Coping: With the Making of “Personal Magic”

I’ve told you many times about Chris Tyreman and the Jewish studies group up on the Prairie of Canada that’s recently come out with a couple of books (100 Questions You Never Thought to Ask and Didn’t Want the Answers To…. and The Destruction of Sabbath: Tracking the History of Deception).  They’ve found a hidden “error correcting code” in ancient Hebrew and they’re finding out amazing mis-translations of religious texts.    That’s not our topic here, though.

But besides sharing a driving fascination with figuring out the Big Problem (how humans have been led astray/manipulated and so forth), I don’t think I’ve mentioned that they, too, have significant skills when it comes to “personal magic” of the kind that lets some people turn their homes into real marvelous “life spaces” while other people, putting no more thought into their surroundings than a cheap framed post to cover up a wall, live in places that are really “dead.”

Elaine’s expression of it is “transporting.”

She’s working on what used to be a simple cobbled-on covered porch with a tin roof on the side of our modular/mobile/trailer.  And it’s turning into a morning “coffee room”  because, along about sunrise, we can be out there with the coffee as the local wildlife goes about the front yard doing its thing.

Each room in the house has a “vibe” to it…and when done (that’s a different problem), the idea is that the house will be similar to walking onto a Hollywood movie set.

Chris (and company) have been doing the same thing (but different, lol) and he sent along some examples:

Just looking through the house and realizing how many things we “magicked” for cheap.  Here are a few things.  My house is exactly the same, no additions.  The new shot is today’s  Even the siding is the same stuff. Took it off and cut it in half length wise and put it back on (saved $6000).  Made the stone from cement and put it on, and the paint was mistints mixed together at $5.00 a gallon.

[George sourcing note:  Some of the most useful places to find home redocorating/value-adding products include the cancelled orders bin and the mis-mixed paints at Lowes and Home Depot.

Other places to find real bargains are Craigslist and eBay.  On Craigslist, be sure and look under the heading “material” and furniture, depending on what you feel like changing in your personal space.  And local garage sales can turn up all kinds of things that can be “magicked” into new amazing new purposes. 

Back to Chris’ comments and a look at Michelle’s house…)

Same for Michelle’s house. We made the shutters for $20.00.

The cabinet was a $50 POS phony oak vinyl.  Used exterior vinyl paint and a stencil.  Found the same look at a store for $500.

My kitchen cupboards are all original, just cheap moldings and paint.  

The new ones are cheap 3/4 inch plywood.  Tops are granite squares at $3 a piece.  The real expense was the tile saw which was $120.

(Another George note: A lot of people would like to have a hidden door, secret passage, and so forth.  But very few people actually DO something about it.  I don’t know where it came from, but I seem to remember an old television show from the black and white era that featured a home owned by a “Mr. Applegate” – and it had hidden doors and secret this and that’s. 

We’ve got one such non-apparent room entrance and here’s what Chris’ looks like…)

The door is chip board and plywood, painted like wood and then clear coated. Then some hinges and and a wheel it rolls on.  The carved wood I did with a dremel tool.

If you need more material later, let me know, we have lots…”

.The whole point of projects like these is that they yield an incredible amount of satisfaction. 

You begin with an idea.  Since we’re all masters/mistresses of “all we see” it is a simple matter of learning to give yourself permission to make a really “worthy” living space for yourself.

Even if you live in an apartment or condo, you can be building that “one-off” “look” that uniquely expresses you.  Especially if you have a deck or balcony that can be used for drying paint and so on.

Not to get off on a positive mental attitude jag here, but as you get into this kind of possibility thinking, something “clicks” inside and all manner of personal accomplishments easily fall into view.

Don’t misunderstand, there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of paper…the more zeros, the merrier.

But it’s one thing to collect zeros and quite another to make hidden doors, change how a house “sits” atop its property, or for nothing more than some elbow-grease and imagination, turn a blah kitchen into a real marvel.

Along the way, you discover that different “skills” are really the “tools” of the magician…and then you start collecting as many skills as you can.

And if someone shares this with you at a young enough age, by the time you’re in your 40’s or 50’s, you will have accumulated an amazing array of past successes and ready to carve out new ones.

The work doesn’t have to be fast…but you need to evolve a confidence that let’s you take projects from this to this:

I’ll leave you with this thought:  If we really believe that humans have the ability to “travel to the stars” as so many TV shows and movies suggest, how are we going to terra-form whole planets and go around mixing up new DNA to plant on new planets (“in our own image”) if we can’t “terra-form” something as simple and local (and accessible) as our own living space?

Well, the answer is, we can not.

Thus, the art of weekend magick where we imagine high purpose, work it past the magicians seven veils (one of which is laziness) and “crystalize it” into this reality from its origins as a thought.

Somehow, we need to teach that,. and sorry Common Core curriculum is a miserable failure compared to any drawing, cooking, metal shop, or woodworking class.

If there’s a force of evil afoot in the world, it’s the theft of dreams and the substitution of zeros (empty placeholders that people willingly trade for goods) that’s the cruelest hoax of all.

At the deepest possible level, we need to rediscover “the magick” because it helps us focus on Who we are  – dynamic, learning, achieving machines with the potential to reach the stars.

Or, hopeless bullshitters who can only “buy” and only collect empty promises.

You’ll become like the people you surround yourself with, in any regard.  Magicians of this sort run in schools, much as fish.

A look around yourself with an appreciative eye will quickly reveal who’s “working on magic” and who’s holding down the couch.  You become like the people you admire, the people you hang with, and reflect the values of your peers….

We become what we think about most.  And a mind’s a powerful-enough thing that if you don’t give it big enough projects, it will eventually start to eating itself.  As Yoda said, “There is no try.”

This being Monday morning, I understand your confusion.   I, too, am torn between the Church of the Almighty Dollar and the Church of Latter Day Power Tools.

I’m forced to attend the first one four or five days a week, but I look forward to the services of the second one every Friday through Sunday.

NationalDreamCenter:  SkyFlash/Futuring

Note from Chris McCleary to check out the “Definitive Guide to Sky Flash” which is just one of the more interesting parts to the National Dream Center’s Project August where we look ahead into the future via dream to see how well the future can be sensed that way…

Monday at the WoWW: Where’d the Voices Go?

Interesting letter from reader Louis, since we were talking last week about people hearing voices that were barely audible and just below being discernable, as to what was being said…

i wrote about 4 or 5  subjects, one being voice related.  have had serious dream experiences most of my life , very vivid and well remembered.  voices  a regular and did not seem particularly important but, the mornings would arrive and i would have the most incredibly overwhelming drive, desire to speak the language. i can say that i have never had a desire as strong as that regarding anything and i mean anything.  i was welled up with the “desire”,  the “drive”, don’t know, to speak the language.  i would walk around in the morning with ,?, to say something, it was about to “roll off my tongue”, “pour from my mouth”, don’t really know. but the energy was powerful. i would be asking myself, am i going to understand what i am about to say. it was so close, so close, but never transpired. the feeling would eventually fade over the course of the day  but return the next. i am vaguely familiar with latin based, slavic based and east asian based languages due to life experiences, none fit, but it seemed familiar. about 2-3 days after i sent the letter all episodes of this stopped, not one since. i have reflected on it since, wondering why it stopped. i am a month younger than you, dementia, delusion, maybe. if that is the case shouldn’t i be happier?
one thing that has come as a result of reflecting on it is that i would have to speak in a tone slightly higher than i normally speak, i am a tenor/baritone, the pitch(?) would be hardly noticeable to the ear but the frequency was important. (this could be total bs as it , as far as i can recall, did not seem important at the time of the episodes).

My “leading candidate” is that the two halves of the brain are responsible, and that “voices” are just one side of brain talking to the other.

Speaking of bicameralism, I sat down for a few minutes at a keyboard this weekend and Wow!  has my left hand ever lost dexterity?  Years ago the left could run through the scales as well as the right.  I don’t play the piano, that’s hopeless, but I did work up to scales.

A note (impression really) from right brain (which operates left hand) suggested that something more challenging that typing and steering would be appreciated. 

After 10-minutes at the music keyboard, left brain told right “I can’t stand any more” and that was that.  But I am planning a return engagement to key right from actually trying to speak directly to left.

George II Falling

You can lead a horse to water, I guess, but you can’t make them drink. 

Son George II insists on pursing his “Proof of Gravity” hobby with the latest postings on his Facebook page of yelling while skydiving.

Elaine and I took our old plane up for a spin on Saturday morning and I’m back to wondering who’s dumber, me of the boy:  Jumping out of airplane, or seeing how much money can be run through a carburetor? 

(Tough call, ain’t it?  I’m thinking it’s hard not to succeed at falling – gravity does all the work.  But the stopping in time?  Yeah, so art to that, I’ll admit…)

Website Work

If you’re a code monkey (a/k/a/ computer programmer or IT type) you may notice this morning that UrbanSurvival is now screaming along with ultrafast load times and even IPv-6 addressing up and operating.

A snapshot of the www.gtmetrix.com output for Urban this morning reveals some very satisfying results, indeed:

I’ve been diddling around with this for a couple of weeks now, but whether it will result in a huge influx of new readers isn’t clear.  I’m not sure how many people really want savvy tech, common sense, serious finance and discussions of magician school.  Still, using this website analysis tool, I got it to where I wanted it and so if Urban is now faster than before, that’s a good thing.  

If fame and fortune follow, I’ll let you know, but don’t hold your breath.  Now tell Mrs. Olson it’s time for a refill and back to it…

Write when you break-even…

George   george@ure.net