Free Hugs

Yesterday (Sunday) I had my first Free Hugs experience with my friends from Couchsurfing/Madrid. Nothing big to be told, but I want to say that if you're too busy, too celebrity or too afraid to offer a hug to a stranger downtown on a Sunday morning, you're doing something terrible with your own life.

See for yourself, and feel the magic even from a magic-deterring device such as a digital video, and if it makes you feel good, give yourself a chance and vow to hold the sign some day soon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPRFA1Efyts
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=47327722863

Adulthood, part one

I've been questioning my religious identity as a Pagan for quite a while now. Eight years ago, very few things made me as proud as waving the pentacle or the "God Herself" flag, especially because of the zest for life, reverence for death as a natural force, and the freedom from the oppression of gender it represented to me. But then, as I grew older, I began noticing nuances (that word...) in general, collective pagan behaviour that made me progressively more uncomfortable, until a few very particular, widely publicized pagan notions began, frankly, scarying the shit out of me. Today, and for the past two years or so, it's namely the certainty that owning a cunt gives you power of "choice" over life and death. Life and death of other people. And then masking it with a ritual to the Goddess of the Woodland presumably makes murder look natural.

When I was young, stupid and blocked, I believed that one chose a religious path because of the value of the theories professed along it. These days, being definetely much of an adult the kid I was wanted to be when he grew up, I know one decides on and chooses his Religion, his social circle, his general experience on Planet Earth, which is still my Deity, and certainly his community by the way they feel; and I also know that identity is an individual merit. I'm NOT going to associate with money-hungry, power-hungry ego-maniacs who make me feel threatened and disturbed. Starhawk's books in the 80s used to be mostly about Preservation and Restoration, and look at all this shit now.

I've been huge on Abraham(-Hicks)'s teachings lately, and I'm working on becoming an allower. The Law of Allowing, of all three Universal Laws Abe teaches, is the most difficult to grasp, but I'm slowly coming to dig it. And even though I know it states that I need to allow others to be who they want to be and do whatever they want to do, I don't have to take in anybody else's personal laws made up on vanity, ignorance and very conditional love. Or love of conditions, actually. Murderers are people desperately unable to allow, so they try the last resort on the table. (And please don't mask abortion with maturity and "Adulthood". First, Adulthood is a very personal and intimate notion created by each adult, since each of us achieve our personal Break Even Point in a different moment, and look at ourselves differently by then. Second, in Spain, where abortions are fully legal, 90% of them are performed by women younger than 19 years old, and in my physical and non-physical experience, all abortions were/are performed by women not really older than that. Abortion is immaturity and total inability to deal with one's own system, sexual life and, for one thing, creative powers of lifegivingness.)

I still love my friends in São Paulo, and I'm still attending all public rituals whenever I'm in town, since I love the memories of my youth. But all public references to Paganism on all my profiles in the Internet and the rest of my social life, are going to go. I'm responsible for my identity, image and religious (political) stand.

I'm so sorry my ex-religion is so twisted by perversions, like practically all religions before it.

Things to Leave Behind

Today's packing up day. For the first time in my life, over half of my luggage consists of gifts for other people, and I can't believe I feel so good about this. Yet, I'm feeling a little guilty because of last night's talk with my sister and mom in her bedroom.

She's turned 25 this week, and in a mysogynistic country like Brazil that's when the pre-Saturn's Return hysteria for heterossexual marriage and children begins, so she suddenly brought her hypothetical marriage into our talk about my future life when I land in Madrid tomorrow, this time so differently from the Spring of '07. Next thing I knew, her index finger was rocking in front of my face and her tone of voice was completely transformed back into the usual bitch mode. Then I received instructions about my outfit for her wedding, who I was entering the ceremony with (my husband--my family--not allowed because here in Brazil, people's mentality, bla, bla, bla), and what role I had to play in her big day. I said I was going to bring a pianist from Spain and sing, instead. She said, no. And grew angrier. Then she and my mother said I was her family and she didn't want to feel alone in her day. I. e., like I felt on my wedding day, when neither she, nor my mother, called, sent an SMS or even an email. I married like I had no family at all in this world. And then I made that very clear to them with very few words and the perfect voice tone (oh boy, how I love adulthood!), and then made it even clearer, in an even more perfect speech, that nobody in that family had the right to demand any wedding day behaviour from me. End of talk, soothing silence and lightness in my soul. And less shit to bring back in my bags with me, opening more space for sincere gifts for people who have accepted me as I am.

I most likely won't have space in my checking bag for as many books as I'd like to bring. And books are too heavy to bring more than a few in your carry-on. I've been working intensely with Abraham-Hicks's seminars and "Starter Set" CDs throughout this month I've spent here in Rio, and I think among the many blessings I've attracted to myself because of that, I now have a sharper pre-manifestation sensitivity, so I know that I'll need some Craft and magic books with exercises, because I'm currently attracting for myself a study group for (gay) male Mysteries in Madrid. I also intend to begin Storytelling again, and even though that feels a tad bit counter-Flow by now, I'm determined to be surrounded with my tried-and-true repertoire if the opportunity to play The Storm Fool live again appears. And frankly, it might. I had already decided that I'd bring home this time around Nacy McDermott's "Real Vegetarian Thai", which is my all-time favourite recipe book and I had forgotten when I moved to Madrid two years ago. I'm also taking the Gay Kama Sutra, two Brazilian books I think my husband will adore (the world's first gay-themed modern novel "Bom-Crioulo", and a book of essays on the formation of Brazilian identity and mentality "Raízes do Brasil"), Alex Grey's "The Mission of Art", and the three books I had brought from Spain to read on the flight to Brazil: "The Boy with Striped Pyjamas", Oshos's "Creativity" and my German workbook with CD.On top of that, there's Deepak Chopra's "Way of the Wizard", that I would love to have there; the CDs, which won't be many anyway; and, Gods help me, the sheet music I had vowed to take back. These are the ones that should probably stay. I had promised my ex-choir director, the one the Faeries drew me apart from last (NH) Summer, that I'd give him Brazilian music with SATB arrangements, which I had from my old, lovely choir in Sampa. But then, Music lately hasn't seemed to be such a grateful thing to sacrifice other things for, and I'm not sure it's wise, fair or even fun to go back to study solfege anyway...

It's an awful thing I don't have any of my Divination systems here to aid me in deciding, and honestly, blogging/writing used to be more helpful. But in any case, I've been feeling good for taking gifts to Spain, so I'm going to focus on that feeling of generosity, and everything else that needs to go will find their way into the bag.

Downstream and across the ocean. Here I go.