Landing
You know those dreams you have where you are falling? And usually you are falling and falling and you are scared and you are scared and then you wake up? Last night I had a dream about falling, but this time, for the first time IN MY ENTIRE LIFE, I fell and I fell and I was scared but then I LANDED in the dream instead of waking up. I landed! On some grass! I fell for about 30 feet and then I landed. What does this say about my inner landscape? Good things, I believe.
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.: posted by Vera 
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Update on the belly experiment
So I have been walking around with a big buddha belly for a little over a week now. And guess what. I lost about five pounds during that week.
You may remember that last year when I was depressed I ate too much chocolate and too many cookies and too many yellow curries and I gained ten pounds. Ever since then I have been having trouble losing those pounds and keeping them off. I had lost them once completely, which was in January, but they keep coming back. Every time I eat semi-normally and go off my super-abstemious diet for a few days, all those pounds come back.
But this week, for the first time since January, I was at 135 pounds again. Without even trying. All I did was stop sucking in my stomach. I am convinced that it's related. It may seem far-fetched but here is why. You know how when you're single and miserable for a long time and you're wondering WHY can't you find somebody? And then one day all of that stops and suddenly you are happy WITH YOURSELF and by yourself, and then you meet your new partner THE NEXT DAY? It's like that.
You have to be happy with yourself in order to get what you want. I wanted to lose the weight I had gained. And once I accepted my body the way it is, protruding belly and all, I got what I wanted.
Next, I am going to stop hating my hair so that maybe I can regrow the big 'fro I once had.
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.: posted by Vera
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This is kind of funny
For the last couple of days, the only times I have been inside my car were to WATER MY PLANT.
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.: posted by Vera
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Instant manifestation
After getting back from my LA trip, I woke up on Tuesday morning and thought "Huh. I really like going on trips and staying in hotels. I wonder how I can get me more of that." One of my favorite books, Wasted by Marya Hornbacher, talks about that:
Alone in a hotel room in Washington, D.C. Thus began my love affair with hotels, which has yet to end. The anonymity of it all, the just-another-woman-in Washington, the solitude, the smoking in bed, the TV as late as I liked, the palpable proximity to speed and power, within spitting distance of the Real World. I could almost reach a hand out and touch it, this nameless thing I wanted so badly.
I kind of feel that way too, except that I don't smoke in bed.
So I decided to try to travel to one of the places where my company has offices. There are offices in Boston, MA and Bangalore, India, for example. I decided to start out small and IM'ed a manager I know in the Boston office. It turns out that he had already been thinking about having me come out. Two days later, today, I received confirmation of my flight and hotel reservations. I am going to spend the week of July 18th in Boston!
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.: posted by Vera
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Directness
I thought it was time for a change of desktop background. I changed mine from this
to this
Interpret as you may.
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.: posted by Vera
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Osho quotes
Today is my mom's birthday and I bought her the German version of the book Intuition by Osho. It turns out I really should have bought a copy for myself as well. I read the first five pages on Amazon, and it all made so much sense, it blew my mind.
I have to share my three favorite quotes because they have to be out there. The word has to be spread.
1. The head only thinks; hence it never comes to any conclusion.
2. Nobody wants his or her children to become musicians or painters or dancers. Everybody wants them to be doctors, engineers, scientists, because those professions pay.
3. The heart has been denied - and by the way, it will be useful to remember that the denial of the heart has been the denial of the woman. And unless the heart is accepted, the woman cannot be accepted. Unless the heart has the same opportunity to grow as the head, the woman cannot have liberation. The woman is heart and the man is head. The distinction is clear.
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.: posted by Vera
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Free the bellies
It has come to my attention that ever since I was 10 years old, I have been sucking in my stomach. I guess it was when I was 10 that it first became crystal clear to me that people are being judged based on the size of their bodies. So I started sucking in my stomach and have been doing that EVERY DAY ever since, ALL DAY LONG.
So when I realized this about a week ago, I decided to do an experiment: I stopped sucking in my stomach. Instead I just let it hang now, all the way out, and I breathe directly into my belly all day long, making it even bigger. The experiment was to see how I felt with my belly at its regular, natural size.
It feels pretty good. I think, given the size of the rest of my body, I actually have an unusually baby-like and buddha-like belly. It goes out quite a bit and almost makes me look as if I am three months pregnant. This is probably why I started sucking it in in the first place when I was younger. But maybe it isn't big? Maybe it is totally normal for a belly to be convex outward, but we have been conditioned to forget about that?
It has been good walking around with that big free belly. I feel just like a baby. Babies always have big, convex bellies and aren't being judged for it. What if all of us walked around with our baby buddha bellies all the way out? What if all the models and actresses did it to? I, for one, would definitely breathe easier.
Ironically I saw a copy of Shape magazine at the grocery store today, and one of its headlines said "Banish belly bulge." It had a short article about an exercise you can do to "ban that Buddha belly." Fuck that, Shape magazine. Buddha bellies are the new black, just you wait.
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.: posted by Vera
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I did one of my favorite things again
I went to Los Angeles. This time I went with my favorite boy who had never been there.
My favorite parts:
- Running into a friend outside of her own house in Venice without even knowing that she lived there now.
- Door to door service when my friend Colin picked us up for dinner and then dropped us off again afterwards and when Colin said "You can evolve, but you also need roots."
- Refueling at perhaps my favorite coffee shop in the world, Equator.
- Finding a cool new green jacket that I had just admired on another girl the day before.
- Discovering a spot in the upstairs of the Urban Outfitters on Melrose from which you can see the Hollywood sign.
- That one time he kissed me on the cheek.
- Finally getting to eat at Electric Karma which I had eyed last time I was in town.
- Seeing my favorite new flower every-fucking-where.
And here a picture that says it all:
The rest of my pictures from the weekend are here.
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.: posted by Vera
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Blueberry stars
Every blueberry has a star in it.
Have you ever noticed? I eat blueberries every morning on my cereal, and you can really see the stars when the blueberries are swimming in milk. Then all you see is the star outline poking up through the surface.
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.: posted by Vera
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More anniversaries
Every day is many many anniversaries. Some are more significant than others.
I have two significant anniversaries this week. Today is the nine year anniversary of me moving to the U.S. from Germany. Here is a picture of me driving my bug to the airport on June 17, 1996.
It was very early morning. My then-boyfriend Brent, who was going on the plane with me, was in the passenger seat, and my sister was in the back taking the picture. My parents were in their car behind us. We took two cars because my sister was leaving on a plane for somewhere as well, and we had a lot of combined luggage.
And yesterday was the three year anniversary of this blog. That means I have been blogging for one third of my time here. Three years! And still only about 50 readers a day! That's okay. This is just little old human me. There will be other channels that will be more successful.
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.: posted by Vera
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Blood
I got my period today, and oh, how much I love it. I love the downward pulling I feel in my lower body. I love the sense of release and expulsion.
I have always loved having my period. It has never been gross or a drag for me. I think it's because I got it so late - I was 15 and a half and I had been eagerly anticipating it. The first time I got it, I was really excited. I was sitting on the toilet when I noticed the blood in my panty, and I ran out of the bathroom and to the kitchen, with my pants still down at my ankles and said "Mama! Mama! I got MY PERIOD!" I still kind of feel that way every time I see the blood again. I get very excited. The bleeding feels good to me. It makes me feel alive. It makes me feel female.
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.: posted by Vera
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Fish
Mountain fish
Originally uploaded by verabug2. While hiking last weekend, my friends and I came across this family of mountain fish.
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.: posted by Vera
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Money vs. other things
A lot of thoughts on money are swimming around in my head right now. I hope I can all put them together in one cohesive post. Maybe I'll just go in chronological order of incidents.
In 1995 I was selling stuff at a swap meet. That day my wallet was lost or stolen with about 200DM* in it, most of it money I had made at the swap meet. I was really really bummed because 200DM at that time was a LOT of money for me. A few days later I was walking through a parking lot towards a grocery store. I saw a 50DM bill drop out of a guy's pocket right in front of my eyes. He didn't notice. Nobody else was around. I was the only one who knew that the bill had fallen out of his pocket. I picked it up and kept it. I know I know, I am an evil witch. But I was broke! And I was only 19! And my wallet had just gotten lost or stolen! I know, none of these are excuses. But since my wallet had just gotten lost or stolen, I took this as a gift from the universe. The universe would see to it that this guy would get his money back elsewhere. But yes, I know that that is not really an excuse either. Anyway.
In 2000 I had just graduated from college and somehow found myself having quite a few friends who were making more money than me. To one of those friends I said - somewhat out of spite and somewhat out of jealousy and somewhat out of the knowledge that money isn't everything - that I would rather be a good person than make lots of money. He laughed at me and said "Well, what makes you think they are mutually exclusive?" At that point I bitterly conceded. But now I'm not so sure anymore that he actually had a point. When money becomes the focus, there is a risk of neglecting other parts of life that are necessities to being a good person. As can clearly be seen in my example above of the 50DM bill I "found." Money was more important to me than doing the right thing.
It just so happened that this morning I had thought about the incident with the 50DM bill. Later today I was at the grocery store. I paid with my debit card and asked for $20 cash back. The cashier told me that the PIN number was incorrect and that I had to do it again. So I swiped my card again, put in my PIN number and asked for $20 cash back. The cashier said "20 - 40 - 50, there you go. Would you like help out?" "No," I said, looking at him incredulously. I stuffed the money - two 20's and a 10 - into my purse and left. I was like "Another gift from the universe? But nobody has stolen from me lately. I don't want to steal either." Then I thought that maybe by swiping my card twice I was really getting $40 cash back. But that would be $40, not $50. And then I thought that at the end of the day the cashier might have to pay for the shortage in his drawer out of his own pocket. And since he has a cashier job and I have a yuppie job, clearly he needs this money more than I do. And he might even lose his job for being short. So I went back later to return the $30. My cashier had already left but I gave it to the manager. He said "That's really nice of you." Well. I hope this story doesn't make it seem like I am trying to pat myself on the back for being such a nice and good person. That is not my intention. My intention is to show that I am human and that I am tempted to keep money that is not mine if I can get away with it. But I also am not going to forget to tell you how good I felt after returning that money. I felt so much better than I ever could by just finding money. I am not at all worried about having "lost" those $30 again. They will come back to me in another form.
And with that I would like to take you to a story Ariel told recently. She was freaking out about money, but decided to make a generous $40 donation to a public garden in her neighborhood despite her money worries. And a few days later she received $200 from a freelance client that she wasn't really expecting any more money from. See what I mean? It will always come back to you in another - and probably even better - form. You should try it sometime.
* DM = Deutsche Mark, the old German currency
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.: posted by Vera
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Nervenwurzelentzündung
When I was 5 I spent nine weeks in the hospital. I had a disease called something like nerve root infection, which is similar to meningitis. The way it started was that my legs were hurting so much that I started crying. My parents took me to the pediatrician. I remember being in the car afterwards and seeing my parents walk towards the car arm in arm. My mom was crying. I asked why my mom was crying and was told that she had banged her foot against something. But of course she was crying because I was sick; I think I knew that even then.
While I was in the hospital I couldn't walk or even move for a long time. My whole body was paralyzed. Slowly I was able to sit up again and then eventually walk. After nine weeks I was completely back to normal, without any side effects or after effects.
Strangely I don't think that this episode of disease has traumatized me in any way. I can't think of any ways in which the disease has stayed with me emotionally or anything like that. It just kind of came and went and that was that. Maybe it helped that my mom came to visit me in the hospital every morning and every afternoon, and that my dad stopped by every morning on his way to work and every evening on his way home from work. Maybe it also helped that, as I said, there weren't any physical remnants of this disease. Once I was released from the hospital, the disease was completely gone and never returned. I am not even sure if I was lucky or if it was normal for people to fully recover from this disease. It was a pretty rare disease, and neither I nor my parents ever knew that much about it.
The reason I am bringing this up today is that this morning I woke up from a dream in which I was having a conversation with my mom. In the dream I had died from this disease when I was 5. But for some reason my mom and I were still able to have a conversation about it in the present time. I asked my mom what it was like for her when I died when I was 5. The first thing she said was "We don't have to talk about that," and then she immediately started crying and said "It was so terrible because not everybody knew you." In my dream, my mom seemed to be most sad about me not having had the chance to know a lot of people. But perhaps that is always the saddest part about a very young person dying.
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.: posted by Vera
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New site
Just in time for the new moon tomorrow, my new site is live.
dragonflypsychic.com
Feedback is welcome, but please be nice. It is taking a lot of courage to put myself out there.
Note: I will continue to offer free psychic advice to the readers of this blog until further notice.
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.: posted by Vera
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Neighborhood characters
Every morning on my way to work I walk down 18th Street where all the coffee shops, little stores and restaurants are. There are a few characters that I see almost every day.
The old man who likes to clean
There is this cute old man with a slight hunch back and white hair who wears cardigans and corduroy pants. He is always cleaning the neighborhood. On street cleaning day I often see him sweeping the street. On non-street cleaning days I also see him sweeping the street. The other day I saw him cleaning a neighborhood trash can. It was one of those trash bins that have a small house around it. When I saw him, he was leaning on the house with one hand and drinking coffee with the other. The door to the house stood open and he had taken the trash bin outside. The inside of the trash bin house was covered with soap and foam. The old man just likes to keep the neighborhood clean and his hands busy.
The homeless guy with the sparkly blue eyes
There is this homeless guy who always sits in front of the New Potrero Market. He is probably in his 40's and has the most sparkly blue eyes. Nothing else about him sparkles though. He used to shine shoes for money in front of the market. But now he just sits there with a paper cup asking for change. When I walk by he lifts his paper cup, looks up at me pleadingly and mumbles something. His voice is so brittle, I can hardly understand him although sometimes I have made out the word "change". I usually just smile at him and keep walking, but sometimes lately I have put money into his paper cup. I don't think he ever remembers this. I am waiting for the day where he will just smile back at me without lifting his cup at me. I want to tell him "I know that you're there and I know what you want. I see your paper cup. I will put money in it if I feel like it. But today I just want to smile at you and keep walking."
The guy who doesn't work
There is this guy who is probably in his later 30's who lives next door. He goes to Farley's a lot and he seems to know everybody there. I often see him standing on the sidewalk drinking coffee and talking to people sitting outside of Farley's. Or I see him walking from his house towards Farley's. I don't think he works. Unless he works from home. Although he does seem to work on his house quite a bit. There has been construction going on in and around his house for months. He owns the house. But he doesn't seem to work. The first time I met him was when my landlady crashed into my car. He had come out to see if my landlady was all right. After that he asked about my Beetle every time he saw me for a few months.
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.: posted by Vera
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Just thought you might like to know
Eleven years ago today I lost my virginity after having a tuna sandwich at Denny's. It was a happy day. I was old enough and in love enough.
Exactly one year later I told a boy at a concert "One year ago today I lost my virginity." We then proceeded to make out and he wanted to have sex but I wouldn't let him. What a tease I was.
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.: posted by Vera
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More questions, please
I haven't received a question for psychic advice in a few days and am getting bored. I encourage especially those of you who haven't emailed me yet.
Also, I am working on a new website that will be dedicated to all things psychic. That way I don't have to flood this blog with psychic stuff anymore. In the meantime, please ask me stuff!
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.: posted by Vera
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