Kirk’s Blog

Today I wrote my first blog entry about gearing up for round 3 of my polyphasic sleep adjustment, and in the very same day, Steve Pavlina published a blog entry about his interest in possibly going back to polyphasic sleep intermittently after a year away from it. This is no coincidence since I know that both of our explorations into polyphasic sleep are closely related to the eclipses of 2005, 2006, and the most recent eclipses that passed just this month.

Cue the eerie sci-fi music.

Eclipses are associated with periods of dynamic change. They present an opportunity to clear out old, stagnant energy from one’s life and embark on fresh new directions. It’s not unusual for people to make major breaks with the past, especially if the eclipse touches one’s own natal chart closely. Since the eclipse is usually accompanied by strong emotions, it may be wise to objectively consider one’s actions before making rash decisions. Endeavors started during an eclipse period take on the same dynamic energy and for that reason, they may be unstable. I don’t think that we should necessarily judge an event that takes place along with an eclipse as good or bad, right or wrong, because it’s impossible for us to know or really appreciate the long term consequences of our actions. The important thing is trust one’s intuition and make the decision that feels right. Sometimes our immediate goals are merely stepping stones to something ultimately more rewarding in life, something that we couldn’t have possibly planned for in any conscious way.

I had this dream with scenes reminiscent from Simcity 4.  The dream is appropriate since I spent the entire Labor Day weekend playing it.

I was waiting at the subway station for someone when I struck up a conversation with a person standing next to me.  We began talking about directions, and I explained something to him using a body of water as reference.  He corrected me and indicated that my sense of direction was exactly reversed.  Then I saw the body of water behind me and turned around and realized that he was correct.

Now, I’m clicking some area of the landscape to bring up a window with a “Mystery” slider.  There just wasn’t enough mystery, so I dragged the slider to the right to increase it.

The meaning of the first part of the dream is a little fuzzy, but it likely has something to do with my sense of direction in life, more specifically with school.  I have turned my back on my feelings (the water), and I’m finally recognizing them.  There is not enough “mystery” in what I’m studying right now to easily keep me focused.

My weekend of full immersion in Simcity 4 is actually a lot more meaningful than I originally thought.  I thought it was just me procrastinating again, which is true, but that doesn’t paint a complete picture.  It was a major setback in my progress towards completing my school work, so I decided that I just have to stop working on it for now.  With two significant eclipses and Rosh Hashanah on the horizon, I don’t want to start my new year off so behind in my school work.  As to why the weekend was significant, it was the station of Pluto.  A bit of context is in order here.

This entire transit I am going through, Pluto square natal sun, is largely responsible for my interest in polyphasic sleep to begin with.  It has to do with going to extremes (Pluto) in order to get more done (sun).  During the first exact hit of the transit in January, I accepted additional projects and obligations, loading my plate fuller than I should have.  Then in March, during the first station of Pluto, I decided to attempt polyphasic sleep - an extreme measure targeted at increasing my waking time.  After my initial failure at achieving full uberman, I went on a reduced sleep schedule and worked on increasing my self-discipline, which helped to a point.  I relaxed a good bit and stopped pressuring myself to get more done than I was capable of.  Now Pluto has stationed for the second time, and I made the decision to postpone my overdue school work so that I can engage in another round of polyphasic sleep, which I’m still very excited about.

Betty Lundsten cautions against attempting super-human feats while having the Pluto square sun transit.  Her experience with it is nearly identical to mine in terms of what lessons she learned throughout the process.  I respect Betty’s words of wisdom, but I’m going to have to go with my feeling on this one.  Polyphasic here I come!

I stopped blogging somewhere in the middle of the trip partly because internet access was more difficult to come by, partly because I didn’t feel like it, and partly because all I wanted to do was practice the guitar, which our ceaselessly smiling
organizer, Yifat, taught me how to play. In any case, some of the events during the trip are starting to blur in my memory, but here goes…

On the last night, we had a closing circle, and we expressed our feelings about the trip. Right before the circle, we listened to some amazing Kabbalist-musicians from Tzfat with all sorts of musical instruments. One thing they played was called a bell drum, which made the most amazing and unexpected melodies. It both looked and sounded like an alien space ship.

For the last few days of the trip, we prepared most of our own meals since we were staying in the Livnot campus instead of traveling around in hotels and hostels. It was fun and slightly chaotic preparing our shabbat meal before shabbat, and our challah was a disaster, LOL. It looked like burnt dough. No one was able to figure out what went wrong.

The trip has left me swimming around in the idea of Jewish identity, and for the first time I’ve been more seriously considering the meaning behind the middle eastern political conflicts. My knowledge of Jewish history is pathetic, and I feel that developing it is going to be an important task for me. Welcome Saturn to the fourth house! (for those of you who know what that means, or even if you don’t, it’s fairly obvious) This is the beginning of the journey. The next 2.5 years will tell the story of how it unfolds.

In the meantime, perhaps I’ll see how I feel in Jewish clothes. I’m going to Friday night services this week at a local synagogue, and I’m going to have to rearrange my food coop shifts so that I can observe shabbat. The whole thing still feels very strange, and I have no rational explanation for why I want to try these things out now, except for the reason of exploring my roots. The concept of shabbat does make a lot of sense, and I can see how taking a break every week is as important as taking a break every hour or two while studying.

Since I returned, I’ve made hummus with the delicious recipe I learned while in Israel, and I bought a guitar. I also discovered that one of my roommates is Jewish, and she’s the one who told me about the Friday night service, which happens to be really close. I’m also waiting for my chevre to upload their pictures, which I will add to the blog entries when they do.

• SSS: 2

So far it seems that the core sleep is working out. I feel awake and alert after my 3 hours, and I had the second vividly memorable dream since the transition: (more…)

It is said that when an eclipse occurs, things “come to light” often in a singular and dramatic way. Business that has been carried out largely unnoticed by others will suddenly be exposed. Eclipses are also associated with out-of-the-ordinary events, fitting for the out-of-the-ordinary character of the eclipse in an astronomical sense.

Yesterday, as I waited to see what would develop, the entire day passed without too much noticeable, and certainly nothing dramatic, that could have been connected to the eclipse. Little did I realize the impact that my coworkers’ and my lunch orders placed yesterday would have.

Back when Venus was retrograde (which in itself signifies indulgence), my company began sponsoring lunches for its employees. It didn’t take long for many to discover that through the web-based lunch system SeamlessWeb, one could allocate funds from another user’s account, allowing one to exceed the limit on the price of a single order. So, many of us began taking a bit here and a bit there if there was something that we wanted to get that would have gone over the limit.

Today, and I’m sure this was at least partly precipitated by the unusually large amount of funds I allocated from a coworker ($5, hey it’s my birthday) who is not in the office today (and by another coworker allocating from that same person), the person in charge of organizing lunch came into our office area completely irate. As her voice trembled, she vented her bottled-up anger without regard (apparently) for the volume of her voice, which echoed throughout the office.

That’s more than enough drama for me for one day. What surprises will the next 3 eclipses bring this year? Next up: solar eclipse on March 29 2006, made particularly potent by the station of Pluto on that very day. More on that in another post…

In New York, the lunar eclipse will be visible as the moon rises. Check out this map to see when the lunar eclipse will be visible for you.

Woohoo, my Handspring Treo arrived in the mail today. I bought it used off of Ebay for $50. It’s an old Treo model, several years, but it’s just what I wanted: simple, color, qwerty. Now I don’t have to overload my brain trying to keep everything that I have to do stored in my personal RAM. I need to keep it cleaned out so I can focus on other stuff.

Also, Mercury has stationed retrograde today. Exactly what that means for my Treo only time will tell. I suspect it’s just symbolic of the re-evaluation I’m doing concerning how I keep organized.