Author: Denise

(Tuesday, November 21, 2017) waxing crescent Capricorn / five of pentacles reversed

I get up at 7:30 this morning to start cooking for Thanksgiving. As I sit finishing my masala chai, a tiny particle of dust catches my eye. Illuminated by the sun, it dances slowly through the air and sparkles like a star, making me feel like time is standing still. Microcosm.

An hour or so later I look out the front door window into the clear, blue sky day. Chris has just shared a dream with me: in his dream he sees our wild turkeys gathered by the backyard baby pines. The turks are being frightened away by a smaller but much more aggressive bird. As I muse on his dream a small, white, dusty particle again catches my attention. Miniature flakes of snow thinly scatter through the air on the strong, cold wind. Even though there is not a cloud in the sky.

I am so charmed by this mercurial, nearly invisible snow that I ask Chris to confirm the reality of my vision. He views the snow from my bedroom window. When I join him in my room I see a huge white owl perched above our pond in the box elder tree. We watch it for several minutes, mesmerized. At first I think it is a hawk, but it rotates its head so dramatically I realize it must be an owl, even though it is daylight. Our Great Horned Owls are only visible at dusk and in the night. This owl is the same size as a Great Horned Owl but it has no horns. The head and breast are pure white and the wings are lightly barred. When it finally launches from the box elder to a walnut tree a few feet away, we see that the underwings are completely white as well.

Soon the snow is gone, the owl is gone, and we are feeling great joy about the rare blessing of owl presence. I tell Chris his dream of the predatory bird is precognitive. We dig out our bird handbook and search the web, trying to figure out what kind of owl we saw. I think it is a female Snowy and Chris thinks it is a Short-Eared Owl. Both hunt in daylight.

In the afternoon I check my emails. I have received a message from Jill Purce about her 2018 workshops. I won’t be able to do Glastonbury again, because that happens during Victoria’s workshop in April. Jill does a Healing the Ancestors retreat in Vancouver in July and a Healing Voice session in London for Samhain. I feel that Owl and Jill are connected. She wears pure white during the mandala ceremony. Is she asking me to attend?

(Saturday, November 18, 2017) new moon Sagittarius / tarot eight of wands – burnout

In spite of all of the male-initiated chaos in my outer world, my dream life is full of loving, supportive male partners. Why is this? Am I meant to express the warrior feminine? Or move away from male manipulators?

My dream:

I have just seated myself at a table in a large conference room with the ad agency Friends & Neighbors. Nicole and another woman are leading the meeting. They stand across from me, in front of floor-to-ceiling windows like those at the downtown office on First Avenue and Fifth Street (the old Nate’s Clothing store).

The Creative Director asks the women prior to the meeting if he can sit next to me. He tells them of his deep attraction to my soul. The women are slightly hesitant and skeptical, but give him permission.

The Director and I sit together at a table that has side partitions similar to the ones at my old high school library: boundaries for privacy and concentration. He looks a little like TJ from the agency, but his hair is blacker, fuller, wavier. His body is stronger. More fit and energetic.

He leans towards me, touching my shoulder and side body wth his side body as he makes his presentation to the group. His love feels profoundly wonderful and grounded. His physical and emotional health are gifts I have missed having in my life for many years. I have been the caregiver, without full male support. He loves me unconditionally and I feel his love grow stronger moment by moment. I briefly worry about my flawed and aging body, but then allow myself to be swept away in the joy of true love and to be healed by his sturdy, intelligent, peaceful presence.

Day notes:

Last night I received an email newsletter from Rupert Sheldrake so I watched his video with Russell Brand, and then a few by his musician son Cosmo. Cosmo’s videos are earthy and etheric at the same time. And funny. In one his brother Merlin is being lowered off of a Canadian fishing pier by a cable. He is playing a squeeze box. As he sinks into the water and tries to keep playing music, he bursts out laughing. Both young men have thick, black wavy hair.

Chris was sick, weak and upset this morning. A hard way to start the day.

Midmorning we watched a beautiful, vibrant coyote with a wintery grey coat move gracefully through our yard. I thought of Black Wolf Romeo.

(Thursday, November 16, 2017) moon waning crescent Scorpio / tarot ace of cups

This morning I heard my millennial coworker Blake making quasi-cynical, quasi-humorous chatter to our three new staff members about all of the recent firings. He said he and Katie belong to the “bitter club.” Those two are big fans of Adam, the sexual predator. I felt Blake’s conversation was completely unethical. I was very upset, so I asked Cyndi what she thought. She suggested I tell Blake that Adam was fired for good reasons and offer to provide him with background if he wanted it.

I brought it up with Blake and he refuted what I thought he had said. He denied being upset about Adam’s dismissal, which I knew to be an outright lie. I think I caught him completely off guard. He seemed furious with me. I apologized and said the situation has been upsetting me for months. So he was able to perceive the gist of the story, although he told me he did not want to know about it.

Half an hour later Katie and I were on a call with the Phoenix team. Suddenly the office alarm went off and we were in the middle of a lockdown drill, pretending that a shooter had entered the building. We told Phoenix we would be back in a few minutes. When we returned to the meeting, Erick made a joke about Adam breaking in with a gun. I said, “Yeah, the ex-cop.” No one heard me. Katie said nothing.

By this point I was so shook up I had to get out. At lunch I went to Barnes and Noble. Parked a few cars away from me was a black Audi convertible, the sleazy car Adam drives. And later, as I drove down Pilot Knob, a second black Audi convertible was driving in the lane next to me. How many convertibles are on the road in mid-November? Shadow synchronicity.

Our team had an introductory meeting at one o’clock with the new VP of marketing, Peter from Ecolab. He seems like a nice man, but he shared an odd photo of his family where his blonde wife wears super high stilletto heels and he folds his arm around her waist. Her back is so arched that her chest pops out like a Playboy bunny. She is very beautiful.

After the meeting we all received an email from our CEO, also named Peter, that the director of operations in Portland had been let go. And, the former VP of operations from Eagan, who had retired nearly five years ago, was now in charge of the Portland facility. That was not even the end of the crazy shit.

I ran into my friend Carrie in the restroom. “Did you see that Dan M. is back?” I asked in a highly animated voice. “Oh, my god, NO!” she said, horrified. “He’s another sexual predator!” She and I had gone to dinner together a few weeks ago and we had shared our sexual harassment stories. Today, as we stood together by the dirty old sinks, she told me about two women we both knew who had been preyed upon by Dan. I felt utterly sickened. I suggested she tell HR and she said it would be considered hearsay. True enough. She lit into our HR team and criticized their lack of support for these kinds of issues. I couldn’t really disagree. It took too long to fire Adam. I had to insist that his manager and my manager were informed of his misconduct. The second time I went to the VP of HR, she suggested I get therapy. That’s fucked up. It’s not the victim who needs therapy, it is the mentally ill predator that does. The victim needs justice.

I don’t even know how I can continue down this path. At 60, what is my choice? I need to have health insurance for Chris and for me. How apropos that I joined the Red Tara mandala in Glastonbury. Kali is a presence in my life. I wish I had a few male skulls dangling from MY fists.