Seoul Bath...

I went to a Korean Spa for the first time this weekend.

My friend had invited everyone to spend the day at the spa with him for his birthday, before the party he was throwing that night.  A few of my friends showed up, but most people were waiting for the party.  I'd been wanting to check out this spa for awhile, so I jumped at the chance.

Now, when I say "spa," think more, "communal bathhouse" rather than "salon/day spa."  You pay $20 to get in, and stay as long as you want.  (They're open 24 hours-a-day on the weekends, and they even have a "Nap Room" to sleep in when you want.)  There's a restaurant (awesome Korean food); a PC room with computers, video games, and internet; and a gym.  But the real attraction is the bathhouse.

As soon as you walk into the place, before you even get to the front desk, you encounter signs indicating "No Shoes Allowed Beyond This Point."  So, you have to carry your shoes up to the front desk, where they give you a key to fit a locker there by the entrance, just big enough to hold a pair of shoes.  Once you get your shoes off, you can feel that the dark wood floor is actually heated; feels so lovely.  Once you pay your entrance fee, they give you another key to a bathhouse locker, and a uniform of simple cotton t-shirt and shorts; men get robin's egg blue, and women get prison orange.

Inside the locker room (men and women each have their own locker rooms, and their own bathhouses, naturally), you can change into your uniform and head out into the communal area if you want.  But inside the locker room is the entrance to the bathhouse, and I headed straight for it.  Inside were showers (regular and Asian style - a little stool on the ground in front of a mirror, with a handheld showerhead and a large bowl); two large, tiled, bubbling hot "tubs" (they were more like small pools), one of them herbal; two saunas (one wet and one dry); and a cold water pool (only about knee deep and three feet wide, but running the length of the room; obviously meant for bathing, not swimming).  In one corner was a massage table, with a naked man getting scrubbed down by an attendant.

In fact, except for the attendant, everybody in the place was completely naked, and making no attempt to cover themselves up, which I found very comforting.  I'm used to puritanical American gym locker-rooms, where everyone gets dressed and undressed either with a towel wrapped around them, or in a shower or toilet stall, out of some ridiculous sense of homophobia or something.  That environment always leaves me feeling very uncomfortable.  It freaks me out to be surrounded by people who are clearly all very afraid of something, and not really have any understanding of what it is that they are so clearly afraid of, exactly.  Are they afraid that some "faggot" will see their penis and somehow become aroused?  (And if so, why does that frighten them?  What does it matter to them at all?  And how would they even know that it had happened?)  Are they worried that if they get naked the other men will think they, themselves, are a "faggot," trying to show off their penis?  (That seems more likely.)  Or are American men just incredibly modest and shy?  (Haha!  Yeah, right!)  So I found it incredibly refreshing to be in an environment where nobody had these ridiculous hang-ups that I couldn't understand, and everybody could just relax and enjoy themselves, without getting all squirrely and nervous about something so completely innocuous as being naked in the same room with other men.  I think it helped that all the men there were either Asian or Russian.  (Apparently, this spa gets a lot of Russians, because it is the closest thing to the traditional Russian bathhouse in the area.  They even had one set of their pamplets listing their services up at the front desk printed all in Russian.)

The larger, regular hot bath was empty (presumably out-of-order), so I headed to the herbal hot bath, which probably would've been my first choice, anyways, now that I think about it.  This bath has a large cloth sack filled with various herbs hanging off of the faucet so that the water is running down through the bag and into the bath; the bag is also hanging about half into the water, steeping like a tea bag.  (They had a sign listing all of the herbs they used, but I don't remember them all at this point; several of them I had never heard of before.)  In fact, it felt very much like taking a bath in tea - the water was brown, had little bits of plant matter swirling around in it, and was incredibly aromatic.  After about ten minutes in this tub, my skin felt softer and smoother than it has since I was a teenager.  In fact, even now, it still feels much softer than usual.

After the herbal bath, I took a quick rinse-off dip in the cold pool (and when they say "cold" they are not lying - it was like ice water!) and then tried out the dry sauna.  It was just over 200 degrees in there, and so it wasn't long before I couldn't take it anymore, and headed back out to cool off in the cold pool.  Going from the hot to the cold like that is the Russian style, and I find it unbelievably refreshing and invigorating and sensually satisfying.  (Maybe it's genetic.)  The hot opens up my pores and loosens my skin, and then the cold tightens it all back up again.  The heat brings all my blood out to my extremities and into my skin, and then the cold sends it all flying away from the surface and down into my core.  And the simple juxtaposition between the two sensations is very-nearly overwhelming.  It leaves me light-headed, but pleasantly so.

After that I tried out the wet sauna, but I couldn't take it for more than a minute.  The air is so thick with moisture that you can barely see your hand in front of your face.  Whenever I would breathe in, I would feel like there was more water in the inhalation than oxygen, and since I was already a little light-headed, it wasn't long before I felt like I couldn't breathe and had to get out before I passed out.  It's a shame, because, other than that, I liked the room.  It wasn't as hot as the dry sauna (only about 150 degrees), and the wet air made it feel more like a bath or shower than the dry sauna, which felt more like an oven.  And the water that they used to produce the steam was apparently infused with some herb, as well, because it was, like the herbal bath, incredibly and pleasantly aromatic.  (The dry sauna actually had a small wicker basket full of cinnamon sticks in the corner, as well, producing a pleasant aroma as they baked in the heat.)  I think next time I'll have to try this steam room first, before I do anything else, and see if that works out better for me.

I spent the next hour just going around between the dry sauna, the herbal bath, and the cold bath.  It felt amazing.  We had agreed to meet in the communal room at that point, so I dried off, dressed in my powder-blue uniform, and headed out into the communal room, which is between, and connected to, the two locker rooms/bathhouses.  The communal room is a large, central room, lined with thick tatami mats on the floor, and little tables to go with them.  (At least, they're called "tatami" in Japanese; I have no idea what they are called in Korean, but they are the same object.)  There were also large piles of these small, traditional head-cushions used for lying down on the mats.  There was a TV on one wall, playing Korean television.  There were Korean newspapers and magazines lying around the room.  There were boards for playing Go, Chess/Checkers, Backgammon, etc. scattered all around.  At one end was a line of massaging recliners, and beyond that was the "Napping Room" - a small, dark room lined with more tatami mats for sleeping.  I tried out one of the massaging recliner chairs, expecting a vibrating massage chair.  What I got instead was ten minutes of, essentially, being pummeled in the back by a robot at high speed.  It was more percussion than vibration.  It hurt like hell at first, but by the end it felt fantastic.

Along the walls of the communal room are smaller rooms of varying temperatures, all dry rooms.  The hot rooms were each lined with different materials all over the floor, walls, and ceiling.  The Himalayan Salt room was lined with pink rock salt, presumably Himalayan judging by the name, and kept at 130 degrees.  The Jewel Room was 150 degrees, and lined with smooth cut slabs of green amethyst.  And the Charcoal Room was lined with small cylinders of charcoal, and heated to 170 degrees.  (I didn't go into the last, hottest room, and don't remember what it was lined with.)  There are also two cold rooms.  The Cold Room is about 40 degrees, and then inside the Cold Room is the Ice Room, which is well below freezing, and lined with, predictably, ice.  (The sign said it was -21 degrees Fahrenheit, but it had to be Celsius; -21 degrees Fahrenheit would be dangerous in just a t-shirt and shorts, and while this room was definitely cold, it wasn't painful or distressing.  It felt more like about 25-30 degrees Fahrenheit.)  Again, I spent a bunch of time going back and forth from the hot rooms to the cold rooms and back again.

We ate lunch in the restaurant, sitting cross-legged on pillows at low Asian-style tables, eating delicious, cheap Korean food.  I reflected on the fact that the place was full of families.  I could tell that this was a regular family event; you bring the wife and kids and spend the day.  It was a like the Korean version of a community center or a YMCA.  There was a father and son in the bathhouse while I was in there, the son maybe six years-old.  They sat together, naked, at one of the little Asian-style showerheads, the son laying over the father's knee, as he washed and scrubbed his son's whole body over and over for what seemed like at least half an hour.  To my Western eyes, this looked decidedly creepy, and I couldn't imagine an American father and son doing this.  But at one point I happened to notice the father try to put the son down on the floor next to him and attend to his own washing, but the boy began to pout and plead until the father agreed to pick him back up and wash him again, which made the boy incredibly happy.  I tried to look at it through their eyes.  This was a bonding moment between a boy and his father.  In our culture, we're taught to sexualize nudity in any form regardless of context, and so something like this instinctively seems gross to us.  But this wasn't sexual at all.  It was loving.  And when I stopped myself from seeing it as sexual, and started trying to see it for what it actually was to them (non-sexual, familial nudity) it became a touching display of affection between a father and son.

I lost track of the hours I spent there, and didn't want to leave.  I could easily see how someone could spend all day there.  I can't wait to go back.  They offer massage services as well (foot massage, body massage, Thai massage, body scrub, etc.) for very reasonable prices, and next time I'm going to book one of those and make a day of it.

Chutes and Ladders...

Just a brief synopsis of my day...

In preparation for the upgrade of my work PC (currently my only working computer, since my laptop is in the shop being repaired) from Windows XP to Windows 7 tomorrow, I had a bunch of files to backup, and one program (Quicken) to upgrade, since the version of Quicken that I've been using to manage my personal finances for the last ten years is not compatible with Win7.

I'd already bought the latest version of Quicken, so the upgrade installation should only take about an hour.  Decided to do that first, only to discover that the CD-ROM drive on my PC is apparently broken.  Luckily managed to scrounge a portable CD-ROM from the Help Desk that plugs in on a USB.  After running for a half-hour, the installation program suddenly shuts down with an error message.  Had to restart my computer and do it again; another half an hour, but this time it works.  But when I start up the new program, it tells me that I can't covert data from my old version (2002) to the new version (2012).  I'll need to download and install an intermediate version (2004), convert my data from 2002 to 2004, then re-install 2012, and then finally convert my data from 2004 to 2012.  Ugh, ok.  Luckily, they offered a free version of 2004 for download.

So, downloaded that, but it took me a half dozen tries to install it.  Kept getting error messages, had to uninstall 2012 first (another half-hour), but it eventually worked, and I managed to convert my data to 2004 format.  Then I spent another half-hour installing 2012, only to have it fail with the same error message again.  Had to restart my machine (all told, had to restart my machine six times - at about ten minutes a piece, that's an hour I spent restarting my machine alone!), and install it again.  Another half-hour, but this time it worked.

But then when I went to run it, it told me that I couldn't use my data because it was for a Deluxe version of Quicken.  (Apparently the "free" version of 2004 that they offered was the Quicken 2004 Deluxe.)  And so, in order to be able to use my data that I had just spent over four hours trying to convert, I would need to upgrade to the Deluxe version of 2012, at a cost of $60.  I'd already spent $30 on the version I'd just spent all day trying to install!  I then spent an hour on the phone with an argumentative gentleman from New Delhi at Quicken Customer Service trying to find a way around this, to no avail.  Ended up having to upgrade to the Deluxe version, even though I didn't want it, just to save my data.  Spent another half an hour installing it and converting my data (FINALLY!).

All told, I ended up spending almost seven hours of my day just trying to install this one fucking program.  In my entire life using computers, I have never had this much difficulty installing a program, ever.  Not even close.

And I couldn't use my computer for anything else the whole time it was installing (so that would be all day), so I still had all the rest of my work to do!  But I was out of time, because I had to rush home to try and see the Transit of Venus.

Venus crosses the face of the Sun (from our point of view on Earth) twice about every hundred years or so.  The last time it happened was in 2004.  The next time it will happen, after today, is 2117.  Literally, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  And I am lucky to live within walking distance of an elementary school science lab/planetarium that had set up telescopes with special filters to allow the public to view the transit from 6-8p today.

But it was cloudy.  From horizon to horizon, grey fluffballs of clouds covering the entire sky.

Anticipating a long wait, we brought along one of our two folding camp chairs.  Removing it from it's carrying pouch, She discovered a hidden treasure inside.  A sword, with a crystal handle, and a brass hilt.  This sword had been an important magickal item to me for years.  I used it in various Solar rituals.  It had also been one of the treasures offered up in our wedding ceremony.  I had lost it years ago.  So long ago in fact, that it has been years since I even considered it lost; for many years now I have simply assumed that it was gone, and that I would never see it again.

And then, suddenly, as I'm waiting, desperately, for the Sun to appear from behind the curtain of clouds, so that I could watch this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of our closest neighbor planet floating across its immense, bright face, my long-lost Magickal Sun Sword simply appears out of nowhere.  Almost as if by magick.

Surely, this was a sign that my luck was turning.

And, sure enough, with less than fifteen minutes before the Sun disappeared behind the horizon, there was a sudden break in the clouds!  And She managed to secure us a spot near the front of the line!!  (You have my eternal gratitude for this, Precious. You saved me from disappointment and disaster.)

And so, for about ten seconds, I was able to look through a telescope's eyepiece, and directly into the face of our Star.  And there she was - Venus.  A small, black dot, floating against a backdrop of the enormous, white circle of the Sun.  I saw it with my own eyes.

I will remember those ten seconds for the rest of my life.

And then I got to drive all the way back to my office to finish up the file backup preparations for tomorrow that I hadn't had a chance to do earlier.  And now I'm done, and it's time to go home.  And by the time I get there, it will be past my bedtime.

But I don't even care.

Today was a great day.

Holiday Post...

Finally missed a post.

I took May Day off from all responsibility.  Just wanted to relax and enjoy ourselves, and not have to worry about doing anything other than what we wanted.  And yesterday was one of those days where writing something felt more like an obligation than anything else, so I took the day off.  Kinda sad for the loss of my perfect record, but other than that I don't feel bad about it.  We'll see if it turns out to be the beginning of a downward slide, though.

Walpurgisnacht went well.  We had a fun time, and we had it together, which was really nice.  But there was nothing profound or life-changing about the experience, sadly.  Well, maybe there was one thing.

I kept getting this feeling throughout the night.  This feeling that this was my last trip.  Or, one of the last, at least.  I just kept feeling, "I'm done.  I've done this.  It's fun and everything, but I'm not getting anything out of it anymore.  It's become more work than it's worth.  I've put this tool to good use throughout my life, and it's helped me a great deal.  Helped me to become the person I am today.  But I don't think I have any use for this tool anymore.  I think it has served its purpose, and it's time for me to do other things."

Maybe that's why I felt so strongly that I had to do it this one last time, even though it seemed so counter-indicated.  And regardless, maybe it'd be healthy for me to think of it that way.

I can't wait to see what this next year brings.

Busy Good...

I spent most of my work day on an urgent task that has to be done by tomorrow.  And then I took a long lunch with a dear friend whom I love very much (hi, C!) and don't get to see near often enough.  And now I need to hurry up and get out of here because She and I are going to see this tonight.

So, no time to write a nice post, unfortunately.  But all for good reasons.

So for now I'll just post this here, because it is the thing that moved me the most today.  I hope it touches you, too.

It Wasn't Enough.

Access...

I really enjoyed writing code today.

I get to do a lot of different kinds of programming for my job.  That's one of the things I like about it, actually - the variety keeps me interested.  But there are definitely some jobs that I like better than others, and today was one of those lucky days where I get to just pour myself into one of those jobs I really enjoy.

I have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft Access.  I hate it, because it is buggy as all fuck.  But I also love it, because I know it.  I'm intimately familiar with all of its quirks and eccentricities (READ: bugs), and I know how to program an Access database/application system better than I can do just about any other kind of coding.  There's also just something satisfying about it.  I build the database from the ground up, one-step-at-a-time, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, and by the end I have an application that works, that does what the client wants and that anyone can use, and it's streamlined, and it even looks good.  It's a creative process.  I get the same sense of satisfaction and accomplishment from building a really good database application as I do from writing something that I enjoy and think I did a good job on.   More, actually.  Because coding a good app takes more time and effort for me than it does to write something.  And also, I'm better at it.

So today I got to work on one of my old database apps, adding in some new features that the client was asking for.  The features they were asking for were not things I'd ever done before, so I got to learn something new, which is always a plus, and happens less and less with Access lately.  And, of course, Access threw me a series of its usual curveballs, giving me several WTF-is-going-on??-problems to try and work out.  Which is another one of the things I enjoy about Access, actually.  I never know what to expect (except the unexpected), and anytime I work on an app, I get to spend a significant amount of time just sitting, pondering some completely impossible error, trying to solve this unsolvable puzzle.  And when I finally figure it out, when I have that Eureka!-moment - ooh, baby! - that's what I live for.  Those moments are why I can still enjoy my job.

I realize this was a ridiculously nerdy post, but it's what I was inspired by today.  It can't all be deep-spiritual-exploration all the time.

Sometimes, it's just gotta be about, "Today, I really enjoyed my job."

May Day Dawn Hippie Magick...

I've always had a fascination with the ocean.  And for me, the sight of the Sun rising out of the ocean at dawn is one of the most beautiful and magickal experiences a person can have.  Every vacation as a kid, I would try to get up early enough (or stay up late enough) on at least one day just so I could see it.  It's simply amazing.  Witnessing that majestic sight, it's easy to understand how we came up with an idea like "god."

This year, my Temple was lucky enough to be able to host the IOT's North American section's annual national meeting at the beach.  As soon as I found that out, I knew I had to present a Sun-rising-from-the-ocean ritual of some kind.  When I found out that the meeting would fall during the Walpurgisnacht (MayEve)/May Day holiday, I had my idea.

Solar rituals are, kind of by definition, pretty hippie-dippie.  And so's the beach; just something about being at the beach makes you want to light a campfire, grab a drum, and pass a doobie.  So, almost by necessity, the ritual I wrote was pretty hippie-dippie, too.  But I really, really fucking enjoyed it.  Not all sorcery is about black robes, midnight, and demons, and it's good for us to remember that from time-to-time.

Normally, I'm not very happy with the rituals I bring to the national meetings, but this time I was so pleased with it, I felt I needed to share it with my you, my readers.  Both of you.  ;-)

I hope you enjoy reading it even 1/10th as much as I enjoyed performing it.

May Day Dawn Ritual.  (Google Docs)

April 20th is NOT a "holiday"...

I know I'm in the minority, but I tend to take the word "holiday" in its literal interpretation, as a "holy day."  There is something special about that day that separates it from the rest of the regular calendar.  We give it a higher estimation in our reckoning of our time here in these bodies.  Also, "holidays" are always celebrations of something Good.  The Bad things we commemorate with "memorials" or "rememberances", but never with holy days.

And because of my peculiarly literal take on the concept, I have always had a hard time celebrating 4/20 as a holy day, even when I was regularly meditating at the altar of The Bowl, The Bong, and The Cannabinoid.  It just seems so...base, to me.  It'd be like having an "Eat Junk Food and Jerk Off" day and calling it "holy" or "special".  Just seems wrong, somehow.  Admittedly, of all the different ways of poisoning ourselves for pleasure, that really is the only one that could even come close to deserving it's own holiday.  (Can you imagine a Smack, Crack & Crystal holiday?  How about a Nicotine day?  Though I do tend to always be sure to have a drink on Repellation Day.)  ;-)  It's definitely the least of all of those evils, but it's still technically an evil, so why would we want to celebrate it?

But I still do celebrate it.  (Though I celebrate in a different way now than I used to.)  I celebrate it because a "hippie holiday" of getting stoned and laughing your tits off is SO MUCH BETTER than all of the other things this day represents to so many people.

Hitler was born on April 20th, and so this is a holy day, indeed, to thousands and thousands of monsters with human faces who poison our species with violence and hatred.  Taking their holiday away from them, as the catholics took xmas from the heathens, can only be a Goodness.

Two of those monsters in particular chose this day eleven years ago to stage a massacre at a Colorado high school.  They brutally murdered children, and they had fun doing it.  And they were just children themselves.  And they chose this day specifically because it was Hitler's birthday AND because it was the "hippie holiday;" they wanted to attack the "peace & Love" crowd that they despised so much, and they wanted to re-brand the day and turn it into something horrifying.  And, unfortunately, they succeeded in doing just that for hundreds of families.  I don't want to give them the satisfaction of doing it to me, too.

So, no, it's not a true "holiday."  But I don't think that matters much, in the end.  Taking a day of tragedy and horror and turning it into a celebration of joy, even self-destructive joy, is still a Goodness, and one that I will continue to take part in, for as long as I can.