mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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I idealize and adore Sandra Day O’Connor, so it was not really a surprise to find her as a super hero in my dream last night. She was a super judge, which of course she is, but her super powers had expanded beyond the regular earthy ones. My visual recall of my dreams is still pretty crumby, but the ability to hold on the the basic story and characters is improving. She could swoop in like Mighty Mouse or Batman. She wore fashionable street clothes, not the robe, but did have one of the little collar thingys they wear. She had those same piercing baby blue eyes that had a spectrum of vision that showed her where the rule of law was being abused by the cranky pants people.
The cranky group was diverse and included cops and judges along with regular angry bird citizens (the one’s we think might shoot somebody). The judge archetype seeks to balance justice and compassion. The shadow judge manifests as destructive criticism, judging without compassion, as misuse of legal authority, or threatening others through association with the law. Sandra Day was angelic and gave darshan and peace to the cranky panted ones. She had a clarity about her, as one might expect from cross between a real life Supreme and my dream judge/ justice avenger. She restored order like Jesus healed the sick. She had no props, no wand, no sleigh, just the truth. She was so brilliant that she enlightened the darkness in all the hearts she touched. What she did have in common with Santa was a need to keep moving because there was so much clarity, justice, and compassion to be distributed to all the good little girls and boys. By applying exactly the same fair and equal treatment to all the bad little girls and boys she proved that she was so beyond Supreme.
In real life Sandra Day and I are both Arizona hotties, although she is a Phoenician. She is co chair of an institute to foster civility in Tucson at the U of A. Her reputation for civility is epic, not that unlike my dream Super Supreme Sandra. Her favorite poem in real life tells her secret to Supremehood ( and SuperSupremehood):
Sometime when you’re feeling important;
Sometime when your ego’s in bloom
Sometime when you take it for granted
You’re the best qualified in the room,
Sometime when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions
And see how they humble your soul;
Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining
Is a measure of how you will be missed.
You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop and you’ll find that in no time
It looks quite the same as before.
The moral of this quaint example
Is do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember,
There’s no indispensable man.
[Saxon N. White Kessinger, There is No Indispensable Man (1959).]
How simple. These instructions, followed regularly can easily lead to civil discourse. This Supreme’s got SOUL. Let us all wish her luck on her nocturnal flights through the universe. Hi- Ho, SuperSandra, away. Let’s assume that this poem is the gift she wants us all to use while she is busy fighting injustice.
Historical enemies, sagas of war, and the tragic impact violent thoughts have on society today are harsh reminders of human disorder. We can not look back to find a perfect time in history or a completely noble story of our ancestors’ survival. The mixed bag has always existed, known and unknown, true and false. When evil rocks the world we are all quick to isolate culprits and round up perps in our own minds. It does not matter which demon we blame, even if we never mention it out loud. The very act of deciding who is to blame will be a process to eliminate knowledge of one’s own part in building a more hateful world. The question of the moment is “Who started this?”, but we all know intuitively the answer to that eternal question.
The prostitute archetype in each of our dramas will test and be tested to discover ethics and limits. The question will be answered in this lifetime about how blind you are to others in order to enhance your own comfort. This story will star your prostitute archetype. Your storyboard will be repeated in different costumes and sets until the line has been firmly established between your soul and what you are willing to do for physical comfort. You may find it is an opera one time and a comedy the next, but if you look back you can identify the segments like vignettes on the Twilight Zone. You created and produced these stories to find your limits. Your own unconscious mind has written, directed, and been in charge of casting the stars. There are sometimes entire decades of reruns. I feel that our nation has been rerunning an unfortunate version of our best selves with less than admirable results.
One meaningful action we all can take is prayer and meditation, to the best of our training and ability. Palestrina’s Requiem for 5 Voices may be helpful. Pax vobiscum.
My friend Steffi Burger is one of my German teachers. She was actually born in Germany but will soon join the Swiss club, the most exclusive and hard to join club in the world. She has lived there for about 20 years I think, and fully knows Switzadootch. She will never be able to speak like a real Swiss because she uses German as it was learned in Stuttgart, and will not be able to hide that ever.I am in a category of Swiss speaking much worse than Steffi. I do not speak or read hochdeutch, based on my theory that it has nothing to do with the language and culture of Switzerland. I have tried to learn this very funny and dialectic local code by absorbing it. Results vary. Sometimes I can read stuff and discover the meaning, and others I am totally off course when I read. They capitalize all nouns, which I joke about and have never found to be all that helpful. This is why….the noun is likely to be an entire paragraph. They just love to combine words in their language. I often really like them just for the way they sound. My new favorite word in German is weltuntergang. It is giving me flashbacks to the very first things I learned to say. My friend Beth and I learned a phrase from Ursula of Berlin, the most fashionable woman we had ever met. She taught us to say, ” Let’s be friends. The world is a village.”( Luts uns freude sein. die welt ist ein dorf ) It was my only full concept so I used it in response to everything and everyone. I knew some nouns and the verbs to ice skate and to ride a bicycle. But if the nouns I knew neither ice skated nor had a bicycle I had no way to make any coherent sense with my vocabulary. Welt, or world was in my initial lesson. Now the welt is going under in a single word. Wow, so much as happened, but one thing that has not happened is my magical acquisition of German or Swiss languages by osmosis.
I asked Steffi about parties in Langweiss or Zurich to celebrate the end of the world. She said this had not caught on as a festivity. It is sometimes hard to explain humor when the cultural background is missing. It is complicated to tell someone that the end of the world pot luck party you are excited to attend is to mock the people who are actually afraid of the end of the world. Gives new meaning to you had to be there. I spent the summer of the World Cup partying with the Swiss when the event was in held Germany. I could never convey to an American how the Euros feel about soccer. You truly have to be there to see what they do. Same with Fastnacht, it is inexplicable to people outside the culture. There are intense reasons to celebrate that are generational and not yours if you are born elsewhere. So the Swiss really do Advent, and appear to be skipping the idea of weltuntergang celebrations. I hope the world will not end before I get the chance to go back to Switzerland to party Swiss style. Stay neutral, my friends.
Be still my heart. God has given us something so much funnier than the Book of Mormon on Broadway. To follow the Pope’s Twitter stream is to be enlightened to the cosmic joke. All is revealed in these tweets. I have laughed until I cried several times. The pope himself tweeted about 9 times yesterday, but the fans had some extremely funny things to say. That is all I can tell you. Just do it. Cats on the internet, get back. Trending Bennie Is with us. Et cum spiritu tuo. In the words of the artist formerly and once again known as Prince,, “You can be the president. I wanna be the Pope. You can be the side effect. I wanna be the DOPE.” You can’t touch @Pontifex, this is one thing we all have to admit. The tweep’s got soul.

New Mexico celebrates 12 Dec
The village of Tortugas near Las Cruces, NM takes the 12 December very seriously. The fiesta and pilgrimage to the Virgin of Guadalupe is the main event of the year in the town close to the border. The Piro and Tigua traditions are honored in this village.
I was lucky enough to see the surfing virgin in person during her brief stay on an underpass in Encintas, CA. She was perfect there, just a few blocks from Moonlight Beach. She was removed and I think she went to LA to a collection. There was a great uproar to save the art work, but alas she was taken from the site. Tomorrow is the 12 Dec, Virgin of Guadalupe day. I know all her fans at the beach wish she still had a shrine they could see every day in Encinitas.
During the protest the Kook at Cardiff was dressed in her image to show solidarity. If you enjoy costuming and are not familiar with the Kook, you can check his calendar here.
If you could go back in time to any place and time where would you time travel? I know I would go straight to Bad Ragaz (via Zurich) to party like it is Christmas. I would attend the tree lighting choral evening and giant buffet offered by the Grand Hotels Bad Ragaz. There is nothing like it anywhere.
I would go back to the day before the beautiful people redesigned the spa, when bads were bads, and bademeisters were bad ass.
Hotel William Penn in downtown Pittsburgh has a gingerbread house of the hotel in the lobby..I had a really wonderful buffet breakfast there after a stroll of the town.
hotel in gingerbread

The first time I saw the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA I thought it was a mission. I learned it is a landmark hotel now owned by the city to preserve the unique architectural wonder. I visited for a breakfast in the dining room and a look around the place. It is classy.