signs signs everywhere a sign

Since so many of you have something to say on the subject and I haven't delivered the overview yet let me say this:
First My Diety and your Deity are one in the same. My diety and your diety were out hanging clothes. Said my diety to your diety let's sock Sherry in the nose.
And you have to understand signs. Bad Omens are reminders sent to you because you are about to do something really stupid, really dangerous, really dangerously stupid or totally opposite of what you shouldbe doing as a matter of morality.
A nun is a bad sign. After 12 years of Catholic school and the intense, albeit, subjective, instruction of man's inherent evil and the inevitablity of a one trip to Hell for all of our many transgressions, especially the ones that lie in our hearts, there is no better sign.
And lets also understand that with one exception, every date I've been on since I've been to this site has been accompanied by a sign. Sr. Ann Monica was the sternest warning that all is not well in this exploration.
Why would God care who I go out with? He probably doesn't. I totally skipped this step of development in high school. I don't know my type. If I'm not going to be alone forever then I need to get out and meet people to know. But I also know that those who do not learn from History are doomed to repeat it. The history that I am doomed to repeat at this point is my mother's.

Signs?

What makes an omen an omen?
What makes a sign a sign?
What is synchronicity and what is borrowing trouble?


Superstition, signs and wonders, omens and myths are made when a series of circumstances present themselves in conjunction with events that can be controlled or observed by a less than objective observer. In ancient texts, we are told that the gods bestow favor under banners called blessings. They administer punishment under curses. Or do we just think they do?

Religious friends tell me that we can not count on signs and wonders because they are constructs of the mind not messages from the divine. The opinion is justified in the explanation that early man misunderstood causal relationships. That because lightening which comes from the sky strikes a dry and highly flammable hut does not mean God hates you. It means that you are a moron who waited too long to re-thatch your dwelling. Yet this type of non-related incident is the foundation of many myths and legends. We are told that only the uneducated look for omens as roadsigns indicating good or bad choices. My pagan friends rely on signs and wonders, look for answers in the alignment of stars and in the random selection generators packaged as Tarot decks. They look for confirmation that they are on the right path.
It may be a human tendency or a failing. And in the earliest forms of our scriptural heritage signs and wonders abound. God uses signs throughout the Hebrew, Christian and Muslim texts to confirm His word through his prophets. Moses depended on signs in the Sinai desert the same way we look at Map quest to know where we are going or sailors use the stars to guide them at sea. The concern that the religious have is that you turn your power over to someone else (a fortune teller, seer etc...) to determine your direction and not God. Many psychologists think that it is cheap and easy way to avoid being accountable for your actions. So how do you know if there are signs and wonders or if you're just being wishy-washy? I don't know.

I have been attending to a part of my life I've neglected for the last month. Mostly because I am tired of that bone weary, soul-crushing loneliness I mentioned in the previous post. But also because it is something I should know. I should know what my type of guy is. And I don't. I thought I did. And at this point the only thing I can really say is that I like guys that are older than me. But I don't know what my true type is. So I signed up for a site which was going to get me more out of the house time than the traditional dating site. And it is working. I've gone out at least 8 times with one yielding a second date. What does that have to do with signs and wonders? Only that each time I have gone out there has been what I can only describe as a sign, a dark sign... the kind of sign that says "Turn back now!"
The first sign that I was asking for trouble or at the very least had found a way to displease the Big Guy? Started a period. Period lasted long enough to stop things before they started, get home and gt a shower. The last sign? Sister Anne Monica walked into the coffee shop. How do I know it was a sign? Honestly, non of us can know for sure. But the simple fact that I was in a coffee shop meeting with a friend I hoped would be a hook up and that Sr. Anne Monica hasn't even been in town for 25 years. But today she shows up in my regular coffee shop? That is hardly an accident. Or is it?
Sting and other New Agers would call it synchronicity. The serendipitous arrangement of events that allegedly proves there is an intelligence in the cosmos. So is it a coincidence? Or am I looking for reasons to do or not do? Am I looking for some thing outside of myself to make my choices so that I don't have to be responsible? I don't know. I just wonder if the camp that doesn't believe that God uses signs and wonders to communicate with us can honestly say that Sr. Anne Monica was not a sign. I mean come on. She hasn't been here in 25 years! She left a little after my class ruined Sr. Melvina. If that isn't a sign I don't know what is.
Of course I don't know if the sign is to tell me that I'm looking at the wrong people, casting too broad a net or not even supposed to be concerned about this because God wants me to be alone. And that only because guys are distracting enough that I won't accomplish any of my goals or be available for the uses God has in mind. Fine. But he better tell me what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. Because right now I can't find enough to weird, archaic or super specialized topics to keep my mind off of guys. I don't think its the biological clock issue either because I don't want kids.
I just want to know if these are signs I can take to the betting table.

an omen?

I made a date. And I am waiting for him to show up while I am engaged in my writing projects. My hope is that he is not out of my league. Like so many things, everything looks great on paper. Our communications have been lively, exciting an entertaining. And like so many of my other initial meetings... God has some thing to say about the course I have set...

Sister Ann Monica just walked into the coffee shop.

upon review

Well, I have finally waded through the posts in this blog to date. I can honestly say that in the attempt to write often I have sacrificed write well. Most of this year's blogs are about relationships to the people in my life for better or worse. Looks like the for worse wins out. I don't see a lot of geek. I see no art and I see very little in the writing that is worth a read. Too hard on myself? Not at all. My focus has been diffuse to say the least.
2009 has been the year of exploring relationships on many levels. And I have to say I don't like to whiny reduction within these posts. I look at these entries and wonder a. what the hell was I thinking? and b. how the hell is anyone going to stand to read through these entries and remain a loyal reader? Not that I have many of them. Just ACG, JJ, the unnamed and a sleeper. I haven't had my camera out because I haven't been further than the laundry room at work. I haven't written about what I have been reading because other than Castle's "Heat Wave' I've read very little this year. As creativity goes things have been pretty stagnant. the fault of that is my own. And there is no real reason for it other than I let a bunch of boys distract me.
That is what I hated about the non geeks in my class. They were always being diverted from what they were supposed to be doing by guys/girls they shouldn't have been doing. And to some extent it happens now. And I have become one of those distracted girls, perilously close to losing my geek cred all because I've had my thoughts commandeered by my body.
Where are the posts about the cool things that I am learning about Gypsies? Or what about the cool things that were happening in eastern Europe while my ancestors were becoming honored ladies and gentlemen of the Lauenstein courts? I mean crap, my seemingly disconnected present day interests can be reduced to a common denominator of the mid1400-mid1500 time frame. Where are the posts about that? Everything from the jewelery I've made and the parts I am using to my music tastes can be traced to that time, revolving around a specific set of people. I find it fascinating. But have I blogged it? No. Why? one word: boys.
I have become the idiot I mocked my sister for being. I mean really, from an intellectual point of view who the fuck needs the headache? I have a lot of things to keep my mind occupied. I have a lot of things that are steaming on the cook stove of my imagination that will produce wonderful artwork once it is reduced to a manageable concept. Why do I have this crazy need to stir up a pot of trouble made of ingredients with which I am unfamiliar?
Is that Sting's doing?
I've been as I said, anticipating this album for years. And in this season of my own personal Zakor, I start to insulate myself against the Hounds of Winter that I know will howl outside my snow encrusted, frosty window panes under cold, moonless skies. Sting knows how I feel about winter. From the lines in track 9: Now Winter comes slowly, pale, meager and old, trembling with age then quivering with cold" through the Hounds of Winter to track 15 "you Only Cross my Mind in Winter" it is the biting icy teeth of loneliness that makes me feel this way. As much as I think that I can not go through another harsh Northwestern Michigan Winter huddled against those elements, I think I can not endure another season shivering under my blankets alone while I see so many others snuggled warm against a mate, be they permanent or temporary. Cold I can handle. Alone I can handle. But the combination is so much stronger than I feel myself to be that even Sting's sympathetic understanding does little to encourage me. The older I get the more this is an issue.
But then there is an element that is a barely formed solid lurking at the edge of my awareness. Something that once was, is no more and was so briefly in my life for a time I am not sure I truly knew what it was. It whispers. It sings softly under the the breezes that flirt across the moors. Faint in its existence like the Fae folk, it is hard to perceive. Yet, there is this space within me that recognizes the potential of its being, seems like something that I once knew but can not place since its time has passed so long ago through the days of my life. Without it, my art work seems so flat and in places lifeless. Is it a legend? A fairy tale? An ancient secret taken to their graves by ancient gods? It seems as tangible as the Ark of the Covenant...

on course corrections

Remember to spell check and proofread!
Doh!

Hear ye! Hear ye!

Last year, a couple of weeks before my blogiversary, I started thinking about doing a Wheaton styled highlight of the first year of blogging. You know, the written eqivlent of a highlight reel. But I quickly realized that it was too big a project to do in just two weeks. I also found a lot of typos that escaped the first proof and the spell checker. Oops. As I am working on a list to give the Knight that found out I've blogged about him, I see that in the few short months since May, I've nearly reached the 199 posts I did in the first year. Daunting task just got more daunting. And since the fiction I intended to write for NaNo this year simply refuses to come out of my head and stay put on paper, I am embarking on a new project: the Hitchhiker's Guide to Geekdom (with profuse apologies to Douglas Adams).

HG2G has two purposes: one to appease my facebook friends/relatives who requested a highlights reel and two, evaluate my progress. It always helps to see what you've been doing to know if you need to chance course or expand your areas of exploration.

I hope this is fun and not yet another exercise in futility.

oops

So something in the neural processors is wonky. Verta warned that we were in for some heavy energy with all these frakking planets infringing on earth's territory. But I didn't think that it was going to be this bad. I, apparently, am capable only of Watson styled blunders in assessing value to circumstantial evidence and am completely devoid of imagination to see beyond the obvious.

Dashed off a quick this has been your last communication to Sir Lee. I mean really... asking me to make plans and then not even the briefest of S.O.S to divert my course. Rude. Blowing off my hi while you are online. Rude. And then, and here is where the wicket gets really sticky and not in a good "Ha! I just won this stupid English yard game you vagabond!" way, he replies. "I haven't been online to let you know." Really?

I'm technophobic, couldn't program my way out of an open paper bag. Don't know the first thing about processor capacity and the dirty little secrets about constructing a mother board, or if they are even called that anymore. But I certainly can read. I know how to navigate that site. It's been a while since I fell off the turnip truck but... if your picture shows up at top of the screen with the dark greek writing that says "ONLINE NOW!!!" then you are ONLINE NOW !!!!! Sheesh, I know I was born blonde but puh-leeze.

i mean he could have been serious. Some people have their messenger platforms autosign when the computer fires up. Maybe he wasn't cruising the site. But... he was online. And since he is familiar with jurisprudence you'd think he'd know better. Then again... because they are familiar with church law you'd think pastors and priests would know better than to fornicate. And he is a guy. Who knows... maybe his blonde goes all the way to his bone marrow. Yutz.

Next knight up for scrutiny...