Farber and Farber is a British publisher recommended by P&E that looks very reputable.  Right now they are only interested in poetry from new poets though in the past they have published only poetry from past greats and a few modern favorites that, honestly, I didn't recognize but that they clearly loved.  One of these collections were touted to contain author's notes and alternate versions of some poems.  I took a look at how these hardcover poetry collections (not anthologies) were being priced and saw some at 40 pounds.  So here's the question: do Brits consider that expensive for a book of poetry, or is that about normal in England?  Also, does anyone here have any personal experience with Farber and Farber to speak of... I mean, other that the fact that there is really only one Farber...?

In the dream I had this morning in the car, I was at some sort of festival where most people were in costumes of medieval, fantasy, or Beladhi styles and I was kicking myself that I was not.  I have such beautiful Beladhi costumes at home; why hadn't I thought to put one on?  Well, possibly because I hate showing off my horrible belly but anyway....

I was among the kiosks in a great bazaar and saw the perfect Beladhi top being sold: green silk embroidered with green beads and sequins and gold braiding with layers of guazy silk hanging down in such a way they could cover my tummy nicely.  But I wasn't the only one who'd spotted it.  Another woman was ahead of me in line to try it on... and she bought it!  Damn!

Seeing my crestfallen face, the sales girl said she had some others I might light in back and I could try on as many as I liked until I found exactly the right one that suited me.  "Besides," she added, "These are whole outfits including panatloons or skirts, hip sashes, and veils."

She needed say no more.  I eagerly followed where she led.  It was to a wide, carpeted, mostly deserted hallway like in a fancy hotel where every footstep was hushed in plushness.  She opened a big closet off this and bade me wait on a bench outside while she rummaged for costumes in my size. 

She brought out eye-widening treasures of Beladhi costumes and set up a little Chinese screen from me to try them on behind and look in one of the full length mirrors that hung in the hall.  But every time I liked something and thought it would do nicely, she brought something even more beautiful so I was changing constantly.  Even when I told her, "This is fine, really; it's beautiful!" she wouldn't stop bringing stuff out and, bowled over in her enthusiasm, I kept obligingly changing.

All that changin made me tired and I was suddenly having a hard time standing and keeping my eyes open.  I was literally changing in my sleep as she showed no sign of stopping, no mercy, no reprieve.

The oddest part of this is that I knew I was dreaming.  And who dreams being sleepy or falling asleep in dream?

Me.  That's who.  Weird, huh?

Next thing I knew, I was sleeping in the car again (where'd I'd been all along) and I could here the sale's girl asking people where I'd gone, that I'd run off with an expensive costume on that I hadn't yet paid for and she still had so many more for me to try on.  I debated just keeping my head down, but I'm very honest.  I can't shop lift.  The very thought gives me shudders.  But I couldn't lift my head or open my eyes when I tried to do so no matter how hard I tried.

Then I heard Jeb's voice meowing at me outside the car and was suddenly free to rise again.  I did so.  The costume I'd been wearing was nowhere in evidence.  Just my regular work clothes.  Even knowing the costume was a dream, this was kind of a relief to know.  I hadn't stolen anything.  Yay!

After returning inexplicable from apparent death, clueless as to what she was since she was not among the final 5 known Cyolons, Kara Thrace told Lee Adama she wasn’t afraid of death, had never been afraid of it. 

He’d thought death was the ultimate fear so he asked her what she did fear then and she surprised him with her answer: “I’m afraid of being forgotten.”

Forgotten?  As though her life hadn’t meant a thing, hadn’t affected anyone?  Interesting fear.  I guess it’s probably a common one.  I think we all want to really matter to someone… maybe a side effect of feeling alone in life?

When Kara has seen the 2^nd earth, the one the survivors will settle on for good, satisfied at seeing it, her personal goal, and knowing she’ll not be forgotten, she vanishes between one moment and the next while walking with Lee in a beautiful meadow.  Was she a ghost then?  How did she physically interact with her shipmates then in all this time?  Did another version of her come out of a wormhole, trespassing through another reality unawares?  What was that all about?

It occurs to me that, yes, the universe is somehow one great mind in which all things are interconnected and in which every possibility plays itself out in some way.  Was Kara Part II simply another possibility of herself being played out and once played was no longer necessary in that context of Kara Thrace?  Once satisfied, she could move onto other things.

Realities overlap each other.  The so called “afterlife” must overlap with this one on occasion.  Even residual hauntings must be some aspect of that, let alone that interactive sorts of haunts (not counting poltergeist activity, which is something else entirely).

I think too of that old Christmas movie the hubs likes so much, It’s A Wonderful Life, where the angle shows Jimmy Stewart’s character (I forget his name) what life would have been like without him.  He had made a difference.  He mattered to people just for being himself.  His world was a lesser place without him in it. 

But he was a bit of an activist, remember.  He interacted with a lot of people.  Even if he thought he didn’t matter to them, he couldn’t have helped mattering.  He just didn’t see it.

So what about those who don’t do that?  Hermits or sociopaths who manage to live a life apart from other people.  Who do they affect?  Who will miss them when they’re gone?  The Eleanor Rigby’s of life who “was buried alone with her name?”

That’s something interesting.  I don’t know why anyone would choose to be alone in this life.  But people do.  I only notice, to judge from all of read on the subject, that no one seems to die alone.  There’s always others awaiting them on the other side, ready to welcome them home. 

Both my grandfathers just before they died mentioned the other people crowding the room that only they could see.  Well, they thought we could see them, but we couldn’t.  Seeing those others is something dying people do.  Sometimes the others aren’t recognized (the soul still being partial earthbound) but often there are many a recognized pre-deceased family member or friend among them.  People who’ve had interlife and past life regressions as well as spirits communicating from the other side also mention this.  They insist that no one dies alone even if they’ve lived that way.

But in this life, the barriers we build between ourselves are made of physical matrices set up by ourselves or our circumstances… and the fact that we’re blind to all the ways we’re interconnected anyway.  Speaking of which, I realize this is something that empaths tend to do to themselves in self-defense.  They pick up too easily on other people’s feelings both good and bad and are as easily overwhelmed, so they learn to build walls and keep their distance.  It’s an extreme reaction. 

I don’t know how to verbalize a better response if there is one but I have a feeling there is.  I remember in my one really strong out of body experience that I had while in Iran: the cold wind blew through me rather than against me and it wasn’t unpleasant like it would have been had I my body for it to blow against.  Hot and cold were equal states in this condition.  I felt them.  They didn’t discomfit me in the slightest.  If anything, they were exhilarating.  Maybe empathic feelings could be processed in the same way? 

We are a part of one another.  We can't help it.  May as well go with the flow and accept it in peace.

The tropical night is filled with laughter and voices and the fragrance of night-blooming flowers, of bonfires, roasting meat, and the tang of the not-too-distant sea.

Summer Solstice moon; people feasting, people dancing, hand-fasting and blessings by moonlight, their cares far away, out scouting for their futures, never guessing the present.

By Moonlight, the sea is a distant shimmer just beyond the wide open plain to the west and the mountains are great shadows rising on the east side of the city bedecked with its colored lights.

Time can be gentle; time can be kind, a gentle breeze playing....  Where better to meld us than at the in-between, the calm before the storm to come, the summit of our innocence?

In the dark hour before dawn, people still laughing and loving, the sun seems to explode in white-gold and red on the horizon and human voices cease at the answering of the sea.

Nestled at the foot of the mountains no longer felt safe, the sea rushing up over the shore and flooding the plains in a rage never heard of before save in ancient lore.

Could the stories be true?  Could the world they knew be ending?  They fled up the rocky slopes and many made it to the top, the mouth of the mountain and the earth.

 Time rushes by like a wind... like a storm in the Northwest... here one moment, gone the next, and you never know what hit you nor ever saw it coming, but it changes everything.

The city was swept away in roaring and foam but for a few daring lanterns left bobbing on the turbulence and nothing at all left of once solid abodes and notions of permanence.

Cities, gardens, and life of a sort were built in caverns deep down - built not to last, but last they did, in a drawn-out time, generations of waiting for a retreating of the sea.

Time is motionless as each generation sends one couple to watch the moonlight play on the roiling sea, the sun too bright to contemplate in eyes long accustomed to lesser light.

Son of the Shadows and Lady of the Moon, they watch and they wait for countless generations, watching together for comfort the mighty lost world of once was and will be once again.

Time passes like a dream - running, going nowhere.  Yet the sea retreats to its ancient bed and goes back to sleep far again from the mouth of the earth from whence the people at long last can emerge so tentatively into light.

Again and again we adapt to the night.  Again and again we re-enter the world and find it new.  Every time we leave, it’s the End of the World; yet there are worlds after worlds after worlds and always a Gateway In-between.

Hope I haven't already posted this before.  I don't remember and I'm too lazy to search oodles of blogs down through the years to find out.  So please forgive me if I have.

I asked my daughter to read this and tell me whether or not I should include it in my poem - story collection: Ghosts of Youth & Passion and she couldn't give me a definitive answer saying only that it was "heavy" for but she wouldn't rule it out entirely, which means...?  Hmm.  Maybe she's just afraid of hurting my feelings? But I only asked because I can't make my mind up about it myself.  So what do you guys think?  Be honest now.  No smoking blowing necessary.  I really want to know.  Please?

So I’m reading a playful novel of purported fiction called A Modern Witch about modern witches connecting to one another, sharing tips and camaraderie and training newbies en route, including one young realtor who doesn’t know she’s a witch which, btw, quite realistically makes her dangerous. Imagine not knowing you’re doing something while you’re doing it because you don’t believe you can. You have a situation where you’re not taking conscious responsibility for what you’re doing. Random energy is just exploding out of you at whim with any sharp fluction of mood or emotion. Anyway, been there, done that, don't have the tee-shirt (not into those), it makes perfect sense to me, and EGAHDS can female emotional energy get out of control at certain times of month and life.  I freely admit that.

The novel reads like fiction and I’m sure it is, but the magickal precepts are perfectly valid in my experience. It’s kind of like one of those sci-fi novels you read where the concepts are really solid but couched in fiction because the author is introducing a perfectly valid idea that for whatever reason isn’t yet commonly accepted in mainstream science. A lot of writers and oracles protect themselves by presenting knowledge is this safely digestible way.

In the book, a witch named Nell has developed an internet spell by which fellow witches, knowing or not, are redirected from whatever they’re doing online to her own witch’s chat room and website called AModernWitch.com. Just for fun, I Google that and guess what? There really is such a website under almost exactly that name: ModernWitch.com. Check it out. It’s pretty cool. Definitely a keeper for me.

I wonder which came first? The website or the book? Or if maybe they coincided serendipitously… you know, one of those ideas that just permeates the upper expanses of consciousness for sensitives to pick up on if only they hit the right frequency of being? A lot of new ideas in all disciplines are received that way… in fact most are I suspect.

Speaking of which… hmmm. How to put it? Warning: this is about the closest to a “religious” idea you’ll ever find me gravitating, though of course it has nothing much to do with organized religion. That would be a horse of a different color. Green, I think. Anyway…

In See You Later by Christopher Pike its mentioned at the very end, the concept of what avatars really are.  It's also alluded to as it is in Atlantis where the mystery woman Sin Fen is teaching the main character, Dane, about the mind gift they share, how to tap into it for the purpose of a very dangerous mission he has to perform and tells him, "Listen to the voices of the gods," by which he intuitively understands she's not referring to the religious idea of gods at all.  It also appears in many other books I read in college in the realm of Jungian psychology and hypnosis and some things about Archetypes and The Bicameral Mind, etc and dovetails well with my own concept of an intelligent interactive multidimensional universe and spiritual realms.

Meh.  I don't have time to go into it right now.  Black Butler is on!  Love that anime!  Cheerio for now!

Why not?

I Googled the term "Family friendly nightclub and got nothing but a suggestion that there might be some in Dubai, but the listing provided no such thing.  No listing anywhere provided any such thing. 

There were adult nightclubs, including of the non-alcoholic variety.  There was one of the latter in Ireland where public drunkenness has reputedly become a problem of such monstrous proportions that people have been actively trying to find ways to at least not aid and abet it. 

There were a number of teen clubs even in my area but they tended not to last long before teens started sneaking drugs and alcohol in leading to raids that ended up with the clubs being closed.  Dumb kids messing things up for their fellow teens, not to mention the poor well-meaning club owner scuttled and disillusioned in the process.

There are a lot of clubs for kids no matter where you go it seems: matinee clubs, Chucky Cheese, Funtasia, Bullwinkles, McDonald Land, Burger King Play Land.  Yes, these clubs include food, drink, and trinket sales as well and none are particularly good.  The real sales are in the fun they provide.  The rest is simply obligatory.  It doesn’t have to be good.  Kids may be fussy eaters, but most are willing to scarf up junk food and go back for more with the sort of pure relish that is never shown to any sort of remotely healthy foods like fruit and vegetables.  Their parents just accept this and go along for the ride if it means something fun for their kids to wear themselves out on for a change of pace.  Some of us parent types used to even play with our kidkins in the giant habitrails of these places.  Have you done it too?  Even so, there really is no question: these places are far more about kids having fun, not adults.  Adults don’t go to these places unless they are taking their kids there.

The thing about having kids is that most of us learn pretty quickly where not to take them even when it’s allowed.  The strict discipline my generation and those before it was brought up with is nearly absent these days.  Most of us faced spankings or restrictions when we misbehaved.  Now it’s considered child abuse and you can lose your children to the state over that.  Parents have become permissive in general and their children very spoiled because that’s just the way it’s worked out.  But kids can still torture their parents into cringing submission via all-out tantrums and heaven forbid they do so in a public place!  The very idea is shuddersome.  Everyone gives you the stink eye BAD and you’d better hurry out with kidlings by the scruff of the neck before you get thrown out – something, btw, I would never blame the owner of any establishment for doing.  Noisey unruly kids on the premises will guaranteed drive their customers away after all.

So when my kids were small, the only public venues I brought them to were parks, MacDonald’s, Chucky Cheese, Burger King, Bullwinkle’s, & innumerable PWP events.  Nice restaurants and all but a few specialized movie events were OUT as were most visits to the homes of others.  No more parties to go to unless they were strictly kid parties.  But see, the places I could safely bring them to were safe for a reason: my kids weren’t bored there.  Bored kids, with no strict discipline to prevent it, WILL misbehave.  It’s a fact of nature.  Most will put their halos back on IF they are sufficiently entertained.

All of that said, modern parents don’t get to have evenings out or to socialize much at all unless they have a babysitter to mind the kids while they do so and kids only learn to socialize with other kids and have full expectations that the adults in their world will simply tolerate their tantrums, special demands, and bad manners as a matter of course. 

That’s not good.  It’s also not an insurmountable social problem.  It should be easy.  You should be able to take your kids along to places where you can both fully enjoy the activities, show your best face, and socialize with others as well as each other.  There should be nightclubs open to everyone old enough to socialize.  There should, specifically, be family friendly, alcohol free nightclubs. Why aren’t there?  Fear of adults trying to pick up on kids while their parents are present?  Fear of our children seeing us being ourselves as we would be out from under their supervision (i.e. recording and playing back at random everything we say and do).  Fear of… what exactly?

What are your thoughts on this?  Would you  be open to the thought of a family friendly nightclub: live music, dancing, large play area for kids, exotic alcohol free drinks, parties, fun and games…? 

Side note on that is that the square dance clubs my parents belonged to when I was little were like that but, hey, these are modern times.  Square dancing’s fun but it’s also a bit old hat and won’t appeal to everyone but heck, why not have folk dancing at a club at least once a week?  These are something that even little kids can be involved in that won’t likely get them trampled as would less choreographed styles of dancing.  Kids were also invited to the Eagle Club dances that my parents belonged to.

Ha.  Saw a forum discussing this.  Someone was asking how feasible a non-alcoholic nightclub would be, pointing out that there is in fact a wide open niche for it wherever you go.  Most people answering said it wouldn’t be; that people went out to drink alcohol.  Then someone pointed out that they could drink alcohol at home at a 3^rd of the cost and never endanger anyone’s life later that evening when it was time to go home.  So why go out for it?  Not so much for the booze, but for the entertainment of course!  And then someone, getting no further than the outrageous idea of a non-alcoholic nightclub chimed in to say that coffee houses should count for that. 

LOL.  Well, you can certainly socialize in them but quietly as a rule.  Some around here will have a singer or small jazz/folk band come in to entertain (Jeb is gagging over my shoulder at that) but there will be no dancing as there is never a dance floor, meaning those who enter as strangers will maintain their distance from one another, and there will certainly be no play area for the kids to play area, so the kids will be bored and you know what that means…  It’s not a nightclub and it’s certainly not a kids’ club.  Not that espresso or coffee couldn’t or shouldn’t be served in a nightclub; just that a coffee shop is definitely not an interchangeable venue.  Come on, it’s a Coffee Shop.  Let it be what it is and let’s go do something more fun.

Hmmm... just saw a forum comment from someone else saying they'd like to start a non-alcoholic nightclub in my town.  Yay!  It's about time!  Maybe I can help.