T.W.I.S.E.R.N.!
THE WORLD IS SO EXCITING RIGHT NOW!
The Beth Lapides Newsletter
INFINITE JEST
and a useful tool

I love this photo! This infinity sign is multiple exposures taken from the same spot over the course of a year. That infinity sign is the path of the sun!!!!

I'm a bit of an infinity sign nut. I doodle them. I catch myself tracing them with my thumb on my index finger absent-mindedly. I put infinity sign/masks on my book cover.

I love this picture because it affirms how central the idea of infinity is to life, but also has this crazy level of irony. The sun is what gives us the calendar, the very thing that makes us feel like time is not infinite.

With my February, 2, 2/2, filter in place, staring at this image, I noticed how much the infinity sign has to do with the interplay of one and two. It's one shape, a never ending loopy speedway of a doodle. But it's also two. So the one and the two. Creative and recpetive. Firm and yielding. Yang and yin. Shiva and shakti. Chocolate and vanilla. January and February. It's the "and" that creates the infinity.

One way to use the infinity sign. If someone is upsetting you, and you've done all that you can do with doing, picture an infinity sign. Put your face in half of it. Go ahead airbrush yourself. Why not? Then put their picture in the other half. Don't airbrush them, but don't waste your energy blacking out their teeth or drawing mustaches either. Now, in your mind, cut the two halves of the infinity sign apart. Watch yourself float away from this person/place/situation. Breathe a sigh of relief. Have a nice glass of water. Or red wine, what the hell, it's got a lot of anti- oxidants and it's been a hard day!

TODAY IS 2/2!
me and my shadow

Today is 2/2. Groundhog Day. A perfect day numerically speaking for a holiday which is about looking for your shadow, your other, the second you. The number two, then the two shadowed. Nicely done holiday schedulers! Somehow this year Groundhog Day has hit a chord with me. And it's hard for me to believe I've just written that sentence. That must be the shadow me.

But this year I am all about waking up.

And here's what I've woken up to on this holiday that's about waking up. There is always a shadow. When it's overcast it's all shadow. Shadow of the cloud. And our own shadows are not so visible. This is a perfect metaphor for right now in America. A time of cultural darkness which makes it difficult to see our own personal shadows.

So today is a good time to remember the dictum: embrace your wholeness. Shadows can be very illuminating. And even make you look skinny!
WAKING UP
zen again

When I was twenty I had a business card that said "PM Only". But now mornings are a must. So, I use my Zen Alarm clock. Except after ten years of loving it I knocked it to a concrete floor in a fit of over enthusiastic dressing. Woops. But the nice people over at Now and Zen have, despite my clock being well out of it's warranty, are giving me half price on a new one. Lovely. I am switching to the digital because now I travel more. Plus it is great for yoga and meditation timings.

One of the greatest things about the Now and Zen alarm clocks is that you don't ever have to hit the snooze button. Your gradual, dream remembering, awakening can happen gracefully. You never feel like you are cheating by not waking up immediatly. Instead after the first lovely chime, five minutes go by, and then a second chime. Then in three and a half more minutes a third, and so on in a sequence of timed chimes that follows the Pythagorian mean.

Pythagorus is a good person to remember on 2/2 becuase although he is known to most of us as the guy who came up with that equation about triangles, he was a mystic and philosopher, the teacher of Plato, the head of Pythogorian School of Mysteries!, and believed, as do I, that numeric figures can represent quantities, but that numbers represent qualities. that numbers have vibrations. That everything is vibration. Numbers effect us. The way sound effects us. We are all waves. And that is a sweet thought to wake up to.

you'll thank me
ONE THING THAT IS SO EXCITING RIGHT NOW
double or everything!

The idea that I, we, are living right now, in the 2000's, in a time when the vibration of two is very strong, excites the hell out of me! Yes, I am a cheap date!

I bring this up because today is 2/2. And we're in a full moon portal, which highlights the doubling of two, maybe even doubles the doubling. The moon, of course, is the celestial body associated with twoness. La feminine principle. So, a full moon and 2/2. Auspicius. Or at least focused.

I know sometimes it feels like everything is really just insanely crappy right now. But in my heart I feel we are in a giant energy shift. And that the 2 vibration, is one that can ease our way.

I've had a lot of two "stuff" in the past few years. I now live in two cities. A situation not entirely unrelated to a dove nesting at my front door and hatching two chicks. (Doves oddly, or obviously, are the symbol of the feminine goddess in Judiasm - yes, shockingly there is one - Shekina) I've thrown the I Ching and repeatedly gotten the second hexagram. The Receptive. Six "broken lines". I first saw that the hexagram looks like the Twin Towers when I threw it on 9/12. This blew my mind. Thinking about 9/11 as a shift towards being receptive when everyone was focused on the phallus, the yanginess. The Twin-ness, the two was a big part of it.

So I keep trying - or not trying - to let go of 'we're number one" and embrace the dance. The dance between will and surrender, the ultimate pulse. Still, I'd like to win America's Next Top Model. If only I wasn't 5"2".

TOOLS FOR ENLIGHTENED LIVING
think lobally act locally

Sometimes it's too quiet in my office. The birds have taken the day off, there's no laundry to put in thedryer and the winds are not up.

I want some sound prodding my thoughts along. Occasionaly I can find a song and play it in a loop, kind of like the infinity sign, and I'm good for hours, maybe days.

But most of the time lyrics drive me crazy while I'm writing. And since I am someone prone to have lyrics stick in my head, I'm kind of careful about what songs I listen to even when I'm not writing. So, though Greg and lots of my friends enjoy it, no Pandora for me.

Then I reminded myself that I "always have everything I need". Which flipped the switch and I remembered I had a CD called Alpha/Theta Waves. I loaded it up in my iTunes and it has really been fantastic. As the CD notes say: "These vibrational sound waves ease you into an altered state of consciousness -- a mid-range meditative state (alpha), or a deep-level state (theta)."

Since then I've started to research what's available in terms of sound input. It's amazing.

start hear!
COME 2 THE UNCABARET MY FRIENDS...
2 shows 4 U

Saturday, February 24 Un-Cabaret with Taylor Negron, Greg Berhendt and our old friend Mary Lynn Rajskub @ M-Bar, 1253 N. Vine St. Call 323-993-3305 for reservations.

Friday, February 9 Say The Word special valentines Day Show: "Love Bugs" with Stephen Glass, Scott Carter, Rob Cohen and Jon Kinnally @ the Skirball, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. Call 866-468-3399.

stay up to date with Un-Cab stuff
"Did I Wake You?"
My second book
Did I Wake You?

My agent told me that this was my second book. That I should write my story first and then we would sell this one. But I had already bought my second house first. And felt that "Did I Wake You?" was a book about right now. Even though haiku are by nature all about now, a perfect form for a nowist like me, this book I felt spoke to a particular moment in cosmic/ political/you might call it historical time. Luckily Soft Skull agreed. But in some ways I know my agent was right, it would be easier getting the book "out there" with the muscle of a "bigger" book first, so much gratitude to those of you who have been spreading the word.

"Brilliant!" - Trashionista.com

Being number two
Is very under rated
said sad number three.

The Daily Planet on Franklin Ave, in LA, a really great book/magazine/gift store has DIWY now. Stop in say hi and pick up a copy!

buy a book and get a FREE CRYSTAL!!

Peace, love, namaste, blessings, shalom, and all that good stuff. xoxo Beth


phone: 323-993-3305