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I haven’t done a list in I don’t know how long, so here’s one for 2009, recognizing my top ten, notable events:

• I got to see a woman/my partner/Tristan give birth to our first child and son Lee, born (1.24.09)
• I completed yet another phase of build-out at the first house I’ve helped build from scratch
• I got to see Lamb play live
• My immediate family got together, including my sister and bro-in-law from Spain (who got to meet Lee); last time was some years ago
• Made my first trip to Ireland
• Flew solo with Lee back to PA for a quick family visit
• Moved back to Los Angeles, California
• Helped navigate my Internet fabric company through treacherous economic waters, coming out ahead, out of debt and on track for renewed profitability
• Lee: rolled over, crawled, stood up, took his first steps, started “talking”, along with a multitude of other firsts
• Discovered some interesting truths about myself through some very heavy introspection

“…baby step onto the elevator… baby step into the elevator… I’m *in* the elevator.”

This year has been a bunch of baby steps, not only for Lee but for me too. Thankfully, that seems to be coming to an end. With the move back to LA coming up soon, things should ramp back up, personally and professionally.

I’m really looking forward to it.

It is with much anticipation and after much thought, discussion, consideration, review, soul-searching, deliberation, and so forth that I have decided to set my sights firmly on the move back to Los Angeles, CA.

After half a year in PA and half a year in Ohio, neither Tristan or I have been satisfied with each others hometowns. Granted, as many have said, we haven’t given it time. But why should we when we already know what LA is like and more importantly, that we BOTH like it? Granted we didn’t have Lee there when lived there last, but a number of our friends out there have been having kids, while still finding work and time to play; it can be done and it will only be that much better with Lee.

There’s so much more opportunity and competition there; people go after their dreams. In big ways. And that’s largely what we’re looking at. Lee is part of our dream. But we both have others and it seems best, on most counts, to realize them there.

Admittedly, it’s going to be tough for me personally, on some levels, to head west again. I’ve held on to some pretty old dreams in PA and with another move west (my 3rd), it will be just another step away from them. Especially difficult, will be leaving my blood family behind again. Now that I’ve crested 30-yrs of age, it’s become even more clear to me how little time we have with each other in one lifetime.

But, many new plans originated in LA though and revolve around it or the west coast in general (yes, the spirit of the west is still quite alive and well . Plus, with age comes an increasingly strong dislike for the cold and wet weather.

So in maybe another two weeks, maybe more, maybe less…we’ll be back in La La land. Stay tuned.
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Update 1.6.10: We’re back in LA (have been for over 3-wks and it’s great!).

In the process of packing and unpacking several times over the last year, I’ve come across numerous old sketchbooks and other pieces of art I’ve created over the years. This, added to a previous desire to get most of my art online out of a desire for both viewing and archiving sake, led me to finally scanning a bunch of pieces from various sketchbooks. I’ve a bunch of them up on Facebook too, to share with those that haven’t seen any of my work before.

Here’s a few shots of what’s there:

I’ve begun compiling a list of favorite musicians. It’s a work in progress, especially since many of my favorite artists are still packed away in my cassette (tape) storage and have therefore fallen out of touch with them. As I work my way through those boxes and my memory, I’ll be adding them all on here:

A Perfect Circle, Aes Dana, Alice In Chains, Amanda Jayne, Amon Tobin, Ani DiFranco, Aphex Twin, Arcade Fire, At The Drive In, Bad Boy Bill, Beastie Boys, Beck, Ben Wright, Bjork, Bliss Puppies, Booka Shade, Broker/Dealer, Carbon Based Lifeforms, Carl Cox, Chevelle, Cocteau Twins, Daft Punk, Danzig, Dave Matthews Band, David Sylvian, Dead Can Dance, Death Cab For Cutie, Dieselboy, Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, DJ Brad, DJ Brian, DJ LTJ Bukem, DJ T-1000, DJ Treavor, Enya, Faith No More, Fiona Apple, Frankie Bones, Front 242, Fugazi, Future Sound of London, Gregory Johnson, Hallucinogen, Hardfloor, Helmet, Hot Chip, H.U.V.A, Jamiroquai, Janes Addiction, Joey Beltram, Jose Gonzalez, Kings of Leon, Lamb, Live, Loop!Station, Maata Haari, Maserati, Massive Attack, Meat Beat Manifesto, Ministry, Monolake, Morrissey, Mr. C, Nicky Fingers, NIN, Nirvana, Nitzer Ebb, Omar Santana, O9, Pearl Jam, Peter Gabriel, PJ Harvey, Portishead, Primus, Puscifer, Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rusted Root, Seven Seconds, Sigur Ros, Sinead O’connor, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Sisters of Mercy, Skinny Puppy, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Speedy J, Sting, Stone Temple Pilots, Sun Project, Talvin Singh, The Cure, The Mars Volta, The Police, The Postal Service, The Sisters of Mercy, The Smiths, Tool, Tori Amos, Type O Negative

This post is in response to an hour-and-half phone call I had with one of my sisters earlier tonight.

We’re very similar in some ways and so I recommended she look into Barbara Brennan’s healing arts (since we were talking about changing ourselves for the better). I started an email to describe the healing system and my take on it and then gravitated here to post simultaneously but, quickly deviated to what follows (still in progress), below. Influences and the like aren’t included as of now. Perhaps if there’s cause for it, I’ll expand upon it all further sometime. It should also be noted that this is only the first pass/draft, written on the fly long past when I should have been fast asleep.

Take from it what you will, hopefully with an open mind…
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Brennan, her school and its philosophy may seem a bit fanciful and ungrounded (no pun intended) if you have little to no experience with the more esoteric healing arts/sciences. Having studied, practiced, received, and lived these and other similar modalities for the better part of 15-yrs now, it’s all par for the course (for me), and so I can only recommend an open mind and a suspension of disbelief.

What I feel is important to take, if anything, from her system is that all living things (particularly humans), generate a powerful field of energy about them (Brennan’s based on a 7-layer system) and that this field is a filter of sorts. Most if not all, disease originates here first. If it remains unattended, it can advance through the energy field into our “physical” body, becoming an even greater nuisance or imbalance. An imbalance in our energy “body” can (and I would say most times) create one in our “physical”, “real”, or cellular body.

Brennan also states that (often times), disease can be traced back to some incident in which we experience a traumatic event, be it physical or emotional, and that if that event is powerful or significant enough in some way, it will create an imbalance in our energy body, a “frozen time conglomerate”, as she likens it. You cry, you yell…whatever you do either in the moment or for sometime after may seem like the only reaction we manifest (obviously some events are more permanent than others and irreversible, like the loss of a leg, virginity, etc.), but according to this theory, it’s an ongoing reaction.

This FTC becomes a part of you and you unconsciously grow with it, continually and unconsciously feeding it (like a cancer, not uncoincidentally). If your FTC’s progenitor was significant enough, you will also start reacting and responding from that FTC. In other words, if someone beat you up physically and you became fearful from that event, then you’d react out of that fear-base in future events that trigger it, i.e. confrontation, verbal abuse, etc.

With time, that FTC would grow beyond its vibrational (energy) field and enter your physical, cellular field (I would argue that your energy field is also cellular, but that’s another discussion), and if unchecked, wreak havoc on that part of your body most closely related to the FTC in your energy field, eventually effecting your entire system.

Gaining an understanding of this and carrying it consciously with you in your everyday life is I think, a crucial first step in healing yourself. If you can recognize your loops and patterns (as they pertain to your FTC), then you can kind of call yourself on your own insecurities/weakness/bs, before anyone else does, which in turn, empowers you when someone else starts attacking you. Even if they’re not intentionally meaning to, the curse of an FTC is that it doesn’t distinguish between intentional and unintentional triggers (triggers being a look, name calling…anything that aggravates it).

Going back to vibrations for a minute, it should be noted that everything can be translated to or measured, in a vibrational state, as at the subatomic level (and this why it’s interesting that “hard science” claims to be unable to verify Brennan’s system) everything exists on a vibrational state/level/frequency.

As IndiaDaily puts it:

In superstring theory, the subatomic particles we see in nature are nothing more than different resonances of the vibrating superstrings, in the same way that different musical notes emanate from the different modes of vibration of a violin string. (These strings are very small-of the order of 1035 metres.)

The computer algorithms are now able to model higher dimensions with the help of superstring theory. Things fall in place. Everything that we see, feel are illusions. They are nothing physical but really unreal manifestation of vibration from the higher dimensions.

What does all this mean: to you, your health, your “true” self? It means that you are empowered for change from within. Now. But how? Beyond recognizing what’s stated above, you need to correct this imbalance energetically first, before you can see permanent healing take hold physically. To do so you need to treat the FTC with an equal or greater blast of energy to that which created it. Quantifying and dispensing that energy, admittedly, requires a higher level of proficiency than you might now have. But I believe that with time, you can chip away at these blockages yourself. Of course, if you have the time and money, you can probably find a Brennan graduate to assist you in the process (and I fully recommend doing so to at least familiarize yourself with the process).

Additionally, energy work requires it’s own study and practice but a simple introductory course into Qigong meditation or something similar can be a great help. But, all of this is natural to us, I believe, on some primal level. Using your intuition or your “gut instinct” can quite accurately hone in on what your body needs. It’s constantly delivering us signals, many of which get overlooked in our super-media saturated, hectic life styles.

My summary of energy work/channeling is that it’s like transferring your mental consciousness from your mind (specifically from between your eyes) to your hands and then outwards/inwards to your intended target and then throwing a faucet on, adjusting the flow/intensity as necessary. There are however, many forms of visualization for this, mine is just one mixture drawn from my experience in Qigong, martial arts and intuition. You can “trickle”, “pour”, envelope, vibrate, flatten, knead, or use any other mental technique to move both new and old FTC energies.

As you take new energy in (visualizations are helpful here too) and direct it out, it’s important too to ground yourself simultaneously. I usually picture and feel a massive cord/rope/shaft of energy from my root chakra to the ground (and deeper depending on the energy worked), with “waste” energy traveling out this path. Basically, new energy comes in from the top of my head (or crown chakra), then splits through my head, then arms to my hands, and out, while simultaneously feeding some down to my ground cord. I alternate these two channels, again as dictated by the location and volume of energy needed.

The overall feeling of this should feel like a hose has been turned on and water is spraying out your hands while your feet seem bolted/joined with the floor/earth. Some keys to recognizing that energy is in fact moving, can be: mild to intense temperature feelings/variations, vibration changes (pins and needles, humming, buzzing, etc.), electrical currents through all or portions of your body, extreme calm and stillness, and more. In extreme cases, you can even experience intestinal/stomach activity, up to and including projectile vomiting and bowel movements (though that’s generally more a result of the FTC being stimulated and broken up).

In summary, I believe Barbara Brennan’s system to be one of the leading, if not best, of the modalities out there. Of course, each person’s different and other systems can have their share of success in healing too. But, Brennan’s just seems the best fit, for me that is at least. And I’ve not yet even taken any the school’s courses, this is all just from reading her books and seeking out some of her students and alumni for an occasional session. I can only imagine the success in health I’d find if I’d someday complete their program.