A Karmic Hodge Podge

Americablog had a beautiful set of travel photos from a Roman site in Tunisia - check it out!

And then I found Tangled Webs' description of how REALLY bad the oil situation is:

These are from John Mauldin's newsletter in a piece written by the oil analyst David Galland. Galland's take on Saudi Arabia is the most optimistic. I personally think that the Saudi's are hiding the fact that they are at, or very near, peak oil themselves. Then, add this to the equation:

"If you look at the situation in US presidential terms, looking at fossil fuels plus nuclear, the world burned through the equivalent of 10% of all oil ever consumed in Bush's first 4-year term. And, in our model, we're going to burn 10% of all remaining conventional crude in the second 4 years of Bush's term.

Whoa! That's some incredible increase in consumption!

You may have read such analysis before. But you will not often read it coming from a highly mainstream, very conservative market analysts.

If you like $4.00/gal oil, you're going to absolutely love $10/gal oil.

Hopefully, MY candidate for President will help reduce all this crazy consumption!

But, again, and as usual, Bob's Art Blog lifted my spirits - I love Rousseau's works. Did anyone else out there have the Muppets Calendar with Zoot as the "Sleeping Gypsy"?

And then there's Rob Breszny's ALWAYS inspirational horoscope, and general wisdom for this week:

"By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers . . . This palpable world, which we are used to treating with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association, is a holy place."
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):

A professional dominatrix I know says that many of her clients are men whose jobs give them excessive authority over other people. When she's bossing around these honchos, she sees herself as an agent of karmic correction, counteracting a dangerous lopsidedness in their psyches. I bring this up, Pisces, because you're in a phase when you should rectify any imbalance of power that exists in your own sphere. If you're a swaggering alpha male or female, put in a stint as a humble servant. If you're normally a timid soul, flex your willpower with feisty abandon. If you're neither a control freak nor a doormat -- and thus have no karma to balance -- spend quality time meditating on how to gain more power over the wild ebbs and flows of your imagination.

"Let the body think of the spirit as streaming, pouring, rushing and shining into it from all aides."
- Plotinus

So, isn't it an amazing coincidence, that, in keeping with the Karmic message above, my friend, Clarissa, told me this story on the walk to work today about a lost pencil? I had to share!

When Clarissa was in elementary school she had a blue pencil she absolutely loved. She used it every day, and wore it down so that it got to be small after all the sharpening, you know. So one day, she dropped it while she was riding the bus. She looked for it, couldn't find it, and figured it was lost forever. About a year later she was riding the bus and all of a sudden, HER little blue pencil rolled out from under one of the seats. She picked it up and checked, and indeed, it was hers. Feels karmic, doesn't it?

Finally, from Bris de Mots:

"Toutes les choses de la terre
Il faudrait les aimer passagères
Et les porter au bout des doigts
Et les chanter à basse voix
Les garder les offrir
Tour à tour n'y tenir
Davantage qu'un jour les prendre
Tout à l'heure les rendre
Comme son billet de voyage
Et consentir à perdre leur visage"

Anne Perrier, Oeuvre poétique, 1952-1994, in Pour un vitrail, préface de Gérard Bocholier, L'Escampette, 1996