1. Air (Yellow) represents mind and thoughts, the ability to think.
2. Water (Blue) represents emotions.
3. Fire (Red) represents will, the ability to direct your thoughts and emotions towards action on the physical plane.
4. Earth (Green) represents all the materials on the physical plane that the three subtle-elements interact with.
5. Space (White), or aether, represent the "5th element" and it is the "background canvas" or "cosmic lattice" that the "material earth" is projected upon.
While I believe that the "five elements" actually related to a funamental truth about the structure of matter at the microcosmic level, I also really like how in alchemy they're used as a metaphor for the ingredients of human experience.
The Horsemen are drawing nearer
On leather steeds they ride
They've come to take your life
On through the dead of night
With the Four Horsemen ride
Or choose your fate and die
Here's a close-up of my photo. After your picture develops, the woman there explains how the colors that appear in your photo relate to the things that you been thinking about and doing. I came and total skeptic and left dying to read more about how this thing works (I ended up visiting the house of the inventor when I was out in the Bay Area a few months later - but he was away at a conference!)
I was feeling all gunked-up inside after getting divorced and after trying a variety of things, someone suggested I try reiki. I wasn't very optimistic about it, but decided to give it a shot. I booked a session with Brian and was really amazed at his ability to rid my body of the feeling of "stuckness" I was holding. After a few really interesting sessions, he encouraged me to take his "first degree" reiki class.
After BBQ, a bunch of different people played music. And then after a few songs, the musicians invited kids and anyone else who wanted to play music up to join them. I wish every party had this. It's so weird that we mostly listen to recorded music at parties instead of make it.
...and failing in the best way possible. Every time she'd fall asleep her head would go ALL the way back and for a brief glorious moment she'd look like a human PEZ dispenser and then when she'd wake up, she'd snap her head upright. SO. FUCKING. FUNNY.
Backstage after the performance had finished! The piece was totally wild. It started with Theresa in a white-dress and lovely make-up. Her hair was pinned-up in an elaborate "beauty pageant-style" hair-do that concealed a bunch of large ink-filled balloons!
Grant and I emerged from backstage, carrying Theresa in a chair and set her down on a large sheet of paper in front of the audience. After we cleared away, a photographer approached Theresa and started taking a series of close-up portraits of her like they doing a fashion-shoot. She made uncomfortable smiles and posed for his camera. A minute or two into the "shoot," she acted like she was playing with her hair, but she was secretly popping the ink-filled balloons! As she popped each balloon, a gush of jet blank ink seemed to appear from nowhere and would stream over her face and onto the white dress.
The performance ended with the the lights suddenly turning off. Now came the part that we'd spent hours rehearsing! Grant and I had to go out in the darkness...
The other was an investigative journalism piece for Penthouse! "The Squirt Meister: There's a masseur in New York City who says he can provoke female ejaculation in any woman. Our lucky reporter took two volunteers to test his claim."
We hid out from the hoi polloi on the rainy-roof where Leigh turned the blankets the hotel had laid out into snowstorm chic. (Bonus points for her drink balanced on the fire box in the background!)
...and then swam across the "The Split" the body of water that divides the southern, inhabited side of Caye Caulker from the uninhabited and undeveloped northern half of the island. I explore on my own for about 30 minutes, but then got nervous about accidentally surprising a crocodile and decided to swim back over to where the rest of the humans were.
After a two-hour boat ride going over 8-foot swells THE ENTIRE TIME, we finally made it to the calmer, reef-protected area of the ocean near the Blue Hole.
I thought the room was so cheap just because it was terrible. But that night I also learned that the discount was also due to the fact that the room is twenty feet away from the island's only MEGA CLUB that plays insanely loud reggaeton music (played over a PA, inside a rectangular building entirely constructed of corrugated sheet metal - like it was MEANT to be heard) until 2am every night. (I'm laughing as I type this because I remember myself laying in bed that night reggaeton-dancing-myself to sleep to the bed-rattling beat.)
The entire time my mind was trying to soak in the details and atmosphere of the place and comprehend the minds of the people who designed and built it, it kept getting interrupted with a voice saying "this is JUST LIKE being in an Indiana Jones movie!"
From the Wikipedia summary: "Baudrillard defined "hyperreality" as 'the generation by models of a real without origin or reality' it is a representation, a sign, without an original referent. Baudrillard believes hyperreality goes further than confusing or blending the 'real' with the symbol which represents it; it involves creating a symbol or set of signifiers which actually represent something that does not actually exist, like Santa Claus. Baudrillard in particular suggests that the world we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more."
...we hiked our way through the jungle again for a bit to Tikal's Temple IV. Built in 741 AD and standing 212 feet tall, "Temple IV is the tallest pre-Columbian structure still standing in the New World."
After telling us about the site, our guide let us loose to explore. So mind-boggling to walk around and try to picture what the place might've been like in the hey-day.
He's called a Long-billed hermit! If you look on the left you can see his colors. I like how the top part of his beak is black and the bottom part is yellow. So handsome and hermit-y.
Busy day! Went back to the hotel for a nap.THIS, by the way, is the hilarious / terrifying entrance to my hotel: Hotel upstairs, MEATSHOP downstairs!.
Sure, you're welcome to stay here. As long as you can overcome your fear of the obvious horror-movie danger of us murdering you in your sleep and SELLING YOU AS FOOD in conveniently-located meatshop downstairs. Haven't you seen the movie, Hostel, you idiot?
Built around 800AD and standing 130+ feet-tall, it's the second-tallest structure in all of Belize. After walking up the first group of steps to the first terrace, we went to the other side of the pyramid...
View of the courtyard! More unbelievable than the fact that you can actually climb up to the top of these monuments is the fact that there aren't any safety railings or roped-off areas to prevent you from falling off the edge and plummeting to your death. Even getting this close to the edge to peek over and take this picture made the people up there with me nervous and made my palms start to sweat. Haha.
This sign is another example of something I found really charming about Belize. They're an English colony and English is the official language, but a lot of the signs there phonetically spell out the local pronunciations of words! SO GOOD!
Our guide Percy paused and casually asked "Anyone thirsty?" before slashing his machete in a diagonal arc at a thick vine above his shoulder and offering the fresh water pouring out of it for each of us to drink.
So amazing / horrifying! (Dear non-vegetarians, I hope you remember this photo next time you tuck into a delicious crab and/or lobster! Ew! Ew! Sea bugs!)
The scales on a pine cone, called bracts, are formed by two spirals going in opposite directions. The number of spirals are both always numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. Phi played out in three-dimensional space!
Close up of the condemned, in chains, being led to hell. I like how there's a devil at both the front, and end of the line. The guy in the back is so excited to shepherd everyone to hell. He's like the worst camp counselor of all time.
I ended up moving the laptop behind me out of my line of site. The software allows you to "record" your brainwaves and review them after the session is complete.
After a few drinks, we headed upstairs to my apartment so we could try out my Neurosky headset and the games that you play by trying to focus your brainwaves! Here's Quinn focusing her attention to try to explode video-game barrels full of TNT.
...where it interprets your brainwaves and graphs them as they relate to "attention" and "relaxation", the two simultaneous poles of mindfulness meditation.
Leigh is the MASTER of photoshopped party invites! Here's her Martha-Stewart-cooking-an-Edie-turkey Thanksgiving Invite! Hahaha. They get better every year!
