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The Madwoman of Menotomy
[ website | neitherday.com ]
[ journey | spirituality, madness, travel]
[ opinion | politics, psychiatry, religion, polls]
[ read | poetry, stream]
[ see | the madwoman, art, photography]
[ hear | voice posts]
[ free stuff | backgrounds, icons, mood themes, wallpapers]

Spring!!!

Date and Time  - Mar. 20th, 2008, 11:01 am

Current Mood  - optimistic optimistic
Current Music  - air purifier

Spring has arrived. Soon, the plants my sister and brother are sending me for my birthday will start arriving and I'll be able to put the compost to good use. They are sending me 3 butterfly bushes, 3 red latham raspberry bushes, and 6 oriental poppies. I'm very excited about gardening this year.

I haven't done any gardening since I rented the house in Columbia, Missouri and grew carrots out back. It was a very small house with a small yard, but it was a house with a yard and it was $185/month. Wow, that price seems great now, I couldn't rent a room for that around here these days. It's a different season here, in more ways than just not being winter anymore.

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Free Icons — Animals in the Snow

Date and Time  - Dec. 6th, 2007, 10:47 am

Current Mood  - cold cold
Current Music  - air purifier

house sparrow in the snow    house sparrow in the snow    brown-headed cowbird in the snow

cardinal in the snow    starling in the snow    starling in the snow

monkey ghost in the snow    monkey ghost in the snow    wire squirrel in the snow

bluejay in the snow    bluejay in the snow    bluejay on a rusty fence in the snow

mourning dove in the snow    mourning dove in the snow    wire squirrel in the snow

squirrel in the snow    squirrel in the snow    squirrel in the snow

squirrels in the snow    squirrels in the snow    squirrel in the snow


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Fun With Wikiscanner

Date and Time  - Aug. 17th, 2007, 07:43 pm

Current Mood  - rushed rushed
Current Music  - budgies in conference

Just for fun, I decided to look at the edits made from the United States Department of state using wikiscanner. I only looked at a fraction of the over 2,500 edits, but here are the ones I thought were interesting:

Laura Bush thinks Condi would be a great president

We're being invaded by Mexicans!!

"...the World Bank is one of the most highly-regarded financial institutions in the world..."

Tiawan is a pseudostate

"The statements about events in 2007 are clearly written by a Russian."

State Department predicts what issues will be contentious at the next Intergovernmental Conference of the European Union

The Department of State knows a lot about science and technology in China.

Somewhere in the world, humans can marry non-human animals

Delete – Who said the 2003 invasion of Iraq was illegal? No one said that

Delete – You can't say that the U.S. officials should have know that Bin Laden would turn his attention to the west after the Soviets were out of the way

Delete – Text on the United States Interests Section in Havana

Delete – A large chunk of the Missouri United States Senate election, 2006 article

Delete – Part of the discussion on the Agent Orange talk page

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Free Cardinal Icons

Date and Time  - May. 11th, 2007, 10:03 am

Current Mood  - hot hot
Current Music  - budgies gurgling

cardinal icon    cardinal icon

cardinal icon    cardinal icon


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Free Bird Icons

Date and Time  - Apr. 15th, 2007, 09:36 pm

Current Mood  - awake awake
Current Music  - wings flapping bluely down

pigeons fighting    american white ibis    american robin

brown pelican and cormorants on a beacon    american white ibis    american robin

female boat-tailed grackle    male boat-tailed grackle    anhinga

belted kingfisher    red-bellied woodpecker    northern mockingbird

black-capped chickadee    northern mockingbird    tufted titmouse


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States I've Been To

Date and Time  - Mar. 16th, 2007, 06:31 pm

Current Mood  - cold cold
Current Music  - traffic and snow plows

states i've been to


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Revisiting Salvia

Date and Time  - Feb. 11th, 2007, 11:48 am

Current Mood  - awake awake
Current Music  - budgies gurgling

I've done salvia divinorum in the past. However, I'd only done 1X. Last night I tried 5X. Oh my, what a difference. The world ripped away in front of my eyes into interference patterns. Then diving down, I forgot everything. Complete dissolving of definition. No knowledge of the day to day world, no sense of self. I had to rebuild my perception of reality. Put everything back together. I had even lost the concept that everything was occurring in a three-dimensional locally-euclidean space, and couldn't figure out what kept me physically separate from anything. Even as I came out of the most intense part, everything kept warping together at the edges of my perception.

The strange putting together of things, defining of things, is the journey from the wholeness at the center. Without a sense of self, everything is one. There is no need for definition or distance. What is at the center is beyond definition. It is the All, the Ineffable. Words are boxes which cannot contain It. Even saying it is "beyond definition" misses the mark, as it is neither beyond or before.

I took the journey twice last night, the first time the speed of the journey panicked me on my return trip from There to Here. The second journey I was able to experience reconstruction from a much calmer place and was able to observe the experience more.

The salvia divinorum experience is not unlike experiences I've had in the past, however the pace at which salvia divinorum triggers these experiences is frighteningly fast: the most intense part is over in the first 5 minutes, and after 10 more it's completely worn off. The short duration along with the physical immobility during the deepest part may be why such a potent herb such as salvia has managed remained legal in most of the entheogenphobic United States (Missouri being the exception).

After the journey, I made a map...

perception and unity

We are waves emanating out from Unity. We perceive other waves as other selves.

At Unity we become all waves, all things. There is no self at Unity.

Between the everyday sphere of perception and Unity lies a domain where the waves are not united and a self still exists in some form, however the waves interfere with each other. This interference can show up in a variety of ways, including sensory phenomena (hallucinations, patterns, distortions, etc.) and/or disorganized thinking.

When viewing an autostereogram, focus of the eyes travels from normal focus to the adjusted focus where the 3D image is visible, the focus travels through an intermediate stage of visual clutter and interference. Traveling to Unity is like refocusing your eyes.

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Voice Post:

Date and Time  - Jan. 22nd, 2007, 06:06 am


VoicePost Help
119K 0:34
“I'm in Detroit waiting to depart for London, Ontario. If all goes well, Amber's friend Gwen will pick me up in London and drive me to Saint Thomas and I'll see Amber sometime this afternoon.

The next time I post will probably be from Ambers house. At least will hopefully be, because if I'm posting from somewhere else that would mean that somewhere my plans went awry. But, I don't anticipate that.

That is all.”

Transcribed by: [info]neitherday


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Voice Post: Cool

Date and Time  - Jan. 22nd, 2007, 12:17 am


VoicePost Help
43K 0:12
“It's cooled down in here. This bus is going to take me all the way to London. I'm going to try to get some sleep, hopefully the rest of the trip will go well.”

Transcribed by: [info]neitherday


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Voice Post: Made the Connection

Date and Time  - Jan. 22nd, 2007, 12:02 am


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101K 0:30
“I'm in Chicago, I got on the Detroit bus, we made it in time. It's hot as hell on this bus, but at least I'm on it. If it doesn't cool down, I imagine this will be a sleepless night. I just can't sleep in this kind of heat. I should have worn something lighter — like a tank top and shorts.”

Transcribed by: [info]neitherday


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Voice Post:

Date and Time  - Jan. 21st, 2007, 09:36 pm


VoicePost Help
78K 0:22
“We left Champlain, Illinois about 10 minutes ago, we're running about 25 minutes behind schedule. I only have a 20 minute layover scheduled for Chicago, which means we're going to be cutting it VERY close to make that Detroit bus.”

Transcribed by: [info]neitherday


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Voice Post: Bust Details

Date and Time  - Jan. 21st, 2007, 06:52 pm


VoicePost Help
304K 1:27
“Greetings. I'm in Springfield, Illinois.

I've found out more about what went on back in Saint Louis. Apparently the security check we went through which I thought was ridiculous, because they had you walk through the line and then go back to the end of the line after you'd gone through the security check. It seemed relatively easy to just get into the line without going through the security check. I thought it was rather stupid at the time because of that.

But, realize it was actually pretty sneaky. What they did was when you went through the check, they put a small orange sticker on your ticket. Getting on the bus, they flagged anyone who didn't have that orange sticker. The two people who got busted didn't go through the security check and when they got of the bus [security] subjected their bags to an extra-intense screening and, i guess, found the drugs on them.

I still don't know if I'm going to be too late getting into Chicago. But, it looks like since we were only 15 minutes late and I was scheduled for a 30 minute layover, we should be able to make it.

Cross my fingers.”

Transcribed by: [info]neitherday


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Voice Post: Starting Off with a Bust

Date and Time  - Jan. 21st, 2007, 05:15 pm


VoicePost Help
219K 1:03
“I'm waiting on the bus at the bus terminal in Saint Louis. They pulled someone off the bus, actually two people, and apparently they were trying to transport something illegal (not sure what it was). I guess they discovered that their checked baggage wasn't checked correctly, and checked their baggage. So, they got busted.

I'm hoping that this doesn't screw up my transfer in Chicago, because that would have a domino effect and screw up my transfer in Detroit as well. This would make the trip a very long trip. It's already long, but it would be extremely long. But, I know that kind of thing happens on Greyhound sometimes. So, if it happens I'll just deal with it. I guess I'll know more when I get to Chicago.”

Transcribed by: [info]neitherday


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Saint Charles Blooming

Date and Time  - Jan. 19th, 2007, 12:51 am

Current Mood  - impressed impressed
Current Music  - silence

I went out on a coffee house crawl with Heather this evening. Saint Charles has changed a lot. It's got a much more vibrant artistic community than it had when I lived in the area. I was impressed by the variety and quality of the local artists.

One of the coffee houses was in the New Town at Saint Charles development. It is a planned sustainable community with mixed income levels and a focus on pedestrianism and environment. Narrow streets laid out on a grid and shops and residences within easy walking distance from each other, it's a great alternative to suburban sprawl. Even though it is still very much being built, it already has a warmth and a personality. If I were planning to move back to this area, New Town would be at the top of my list.

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Yeti

Date and Time  - Jan. 17th, 2007, 07:39 pm

Current Mood  - hot hot
Current Music  - dishwasher upstairs

yeti on my coat


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My First Stop Motion Animation

Date and Time  - Jan. 17th, 2007, 03:36 pm

Current Mood  - accomplished accomplished
Current Music  - television upstairs

puzzle animation


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Cardinals

Date and Time  - Jan. 16th, 2007, 05:42 pm

Current Mood  - mellow mellow
Current Music  - silence

female cardinal on branch
+10 )


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Morning Above the Clouds

Date and Time  - Jan. 15th, 2007, 11:08 am

Current Mood  - awake awake
Current Music  - television upstairs

morning above the clouds


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Ice Storm

Date and Time  - Jan. 14th, 2007, 10:40 pm

Current Mood  - mellow mellow
Current Music  - aladdin and the king of thieves

icy branches
+22 )


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