Categories
Dreams Poetry Thirsty Thursday

Thirsty Thursday | Dream 2

Another dream from October of last year


It seemed so funny, now, that we should be sitting there.

Together at a booth with two – or three? – other people. I didn’t know any of you.
And yet – you. You stared at me with such a loving smile. I felt I knew you my whole life.
You said something to me, and I felt warm inside. Though we weren’t alone, the world stopped for us. Alone in the booth, with Bill, Jane and Russ. 

Your foot brushed my leg, a flirt loaded touch. My flesh raised as though cold, suddenly five was too much. Desire filled my heart, and I longed to be held. I saw you see me; you saw me melt. From inside out, I became mush. It happened so fast – so much for being tough. I wanted to reach you, as you were sitting there. I thought we were in a booth, but now you’re sitting in a chair? And the ceiling lights flickered, from fluorescent to 40watt. In the now dimmed diner turned cafe, I no longer fought: the dream was fading fast. Though the feeling remained warm, it was now in the past. Your lingering smile and your simple foot play, I mumbled as I woke, “I wish I could stay.”

Categories
Poetry

Snow | wonS

Photo (2018) & Poem (2020) by K. Samways


Snow | wonS

A snow globe world is turned around
Snow falls up then snow falls down
Defying gravity one moment here
Yet normal normal is the cheer
What comes down is what went up
Spilled contents redistributed cup to cup
Every so often this reset button trips
Snow white blanket, purity uplifts
Illusion is enough to calm most fears
Blindly inject cure: crocodile tears
The snow it fuzzies up our mind
As if it wasn’t hard enough to find
Answers in a material world
Shopping for your material girl
Happy family, joyful pawn
Garbage cleared from your front lawn
Hidden in basement, marked on map
X like treasure, X like trap
Drink your poison, muddle mind
Take the blue pill and you’ll find
You’re content, go back to sleep
No more sorrow, no more tears to weep
Do not fight back, now put on your leash
Plug in here, work, pay, perish, release
Fuzzy, fizzle, fight through fog
But it’s hot and cold, sinksand squish bog
I can’t get my boot out, it’s stuck
I’m getting sucked in, ah! shit! fuck!
It’s like every 90s kid’s nightmare
Quicksand, giant insects, CGI Monster stare
I swore I’d never do mushrooms again
So how the fuck did this poison get in?
A muddled mind, dentist lips, numb and swelled up
Gauzy cheeks, boozy blur, drink more & bottoms up!
Brandy eyes, winey breath, lighting tricks
Mascara smudge, husky voice and whiskey dick
Although he cannot get it up
Up goes the snow as we get tossed
Back to the ceiling blank and cruel
Our snow globe world, veiled reality dual
A switch up just a little now
The streets are a mess, so 
Start your engine, start your plow
No drunk driving back to bed
A muddled mind craves sleep instead
Especially on snowy days with skies so white
Maddening maddening caged with fright
Absent absent is delight
These foggy thoughts have me depressed
Felt as though it should be addressed
Since my words are losing sense
Opinions will replace facts but present tense
Thoughts are real hallucinations too
So we should react and divide as taught in school
Until tremors indicate we’ve been picked up again
And perhaps we’ll wait to see
Snow fall up and people down
To make our chess piece move
Knight or queen, still just a pawn
Because the game is rigged beyond
Our understanding with snow globe tricks
Appearance versus reality
Drugs, prescription, scripts
Fed from faceless machine, dark
Conspiracy theory
You can reject because as 
I’ve said
My muddled mind, fog headed here
Sees snow fall up through window pane
A mirror image from glass next door
Reads backward enasni: you’re insane.

Categories
Love Letters Poetry Thirsty Thursday

The Emperor | Letter 4

Dear Gallantry

The shadow
of the unseen

groundedness
ethereal

skittering claws
on laminate floor

MEW and the splash
of milk poured kindly

I walk to
the temple

hands clasped
feet bloodied
by pilgrimage

I have escaped
two cults

& am now 
a pilgrim
in an empty room

walls dissolve into
ecstatic space

galaxies permeated
by lantern lights

opened over lightyears
some long extinguished

into the underworld
a pilgrim’s womb

am I electric
circuit open

lips apart & move
toward

am I electric
if sparks would

come between us 
should we kiss

am I electric
bad to touch

I know not what
ill thoughts

your mind produces &
can produce

a stained extreme perversion
pressed over truth

If my mind convince me
You’re the One

The mother being in us all 
The child, fun

Yet still the warrior
standing tall

If my mind convince me
choose dead end

Plant the seed, Oh
Foe Destroyer

Reap the harvest, Oh
Great Enjoyer

I see the flame
alight in you

Like a moth I’m drawn
Oh please undo

Like a fly in your web,
Thanatos taboo

The mentor, a gem
my teacher, a guide

The sword in the rock,
Eros, my pride

Tears fall in my lap
in the castle alone

I unearthed the mask
to hide 

behind the offering
of pearls

A broken heart reveals
I’m not diamond nor stone

As the flame ignites
the animal yields

So I sought you out, Gallantry,
found you on high

along with your mind and your songs
and your thigh

which I’ve touched in my sleep
as I’ve stroked your hair

I’ve touched you in places where
you usually take care

to preserve with resignation 
that we should not be caught

staring too long while we’re working
or not, because

we’ve paused for laughter – my
god overall

I can’t help but wonder what
may come after

for you loved Cattle Call, and that
had me in

hysterics, a place I call home
giddy with giggles

and hellbent to roam.
Yet I

simply walk to the village
just over 

that bridge, and I walk there
so slowly

Climbing a mountain to get to
the ridge

finding a heart, healed & holy
set apart

loving the self, deep ocean
reminisce – you’ll 

do me the pleasure of delivering
this life’s first kiss

though we’ve shared infinite karma
what’s to ripen

right now can delight and amuse
us while we 

still develop, unattached, somehow
we’ll figure

it all out. Are you with me? 
Gallantry?

xx, The Empress

Categories
Resource Wednesday

Resource: Tips on Giving Constructive Feedback | RW Issue 5

Maybe you already know the importance of training your staff and volunteers. Maybe you’re already great at appreciating them. Maybe you’ve already outlined clearly the role your supervisors must perform.

Maybe you still need a little bit of guidance when it comes to effectively communicating constructive criticism. This resource is perfect for providing tips and reminders on how to deliver constructive coaching to your volunteers (or staff). Feel free to build off my outline or design one specific to your organization.

It’s always important to remember your intention when providing criticism. Your intent (hopefully) is not to harass someone out of your organization by making them feel like a failure at what they do. You want to encourage your volunteer or staff to build their skills and get better at what they do. Typically, you’re not on a fault-finding mission wanting to eliminate them. You want to enhance their performance which in turns increases your ability to hit your targets.

Having a way to measure or evaluate each position in an organization, paid or unpaid, can help you be clear on the importance of good performance. You can use these measurables to set realistic goals for your staff so that they can incrementally improve. However, if it’s difficult to assign quantitative value to the job, there are still ways to communicate and monitor performance based on quality.

Find the full resource here, and see below for a quick summary:

  1. State the purpose of your feedback.
  2. Describe specifically what you’ve observed.
  3. Describe your reaction.
  4. Give the person an opportunity to respond.
  5. Offer suggestions and provide reasoning for your correction.
  6. Summarize and express your support.

One of the most important things I’ve learned over the years is

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

Mike Kerr

A Personal Story

I had a boss that would often say nice things in emails. However, in person she was often rude, abrasive, manipulative, or just ignored you. Whenever her staff would read the “nice” things she wrote in emails, they would disregard them or read into them as being extremely negative.

A year after I left the job, I listened to a coworker complain about things she was doing. From an outside perspective, they didn’t seem that bad at all. But having been in that role, I knew exactly what was going on. People read into things. People take things personally, especially young and inexperienced workers.

It’s so important to act with authenticity, integrity, compassion and kindness if you are going to inspire your staff to work hard. You’ll get so much more out of them than if you employ the chains and whips of threats and fear.

Giving feedback is often difficult, but I can help make it easier. If you need more specific support or guidance, contact me for a coffee.

Categories
Affirmations Tarot

Fear & Feels | TT 5

A Message from the Tarot:

November 23, 2021 ~ The Tarot of the Divine

Nine of Swords

Ouch.  Nine of Swords reveals that we may have heeded toxic advice in the past that has brought about a negative consequence. (Where can we see that in the world? 🙄) This has resulted in you punishing yourself. Why did I do that? Why did I listen to that person? Why didn’t I do this instead? 

Clarity may be absolutely absent as we relent to cruel questioning of ourselves, our desires, our decisions. We may be filled with regret or a yearning for a different outcome. Your mind feels as foggy as the air in the image of this card. Dark, dank mist swirls around the oracle as she reveals her chilling prophecy.

From this place of doubt comes further indecisiveness. You may feel drawn to two or more different perspectives, choices, or viewpoints. You may be beating yourself for making the “wrong” decision in the past and you’re worried about making another “wrong” decision in the future. 

The Tarot of the Divine reveals the legend of Oedipus in the Nine of Swords. In particular, the moment that the king finds out that his son, Oedipus, will one day kill him. In learning this information, the king is tormented and separates himself from his son in hatred. Instead of raising his son with love to prevent such an action, his fear (and resulting actions) creates the truth of the prophecy. 

You may feel stricken with anxiety, terror, nightmares, obsession or even sleeplessness. The energy of the world mirrors your internal condition as we continue to bring our greatest fears into reality. Great disease, tragedy, controlling measures, loss of freedoms, and environmental destruction cover our planet. Our fear and anxiety causes us to withdraw, wishing for a different outcome, but only performing actions that increase the damage. 

Stop. Breathe. Recovery is possible with acceptance and letting go of our uncontrolled desire for things to be different than they are. With patient acceptance, we can change our fate this moment forward. We can release our fears that the future will be the same as the past – if only we can learn in this moment. Breathe. Be sure, when the time to make the decision has come, you choose out of love and wisdom and never out of fear and hatred. 

Journal Questions:

What do you currently regret? What’s replaying in your mind? What do you wish was different? What are you afraid of? What are you actively hating? How can you choose love instead?

What choices are you currently faced with? How do you want to feel in the future? What do you want your life to be like? What fears are you going to release? Can you let go of your desire for a particular outcome? Can you see the best case scenario in all options? How can you believe that everything is working out for your highest good? How can you perceive that things are happening for you and not to you?

You can stop feeling like a victim of circumstances, but it does take some emotional and mental energy to get there. There may be more pain as you close the cycle, but you will open your world to endless possibilities when you have the ability to accept yourself as you are.

Affirmation from Tarot: Mirror of the Soul :

I am loved, simply because I am the way I am.

Gerd Ziegler

A (simple) Message from the Oracle:

The Tear

It’s time to let go. Let go of the pain you’ve been holding onto just to relive the preceding experience. Let go of your fear of vulnerability. Just let go.

Let go physically; let go emotionally. Be vulnerable. Soften the ego. Release the sorrow that no longer serves you. Release what’s keeping you stuck in the energy of hurt. 

Stop beating yourself up. Stop blaming others. Just feel. 

Did you know that even strong emotions last only 90 seconds on average? In reality, a minute and a half can feel like forever. But once you release your pain and suffering, it’s over. It may come in short waves, so it feels like it’s never ending. But it’s only through feeling and acceptance that we can let go and move on.

Let the melody of melancholy run its course, flowing through you. Resist drowning in the murky drama of story-making. Don’t let the narrative override the feeling. Quiet your mind, feel, cry and let go. 


Tarot: Tarot of the Divine by Yoshi Yoshitani
Oracle: The Wild Unknown Archetypes by Kim Krans

Categories
Buddhism Meditation Monday Motivation

Attitude of Gratitude | MM 5

Many people recommend beginning your day with gratitude. They encourage journaling, each morning, a list of ten or more things for which you’re thankful. You can also sit with a mind of gratitude, imagining the list of things you’re grateful for.

I think this is a wonderful practice, and I find no argument with its benefits, which a quick internet search confirms include better attitude throughout the day (better emotional regulation), improved resilience, and overall increased happiness.

So why is this, and what can we do to add more meaning to this small effective practice?

If we understand karma (cause & effect), we understand that positive feelings come from practicing virtue and that negative feelings come from practicing non virtue. How can generating minds of thankfulness create happiness? What makes gratitude virtuous?

In order to maximize the positive effects of this practice, we should cultivate this attitude with wisdom. Instead of being mindlessly thankful for things like a sunny day or having a roof over our heads and offering this thanks aimlessly toward the universe at large, we can actually add power to our practice by offering our appreciation and our love to the kindness of living beings who continuously help us enjoy the things we attribute our happiness to.

The building you dwell in didn’t simply appear over night. It started as an idea in someone’s mind. It became a blueprint. Materials were sourced: wood from trees, mined metals melded in factories, synthetic materials invented and recreated. Kind humans putting in mental and physical energy to flesh out a building that began as a mere thought.

You may have heard a variation of the concept “It takes the whole world to make one object.” It takes machines built in one place to harvest crops in another. When we break apart an object we typically enjoy mindlessly, we have the potential to see literally limitless dependent relationships. This thing relies on this which relies on that, which ultimately all relies on the kindness of living beings.

If we cultivate an attitude that appreciates living beings for their kindness and cooperation, we are creating specific and positive causes to feel much deeper and lasting positive feelings than the temporary and misplaced joy of thanking the sun for shining, wrongfully believing the sun is the source of today’s happiness.

Mindfulness Challenge 1:

Choose three objects that you use every day in your home. Three objects that you feel grateful for or happy when you use them. Three objects you may rely upon.

Think about how you came to obtain them. Did you purchase them at the store? Did someone have to stock the shelves with them? Did someone give it to you as a gift? Meditate on the warm feeling of gratitude and love toward the people who helped you attain this item that you benefit from daily.

Now think about how that object was created. What materials is it made of? How were they harvested or created? How is the object put together? How many beings were involved in the assembly of such an object?

Finally, think about how this object was conceived? Did someone invent it? Did it begin as a mere thought or conception in someone’s mind? What plans would need to be prepared before such an object was actually physically created?

Once more, try generating a warm feeling that actually cherishes the people, the kindness of those people, for helping make it possible for you to enjoy this phenomenon each day.

Results

I hope that by journaling or meditating the above mindfulness exercise, you can move your practice of cultivating gratitude from something that generates a temporary happy feeling to something that brings more meaning in your life.

By understanding how connected we actually are, and how it is the kindness of living beings that creates the world we experience, we bring much more fulfillment and ultimate meaning to our practice. We direct our gratitude toward our neighbours, our coworkers, the employees at our local grocery stores. We can grow our patience, our compassion, and we can reduce our resentment and blame.

None of us would be alive today without the kindness of others. For that, we can be extremely grateful. No matter the hardships we’ve endured, we have benefitted from the kindness of others. How wonderful!


If you need more inspiration…

Categories
Poetry

Misplaced Grief

I thought my pain was due to his absence
yet the delusions arose in his presence

my uncontrolled desirous attachment
formed unfulfilled relationship wishes

I no longer sensed the man behind the mask
begging for a freedom he refused to imagine

loathe to face the grim consequences
of his actions, or their lack

Categories
Saturday Expressions Visual Artwork

Humble Beginnings | Session 4

Picture of friend Jessica, 1995

There was no way to foresee artistic talent in my future. But I think you can see the creativity.

“My whale is swimming. “

And a love of purple I didn’t know I had for almost 20 years.

“I made a ghost.”

Happy Weekend!

Categories
Firescape Fridays Philosophy

Lethal Loopholes | FF 4

Whenever there has been a legal exemption or loophole whereby governing bodies can make wide use of humans to advance the grand motives of a nation as a whole, or just the ruling class, the advantage is taken with impunity.

Whether it has been to use widely available slaves to erect grand monuments and pyramids, later an accomplishment described as otherworldly (perhaps present laws forbid that level of inhumanity); whether it’s been to exterminate populations with reluctant or hearty support from people who were once deemed credible and rational (and who received this status of logic back when they had shown their fickleness in earnest, switching loyalties again); whether it has been to build a railroad across Canada with dispensable human labourers of particular descent; or whether it is to test new medicine that has never before been proven effective, causing injury and death to lab animals in recent public clinical trials before it was being widely developed for, then promoted and mandated to, the entire public.

Or perhaps, one can see the timeliness for needing a capitalist advantage when in pharmaceutics they were extremely close to a marketable mRNA vaccine but lacked proper funding to prove that it wouldn’t be harmful which, due to failure thus far, they didn’t have. Nor could they come up with a new motive for new widespread vaccination mandates without a devastating reason (and no alternative). Nothing could be better than a worldwide pandemic desperate for its own end than to allow for: mass funding, mass production, mass testing. (Hysteria, fear, environmental neglect, a grand distraction)

That is all fact thus far. The fact is that an advantage exists. How can that be denied? The factors are not the conspiracy theories; the answer behind the “WHY” is the conspiracy. And since we do not know, everything is theory. 

For example, one theory is that it would be quite easy in a pharmaseutics lab to create or mutate a virus without having to disclose its existence to governing bodies or the public. The fact that mandatory publication of pharmaceutical projects and studies does not exist must support this theory. How easy would it be to release it? I read, in an article written in 2017, that Moderna was choosing not to publish its research but instead was keeping it “secret” promoting an air of secresy and competition – in a field that is now “benefiting” the entire world, that each individual in Canada is now being forced to submit to or be deemed irrational and unethical.

How can this be? How can pharmaceutics exist without a Hippocratic oath at its core? Without true values or virtue? How can they profit to such a degree and still be held free from liability? I have read that the government will give pay outs to those “injured” from the vaccine – a payout is not a restorative measure, it is mere compensation. How can money recover your lost livelihood or your very life? What’s more, this is taxpayer money, not funds siphoned from big pharma’s profit margin. 

How can we pretend that “this” is the only option? “This” which we do not even have to speak by name, now that an entire globe can speak the same language of disease by action. Not in understanding of how things actually work. With no understanding of the spaces between. Simply a repeated consistent narrative driven by the largest, most successful and most expensive marketing scheme. A scheme so important that the dollars could not have been spent elsewhere – certainly not cleaning up our environment nor our minds – the birthplaces of all disease.  How can a sick society invent its own cure and force everyone to take it – even though we know – scientifically repeatable – that no one solution or discourse has ever been appropriate to all people at one time?

What is the invisible force that all world leaders are now bending their knee to? What is this force that we are all being bent to? What alien invasion has so corrupted leadership when with impunity they can force everyone without exception to change the ecosystems of their bodies before an error has even occurred? What voice has banished the utterance of the word “experimentation”? For even without medicine, life is one big experimentation – how can we argue that? When we have no idea what is to unfold. Can anyone say what is about to unfold? Can anyone say honestly that he does not hold fear in his heart? Please, lead me to the fearless man, for he must have the answers. Yet, if he does not reveal them, I know there must exist some fear. For I am no one. Certainly no one to fear. 

If you fear me or hate me at reading words on a page, words that constitute no part of my being, simply ask yourself this one question and investigate it fully without compromise: Why?

When we investigate the WHY of the pandemic, as in WHY did this virus hit so hard – the answer is not in the common thread of the virus- because everyone experienced the virus differently. The factors that made the virus more deadly in some and not in others was not that the virus had a spike protein…it was that the environment was polluted, some people were old, some young, some healthy, some sick, the most affected were already afflicted – mainly by age. 

Improvement to things that we can control is being abandoned: commonalities of the polluted environments, lack of health care, poverty, heart conditions and existing disease,  disadvantages that severely lessened a person’s chance at easy recovery from what could have been classified as this year’s cold.

If only we were looking to real preventative measures to stop such a thing arising again in a new form! But there is no task force looking into that… and so I will not be made to submit to a edict set out in economic laziness. My life is not an economy course, and taking a vaccine will not make me more productive. 

If I am forced to submit to something so against my will and rationale, I fear it will not be long before I am lost to suicide or at least its fantasy as I long to untether myself – not just from a diseased world, but such a willfully ignorant one. 

Look to the profiting powers playing their hand of distraction. See what devastation is coming should we take no action. Understand what real safety is and how none is actually offered to you or your family. Wake up and see the truth – or at the very least, see the lies.


Categories
Dreams Thirsty Thursday

Thirsty Thursday | Dream 1

This week we’re going to mix things up a bit. I’m going to share a thirsty dream instead of a love letter. Enjoy 😉


A Dream

You met my eye across the room,
I couldn’t believe my luck.
I felt your stare raise bumps on skin
and simply yearned to fuck.
Right before my very eyes,
you strode across the floor.
My heart beat fast and skipped a beat.
I felt your eyes once more
look me up and down, 
your hand came out,
and wrapped around my neck.
My eyes met yours, and there we stood 
with parted lips we moved toward
each others’ face and tongue
met taste of another
flesh that was hot and sweet
and cold sweat meshed
against your cheek, my 
hand came out to meet
your back and pulled you close
to grind against the fabric
of my …what was I wearing?
You went to the bathroom, 
and someone came in. A new conversation
started, and I realized the
bed I was in was getting cold,
and the sweat was real, but
the image was not, though the scene was hot,
and my bedroom came into sight,
as my eyes met the light that
the day time brought, so I had to shake
it off while still admitting
it was nice to feel your eyes
on me though it was just a dream.