some reason?"

Crissy: "What? Has that ever happened?!"

Dani: "I. No. Not that I know of. And. I checked that it was set to record before I left this morning. It's just. I suddenly have this horrible sense that somehow it's NOT going to record. Not a precog. I didn't SEE it. Just a sudden intuitive FEELING it's going to fail somehow. And after I told my sister it shouldn't be a problem to watch it together later."

Crissy: "I mean. It seems strange that it wouldn't record. Especially if it's never done that before. But this is you, and I've never known your intuition hunches to be wrong. So if it does, I'm sure it will be something random and your sister will understand." 

Due to trying to thread between two severe thunderstorm lines, I didn't get back until 4th quarter. (But my sister and I had plans to start our zoom watching call between 5-6pm CT so that didn't matter much.) I get in and glance at the dvr cable box and it says 1:17 -- which is definitely NOT the time. With a sinking feeling, I turned on the TV and the cable box/dvr and as I suspected, it was locked up on some diag screen I'd never seen before and nothing was responding and the time on the clock wasn't advancing past 1:17.... With a sinking heart I powered it off and on again. It turned on (slowly but the way it's supposed to) but when I went to the list of recordings, it only had one NFL game, the Packers v Bears game last week on 9/18.  I texted my sister immediately with the bad news as I went to find the game as quickly as I could get the guide to flip stations and once there I started recording the remainder of the 4th quarter....

But we definitely saw those last several minutes and those nail biting blood pressure "Are you really going to fucking let Brady tie this up send it to overtime and maybe then lose this game you've been winning?! In the last two minutes?!"

My sister, albeit a Virgo, was really understanding about it told me it wasn't my fault at all but I felt bad about the DVR failure after telling her "it should be fine as long as the DVR records it." I mean, I could have gone to the orchard yesterday, was just enjoying the quiet of staying at home cozy on the cold rainy day until it was time to meet up head to symphony.... If I'd had a proper precog, I would have known better and made sure I was home to verify at least the 3:25 start of the game was recording.... But I DIDN'T have precogs, didn't even have the impending foreknowledge (that came Cassandra style too late to avert the fate) until just minutes before the shift occurred....  And so I felt awful about it.... Because by the time I had the premonition FEELING (which is different than a precog seeing/hearing/living in the future moment) we were halfway to the orchard and if I turned around then when i realized, we would be unable to visit the orchard before close and Genevieve (one of the family who own the orchard) had a half gallon of pear cider set aside for us as a gift. It's something special they make just for the family but don't sell it and she wanted to include us in the gifting of this batch, and it has a high sugar content ferments fast can't be left in the sun even for short times and needs to be drunk within a couple days. Which was very sweet and she asked us last week if we would like some if there was enough so I knew we HAD to go to the orchard this weekend. And it meant I was able to get soooooo many Ananas Reinette apples!!! (they're a small yellow skinned speckled apple from Alsace-Lorraine, the name means "Pineapple Russet" and this year the flavors are so good and complex and it's so tannic tart delicious!!!! So when I said I'd only grabbed half dozen in a mixed bag, Genevieve grabbed me one handed it to me to try (I don't like to assume, small family business, integrated pest management no chemicals -- I want to pay them for my apples so I accept gifts with gratitude, but I never assume or try for myself without asking) after I admitted I'd only grabbed about half dozen in a mixed bag and she told me to try it right then because knowing my apple prefernces for the tart complex crisp apples, she knew I'd adore it. And after I did, I filled an entire extra bag of them, especially since they will keep well in the fridge -- until May if I can manage not to eat them over the winter! 

So the sudden sinking hearted knowing was one of those stupid disheartening Cassandra premonitions of a future doom/failure where you can't even fucking change it from the trajectory you're on without fucking something else up.... And the thing is, they're always about something irrational or improbable, bad things that are statistically UNLIKELY to happen and yet I have a sudden sinking feeling and disappointment that the improbable sorrow/suffering will manifest somehow -- and yet I can't just SEE the glimpse to know what's contingent or immutable and when it will be and what if anything I could do to avert it.... Premonitions like that are even worse than my classic version of playing Cassandra where I fucking TELL everyone the precogs I've seen and nobody fucking listens to me until it's too late to change the dang path and now what was contingent has become immutable and we're stuck with it and it sucks and we didn't HAVE to be stuck with it if people only just LISTENED to me when I state the improbable things that i expect to come true and happen... 

On a side note: sometimes I claim and prophesize random seeming improbable GOOD premonitions/precogs that nobody can make  sense of until they happen. Things like me being in front of a stage at Irishfest between sets and chirping, "O I'm so excited for when we'll get to see Punch Brothers at Irishfest!" and Crissy just raising an eyebrow said, "I mean, that doesn't seem likely, but I'm here for it if it happens" and my ex boyfriend who is a skeptic didn't know about my gifts but knew I could be a bit uncanny and it scared him. so he just blinked at me and said, "DANI! That makes no SENSE! Why would Punch Brothers play Irishfest?!" Are any of them even Irish?!" Me happily: "Not that I know of!" Him: "But that doesn't make and SENSE?! Are you sure you don't mean Summerfest?!" And I sipped osme of my red flavored snow cone and told him, "I do NOT mean Summerfest, I've SEEN Punch Brothers at Summerfest and if I meant Summerfest, I'd have said so. The stage names are different. Punch brothers WILL play Irish fest, in front of that banner with the irish-ified nstage name. I don't know how or why, I only know is." And he said, "Well that's just not something that I just can't see happening. You're just making things up now." Which got me angry and I glared at him said, "Well of course YOU can't see it. I didn't see YOU there for it. Just Crissy and me. And I don't know WHY Punch Brothers will play Irish Fest, but they will. And I'll see it and Crissy will see it but YOU will NOT see it." They announced soon after that, after I had definitely broke up with the ex, that the nextyear's theme for Irishfest was "roots and branches" and would feature bluegrass/newgrass artists -- including Punch Brothers. Who played the exact stage I had said they would. (This was towards a rather rocky end of that relationship, if you can't tell. In large part because his dismissiveness and refusal to listen to anything form my gifts was not only patronizing but ALWAYS lead to precisely what I had warned would happen if my precogs weren't heeded and I was tired of cleaning up messes I could easily have avoided if I was listened to. Also, he never once apologized or admitted I had been right with my sudden intuitive knowing he had refused to listen to, just shrugged and the closest to an apology I ever got was "I mean it was so unlikely -- how could anyone have KNOWN that?!" Anyway. There's a reason he's an ex... In general, trying to figure out when and how to discuss my gifts with boyfriends is always difficult for me... One of these days, I'd like to be with a man who knows and accept s and listens and loves me for all my wyrd gifts. Where he sees them and hears me and believes me and doesn't need to be convinced or cajoled that even when improbable still my spiritual gifts and wyrdness are my truth...It would be nice to be accepted and loved for my witchy/fey gifts just as they are and just as I am with them.)

Anyway. This was one of the disheartening because I cna't avert them premonition FEELINGS not a precog SEEING that the DVR would somehow not record the game and we'd miss most of it.... The only precog(s) I've had since the major fate line fluxes over the week were on Friday afternoon. I was getting dressed for the Della Mae concert and was just about to put the sweater on when I got a quick precog flash of me wearing that outfit at Overture Hall. So I rolled my eyes at my reflection, stamped my foot and said, "O thanks. This is definitely important enough to precog flash. Glad to have you back but hell, if I'm wearing this outfit tomorrow night, WHAT will I wear tonight to Stoughton Opera House, hm? That's where my time crunch is after all...."  And obligingly, I got a very weak precog of me and Crissy at Stoughton Opera House and thus knew what I'd be wearing. I quirked an eyebrow at my reflection, put my hands together in gratitude gave a bow and said, "Thank you! That is much more useful precog for right this moment." And I honestly didn't care if they were self fulfilling prophecies or not, I often test and try to foil my precogs because of a scientific "desire to disprove the hypothesis" mindset (spoiler alert: the immutable precogs always come true, even if they're random stupid things like a glimpse of me somewhere so I know the outfit/company/place and even if I TRY to wear something else or try to let other people choose a different restaurant, I spill somethign that stains on the outfit need to change or the restaurant option is randomly closed/long wait time and stupid things keep getting in the way until I give in to accepting the precog or if the other person knows about my gifts they get exasperated say something like, "Dani just tell me WHERE you saw us eating -- this is stupid and I'm hungry." Anyway, so I DID have some minor precogs on Friday afternoon/evening, but they were the small kind that occur all the time in short timeframe loops and not anything big.... (on a side note, packing is WAY easier if you can peek ahead or ask for a precog from each day to know what outfits/shoes/outerwear to pack. Packing always takes me waaaaay longer if for some reason the precogs aren't flowing the way they typically do. It also works for assisting other people (especially kids) with packing or for making sure that you don'tforget things you almost forget. Half the time when I think I'm done packing or ready to leave home to head out the door for a drive to a show, I pause and close my eyes and think to myself, "Right, let's check contingent precogs -- what might go awry if I leave right now just like this? What am I forgetting that I will need?" And THAT is  avery useful way to use my minor precog second sight playing flipping through the fatelines. Much better than some of the ways I use the gift.... (Look, sometimes I will literally just ADHD fidget spin with the flow of time for absolutely no purpose, sometimes not even realizing I'm doing, rather than use a physical fidget after getting yelled at so much by teachers in elementary and physical middle school for tapping or playing with my hair or flipping my pens/pencils around my fingers....) 

Anyway. The dogs and I are back at work. The Packers won. My sister and family and I still got to watch the last quarter of the game at least. I avoided being caught in the 60mph winds with quarter inch hail sever storm cells. I got to spend time with Genevieve's 3 beagles (they're always there on Sunday, Audrey is always welcome to visit, but Sophie doesn't always get along with other dogs so I'm waiting until after my parents get back to bring Audrey to the orchard again.) We acquired our half gallon gift of pear cider and plan to split it and drink some of it tomorrow night. So many of my favorite varieties of apples are available now and I bought myself 27lbs of apples (at $2/lb)!!!! So things really didn't quite go as planned, but it's alright and things worked out.

~*~*~*~*~

O right! Also. On the precog/premonitions front! For what it's worth... I don't currently have any precogs or even premonitions regarding Eric. Not positive ones, not negative ones. None. It's just an opaque void of unknown.... 

I can't see that he IS in my future fatelines, but I also can't see that he ISN'T.... Everything, and I do mean every damn thing, that I have said about me not seeing me in his life or his future or that he doesn't want me because he is in love with someone else -- it's all overthinking coming from my head and logic (which may or may not have bad premises) and trying to make me come to terms stoically with what I don't want to be true rather than allowing myself to believe any lies. None of that is coming from any precogs I've seen or any premonitions I've had. 

I DID have both precogs and premonitions that they were going to sign to a country label and I'd have to let the band go and it was going to change everything but there was nothing I could say or do to stop them from changing those fatelines to less painful lessons from failures paths -- and I warned Crissy about it coming over half a year before they announced the signing to Big Machine. And following the choice made on Oct 28, 2018 I had the sudden shift of fate lines and the precogs of every consequence of that choice and how I wouldn't be able to avert any damn one of them no matter how hard I tried until I reached the point of complete failure and giving up every one of the contingent precogs I've had since I was a kid about the future that WOULD be if we found each other to reunite, even though it takes a lot to push me to give up on anything I care about. And I hated those precogs and I fought every one of them and I've tried and tried and every one of them has come true... And I hate it and knowing it's coming doesn't make the hurt or feeling of betrayal or loss of faith in a person's ethics any easier to bear....

But as for where things go from HERE?! O, all my conclusions are just hypothesis-probability logic driven overthinking. Ain't a damn thing about the trajectory as I see it from here that has anything to do with seeing a precog or feeling a premonition. It's all a blank slate, a tabula rasa -- there have been no choices that would define the path that the precogs/premonitions would be generated from. I haven't SEEN or FELT any damn thing to make me draw my current conclusions -- it's all just my overthinking the circumstantial evidence and my assumptions about how/why the events of the past were chosen by other people to go down these current paths. It's all overthinking and drawing conclusions from the overthinking. None of it is fated knowing, none of it is from my gifts. I can see nothing, neither good nor bad, regarding Eric and me and our future paths. In large parts because none of the choices that would determine WHICH path we walk from here has yet been decided/chosen by the person(s) whose free will would set the course.

I don't know if that's reassuring or not... But, none of my current conclusions and sitting in hurt and stoic acceptance is based on anything my intuitive spiritual gifts have shown me... And. If I sit and poke at my gifts.... I. Well. in my subconscious KNOWING, what i feel from him is love and desire and fear and hopelessness because he can't see a way to what he wants but a deep abiding certainty and promise within him that he KNOWS what he wants and nothing can change that and while he may not know how to get from here to any damn thing he desires, he's very clear on his desires..... And if I wanted to do anything to make his path easier right now, all he would want would be to know that I see him and to feel that the love runs both ways and I still love him. (I do love him. It's not a lack of love or desire keeps me from letting me see him -- it's my (potentially mistaken) belief that to look at him would just end up hurting both of us down the line for wanting what we can't seem to have and make work.) If I poke with my intuition at it all, there's just a bubbling glowing love trying to burst into full beauty and his reaching and trying to keep me from giving up on him or me moving somewhere he cannot find or reach me..... Which makes no sense, it's just what my heart says it KNOWS about his heart, no matter the distance or miscommunications, it insists that my head is all wrong and he knows what he wants for his happiness, he just doesn't know how to make it his.

But yeah, my current stoic head space has nothing to do with fated events or my precogs or any spiritual gifts or my desires that have spun me to believing that there's no place for me in his life and it's past time for me to let him go. That's all overthinking and my analysis of the evidence and data that I can see from my limited subjective knowledge. And my assumptions that he's dating around and seeking some other woman to fill his loneliness so he doesn't feel the only single in his group of peers, the only one who still is nowhere near his happily ever after. 

And.... For all I say I need to accept that he wants someone else doesn't want me and I need to let him go completely and move on.... I'm still currently single and  not dating anybody else and there's nobody available in my life I'm even the littlest bit interested in. And I'd rather be alone than with someone who is a waste of time or not what I want.... And right now, the deepest truest parts of my heart only want him -- I can make me accept he doesn't want me and he should be free to have whatever it is he does want -- but I can't make me want someone other than him. Hearts don't work that way. Souls don't love by fiat ultimatums. And even if I can't be with him because there's no place for me in his life and he doesn't seem to want me or care about me, still I don't want anybody but Eric. And I'd rather be single than pretend or make someone else fall in love with me when I just want Eric...

If I asked you to remember, Why we set out on this road. You gonna fight me or surrender? That it wasn't all my fault. 'Cause you're breaking down, and I can tell it's deep. There's a tidal wave that's rushing towards the beach. But your anger has such beauty underneath, And we all want love. Yeah we all want love. There's no end to what we're feeling, Just some breaks along the way. I get so caught up in the meaning of it all, While my heart just wants to play.

 O right yes. When I said there are only two reasons for karmic ties from the past and past life memories to resurface in any give life -- for healing renewal of the connection to continue to help it grow together or to zero it out let go of the karmic debts between you, both good and bad. And that's true. But it's also true that in all the years of this life I've always assumed that this life fell into that first category of voluntary karmic chains and joy in the reunion whenever it finally is allowed to grow once more. Never have I considered until recently that perhaps I was wrong in my faith all these lifetimes and all my years of this life, that maybe the reason for the bond pulling us together and all the psychic connections and past life memories is so we can choose the second course and release each other from our old promises and what binds our souls to find each other and seek each other across lifetimes...that maybe release from me and those old promises and the chains of our karmic pasts is what he truly wants with his free will choices. That to be free of the bond to me and the pull of it is the only reason his soul desired to cross paths with my soul this life... It's been hard for me to consider that possibility, and given I don't know what he desires I don't claim it's TRUE that the fate that binds us together and pulls between us is because he desires to be free of me.... but I only know that IF it's his truth, then I would wan to let him have that free will choice and release him from any expectations or desires or past promises of mine keeping him bound to me if I'm no part of what he would choose for himself......

It breaks my heart so much worse than I can possibly words to even consider that maybe this life and all it's star crossed fates is designed so that I can let go of my desire for the outcome that we have reunions and to release him of the bond and the chains of our old promises and the karma that strengthens the ties between our souls.... I hate to think that this life is about karmic releasing not reuniting in love.... But I have to at least admit the possibility and ask the questions in the light of how everything has gone these recent years... I no longer have blind unquestioning faith that it's all there because our reunion and the healing and the love and the growth and shared life paths WILL be both of ours again in this lifetime. It was already shaken deeply, and the realization that it all matters so little to him that he's already looked elsewhere fallen in love with some other girl was the last nail in the coffin for my old unquestioning faith and hope and reasons to cling to the first of the two possibilities, the one that happens to align with my own selfish desires outcome 

 I recognize that in the past, part of my process over these last three years that got us here was the bargaining of accepting that if we can't be together this lifetime then that doesn't mean we can't be in the future if that's where free will choices lead so there's no place for me in his life for this lifetime. And I'm not abandoning that as a possibility because I can't even tell you my own future in this life because free will choices have altered the course of all my old contingent precogs.... I suppose they're not gone, they're just not on the current trajectories of life paths. But the thing with life paths is they're what you walk, not the trajectory it's headed -- and what you walk is built entirely of free will choices, y'know? 

So I can't say that there is no path to those happy joyous contingent precogs that used to feel so fated to become real. And I certainly can't say that there WON'T ever be future lives where our soul paths cross again. I would like for both to be true.

But the thing is, I don't feel like anything that has happened since Oct 28, 2018 has any damn thing to do with MY desires. I may DESIRE to get to those fatelines where we have a future together this life and I may DESIRE to have future lives where we can be together in healthy relationships where we can both grow and as learn new lessons be better versions of ourselves.... But my DESIRES can't in any way shape the choices that got us into this mess nor can they get us out of it.  In the end, my two "missteps" where there's opportunity to assess and question what I may or may nt have done awry was 1) being honest and truthful about my own feelings and reactions 2) having a desired outcome for a given relationship dynamic. Those were the only two factors within my own choices and my own control that I could even consider to find lessons in.

The choice to be defensive in the face of an honesty that "if you choose to continue with these choices to try to succeed at country radio, the country music at shows is causing me pain due to my synesthesia so I will cease putting myself in situations that I know will cause me, personally, pain" and then to act out on that defensiveness and continuously double down on the defensiveness that you never did anything wrong isn't about my choices -- it's about the way someone else reacts to my honesty and that's not with anything I can control or my desires can shape. That's about the other person, about the version of them they choose to be in the moment of their reaction and in the future moments as the consequences of their past reaction(s) unfold. What else would you have had me do? Lie? Stay despite the raw physical pain I was enduring just to try to be there? Remain silent about the cause of my leaving just have disappeared never returned and you never know why? Because those were my options, and I tried staying despite my pain and I stayed until I realized that I was experiencing so much pain I wasn't even getting joy from their sets anymore due to how much pain I was still in from the opening act(s) and the before/between sets playlists of bro country artists. It was the Q106 Toys for Tots holiday show at The Majestic in Madison back in 2017 that was my realization of "I can't keep putting me through this anymore" and it was me literally flinching and convulsing from the music while the then 12 year old (who adored them more than any other band ever and this was her first time ever getting to see them live and it ended up such a bad experience due to the country music that the Taurus teen decided she was done with them for causing me so much pain) had her hands clamped over my ears and me still flinching like I was being jabbed with a cattle prod every time the vocals twanged on the songs playing between sets.... Once I realized the pain from the country radio songs surrounding their sets was robbing me of feeling any joy in the sets, I took that option off the table. So my options remaining were 1) to speak my truth of my experiences honestly 2) to lie rather than speak the hard to hear truths 3) to leave silently with no explanation for the reasons of disappearance. I refused to lie because that's simply not in my nature by a conscious choice I made when I was in the 4th grade recognized that trust can't be built on a foundation of lies and no meaningful relationships can exist without mutual trust. And I considered just leaving ceasing to show up, but I felt that if it were me and my business, my art, my career, if I lost a faithful fan/customer who had loved everything I ever did and had stood for, I would want to know what I did that made them leave and give up on me so they deserved as much from me. So I chose honesty about my experiences and for that I was blocked -- for speaking the truth of my own experiences that the country radio at shows was so painful to my synesthesia it would stop me attending future concerts. That was my experience with my synesthesia and my truth, it's my truth EVERY time I have to endure country radio artists, the reactionary defensiveness to hearing the hard truths of my honesty about my experiences was the choices that was about Britt and Liz and their choices and the choices they made in the name of the entire collective of the band to respond to honesty and truth with bullying via ostracism and injustice.

So what lessons COULD I learn regarding honesty and truthfulness? That I shouldn't choose to be honest about my lived experiences or that I should shut up about the hard truths that the person holding all the power doesn't want to hear? Fuck that -- down that road one only finds paths of the abused and paths of injustice that is never fought. The only lessons I can derive from it is that the choice of being honest and speaking up about hard truths is mine -- how those with power to harm you REACT to truths they don't want to hear or they don't want other people to know is about THEM. You don't betray honesty and truth, not even when someone who always claimed to stand up against injustice chooses to become the bully because they don't want people to know the truth of their own defensiveness and ego.

Now we get to the part about my own desires an what lessons there are for me about my desires for a given outcome....

Well. On this I am guilty. I have long held desired outcome, across lifetimes, that Eric and I could bend our life paths back together in any/every lifetime we're given that chance and to choose to heal and grow to better versions of ourselves within the light of that love and the bond that pulls us back towards each other. I've wanted that for so long, for so many lifetimes and all of this lifetime, and for so far back that I genuinely can' remember a lifetime without that desire being there somewhere inside of me whether we were able to realize it or not in those lives.... It was that raw desire for our paths to cross once more if that's what he wanted which is why for this reward life of mine I asked that 1) any soul seeking me be able to find me 2) I wished to live my entire life surrounded by people I love who could love for me qua me 3) For as long as those first two conditions were met, I want to grow old again because I haven't in centuries... I didn't choose to ask for him directly in this (or any) reward life because the only way for their to be meaning in me getting what I want would be if it was also what he wanted and chose -- it would be meaningless to have him in my life if that wasn't what he wanted and chose for himself and his life path this life. I still stand by that. I just asked for the conditions that as long as he was seeking me and me as I am was something he desired and valued, he'd find me this life.

Ad the thing is, all of this life, I never once doubted that there was anything wrong with my desire for a specific outcome. I never doubted that with all the flood of past life memories of when our lives have interwoven and the pull of the bond and all the shared dream space and ability to reach each other even over distances throughout my childhood and early adulthood, I never doubted he would find me and I'd get the outcome I wanted, that it was fated to happen somehow at some point. Sure I'd get bored and date whoever was in my life while I waited, knowing every time that what was wrong with them for me was that they weren't him. But I never doubted my desire or that the outcome I desired was fated to come true once we crossed paths. The very IDEA of doubting my desired outcome never once entered my head. The closest that came was, "What if this life of mine ends before he finds me or before we can choose a path to walk together?" and my answer for that was, "Death is inevitable, short or long life that's what incarnating being born means, and if that happens then there will be future lives with future fateline paths we can walk together when our souls and our karma choose that for us both." Never once in my entire life did I ever doubt it -- not until August 2019 when he, personally, was all excited talking about going live on the band's account to celebrate their Kickstarter success with "all our fans and backers" but then didn't even CARE about the injustice of going live there after some of those fns and backers had been blocked on the band account for their past honesty. And first I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he simply didn't know -- after all if he had nothing to do with blocking any fans there, how could he know anyone was blocked? So I naively assumed he simply didn't know and that speaking the difficult truth telling him why he was doing something wrong and unjust by going live on the band instagram account claiming it was a way to thank ALL the fans and ALL the backers. I put my faith once again in being honest about my lived experiences and speaking up the hard truths.

But all I got to the dms was that they were marked seen but no replies. And when I tried to bring it up publicly, all I got was victim blamed and attacked by the band's "diehards" because nobody associated with the band would ever have done anything like that unless I deserved it so obviously it was my fault. And from him there was no actions, no responses (though he did still reply to other people's comments and the official band twitter even liked some of the comments from diehards replying to me bringing up why not ALL the fans could attend an instagram live unless the band did something about addressing the blocking of fans for any criticism of not being fans of country radio that occurred on their instagram account under their previous management.) And that hurt. That hurt damn deep. As Bronx said tonight on the Patreon preview of their October reading for Libra, "Betrayal never comes from a stranger, only from someone you trust." I had TRUSTED that he simply didn't know but that his claim to stand against injustice and bullying and to stand for seeking social justice was true.I had TRUSTED he would and should care once he knew. And he didn't. He did nothing, he didn't respond, he went right on ahead with taking active part in bullying and ostracism and excluding people while claiming to stand for inclusiveness as a band and as an individual. 

And that hurt, it hurt deeply, and it made me need to reassess a lot of things....

I concluded that he had failed the test, was still choosing peer pressure over doing what his ethics claimed to stand for -- that he STILL was failing that same damn lesson of what to do when choosing between social pressures and personal ethics which he failed 600 years ago. And so after sitting with my sense of hurt and betrayal and rejection and injustice following his choices of August 2019,  I reached the point I accepted that Divine Timing is Divine Timing and only he can learn his lessons in his own time and way so I can't rush it with my desires -- that until he learned that lesson and learned it true enough to pass his soul tests on it, I would only veer be a catalyst of that test for him and we couldn't be healthy and healing and a source of soul growth for each other. And it was in that spirit which I accepted that this life now was not the timing intended for our paths to cross again and to renew a lifetime of choosing each other as our shared path and shared fate, that my desire and impatience had brought us together too soon before he'd learned his karmic soul lessons and this was the price of my desire trying to force Divine Timing so I would accept "not this life" and in that spirit wish him my hail and farewell at the three shows I had tickets to see them in Nov/Dec 2019. (Tickets I bought after they announced they were indie, during my naive hope that they wouldn't knowingly be bullies and maybe it had all somehow been a misunderstanding from their management/country label which had got me blocked for my honesty that country music at shows would keep me from attending future shows and once they were independent in charge once more of their own band and their own image and their own social media it was all fixable where it had been broken -- that I didn't need to let them go, I just had to speak up the truth of what happened give them a chance to make it right again.) I went to Ann Arbor, Chicago, and Minneapolis with the intention of a proper farewell and goodbye (for now and however long it takes) since I already had the tickets from when I'd dared hope for something better.... In Ann Arbor I wouldn't even let me look at Eric, not once for that entire show, because I didn't think it fair on either of us to give him the lie of false hope when I was there as a goodbye.... And in Chicago, I, I had my rose quartz polar bear charm pendant from Detroit Zoo polar gift shop on me because I didn't want to leave it hanging visibly in the car where it normally is, and rose quartz makes all my empath gifts stronger and all I could feel was how hurt and sad and confused he was, and when I looked at Ian  he just gestured with his head over at his brother asking me to at least LOOK at him because he was so emo and miserable where he'd only hoped for joy after how much joy there was at all the summer shows of 2019... And I just,between the intensity of everything from Eric down the bond and the intensity of meeting Ian's eyes na dhim asking that I decided that it wouldn't be a goodbye without making it a good goodbye, acknowledging all the good and beauty and joy that the band had brought me over the years and that included the joy in having found/been found by Eric against all the odds.... So in Chicago I gave in to the connection and all the brightness and joy and love there and all the potential for it to burn brighter still -- because it was all still a part of the truth of it all. And in Minne I came in still in that inner space and was there in that magickal place where everything shines extra bright and is full of promise for most of that show. And I was there, and I was even asking myself if I HAD to say goodbye, had to make myself let go, until the part of Brittany talking all about the importance of standing up to speak the hard truths to power then saying from the stage "please find us on our Instagram, we would love nothing more than to have all of you follow us there" and him re-echoing the desire to have everyone join in there and then Brittany saying, "I hope this song gives you the strength to leave that job, to walk away from that relationship that isn't going anywhere, to stand up for yourself." as her intro to Hands Dirty.... And it was that plea to do the impossible, what had been MADE impossible by her defensive choices and his choice of inaction after being directly told about why it was impossible for me to join them there eon their Instagram while blocked on the band's account, those words are what made all that new born joy and hope die inside me. It just hurt all over again... And it just, all that light and fire and joy in the connection being renewed it all just went out inside me like a bucket of water drenching me from head to toe... And so I looked at him one last time and had an inner,"Farewell my love" and I shut down blocked out the bond, and I looked one last time at all of them to say my inner goodbye -- and I deliberately stepped behind a very tall man and a pillar so that I couldn't see the stage and nobody on the stage could see me even while standing on the box... Not even when Ian stood on it during Dance in the Graveyards which is one I've always loved right from the start and always made me shine extra bright, but there was no luminous brightness in me at all that time, everything just burned out and sodden unable to be re-lit and physically without having any soul brightness to shine around the physical barriers there was nothing to help him find me in the crowd after I said that inner goodbye. 

And everything since then has been about me fighting the battle to square the circle of the hurt eveyr time that old injustice and bullying is picked at and my selfish desires to still at least SEE him know hes' happy with his life path he's chosen for himself and accepting that he has the right to his free will choices and I can't force the hands of Divine Timing...

And somewhere in Leo season, I recognized that.... As long as any part of me clung to my own selfish desires for a given outcome, I wasn't truly ACCEPTING his actions, what he had done with his free will choices and the consequences of his choices for his life path.  That to truly accept his choices as his own to make was to remove any hope of my desires EVENTUALLY coming true because my desires would require shifting his life path in ways that he wasn't choosing for himself... So I decided that I would choose radical acceptance of his choices/actions and let him make his own paths, in this life and his future lives, without being bound by the chain of my selfish desires for my reunion with him -- to let him go with no expectations of him choosing for our paths to cross... To let go of all desires within me that his path cross mine so our futures could have the same shared path and to instead let myself be guided by the pull of what lights me up with joy and to be in the places where people choose me and love me as I am, honesty of my own truths and all....

So. That's where I'm at. That's what I'm trying to do. Because it's the only way that I can see for me to truly respect his free will to take him wherever it is he wants to be to find whatever happiness it is he seeks given where we are now and the choices that he has made or allowed to be made in his name.... For me to take radical acceptance of his choices and his right to whatever life path he chooses even if there's no place for me in it and that it's wrong of me to hold him to old promises and the chains of my desires for the outcome I have desired.... He doesn't have to choose me or any future paths with me in it if that's not what he desires and chooses for his life of his own free will -- and his will isn't free if I dare to bind it with my desires for a given future fate lines and old promises he may have outgrown...

It sucks and I hate it and it doesn't get me what I DESIRE -- but it's the ethically right thing to do in light of the life he has built for himself, the choices that have been made for him by those he trusts most, and the choices he has made for himself when given a chance to fix what was broken in 2018....

I still quite firmly believe that all things that break can be fixed with acts of intention. But... I can't choose for him or his sister or the band or anyone else to WANT to fix this, and all intention to make things better than they've been has to start from a place of WANTING to make things better. As long as you  don't see anything wrong with how something is, there can be no intention to fix what you refuse to see as broken. And no amount of desire to fix it on my side can do any damn thing if the people with power to do something to fix things refuse to even acknowledge that things got broken and need fixing... I can't make his free will choices for him, all I can do is accept the choices he's made up until now and hope that they will get him to the happiness that he seeks. And that if they don't bring him the happiness he seeks, then I wish for him the courage to figure out what went wrong, what choices and consequences got him to where he is so he can figure out what choices he has to make to get him to the happiness he seeks for himself, in this lifetime and all his future lifetimes. Because, after all, I can force myself to this sort of radical acceptance of his free will where I let go of even my desires for a given set of outcomes -- but still all I have it in me to wish for him is that he reach the happiness he seeks and that he find his way to get there wherever and whatever it is. All I ever wanted for him, in any life, was for him to be all alight in that brilliant joyous soul light light that shines from him when he chooses what he truly loves and finds joy in. The world is dimmer for me if I have to imagine it without the light of his soul at its brightest truest.... So I won't desire I be any part of his life if there's no place for me and I won't desire that he ever have to cross life paths with me again in his future lives if that's not what he wants -- but damnit all I still desire that the light of his joy and his love be shining somewhere, with whatever brings that to shine brightest in him, on whatever paths he takes in this life and all his future lives.

*sigh* I'm not going to find my answers at quarter to 5 in the morning after not sleeping all night.... I'm gonna go make a cuppa tea now and read until predawn light tells me to go watch the sunrise. My only plans for today are to head home at some point to see my cat Spock and change into Packers gear, drive to New Berlin to stop by Westons Antique Orchard for more heirloom apples and fresh cider, watch the Packers game late on delay at like 5pm via Zoom with my sister's family (my niece Monroe has an afternoon birthday party so my sister asked me if I would watch with them after they get back.)  

O. And it's the Libra new moon and Rosh Hashanah. Luckily for me that the eating apples for a sweet year is the easiest part of me keeping the Jewish High Holy Days. At least it's the start of the High Holy Days, not Yom Kippur, I still have time for the soul searching and to ask forgiveness for any wrongs I've done before the book of the year closes. I'm Jewish by birth in this life, but my soul cleaves to older Universalist daoist pantheist pagan beliefs. Still, the traditions of soul searching and atonement and forgiveness for moving into the next year is one of the few things I keep of Jewish traditions because I like it as a healthy process for any soul of any faith to come clean with one's own conscience and your concept of the Divine. Funny enough, last night last night in the lobby before symphony, I ran into Maureen one of my Jewish friends from Camp Shalom and one of my closest high school friends who hadn't seen in over a decade. She lives in Chi but is in town visiting her parents for Rosh Hashanah since it falls on tomorrow at sunset and her and her husband decided to come see symphony tonight. They even ended up seated in our same row just a 4 people down from us, curiously enough. She actually reminded me it was Rosh Hasahanah Sunday at sunset, which otherwise might have slipped my mind. Makes her the first for me to exchange "L'shanah tova" with for the coming year, lol.

P. S. Because of the instrumentals of the song in my head, I decided it only appropriate to make a cuppa Breathe Deep to honor the lyrics. This was my tea tag.... 

If you'll pardon the dark circles under my eyes right now from a significant lack of proper sleep recently, these were some of my reactions at the Universe's sense of humor. 

Now what's a girl supposed to do with tea tag advice signs/synchronicities like that?!?!

Best my tire brain has got is not to do anything unless it's coming entirely from a place of love.  That even free will can choose to be bound in ties and chains of love, and that that's the one Universal law greater than the sanctity of free will. So not to do anything impulsively that doesn't come completely and entirely from love. 

That's the best I got to understand that tea tag synchronicity as advice after I'd written this whole dang post to help me purge a catharsis from all the feelings whirling about inside me, the ones in the post title brackets and all. Like I said, Universe has a funny sense of humor and timing.... 

O my sweet bear.... How is this such a fucking mess that should have been so easy? *Sigh* I wish I could find the end of the string that I could give one good solid tug and untangle the whole damn mess to let us try again. Not start over, we start over we repeat the same stupid mistakes. But to untangle the mess so we can try again, with all the lessons that the mess taught us of what we don't want to do from here forward 

[Post Title: Lyrics to the Delta Rae song The Meaning of It All. I have always loved this song, and weirdly it's never made me want to cry like it does for so many other people (including him) because I always hear in it the strength to endure that is the bedrock of it against all the rocks. It's that promise in the lines, "Cause we're breaking down, and I can tell it's deep. There's a tidal wave that's rushing towards the beach. But you know I'll be there waiting, With my arms outstretched to reach for you, my love. 'Cause we all want love." that is what stays with me always from that song. Those lines of promise and the piano melody with the strings arrangements.  Sometimes, when I've hurt the hardest and made myself be the most stoic in radical acceptance of letting him go if that's what he wants and his choices dictate, my brain will play for me just that piano and strings part of the song and even when my conscious brain won't let me hear his voice and thus the words themselves as a reminder, just my inner jukebox playing for me the piano melody and strings arrangements when I'm hurting worst I'll feel the comfort of that bedrock promise in the song like the strongest warmest love filled hug. Through everything else and all the doubts and the mistakes and the messes and the letting go and the heartaches, that's the one thing I've held onto that has stayed with me and is still with me even now, even in me trying to accept that letting him go mean not just letting go of desires outcomes for THIS lifetime but accepting it may never be in future lives.]

 O, how is it that I hate country music claim it's physically painful to me but am once again going to see Della Mae (a bluegrass band) again? Well. I get it's confusing, how many bluegrass artists are among my favorite artists definitely seems on the surface inconsistent with my claim that country radio and country style vocalists cause me physical nerve pain. The short version of it is that the ladies of Della Mae are wonderful humans and activists and most of their songs are beautiful with brilliant instrumentation, I don't love all their songs because sometimes their vocals/harmonies twang enough to be physically painful for me but not most of the time. It's about 30% of the time that their vocals are off enough due to country twang to be painful, but not as bad as most country singers and the other 70% makes up for it. There ARE country vocalists  like (though no bro country artists and no country radio cma artists, not even Taylor Swift.) Most of the country artists I like come from bluegrass or older classic country music. 

The more complete version is that the physical pain from MOST twanging vocals is a byproduct of my color-timbre synesthesia and thus to understand it you need to understand the synesthesia itself..... So, I can't TELL you exactly how/why a grad piano is the silky deep indigo-blue-blacks through silvery-steel of waves on open water under a full moon or a fiddle flickers the crimson-tawny-golds of firelight but in the jewel tone clarity of precious gems or a cello is a deep-crimson purply wine colored jewel tone or an acoustic guitar with typical metal strings is the jewel like green of sunlit birch/beech/aspen Sprig/Summer leaves but a classical guitar (or any guitar strung with nylon strings) is the beautiful golds of sun through birch/aspen Autumn leaves or why an electric guitar (without any pedals or anything that causes distortion wobbles on the timbres) is a metallic cherry fire truck red or why woodwinds are the clear blues/turquoises/greens of Caribbean ocean waters or why harp (and harpsichord) are the golden hour colors like when the air is saturated with sunlight or why all brass instruments are different types of brilliantly metallic greens in different hues depeding on what type of brass instrument..... MOST standard drums are just sort of a sudden brown or copper toned with the cymbals a shimmery like crackly swirly fireworks but then a kettle drum or even a timpani has a shimmery rainbow irridescent blue tone to it depending on where you hit and how long the sound resonates to amplify.... I don't know exactly WHY I experience musical tone timbres as the colors/textures/energies I perceive them, but there IS a tonal relation between instruments in the same families or constructed similarly. Pretty much anything that is a string resonating over wood has the deepest jewel tones and clarity like light behind a stained glass window whereas the more metal is the more it has that shiny polished reflective metallic aspect. And there is definitely a correlation between higher notes being lighter/brighter hues in the color family and deeper/lower notes being the darker hues within the color family...So allt he isntruments in the strings family from fiddle/violin to viola to cello to upright bass is all the same color family that goes from fiery-tawny-white gold to rubies/garnets to deep chianti into pnot noir wines and then purply-iolite into sapphire royal blues. The higher notes on a piano are the moonlight colored crests of the waves while the lowest notes are the deeper almost black indigos of the wave and the rest of the notes are all the shades along the curve of the wave. Capo on the guitar to shorten the string tension make the notes higher/brighter makes them more chartreuse and not the deeper emeralds of a typical acoustic guitar. The colors, of all instruments, are brightest and clearest and richest when I hear the acoustic instrument with my own ear, no mics or speakers or digital editing or distortion. Compression of the sound waves or digital manipulation to smooth out or move notes also compresses out the timbre signatures so it desaturates colors -- the more digital and the less mechanical resonance, the more desaturated the colors. To the extent that say a keyboard or digital piano is like a black and white photo/video of moonlight dancing on ocean waves. Everything digitally created or synth is all black and white to me, none of it is colored. 

So that's instruments. Vocals can be a wide range of colors and textures, many people have two different colors/textures in their chest voice versus head voice or where they have natural breaks in their range. People who have one color/texture gradient across their entire vocal range are exceedingly rare. (Also blood relative vocals TEND to have similar color families, like a strings arrangement, which is why blood harmonies tend not to clash as badly as some other voice harmonies do. Mot voices that don't blend, if you asked me with my synesthesia why it doesn't work I would tell you that it's because the colors of their timbres clash even though they sound good apart.)  

The other thing to know is that movement off a true note is like layering a filter across the colors of the instruments true note and the further you move off the note the more intense it gets until the point that is the halfway to the flat/sharp true notes and that mix of grey-purple and orange-brown makes like an opaque pint water from rinsing contrasting colors too much version of the true note. A note that is sharp off true goes brown-orange-safety cone blaze orange while a note falling into sharp moves grayish into pigeon into blue-periwinkle layers. So a guitar out of tune, unless you've adjusted your fingering for the not quite in tune string, becomes a brown/range filter layer over the green or a grey/purple filter over the green -- play around with the hues/basic color overlays filters of any basic photo editing filter and you'll understand why some instruments out of tune are more painful than others and why the further they get out of tune and why having one string slightly flat and the next slightly sharp makes things muddy and discordant....

Right. So. Now you get the basics of the way moving off the true note creates intense sometimes conflicting color filters over the true note color. Now Think about the way that a country twang slides and moves from the true note to the next true note, think of the way it goes suddenly sharp or bit flat then sharp then back to a true note. Now imagine you experience all of that slide as a psychedelic change of color along your optic nerve EVEN IF YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES. And now imagine that you're starting with a voice that's naturally a green into chartreuse or turquoise in the lower and hot pink the falsetto and you're now putting the brown-orange sliding filter over those colors or you go grey-purple filter to sudden orange filter back to the true color again in these ever shifting acid trip color combinations. THAT is how I experience the sliding from one true note to the next with a country twang between the notes....

So the ONLY voices I can handle twang on are ones where an orange filter looks good on the normal base color, like when you have fiddle like red vocals or gold colored vocals.  And if your voice is blue or silvery, going slightly grey on your notes isn't actually painful on your voice the way it would be on someone with a fuchsia voice hitting their note flat....This is why it's FAR easier to tell people that country vocals are physically painful for me than to explain why 95% of them are physically painful but select artists putting a country twang n their vocals never bother me.  Exceptions include Alison Krauss, Bonnie Raitt, Rhiannon Giddens, some Patsy Cline, some Johnny Cash, Eagles songs that other people find too country, all three singers in Nickel Creek...It's all because the true colors of their voiced singing timbres create complimentary colors under the filter of a twang on them.

Now, Celia (the main singer of Della Mae, who started in 2009 and got their name from the lyrics of the classic bluegrass song Big Spike Hammer) has voice that in the lower alto part of her range is very closely akin to the fiery tawny fiddle colors of Alison Krauss' voice -- so twangs on their vocals aren't painful. It's just an orangier version of rad-gold tawny. BUT Celia's head voice as she gets closer into her contralto range gets a very magenta color as she get higher then into a bubblegum hot pink -- so the intermittent brown orange overlay of a twang on her higher range IS painful to me. Most of the time she sings in her alto range and it's beautiful, but not always for me when she twangs on notes she takes into the pinker portion of her range. When the other members sing lead, it varies as to whether I like the color experience of the song or actively dislike it, but none of their voices or harmonies are physical flinching from the nerve pain of the color contrasts the twanging produces like with most country radio artists.... And it is a physical flinching nerve pain if you ask me to listen to most country radio artists. Like smacking me with a live electric cable. It's worse when you have a country singer open for you though than when you have pre recorded country music playing, but both are bad.....

Also, Della Mae are just genuinely GOOD women fighting all the good fights and encouraging women musicians and using their career as a platform to stand up speak out on social justice issues. And they write songs that are musically gorgeous but talk about what's going on right now like The Way It Was Before (which is on their 2021 self released newest album, Family Reunion) and which they introduced tonight as being a song about how we all need to have more compassion for the suffering of others, that regardless of our religious or political affiliations, the lack of compassion is what allows the suffering to continue. This song is so powerful and beautiful and I love it but it always makes me tear up and feel so much sorrow and anger over all the man-made ego/selfishness driven suffering in our modern world.  Tonight was no exception -- those verses kicking you in the fucking gut but in the best possible speaking the uncomfortable truths out loud way. While the chorus is the reminder call to arms that nothing changes unless we all band together to change it. And that's important, to keep speaking the uncomfortable truths out loud no matter who wants to shut you up or bury the truth because they don't like the light their actions cast them in how calling it out makes them look if everyone knew.  And to remind you that everything broken can be fixed by intention if you decide to break the cycles and no longer repeat the way that things have been done before.

Anyway, I adore the ladies of Della Mae, and I have since discovering them in 2012. As musicians and as humans and as songwriters using their music as a platform to speak the hard truths ask people to face them. 

And yeah, I actually went to the effort of putting on eye shadow and eye liner and mascara for them. (The only makeup I own right now are my eye pigments and nail polishes. I really don't wear much makeup ever this life because this life is about bare faced honesty and being loved for me qua me this life after spending my last life with so many in love with their idea of me but nobody ever really seeing ME.... But I do sometimes enjoy painting colors on my eyelids and fun colorful eye liners and occasionally giving my emo love of black cat eyes a chance to come out an play.  Mostly the eye colors help to cover the fact my skin is so transparent and you can see the veins in my eyelids without it. Mostly what I own are metallic neutrals and then colored eyeliners that pop the green or aquamarine colors in my eyes make the color of them extra brilliant.)

See? I was cute tonight. A bit fée elfin as full of smirks as smiles, but cute. Even after taking my contacts out to give my eyes a break and putting my glasses on, your girl still cute. Terribly myopic since I was 9 years old (both my parents wear glasses) and without glasses/contacts I can't see much clearly unless it's right in front of my face, but wide eyed and cute. Tired and bespectacled, but still cute.

 

 

But now the rain is passed through and the chamomile is kicking in and the dogs are putting out sleepy vibes.... So I'm going to listen to my body and cute or not curl up here on the couch listening to the Nat Geo marathon of Vikings: the Rise and Fall documentaries I've had on since I got home. Until the TV turns itself off from me not doing anything or the switch to paid programming at 5am around when the pre-dawn and the birds wake me up for the sunrise anyway. Because obviously the bloody history of the Vikings raids on Europe is the sort of things everyone falls asleep to.  *yawns* I'mma try to get some sleep in before sunrise and then some more after sunrise is past. 

Bonne nuit.

I haven't had all that much going on to write here right now. I've been questioning myself why have it why keep it what purpose it serves for me if I'm not writing out my thoughts/feelings/reactions apropos of Eric here, given that's about all it devolved into over these last several years.... And that's part of a bigger question regarding if I'm in the right, if I'm doing the right thing by choosing a path of intentionally letting him go from a place of radical acceptance of his free will no matter where it leads him. Because that's the path for myself which I chose the other week when I decided to unfollow his Instagram account because I didn't see anything healthy (for me or him) in me trying to square the circle of my own selfish desires to maintain contact still see him and all his continuously consistent free will choices regarding his part in the bullying of ANYTHING done on his band's instagram or sharing anything from it while the band's account has a systemic issue of ostracism of blocked fans for speaking the fans own truth and then ghosting rather than replying/acknowledging any attempt at discussing or making right that wrong. So I chose as radical a possible acceptance of his free will and letting him go completely, including letting go of even the hope of us crossing paths to be together this lifetime, as my answer for what I feel is the healthiest and truest to my own ethics choice I can make at this juncture. That doesn't make it the best or the one that gets either of us what we truly want.... It's just what I have deemed at this time to be the healthiest and the mot faithful I can be to my own internal code of ethics in a situation where I can't do any damn thing to alter the choices of others and I refuse to put him in a position he has to choose between me and the group around which he has built his entire life and identity in this lifetime of his. 

I do not believe, nor have I ever believed, that it is morally right to put him in the middle or ask him to choose or make any sort of ultimatum in a situation that was entirely created by the reactionary defensiveness of his sister acting in the name of the entire band and then doing what she always does, which is trying to bury the truth and the evidence that doesn't show her in the light she wants people to see her. (She was like that in past lives too, but never to this extent.)  The dynamics of her choices and her toxic behavior patterns shouldn't be paid for by him, EVEN WHEN she has been allowed and continues to be allowed to graft those patterns into the structural organization of how their collective deals with fan reactions she didn't like and so doesn't want other people to hear.

He shouldn't have to pay for or be stuck in the middle of anyone else's choices -- and I stand by that at a very basic ethics of fairness and justice level.  However, he does have to answer for what he knowingly allows to be committed in his own name and for his own personal choices and for the consequences of his own actions. He has agency and free will and for his own choices and his own actions and what he knowingly allows himself to be part of in a group setting IS about him and it is fair to ask him to bear the costs of those choices he made in free will. He shouldn't have to pay for the CREATION of the system of ostracism that has been and continues to be enforced on the band's Instagram account (not unless he took an active role in its creation) and he is not guilty of anything before he knew it existed BUT he is guilty of perpetuating it and taking active part in it AFTER he was informed of its existence. And the more actions of bullying via ostracism he has engaged in or continues to engage in by sharing to/from the band's account or going live there, the more guilt he accrues for his own acts of complicity by his silence (where the very act of not speaking out against the injustice/wrongs committed by a group you are a member of or by people you respect/care about is allowing the acts of injustice to continue) and his choice to be an active participant in the bullying via ostracism whenever his actions are a reinforcing reminder of the group think toxic tribalism of "you can't sit with us, you're not one of us, you're not welcome to sit at our table."  And so it is for his choices, his inactions, his actions, and the consequences of them all that I have chosen as I have. I do not hold him guilty for creating the system that's been perpetuated in his name as a member of the collective, but I do hold him guilty for his silence once he was told about it and his choices to continue to take an active role in behaviors of bullying by ostracism. Someone else chose to create an unjust system in his name as a member of the collective he helped to create and belongs to, but he chose to do nothing about it once he was informed of the wrong of it and he chose to make himself an active bully perpetuating the injustice and cruelty in what he has said and done sharing to/from the band's Instagram account and going live there over the last three years AFTER he knew about how the collective group account had been made into a system of ostracism and bullying. 

And I'm tired of my hurt being the coin by which his guilt is measured out. Let his guilt sit on his own soul and his own karma, but I don't fucking want it paid out by my own pain or hurt or me being the scapegoat. So I chose that a consequences of his actions and choices is that I'm done and don't want to see him or have anything to do with him so long as he is guilty of caving to the peer pressure that he uses to rationalize him actively taking part in being a bully KNOWING that his actions are acts of juvenile middle school bullying toxic tribalism behavior patterns.

 Do I recognize that there's a deep connection down the bond between him and me? Yes. Do I recognize that both my own and his memories of our past lives all center around our past interactions/relationships? Yes. Do I know that at a profoundly karmic spiritual lessons level most people are born tabula rasa regarding their own past lives and only those things which can aid us in our soul path of healing/growth for that lifetime are the things we remember from our past life versions of ourselves? Yes. Do I conclude from this that our paths were fated to cross in this lifetime for some form of karmic healing and that we both came into this life with soul preparations for that inevitable crossing of paths? Yes.  I acknowledge and hold all these things as true.

But now. Here's the thing. What I CAN'T know from where I am in this life path/soul healing path is HOW we're meant to clear the karma between our past lives.... I can't tell you if the "right" path is a shared path of love and healing OR if the "right" path is the release of the karmic debts to each other and setting us both free to go wherever our soul paths lead from here. I cant tell you if letting him go by me zeroing out the karmic debts between us (at least from my side) to release him from it is a release from here throughout future lives so there will be no bond pulling between us or if him holding onto his perception of the karma links between us means that after he heals as far as he can in separation we will then cross lives in the future to give us another opportunity to finish the healing from his side. I don't know any of that right now.... I genuinely don't. It all depends on free will choices.... The cycles of incarnation here on this plane/planet is ABOUT the lessons to be learned within a framework where free will is sacrosanct but the consequences of each choice are inescapable. 

I don't know if he and I came into this lifetime for healing by being together again or for healing by releasing the strands of the cords of our bond between us. I know either option is open to us to choose between in this lifetime -- but I don't know which path we will choose/have chosen. I don't know which path provides the lessons of greatest healing, the lessons are different either way but our choices will make it clear which lessons we need to learn for our own soul's growth.....

But I do know that I don't like the version of me I would be if I allowed myself to sell out my own ethics and boundaries and how I hold free will sacrosanct while acting within the cycle of souls incarnating. And I know about me that acts of intentional cruelty, intentional bullying, doing wrong when you know better and know how your actions are hurtful to another, is my red flag line in the sand because of what it tells me about what the character of that person is willing to rationalize and sell out in the name of peer pressure conformity or ego driven selfishness/venality.  And ultimately, I am as beholden to my own choices and the consequences of them as any other soul choosing paths of incarnation -- so it is my choice that I cannot and will not condone the sort of rationalizing that makes othering and toxic tribalism and "us" v "them" mentality of excluding people and doing things for fear of ending up excluded from the group if you don't conform. It is an evil rationalization of cruelty and eliding ones own responsibility/guilt of one's own actions and it only ever leads to greater and greater evil done in the name of whatever collective you are a member of, whatever collective demands you choose acts of cruelty against anyone that the leader of the group marks as outside the group and rationalize it however you do. It's the same dynamic at any age, any collective, any point in history. Whether it's your friend group, your political group, your religious identity, the harm done by the rationalizing your own participation in acts of intentional cruelty is the same. And if you don't weed it out when it crops up in small ways, it will lead to ever greater acts of cruelty in the name of the collective unless/until you stand up against the wrong of it -- even if the act of standing up speaking the truth that injustice is always wrong puts you outside the group collective if it's too ossified or powerful to change. Still if you don't stand up, even against friends and family when they are guilty of it, to try to create a more fair and just and kinder system then you become a part of the problem and a part of perpetuating the system.

I can't make choices for others and I don't want to. But my own choices don't allow for me to pretend I don't see and don't recognize the pattern or the harm that rationalizing the patterns of thought/behaviors that create such group think collective behaviors.... And I'm the one who must live with my own conscience. My choices will always reflect that, will always take me down the paths that let me hold most truly to my own clearest conscience.

That said, I haven't been sleeping much and never at night. Because I can and do hear him reaching for me in dream space while he sleeps. But I don't trust me to see him even in dream space and not be drawn to him and want to forgive him without him having done any work to keep the old patterns from repeating... And what's the point of a forgiveness when there can be no expectations of a lesson learned and changed behaviors for the future? Isn't that just enabling and abetting the recurring patterns and toxic cycles that came before so that they keep repeating? So for most of this last month I've only been sleeping in the daytime hours on a flipped schedule when he'd be busy working or doing normal life things and staying wide awake in the hours I can feel him reaching for me down the bond hoping to see each other in dream space. I can't trust me not to become a part of perpetuating the same old patterns if I see him, so I'm keeping myself awake during the times normal people sleep and I sleep between sunrise and sunset in the hours that most people are active or have things to do, especially if they have commitments involving other people. *shrugs* I don't want to be an enabler or a part of repeating toxic patterns.... I want to learn and heal and grow and discover better healthier modes of interaction and being in this lifetime. And if that requires flipping my waking and sleeping hours from most people's, so be it. That's better than being complicit or an enabler of repeating toxic patterns when everyone involved should know better and should want to break them to find something better and healthier....

Wednesday morning all the fate lines were wildly in flux again.... They made me very light headed and dizzy, especially when I went outside the energetic shielding of my parents house to take the dogs out to the backyard.  But it improved and settled again by Wednesday evening and hasn't been in flux since then. At least not that I have felt. I've enjoyed watching out how the meticulous rule following system building of Virgo has played out in national/international politics -- I'm excited to watch how things continue to unfold under the sign of the scale of Justice. (Both my sun and my Mercury are in Libra, so I'm much more comfortable with both the balance and the hard edge of justice and karma consequences of past choices/actions.)  As an astrologer, I don't expect the actual violence of hidden things coming to light and the next rounds of battle between inclusiveness vs repressiveness until we enter Scorpio season -- I expect justice to be served up for as long as the sun and Mercury (communication/technology) are in Libra BUT as soon as one and worse both are in Scorpio we will see the blow back and the flames of all that goes on beneath the surface and especially everyone who doesn't believe in justice but prefers to have their own way to be the authoritarian way. And there will be a pendulum swing back -- the more justice we can get under Libra, the more blow back you should expect from those who don't believe in or actively try to undermine/fight justice. You don't need precogs to know that, just a lot of lessons in realpolitik and astrology. Take all the legal gains we can get right now in the name of due process and fairness while sun/Mercury in Virgo/Libra of meticulousness and justice -- because once they move on seas get VERY stormy until they're both in Capricorn....