Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

***********************************************************************************

There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.  ~Vicki Baum

Dancing is the poetry of the foot.  ~John Dryden

Dance is the hidden language of the soul.  ~Martha Graham

Talk about dance?  Dance is not something to talk about.  Dance is to dance.  ~Peter Saint James

Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.  ~John Wain

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.  A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.  ~William James

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.  ~Japanese Proverb

I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what it too deep to find for words.  ~Ruth St. Denis

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music.  Bodies never lie.  ~Agnes de Mille

Dance is a delicate balance between perfection and beauty.  ~Author Unknown

the actual adolescents’ changing moods puzzle them as much as they puzzle their families

The Cancer Love Mystery

The child is now an Adolescent, the soul having evolved to the stage of Cancer, hovering between childhood and maturity, longing to be grown-up, yet hesitating to cross over to the other side.  Cancer brings back awareness of the negative feminine and reflective Night Forces.  But this second experience of night is blended with a new, richer and even more sensual feeling (which was only a poetic inspiration, not yet a true reality, on the earlier Taurean level), for a change of seasons has occurred.   The spring awakening has deepened into a mid-summer night’s dream in all its full-blown and fragrant beauty for these Cancerian Oberon and Titania men and women.

Now the moody, sensitive, “Adolescent” soul vacillates between childish dependence and the maddeningly enticing, beckoning world of adulthood (what is like to be a man or a woman?).  This is beautifully expressed by the experiments between the human and faerie worlds in Taurean Shakespeare’s famed classic.  Is it sad or happy…funny or tragic?  The symbolic “Puckish” Cancerian Adolescent observes the adults (humans) in the environment, uncannily perceptive of everything seen and heard.  But this grown-up, material world so intensely watched hints of frequent disillusion.

And so the dreams of Cancer are troubled, causing the Crab to cry out in the night, sometimes dragging the old symbolic Taurus Teddy Bear out of the closet, and hugging it closely when no one can see.  As with Cancerian men and women, the actual adolescents’ changing moods puzzle them as much as they puzzle their families.  But those terrors are very real to Cancerians, who fear that maturity will mean the loss of security known with the parents, especially the mother.  Will future strangers ever fuss over the Crabs and love them as unconditionally as mother?  Cancer is beginning to suspect that they won’t.

Unable to explain their apprehensions, the Crabs turn secretive, dreaming alone – or hide and pout, imagining that no one understands.  On the Cancer level, the possible loss of parental protection haunts the subconscious.  Cancer has already learned what loss is.  Perhaps childhood friends have moved away, the family has changed residences, the old familiar neighbourhood is gone.  The world is no longer so exciting as the Crabs sense its hidden pitfalls.  The “Adolescent” Cancerian men and women know that growing up will surely bring unexpected hurt, so they cling to what they know can be trusted – yesterday.

Because the new perceptions are so acute, Cancer sees a combination of tragedy and comedy in Life as it expands in his awareness through his first excursion into the sensitive Water Element.  Still, despite an innate shyness, the Cancerian soul will not be pushed into the background, for this is the second experience as a Cardinal leader, which can turn illogical fear into sensible caution.  The Crabs wish on both the Full Moon and the New, only half-conscious of what it is they wish for……reluctant t find out.  What does tomorrow hold?  Sentiment moves the Cancerian Adolescent soul to tears.  Motivated by the need to hide true emotions, the Crabs say: “I FEEL” – then, so no one will suspect they feel so deeply, they make jokes, believing they fool people.  If not handled tenderly at this crucial stage of soul evolvement, the Cancerian man or woman develops a permanent, hard, protective shell against the cruel world.

Cancer’s positive qualities are imagination, tenacity, tenderness, sensitivity, care and caution.  Expressed in their negative form they become stinginess, irritability, melancholy, clinging and cowardice, possessiveness and moodiness.

To Cancer, as to the actual uncertain and sentimental adolescent, love has become important again, above all else.  But it is now synonymous with home, representing emotional security – and the need for love is so great it must be disguised behind moody tears and Lunar laughter.

A war does not determine who is right, only who is left.

Source: http://al-el.clan.su/

Wisdom

Those who are skilled in combat do not become angered,

those who are skilled at winning do not become afraid.

Thus the wise win before they fight, while the ignorant fight to win.

~Zhuge Liang

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

~Baltasar Gracian

He who knows not and knows that he knows not is ignorant. Teach him. He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool. Shun him. He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep. Wake him.

~Anonymous

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

~Bertrand Russell

A great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.

~German Proverb

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

~Jeanette Rankin

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

~Voltaire, War

Source: http://media.photobucket.com/image/impossible%20is%20nothing/pedro925/impossible.jpg?o=11

A person knows nothing…

But a person does believe, think, imagine, make up, recall and guess a lot.

Source: http://al.turtlecounseling.com/blog/_archives/2005/3/11/418514.html

Emotional Competency

Well, well, well…  I did not have time to write anything.  Not that I really wanted.  But there is good news – after all this time, after all my efforts, I suddenly came to realize who I am, the good, the bad and the ugly.  It is a revelation, you could laugh at it all you want, but I was blind.  Now I am upset, but hopeful.  I am back to square one.  The April Fool Joke is all on me.  Well I am Fool and a grandiose Fool at that, but at least now I realize it.  What a relief!!!

“Don’t ignore the past.  It is the place where we keep who we were and who we’ve grown from.”

“What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance.”

“The way you see it is never the way it is.”

“Your truth is never the Truth.”

Source: http://al.turtlecounseling.com/blog/_archives/2005/3/11/418514.html

I am glad that I had the courage to look at the things they are now and regret that it took me so long.  But it is what it is and it is imperative to press forward.

Since there is no time to waste, I am not quite sure whether to continue updating my site or abandon it altogether.  Until I make a decision to quit, I will try and make short posts.

There is one site I found, which I intend to explore –

http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/

you can do it too – that is my suggestion for the day.

There are a few lines that drew me in

Passion + Reason = Constructive Action. This is the essence of emotional competency.

And a few quotes

“Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies.” ~ St. Augustine

“First-person viewpoint is the fundamental asymmetry of humanity.” ~ Leland R. Beaumont

Source: http://www.bloomington.k12.mn.us/indschool/WB/calendar1.jpg

Calendar Wisdom.

For all these (3!) months I have not done well at all.  All of these months I have not succeeded, even in March when I decided to stick to “Success” and “supposedly” made resolutions.  No, to be more specific, I made resolutions; the only problem was I did not carry them through.  But remembering the Art of Reframing, it was not a disaster, but a learning experience.  So, I need a plan, I need motivation, I need to check my progress daily.  I will see what will happen from now on.  But I have to admit that two ideas are firmly planted in my head – Love (February’s theme) and Success (March’s theme), they are unrelated (or so it seems so far!).  I have read a book by Anthony Robbins “Awaken the Giant Within” and I will be quoting him regularly.  I guess I can give myself credit for at least trying to find a way – Anthony Robbins is considered to be a psychologist of change and success, even though his expertise is not indisputable.  Regardless of his credentials, I believe that if I do the exercises that he suggests and take his advice with a pinch of salt, I will do better than without any plan or direction in mind.  I have to stay on track!  I can change almost everything, but it takes time.  So, opening a new chapter…

April Fools.

Perhaps it’s light-hearted nature of Spring that brought about April’s Fool Day, the way it looks like summer one day only to be freezing the next.  Take a moment to inject humour into your day.  See if any of the word tiles below strike your funny bone.  If not, try randomly grabbing words and putting them next to each other.  Take it further: put together those words that seem least likely to be side by side.  Create an absurdist collection of funny language.

Quote of the month:

“Humour is the great thing, the saving thing.  The minute is crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

 - Mark Twain

I tend to think that I have a great sense of humour, but some people just don’t get my jokes and in the worst-case scenario it all turns very ugly.  They may get angry, offended or aggressive.  I think they take themselves way too serious.  Do I have to adjust all the time?  I guess it is a choice…  I always laugh at myself, so it must be a good Sign!

Source: http://smartlemming.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/abstract-waves.jpg

No particular reason for picking this song.  Or there is a possibility that there is a reason for everything.  As one of my new acquaintances put it “there is a reason for my insanity”.  So there must be a reason for mine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgYgpoZpOK0

Bob Dylan “Things Have Changed”

A worried man with a worried mind

No one in front of me and nothing behind

There’s a woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne

Got white skin, got assassin’s eyes

I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies

I’m well dressed, waiting on the last train

 

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose

Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

 

People are crazy and times are strange

I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range

I used to care, but things have changed

 

This place ain’t doing me any good

I’m in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood

Just for a second there I thought I saw something move

Gonna take dancing lessons, do the jitterbug rag

Ain’t no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag

Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove

 

Lot of water under the bridge, lot of other stuff too

Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through

 

People are crazy and times are strange

I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range

I used to care, but things have changed

 

I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road

If the Bible is right, the world will explode

I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can

Some things are too hot to touch

The human mind can only stand so much

You can’t win with a losing hand

 

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet

Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street

 

People are crazy and times are strange

I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range

I used to care, but things have changed

 

I hurt easy, I just don’t show it

You can hurt someone and not even know it

The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity

Gonna get low down, gonna fly high

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie

I’m in love with a woman who don’t even appeal to me

 

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake

I’m not that eager to make a mistake

 

People are crazy and times are strange

I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range

I used to care, but things have changed

From Robert Greene “The 48 Laws of Power”.

Preface, page xvii

The feeling of having no power over people and events is generally unbearable to us – when we feel helpless we feel miserable.  No one wants less power; everyone wants more.  In the world today, however, it is dangerous to seem too power hungry, to be overt with your power moves.  We have to seem fair and decent.  So we need to be subtle – congenial yet cunning, democratic yet devious.

This game of constant duplicity most resembles the power dynamic that existed in the scheming world of the old aristocratic court.

[…]

The successful courtier learned over time to make all of his moves indirect; if he stabbed an opponent in the back, it was with a velvet glove on his hand and the sweetest of smiles on his face.  Instead of using coercion or outright treachery, the perfect courtier got his way though seduction, charm, deception, and subtle strategy, always planning several moves ahead.  Life in the court was a never-ending game that required constant vigilance and tactical thinking.  It was civilized war.

Today we face a peculiarly similar paradox to that of the courtier: Everything must appear civilized, decent, democratic, and fair.  But if we play by those rules too strictly, if we take them too literally, we are crushed by those around us who are not so foolish.  As the great Renaissance diplomat and courtier Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, “Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.”  The court imagined itself the pinnacle of refinement, but underneath its glittering surface a cauldron of dark emotions – greed, envy, lust, hatred – boiled and simmered.  Our world similarly imagines itself the pinnacle of fairness, yet the same ugly emotions still stir within us, as they have forever.  The game is the same.  Outwardly, you must seem to respect the niceties, but inwardly, unless you are a fool, you learn quickly to be prudent, and to do as Napoleon advised: Place your iron hand inside a velvet glove.  If, like the courtier of times gone by, you can master the arts o indirection, learning to seduce, charm, deceive, and subtly outmaneuver your opponents, you will attain the heights of power.  You will be able to make people bend to your will without their realizing what you have done.  And if they do not realize what you have done, they will never resent nor resist you.

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

Anyone who wishes to understand the nature of beauty should first of all ask himself: where is it located?  Can we say that it is somewhere inside the woman who is considered beautiful?  Can we say, for instance, that there is beauty in the features of her face?  Or in her figure?

Science tells us that the brain receives a flow of information from the sense organs, in this case from the eyes, and without the interpretations imposed by the visual cortex, this is simply a chaotic sequence of coloured dots, digitized into nerve impulses by the visual tract.  Any fool can understand that there is not beauty in that, so it doesn’t find its way into a man through his eyes.  In technical terms, beauty is the interpretation that arises in the consciousness of the patient.  As they say – in the eye of the beholder.

Beauty does not belong to a woman and it is not her specific quality – it is just that at a certain time of life her face reflects beauty, as a windowpane reflects the sun that is hidden behind the roofs of the houses.  And so we cannot say that a woman’s beauty fades with time – it is simply that the sun moves on and the windows of other houses begin to reflect it.  But we know that the sun is not in the windowpanes that we look at.  It is in us.

What is the sun?  I’m sorry, but that’s another mystery, and today I was only planning to reveal one.  And in any case, from the point of view of practical magic, the nature of the sun is absolutely irrelevant.  What matters are the manipulations that we perform with its light…

“Fools live to regret their words, wise men to regret their silences.” Will Henry

from “Monumental Propaganda” by Vladimir Voinovich

I feel sorry for those future generations who will not even be able to imagine that there was a time when the broad extensive lands of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (broad extensive lands, not expensive foreign brands) were all under the sway of a general system of sociopolitical views that were progressive in every respect and compulsory for every one of the three hundred million representatives of the peoples, nations, and tribes (some of them still pretty wild) who occupied those extensive lands, and which went by the name of the Sole Correct Scientific World Outlook.

The world outlook was uniquely correct, and it was promulgated by the only political party (there was no need for any others).  But while all the members of the Party accepted the Sole Correct Scientific outlook, they were divided among themselves into two hostile tendencies.  One tendency was Marxist-Leninist and the other was Stalinist.  The Marxist-Leninists were good Marxists, kind people.  They wanted to establish a good life on earth for good people and a bad life for bad people, but it had to be done in accordance with the World Outlook.  And therefore they killed bad people, but whenever they could, they left the good people alive.  The Stalinists, however, were essentially democrats – they killed everybody without distinction, and they regarded the World Outlook not as a dogma but as a guide to action.  Consequently, the Marxist-Leninists were regarded as humanists and devotees of the Sole Correct Scientific World Outlook (SCOSWO), while the Stalinists were devoted to Stalin and were prepared to follow him in any direction, wherever he might lead them.

[…] so our Admiral, being a man of immense learning and absolutely independent views, who always had his own original opinion on everything, regarded SCOSWO disrespectfully even in those times when very few people could even conceive of such a possibility.  Under his influence I also began to ponder and to doubt things that had seemed incontrovertible to me only recently.  I began to wonder why SCOSWO was regarded as exclusively true and scientific and why the cause of the people’s future happiness required so many of the people to be killed, hounded, ruined, starved and frozen.  And whether it might not have been better to invent some Uniquely Incorrect SCOSWO that would be a bit less hard on people.  To this very day, however, the devotees of SCOSWO claim that the theory was good but the practice was bad.  Lenin devised it correctly, but Stalin applied in wrongly.  But who, where, in what country, has ever applied it correctly? Khrushchev? Brezhnev? Mao Tse-tung? Kim Il-Sung? Ho Chi Minh? Pol Pot? Castro? Honecker? Who? Where? When?  What is so good about this theory if it can never be confirmed in practice anywhere under any conditions?

Nowadays, of course, the number of people selflessly devoted to SCOSWO has fallen a bit.  But in the times we are describing here the broad expanses of our homeland were home to quite large numbers of them, one of whom was Mark Semyonovich Shubkin, a faithful adherent of SCOSWO, a disciple first of Lenin-Stalin and then of Lenin alone.  But he held on to Lenin for a long time, with firm, total commitment.  Shubkin remained faithful to SCOSWO and to Lenin before and after his arrest, during his nocturnal interrogations, even during the years he spent engaged in public works.  Despite the cold and hunger, never, not once, not for a single moment (until certain time came) did he doubt.  Major and minor devils frequently tempted him, trying to sow doubt in his mind, but he endured like Jesus Christ, in whom he did not believe.

The investigator Tikhonravov beat Mark Semyonovich very painfully with a towel twisted into a heavy rope while abusing him in the vilest possible terms, blinded him with the table lamp, prevented him from sleeping and wouldn’t let him sit down, but when Mark Semyonovich, enduring all of this stoically, pointed to the portrait of Lenin hanging above the investigator’s head and rebuked him with quotations from the leader, Tikhonravov replied simply, “I couldn’t give a shit for your Lenin.”  To which Shubkin was unable to find sufficiently convincing counterarguments.  But he continued to display his previous fortitude.  And he left the camp unbroken, undefeated, with his views unchanged.  That is, in the words of the Admiral, he left it the same fool he was when he entered it.  A sealed and certified fool, the Admiral called him, meaning a fool with certificates with big seals on them.

I must confess there were times when the Admiral’s judgments seemed too harsh to me.  And din Shubkin’s case undeservedly harsh.  After all, if a man had been through the camps and not changed his convictions in spite of everything, surely that was worthy of respect?

“Sheer stupidity, no matter what,” the Admiral used to reply mercilessly, “and not even stupidity – absolute idiocy.”

The Admiral regarded Shubkin with mild contempt, although at first he himself had attempted to shatter his faith in SCOSWO and its supreme idol.  He used to tell Shubkin about the German money and the German railroad carriage (which also happened to have seals on it), about the priests and prostitutes executed on the personal orders of “the most humane man ever to walk the earth,” about his progressive paralysis as a result of syphilis, and many other things which at that time were known to only a few.  None of these stories produced even the slightest effect on Shubkin.  Especially since he knew many of them already.  But he explained the actions of his idol by objective circumstances, harsh necessity and the fact that revolutions are not made wearing kid gloves.  He advised the Admiral to undertake a close rereading of Lenin’s full collected works.  “And then,” he said, “it will become clear even to you that Lenin is a genius.  “If he’s a genius,” the Admiral used to argue, “Then why is this prison camp socialism of ours so badly constructed?”  Shubkin would object, “Lenin didn’t intend to build what exists now, but something better.”  “But a genius,” the Admiral used to say, “builds what he wants to build, not something else.”  “Lenin,” Shubkin would explain, “couldn’t not foresee the inertness of the peasant masses, which would not appreciate the advantages of socialism, and he could not foresee that petit-bourgeois element would work its way up to the leadership of the country, that the leadership would turn aside from the road he has chosen, reject the New Economic Policy and advance too fast into collectivization.”  “But a genius,” the Admiral would persist, “is only a genius if he does foresee things.  It doesn’t take a genius not to foresee things.  We can all do that.”  “Vladimir Ilich,” Shubkin would sigh, “was born a hundred years ahead of his time.” “Well there I agree with you,” the Admiral would say, nodding this head in confirmation, “but at your age you should know that premature children are often retarded.”

Shubkin withstood all the Admiral’s onslaughts and for a long time, throughout the sixties and halfway through the seventies, he remained faithful to SCOSWO, and moreover, in doing so he behaved almost entirely in accordance with the behest of Christ, who had told his apostles: Go forth and preach.  Shubkin preached to the old and the young, even to children of preschool age, hammering SCOSWO into children’s heads in a form accessible to them.