I've been contemplating our family.. As always. For everyone's family there is ups and downs.. quirks.. and I'm quite sure there are familes that are much more ... interesting.... than ours.. but I've recently realized why we all are so.. well almost deluded.

Everyone is a liar in their own respect. And everyone believes the lies they have to tell themselves on a daily basis to get through whatever situation calls for they averted attention from the truth. Our family lives off lies. We lie about what we've done.. Where we've been.. how we feel.. who we love.. who we are. We lie about the things that have happened to us. Untill we become an idolized version of ourselves.. and it only takes so long before one starts believing a lie that they live.

I am in no way exempt from this most interesting family trait. I am a very vivid liar. For what does a painter do but use lies.. even to tell the truth. And I don't know how many times I've straight-faced lied and even scared myself at how good I was at it. It's a talent we all posses in our family. How we so eaily mistreat it.

I am kind of at a stand still about my family and their refusal to come to terms with the lies they tell each other and themselves.

I've asked myself why.. why was I .. this black sheep.. so different from the other liars but with the same skill to manipulate with ease... but with the insatiable hunger for personal and exsistential truth thrust into this family of people who recess and refuse to face themselves. Why am I the only one of them un afraid to strip myself bare (metaphorically speaking of course) and see that amoung all things that I wish I was.. I am.

It came clear to me. Why is any oddball their in the midst of square pegs. To make the other's wonder. Why give them something to think about.

I often think about stripping them bare.. showing them their own truths.. the good and the bad... and then I pause and remember that liars are so fragile.. If the mask they wear is broken.. perhaps they will never be fixed.. and is it really.. really .. my place.

I could be lying to myself at this very moment.. But the most interesting thing I ask myself.. what is a lie in this world of illusion.

Does that one small peice of yourself that you give up to hide for a lie just stack onto the illusion a person has already created. Just another sheild of defense from a truth we so desprately want to be the lie. and the lie we eventually believe is true.

I fear that for some of the older members in our family.. My grandmother.. who is the queen of pretending and my mother the mistress of self deciet. My sister spiraling into the same path.. a slave to her lies. and I a princess dancing in my world of woven imagination and vapid words.  I fear for my neice and nephew.. am I powerless to break the cycle.. or am I a self proclaimed beacon of hope that is afraid to tell my family the truth that I so desperately seek in my own life so that perhaps they will finally face themselves like I try to do. Who is lieing now? I ask. (please don't answer that.. it was rhetorical)

I read once that the truth can not be experienced.. only realized.
 This desolate truth is the one I very much wish were the lie.

Hmm.. I really haven't written a blog in a long time. I haven't actually participated in much online activity in a while. (when you have to go outside to you use your internet connection in 90 something to degree weather.. it's not as much fun as it used to be)
Anyway...

Autumn is in the air. I can feel it in my soul. That's the only way I can describe the feeling that autumn is on its way. If there is any season I am most connected to it is summer... I almost love it more than spring. Autumn and spring are the seasons in which the most things happen to me. Not only does semesters start in each of these seasons but the great infinate turns the wheel yet again.

I love autumn because It's so unpredictable.. it's predictable. Everything that has happened that is life altering for the upcoming year happens in autumn.. it's almost a sort of storm of life.

My sister moved back in with us. She's been having some serious issues with life and death and continuing on her path. She no longer gets away with the carelessness that she used to now that her children are becoming more aware of the world around them.

But to my great happiness I witness her turn of tide. I saw the light spark back in her daughters eye. I saw the light spark back in hers. It made me feel so.. happy to see her adjusting so well to the town she always desperately wanted to leave. I hope she see's that running away isn't the answer. I hope that I understand it too. :)

To be continued.

My cat.. most definently... second to my cat is my art professor. :)

Besides see Evan catch a 30lb snook and Jess cook it up?

Um.. I saw God make the morning sky something to remember.
 
I also see Chrissy taking care of her boyfriends pops even though Beau has been trying to cheat on her.

I see my mom making an attempt to care.

I think that's all beautiful

I also saw that kid from twilight.. everything he does is beautiful :P

NO WHERE. :P
I don't want any help right now.

Wait.. I'm lying... find me a job.. I need help there. no one's hiring.

I was hoping to try to find a summer job in a gallery some where since we have about a million and five in my little town.

Oh also.. I would like some support in my "we hate selfish self centered hypocritcal and rude family member society"

Actually I don't want help.. just people who can be like... YOU TOO!!! WOW THERE'S ALOT OF THAT GOING AROUDN THESE DAYS.

I honestly could do less with the routine:

"Well Ashley, ignoring them is an easy way to deal with that problem and blah blah blah.."

I guess I'm not looking for support in that area just understanding..

but the job thing.. yeah.. I could use some help.

I believe my status has been for about ten days or more "Ashley is asking no questions so tell me no answers"

I actually have been refusing to ask any questions lately. I'm tired of answers. I'm sick of paradoxes. It seems like when you ask questions (or even when you don't ask questions) you get answers. Wiether those answers are right or not are entirely up to me.

I'm just tired of asking questions and having other people answer them who think they know more than me. Who feel like they need to school me or guide me or let me in on some secret that they know and I don't. Who are more "enlightened"

Yeah.. Okay. If you're enlightened, I must be illuminated.

I'm asking no questions so tell me NO answers... I'll draw my own conclusions thanks.

I had spent the night at Chrissy's house and we did our usual wine and movies. Only tonight the wine was aged 10 years and french. We did our best to stay awake but to no avail.

Off to dream land. I had a very eerie interesting dream. Let me weave you the tale.

I was in a mall. Working at a malt shop or something. When there was tell that something was going on. Someone was reaking havoc at the mall. I remember seeing her. She seemed vaguely familiar.

Eyes crazed. Mouth slighly parted and hair wild. She sauntered down the mall. Her hand held an object unknown to me.  For some odd reason only women were at the mall today and they were running, running for their lives. I ran down the middle of the mall, I could feel her gaining on me. Her eyes were on me. She was right behind me. I scurried across the floor.

There was no wet floor sign as I slipped up in some sort of liquid as I walked. I was not water. It was soap. An intentional soapy floor it seemed. I felt her breath on me. I pulled myself up from my fall with all my might. The floor felt like a conveyer belt beneath my feet.

Across the way was a J.C. Penney's.

Lots of hiding places in there, I thought.

I sprinted, my legs feeling like cynder blocks. I made it to the threshold of J.C. Penney's.

The insane woman had found another person to assault as I made my getaway.

There in the store were other woman and girls and some children all of the scampering to find a hiding space. Their faces stricken with terror.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a spiraling stair case. One of the old ones you would see in a victorian house or something.

It seemed odd to me that there would be a staircase like this in J.C. Penney's, but at the top of the staircase was a door. A door that could lock.

I climbed the stairs carefully. Keeping an eye out for this crazy woman. I met the door at the top and opened it.

Inside was a hallway with two doors. One of them slightly open to display a bathroom. The other closed and locked. On the walls there was a small framed painting.

The painting was medeval in style. It had two foxes being pulled up by their tails. In the middle of them a tall tree. The foxes, birds and tree's in perfect symmetry. I stared at it for a second and noticed on the wall next to it was some sort of geometric fingerpainting drawn right on the plaster.

The feeling of the space was eerie. Like a calm after a storm. Like something odd had happened here. Almost as if I had seen this all before. I sensed I wasn't sposed to be in this hallway.

I felt for the door nob and stepped out only to run into an older lady in a white dress. Her attire and composure matching the staircase.

"She's coming," She said. "I have the keys, let's hide in here."

I stared at her, questioningly.

"Well are you coming?"

I followed her back into the hallway.

I stared at the fox painting again as the same overwelming akward feeling came over me.

The old woman went to the locked door and opened it.
Through the door a stone balcony overlooking a grassy hill.

We went out to the balcony and she locked to door behind us.

A familiar pefectly symmetrical tree stood tall. Unlike the picture though the tree had a sidewalk by it. Walking down the side walk were two men. One held a microphone the other a camera. Obviously comming to report the calamity. The camera man walked as leashed by the reporter.
 
They reminded me of a donkey being led by a bird.

She smiled at me and started to say something. I heard a toilet flush in the back ground and a door opened.

Panic began to rise. The woman had heard it too.

"We'd better go."

A metal latter became apparent on the side of the balcany.
She waited for me to make my way down first and the followed.

We began to walk down the grassy hill. I still felt paniced and rushed as if some one was chasing us.

We reached the bottom of the hill. I looked back at the balcony. It seemed miles away.

What I saw spun my head.

There I could see myself and the old lady still standing on the stone balcony talking to each other.

She grabbed my wrist and led me away.

We began to walk down a dirt road. I noticed her pretty blue dress. Or white dress. Her pretty blue dress was dragging the ground. I picked up the train of the dress of the ground.

The wind caught hold of it and it billowed up like a cloud. As I held it I swayed it to and fro. My legs skippy.

We came to walk past a jail. The inmates were out, behind the fence they played a sport I didn't understand. Although spanish in appearence they spoke something else something I couldn't understand.

They waved at the old woman and smiled happily. She waved back.

We came again to pass a house. A red brick house that had a huge garage attached to it.

We paused and the big metal garage door opened up and a man whose upper body took up most of the door space poked his head and arms out. He held a rachet in his hand.

He also waved happily to the old lady.

She smiled and yelled out,

"Hello James"

"Hello, Ma'am" he said politely.

I stared in awe of the giant as we continued to walk.

In the near distance a castle became apparent. A grand castle.

We neared the gates as the fell open. In we walked through a kitchen.

I caught myself in the mirror. My hair short and slightly boyish. My attire very knightly.
As if knights could be girls, they would wear what I was wearing. Dressed in red.

We walked through the kitchen and into a tea room.

The old lady offered me a cup of tea which I took thankfully and sipped.

Hours seemed to go by when I thought to myself, My mother must be worried.

"Thank you so much for helping me but I have to go, my mother will be worried." I said politely.

The old lady smiled sweetly and said,

"Well off you go dear. But I get lonely every now and then. Come back in 1000 hours or I will bring you here for 1000 years."

I nodded. Her threat seemed more desperate for company than an actual threat. But her seriousness as she uttered the words made me wonder for a moment.

On my way out of the castle I saw another garage. Or maybe even an abandoned stable. On a wooden chair sat a doll. With brown eyes, red brown hair and a smile. The face on the doll was my own. She sat starying at me in her fancy red dress much like mine but much more feminine.

I stared at her for a moment then made my way to the waking world.

I'm not sure exactly what this dream ment. If anything I do know... that I woke up wondering. I do know.. it was an interesting trip.

Any ideas?

I've been away from gaia for a while.

My little status has said that my last login is at least once a day, but mentally, spiritually I've been away from gaia for a good long while,

I've made some amazing friends while sailing this beautiful ship with you beautiful souls. Each and everyone of you has contributed to my own growth as a person.

You've given me some sort of understanding of myself and of you. You have let me into your lives.

I wanted to write this blog as a sort of way to let you know that I have NOT forgotton about you all, not forgotton about this amazing community.

It's my belief that there are different cycles a person must go through in their life. A "5 steps forward 3 steps back" sort of deal.

Where great personal growth comes but only for us to be brought back to the reason we needed that personal growth and to face it.

I posted the song above for many reasons. I hope you'll listen.

We all go through our own black holes and revelations. The dark before the light before the dark.

Our black holes aren't always as intimidating and as bad as they sound. It's just unfamiliar territory.. or all to familiar and ready to be understood. A black hole is only a black hole because we cannot see it enough as anything else. The revelation comes at the end.

Through my small (and interestingly enough fun) black hole, I've come to realize that these revelations as small or as epic as they can seem are just another entrance to a black hole.

I remember just a few monthes ago I was so spirtually sound in my beliefs. It's the moment that I was so comfortable.. that the peices began to fall away. I knew they fit but I watched the come apart. I tried to hold them togather.. but then I wondered..

Maybe I'm not supposed to hold them togather. Everytime my mountain crumbles,  it leaves behind in it's ashes the birth of something new.

The birth of something that, even though it is less extravagent as the mountain I climbed, is something that I needed to take with me after that amazing climb to the top. 

It's the hatchling from the ashes of the burning phoenix, the birth of something new and amazing. And when it becomes old and stagnant, it to will become a whirlwind of a black hole, and then the perfect moment of a revelation.

I wanted to thank Andrew. My dear Andrew for unknowingly helping me in my latest revelation. For reminding where I am.. where I stand.

Tonight.  I felt her before I saw her. 

I saw a face more lovely than anything  that can be seen. She out shown the street lights. Blinded the stars. She splashed light on the ground and it bounced into my heart.

I needed her.

I was off my path to remembering. I was far to interested in mediocrity. she is my most recent hint.

She shown. She was like a rising sun in the sky. Dawning in the morning.

She said wake up Ashley. You've been dreaming this dream for far to long now. It's time to wake up.

And so I have.