Lots of news in my webly world–and my really world too! I’ve made some changes to the format on the website. I removed the ‘astroblog’ because it seemed redundant. The worthy astrological and metaphysical postings I’ll link to on the ‘articles‘ page, with the aim of keeping it simple. Everything gets posted here anyway. It’s all an experiment, ever-changing and rearranging, just like life.

I’ve created a new page for a listing of upcoming performances, the link to which has replaced ‘astroblog’ in the menu bar. I’ll be updating that one often, so do check in. It looks pretty good when it’s all laid out that way! I’m particularly looking forward the house concert at SoulSpeak which is coming up at the end of May. Look for more information about that one, coming soon. And do check out the brand spanking new SoulSpeak website, isn’t it lovely? I can be found on the ‘SoulSpeak Weavers’ page, and what a community of offerings we are spinning here!

Speaking of SoulSpeak, I’ve decided to postpone the classes I’ve been planning to offer. Instead, I will start off with evening workshops (to be announced) and work my way up to ongoing classes as interest is generated.

The house concert last weekend on Saltspring was a sweet treat indeed. A smallish group cuddled on couches and chairs and the floor listening with every appearance of enthrallment, feeding my Leo Moon with waves of appreciation. Blissful sigh of satisfaction… we ended the evening with a kind of salon, a stimulating group discussion about everything under the sun which was inspired by the lyrical content of many of the songs.

And I collected a couple of comments which I’ll be adding to my testimonials page. This one is my favourite (from a young woman traveling from Australia):

“Heartfelt. Brave. Expressive. Everything I aspire to be in my music, myself, my life. I hope one day I am able to bring them together, connect, with the eloquence and beauty you have. Thank you.” - Amelia

My goodness. Thank YOU, Amelia. That’s the sort of response that gives me strength and courage to continue, makes me feel I’m on the right track after all. I have my moments of despair (being a creative depressive with a tendency to shoot myself down on the slightest provocation), and these comments are pure gold for getting me through those moments.

Here’s another:

“Love your faery song and the one you wrote for women’s camp. You have a unique gift for songwriting. Thanks for sharing.”

and

“When you sing, I feel our presence of Gaia. Singing, speaking, blessing, teaching, healing.”

and

“Thanks be! Thank you Phoenix for giving your being in song for the good of All.”

All right. I deserve to live after all. Sweet. That’s a joke, Mom. Sorry. Dark humour is my forte, though not everybody finds it funny. Repeat after me: “I will not worry about Phee.”

To quote a Talking Heads song that I love to sing, “I’m okay, I know nothing’s wrong.” I feel good today. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, spring is approaching through the chill in the air. Blessings and goodness.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get more complicated here, I decided to separate the astrology stream from my main blog. Everything I post there will also be posted here, so if you already read this blog, you won’t have to worry about that one. But I wanted to be able add my astro-logical words to various aggregate sites out there that compile information specific to astrology, so I’ve chosen instal a whole new sister blog (which can be reached under ‘astroblog‘ in the menu bar above) for that purpose. It’s a whole separate blog but I’ve used the same template and it has all the same links in the header, so for all intents and purposes, it’s the same site.

But of course, it requires extensive tweaking, further webbling and boggling me. Oh, the pain! The pleasure! The sheer unadulterated accomplishment of it all!

The astroblog will focus only on information specific to astrology enthusiasts or, for that matter I suppose, detractors, since I can’t seem to help addressing them. Here we go!

I’ve just been a busy little beaver working on this site lately. I’m updating the astrology section, which has hitherto been the province of my old website, EarthMatrix. Eventually, Earthmatrix will go away and all the information contained there will be on this site.

It’s fascinating, all this tweaking and tinkering and organizing I’m doing. Very satisfying to my Virgo Ascendant, since it fits my self-image of how I’m supposed to be!

Astrology Articles:

A Journey Through the Signs: The Spiral Path

Finding Balance in Astrology

Science and Astrology

Enjoy.

I’ve created a page about my perspective on Gaia called ‘The Beinghood of Gaia‘. It’s not really accessible from anywhere except a link on the home page in the text (the link on ’separatist worlview’ goes there); in the spirit of putting everything new on the blog proper, I’ll share it here:

This planet Earth is a living, breathing, evolving being. Scientists like James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis and Stephan Harding (and many more) have made it abundantly clear that Earth is self-regulating and does not function according to mechanical models. This is no dead ball of dirt and stone that happens to support a precarious skin of life on its dead surface, but rather, a great, mysterious and miraculous living body that we are fully participating in.Humans have evolved a schizoid separatist culture in which we view ourselves as ‘outside of’ nature, so that we ‘are doing things to’ the planet, in much the same way as we view ourselves as separate from our own physiological beings. Spiritual and religious systems of belief tend toward the view that our physical bodies are merely vehicles which we use until we die, at which point we will be in the ‘real’ reality, or Afterlife.

After twenty years of astrological and metaphysical practice, and having grown up in the wilderness of northern British Columbia, I have come to fully accept the entity-hood of Earth. What does this mean to us individually and as a species? We need to change our attitude first, then we will find that our actions will follow. If we truly understand that our own physical bodies are living expressions of our own selves, not simply biological mechanisms or toys for us to use up and throw away, we naturally find ourselves behaving differently. The same applies to changing our view of the planet as a whole. Our current behaviors cannot continue if our cultural worldview changes to one that honours the beinghood of Gaia.

And I’ve created an ‘About Me‘ page, accessible from the top menu bar, that goes like this:

For the past twenty years, I have been developing and refining my vocation while living in relative isolation on Hornby Island in British Columbia. Having recently moved to the greater accessibility of Vancouver Island, I feel called to bring my work to the general public through various venues, including this website.

The unifying thread behind the many types of work I do has been a healing integration and expression of the points of view of the feminine principles: the physical and emotional bodies and the great Mother planet Earth, which have been equally neglected to the point of global and personal disaster.

Seeking to understand the tsunami of change triggered by my Saturn Return in the mid-eighties, although initially skeptical of astrology I received a reading which proved stunningly accurate and detailed and quite blew away my preconceived notions. (Now, I love reading for skeptics! It’s so cute the way their jaws drop!)

I fell in love with the archetypal beauty of the astrological language and embarked on an in-depth study, but soon felt something important was missing from the system. Shortly afterward, I discovered a single paragraph describing the planet Earth’s significance and meaning in March & McEvers’ ‘The Only Way To Learn Astrology’.

Intrigued, I began to use Earth in the chart in the book with excellent results, and when I included also the newly-discovered Chiron (according to Barbara Hand Clow in “Chiron: Rainbow Bridge to the Outer Planets)” I felt the needed grounding and balance had been achieved.

These two forces, ruling formerly co-ruled signs Taurus and Virgo, completed the symbolic system in a satisfyingly symmetrical way. Their addition ensured twelve planets ruling twelve signs and made it possible to perform readings of much greater depth than had before been possible.

I began writing songs around the same time. Never having conceived of the idea of writing a song in my life, a chance suggestion by a friend (‘Why don’t you write a song?’) opened floodgates which have never closed. My songs come from my deep sense of connectedness with Earth and Mother, as well as being tools for working through emotional issues. If for example I write a song which was initially inspired by feeling despression or despair, I emerge on the other side with renewed faith and zest for life.

I view songs and songwriting as tools for transformation and seek to inspire others as I was myself inspired. I am beginning a new series of classes at SoulSpeak in Duncan called “Songwriting for Shower Singers,” having discovered that most people need only the catalyst of suggestion to release their own songs.

For more information about astrological sessions, private house concerts and astrology and songwriting classes, contact me.

Because I haven’t found a way to enable comments on my pages, here’s your chance to give feedback if you wanna

Okay–here it is, the look is pretty much going to be this, though I’m trying to find a way to tweak the background colour so I can have dark green at the right and left sides as I did in the old template. And the sidebar needs work, too, but I’m done for the moment.

As soon as I can create a home page with links to different sections, clicking on ‘phoenixwolfray.com’ will no longer take you to the blog but to a single page. Just click on ‘blog’ in the header.

This is not all that interesting perhaps, to anybody but me, but I’m loving it–cleaning up my online house, renovating, redecorating–it feels great!

Don’t go away, I’ll start writing again soon, I promise.

As part of my reconfiguring process, I’ve updated the permalink structure. What this means is that the URLs of a specific post will now indicate the date and the title of the post instead of the old way which was pretty ugly (in fact it’s called in the industry ‘ugly permalinks’ ). This new way is known as ‘pretty permalinks’. I’m all for that.

This means that a post which was once found by the address http://phoenixwolfray.com/?p=388 can now be found by going to http://phoenixwolfray.com/2008/02/06/back-to-our-program-in-progress/

The new way is longer, but more informative; as you can see, it makes it easy to find old posts as long as you know the date, and it makes searching the archives infinitely simpler, especially since the post title shows in the URL.

And not to worry, the old links still function fine.

I’m in the process of updating the look and function of this site; rather than simply a writing & music blog, phoenixwolfray.com will become an umbrella and portal for my other web identities such as earthmatrix.net, word of mouth, myspace and who knows what all. So ‘Truth is a Crazy Poet’ will no longer be the title of the blog, sad to say. I was fond of that name, though it met with resistance from certain quarters (’crazy? why crazy?’). Off it goes, and the site will nakedly stand in my own name.

Stay tuned for further tweaks and changes!

So what do you think of the new masthead? I rather like it. A little more mysterious, less in-your-face.

I have a myspace page now, it’s pretty bare bones but it has songs available for listening, including my Christmas songs. They’re much better quality recordings than what I’ve had so far; from a recent house concert and recorded on good equipment. I’ve made the Christmas songs downloadable, so please feel free. Enjoy. And Merry Christmas. If you have a myspace page, please add me as a friend. I can use all the friends I can get.

myspace/phoenixwolfray

This is what you’ll see now if you click on the ‘Beyond Hope’ link in the sidebar:

“Beyond Hope’ is my fantasy novel-in-progress, about a young girl’s journey from a northern BC town to strange otherworlds in Vancouver. The archives have gotten garbled, likely due to a wordpress upgrade (can’t think what else to blame), but if you would like to read the book as it exists so far all in one file, please let me know and I’ll send it to you. I’m on the lookout for readers and would love to be critiqued.

Here’s an excerpt to pique your interest:

“Boy, you missed some fun last night,” Scotty had laughed. “Slept like a rock, hey, rockhead?”

“What are you talking about?” Sylvie snapped. She was never at her best in the mornings, and something about this one made her feel on edge.

“Your precious big baby of a brother is gone, and good riddance, too. Dad turfed him out on his fat ass.”

“What? Carl? Scotty, don’t be a creep, please? Tell me what happened!”

“If you missed the fight, then you missed it. But he’s gone and he’s not coming back. You’re mine now, kid sister! No more knight in shining armour to protect you from my evil attacks! Mwah-hah-hah!” He laughed, pretending to be teasing but the nasty tone in his voice made her shiver.

“Mom, where’s Carl?” she had asked first chance she had. Her mother averted her eyes. Right away she knew something was deeply wrong. That was when the ground fell out from under her life. She hadn’t really believed Scotty. He would say anything to hurt her. But this was real.

“Carl has gone to Vancouver, and your father is very disappointed in him,” her mother said, too carefully.

“What? The city? Carl hates the city! Why would he go there?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Sylvie. Eat your cereal like a good girl.”

“Mom! Why didn’t he say goodbye to me? Why would he do that?” She was very close to tears.

“Sylvie, please, eat your breakfast. You’ll be late for school.”

Her mother didn’t look at her once. And her father was worse. When she ran crying to him, sobbing for her brother, he slapped her hard across the face, shocking her utterly.

“Daddy! Nooo!!” She ran to her room and locked herself in for the day. She refused to go to school or to come out for dinner, and the following morning nothing was said. After the slap, there was no way she could ask her father about Carl, while her mother simply ignored her questions with tightened lips, no matter how hard she begged for information.

Scotty acted like he knew everything and was choosing not to tell her out of meanness, but she suspected he didn’t really know much more than she did. That would be just like him. It was a way of holding power over her but she didn’t buy it. She withdrew from her family, turning to her friends for support and information.

Carl’s former friends wouldn’t talk to her either. They acted like he hadn’t existed. It was the weirdest thing. Her first real clue was from her best friend Tracy.

“Syl, I think I know what it was,” Tracy said hesitantly, with the reluctant air of one sharing truly dreadful news. “I heard my cousin talking with his friends. It’s… they say Carl is gay, and that’s why your Dad threw him out.”

“That’s crazy!” she said automatically, but she didn’t really know if it was. What was gay, anyhow? It was just a word, a nasty thing to call boys who nobody liked. Even if it was true, somehow it didn’t satisfy her. It didn’t mean anything real.

Scotty, of course, soon picked up on this bit of news and lost no time in calling Carl every nasty word he could come up with that stood for homosexual. He hinted that Carl did horrible things to little boys. But Sylvie didn’t care. Carl was Carl. He was her brother, he was good, and she needed him. All the heart and life in her world had vanished with him.

Then, two nights ago, something snapped at that party. Suddenly it seemed clear and obvious what she must do. Carl would have called it an epiphany. She recognized with absolute certainty that life with her family without her brother was more death than life. She had to leave, and it had to be right then, that minute, with no time taken to plan or prepare. She told Tracy where she was going, and Tracy tried to talk her out of it. Of course she would; it was her duty as her best friend. But Sylvie had gone, propelled by a force beyond her capacity to resist, and Tracy had then covered for her. That was also her duty as best friend.

And now she was here.

The 100words.net website is no more; they had a site crash, as you’ll know by now if you’ve tried clicking on that ink. Now they are up and running at 100words.com, even better than before. I’m now posting all my 100 words exercises up there as I write them here. They say,

The idea is simple:
Write 100 Words a day,
Every Day, For one Month

You can write about anything you want. Anything. Some people open tiny windows into their lives; others write surrealist poetry. Some writers post finely tuned, perfectly crafted vignettes; others show up at the end of the night and spew drunken nonsense onto the screen.

You bring the content. We set the format.

This is an exercise in disciplined creativity. Writing exactly 100 words at a time — not a single word more, not a single word less — isn’t as easy as it sounds. The word count may be arbitrary, but the motive is not. To borrow from Proust, the tyranny of rhyme often brings out the poet’s best work. By working within a standardized form, the writer can concentrate on other matters. read the rest

I recommend it… it’s a great way to get into the flow and habit of writing every day. Every little bit counts! And, in case you didn’t know it, my story ‘Maggie May I’ which was last year’s February ‘100 words’ entry, starting on the first and ending on the 28th, has been published in a web anthology which is available here.

As for Beyond Hope, more will be coming soon. Watch for it!