Spring Cleaning

non doing with "Taurus Energy" while inhabiting the shakey place

Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.

Pema Chodron

I’m noticing people seizing up and cracking all around me, not just from the earthquakes we had on the east coast, but from people trying to be good and right. When people are being right and not finding anywhere to park their righteousness, they tend to explode. Their visages just start leaking and they get testy.

Similarly, when we start to fail or lose contact with our goals we start to crumble. Whether it’s illness or something else, the more pieces of ourselves fall down and litter the floor, the harder it is to remember ourselves as the mud people we used to be, soft and fresh.

cracked masks being swept up

Photo by Jozsef Hocza on Unsplash

Here I am spring cleaning and sweeping up pieces of myself and dusty faces of other people all around me. I’m sopping up the leaking insides and I’m trying to see myself for what I really am. I’m just some kind of creature, basically my own pet. I can and will have goals but nothing can really change that they are made-up and the product of sustained effort. I’m seeing ways that I can improve.

leaking dirty refrigerator

Wanting to be in a different place can be intimidating when you just see all the work that it will take. It’s like looking at a canyon and thinking, “you mean i have to be that stream eroding this rock for a million and a half years??? yeah right. pff. ”

Meanwhile the stream never once took issue with it. The stream was lucky because it was going where it wanted to go while it existed. You can easily slump into the “wrong” direction with no effort at all but isn’t that kind of effort too? You’re just carving out a path you didn’t want.

I’m working hard to not let what others seem to want from me determine who I am pretending to be/trying to be. I think that Taurus energy, in Taurus season, as a Taurus, I speak from experience, can help one endure the “shakey place” that Pema Chodron mentions. The shaky place is a place to get stronger in. You’re not right, and you’re not wrong, but you’re not standing around waiting for other people’s permission, constantly frozen and reading the room, or trying to explain your every inclination.

The bull is robust and he can wait; he can wait and wait. The bull is powerful and he can get very angry—but because he is not easily scared, he can continue to wait in many situations. He can use that rage very slowly, deliberately.

You were in a mood to quarrel. Please inform me once the inclination passes.

Catherine the Great May 2, 1729, Taurus

And when the waiting is over the bull can move with force. Slow or fast, it really does not matter. The movement is the impact already.

Now you do what they told ya
Now you do what they told ya
Now you do what they told ya
Now you do what they told ya

-Rage Against the Machine (killing in the name of)

Consider the impact of just doing what you think they want you to do….They may never even know you are doing it and you are never really pleased. It’s a path that leads to regret. You’re behaving for essentially no one.

I accept reality and dare not question it.

Walt Whitman

this is my grand father and the photo came out a bit weird

Accepting reality is more than being resigned to it, but really being open to it. Being honest about it. At that point is the opportunity to question yourself and ask:

How did I get here?

Like REALLY. That can be a loaded and unanswerable question.

And it needs to be considered.

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

The Talking Heads, David Byrne, May 14, 1952 (Taurus)

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth, I am the mate and companion of people, All just as immortal and fathomless as myself

-Song of Myself , Walt Whitman

born May 31, 1819 (gemini)

Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable.

Denis Waitley (don’t know his birthday, don’t know who he is)

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, born May 25, 1803

She cracked, I'm sad, but I won't, that's right

She cracked, I'm hurt, you're right

-Jonathan Richmond , Taurus (the modern lovers)

And last but not least, one more from the Taurus I share the exact birthday with—

The more a man knows, the more he forgives.

Catherine the Great

And when in doubt. Touch a leaf.

-ava k lamb, elvis, and barbra streisand

x ava k

"I Believe" is a popular song written by Ervin Drake, Irvin Abraham (as "Irvin Graham"), Jack Mendelsohn (as "Jimmy Shirl") and Al Stillman in 1953.^[1] The most popular version was recorded by Italian-American singer Frankie Laine, and spent eighteen weeks at No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart.^[2]