Diary

Days of Note: Seakeeping with Manannan

Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 7:32am - 7:27pm
Moon: *waxing gibbous, leo (fire/fixed)
Earth: gray, somewhat chilly and rainy all day, though at least we seem to be safely past the snowy season, if not the morning frosts

I'm raging again tonight. Every once in a while I get into moods where everyone just strikes me as stupid and selfish and, despite my pacifism, I want to kick people in the head.

What set me off this evening was reading Rand Paul's rant about low-flow toilets. How a grown man can throw such a self-entitled tantrum that would make our eight-year-old roll his eyes, and do so as a member of an elected government.... ! Jeff insists he's just blinded by his particular ideology, to which I responded, "Well I'd like to kick him in the head so that he would be blinded by my foot in his face!" Low-flow toilets! Of all the things! Like there aren't people who use a bucket or a hole in the ground... like there aren't people in this country who do it by choice as part of their effort to live an environmentally respectful lifestyle, recycling their own byproducts through their compost toilets and giving themselves back to the earth, ensuring there will be enough clean water for the rest of us. And meanwhile, studies are rolling in that those most disproportionately affected by the climate change crisis are those who tend to contribute the least to the world's pollution — those who live impoverished and close to the land — while studies show that we Americans with our air-conditioned SUVs rumbling around the suburbs are growing increasingly less worried about climate change in recent years. It drives me nuts!

And then my cousin, who can sometimes be a bit, well, judgmental, makes a passing remark on Facebook about how as a journalist she used to hate interviewing writers because they always had such big egos. Which, even if it's not an intentional swipe at me personally, still feels like one. Like there's this whole nobility that comes with struggle and failure, like those of us who are passionate about our work shouldn't dare take pride in our accomplishments — or like working to cultivate a thriving community of "niche" readers in love with your subject matter means you're still just a "little fish in a huge sea" and shouldn't imagine that what you do is actually -laugh- important!

Then the irony hits me.

I can't fully articulate it, but there must be a lesson here, about judgement and kindness and rage and passion. And community. What strikes me over and over is how hard it is to save the world each on our own. Every effort Jeff and I make, every step we take towards a healthier lifestyle is one that we take, firstly, as a family, and secondly, as members of our local community. It would be impossible to do this if we didn't live in an urban neighborhood with stores within biking and walking distance, if we didn't have the local co-op with organic, local produce, if we didn't have restaurants nearby specializing in vegetarian and organic cuisine, if we didn't have neighbors and community volunteer programs involved with keeping the city parks clean and available, or protecting the local landscape from developers and corporations. And still, I feel like I'm not doing enough. And when I think of folks in the suburbs, I get angry. I get judgmental.

What I should probably be doing is seeking kindness, and passion. Passion will connect and grow, where rage only isolates and repulses. Kindness opens people up to the possibility that they are good enough, that a good and healthy life doesn't have to be one of desperation and frustration and struggle. There is nothing wrong with taking pride in what we do to help one another and improve the quality of life for ourselves. Harping on how hard and tiring it is to drag American culture along by its teeth into the realities of the twenty first century isn't going to win anyone over. If change and health is something that we can only find in community (with each other, and with the earth), then first we have to nurture and share those things that help to foster community: joy, laughter, kindness, generosity, and gratitude.

I can feel the rage like a physical entity in my body. When I sit for a moment and breathe, I can feel how close that rage is to love and excitement, how easy it is to change my mind about the physical sensations coursing through this meat-space of mine. In a few breaths, that energy is transformed and directed, no longer a destructive force that wants out through clenched fists and tensed muscles, but now something that I can work with, shape and direct to transform the world.

This is what daily practice is for. This is why meditation and prayer are so absolutely vital. The tools to transform rage and anger and frustration and fear — to change them from the center. To reform and redirect, to refine and renew. I can do this. I can learn to do this.

Diary Tarot Card

© Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, The Shadowscape Tarot

The King of Pentacles stands sure and steady in the center, presenting a choice or offering alternatives. A figure of stability and generosity rooted deeply in the earth, he remains grounded and humble (close to humus) even as his aspirations reach ever higher towards the sun and rain above. The choices he presents, with his wise guidance, are two alternatives, two ways of handling the energies of the earth that well up within, drawn from the roots and gathered in from the limbs.

The Nine of Wands is a choice that brings us constant vigilance and resolve, tensed with uncertainty, straining into the future and what it may hold. The lone sentinel astride his mount, poised on the cliff, already worn with previous battles and perhaps overly eager to see strife and conflict in what's to come.

The Four of Wands, on the other hand, is a choice of freedom and joy, celebration and jubilation, finding harmony and balance among our energies so that, through them, we discover our freedom and lightness of being. Lush flowers bloom below as the sun shines above, and we discover ourselves not alone, but part of a community dancing and bounding with gladness through the beauty-charged landscape.

Both these choices lead in the same direction. The center figure, the King, holds his arms out in an equal length cross from his chest, reaching towards each. But to his left, the Nine of Wands, his open hand is lost in shadow, while to his right, his open palm shines in sunlight, holding the glimmering, golden acorn, seed of great and mighty things to come. Prosperity, generosity and stability come not from the battle-weary and bitter, but from the energies of joy and gladness shared in community, which lead back to the center, back to the feet of the King himself.

Diary - Dream

Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 6:45am - 6:18pm
Moon: waxing crescent, aries (fire/cardinal)
Earth: sunny and cold, hovering around freezing for most of the morning and then warming into the afternoon, but the sun is golden on the snow and spring is coming


I had meant to type this dream up this morning, but didn't have a chance. I'm not sure exactly when or how it started, other than the usual "wandering around some place with old friends." In this case, I believe Ellen and other high school friends were with me. At some point, we were rushing through an airport, having just landed and disembarked the plane, when we came across Joe in a security officer's uniform (or police, I'm not sure which). I recognized him as we approached him, and he recognized me, confusion and amnesia in his eyes. This is not the first time he has appeared in my dreams as a go-between of the dead, as has Freddy since he died. This time in particular, his skin seemed dark, and he had the look about him of Hispanic-African American that Freddy had, though his height, body and build were his own and I knew him as Joe, calling him by that name in the dream itself. I walked up to him, seeing how bewildered and confused he was, not knowing he was dead and not knowing how he had gotten there. I felt overwhelmed with a kind of sweet grief and compassion for him. He looked at me and asked me where he was, what was going on. I explained that we were in an airport, that my friends and I had just gotten off our plane. He asked, "Is that the way I came to be here, too?" And I held my hand up to his face, touching his temple with my fingertips, and said, "No, baby, I'm sorry. You didn't come the way we came." (Considering that I would never call someone "baby," and in fact it's a pet peeve of mine, the naturalness with which I addressed him that way struck me as strange after I woke up.)

Then we were moving on, out of the airport, and we were in the College Landscape again - not the campus where I actually went to college, but a landscape that's a mash-up of several different campuses I've been to, all kind of heightened to an archetypal level. Huge, cinder-block dorm buildings stretched up around one part of campus, and academic buildings in another. Ellen was dragging me along to a play that some of her friends were in, and just as we were entering the posh-looking theater lobby, I realized I was carrying around the heating pad I use when I'm having bad cramps. I also didn't have any purse or bag with me, and I stopped her and asked if we could run back to the dorms so I could drop it off. When she insisted no, we were going to be late and it was my own fault for carrying it around with me, I replied, "Well, I was in pain, and if you had warned me we were going to a play, I would have at least brought my bag along to put it away." In the end, I think we decided to skip the play after all, because soon both of us ended up back in the dorm building section of campus.

I realized that I did not actually have a dorm room, yet, but had to choose one (as it was moving-in day for everyone, with the first arriving able to snatch up the nicest rooms). I lost track of Ellen at some point as we each went off to search for our rooms — I think she went off to a hall or suite where a bunch of her friends were already rooming together. I found a house-like section of a dorm building (much like the honors students' house I was in in college), and decided to try to find a room there. I had been explaining to someone earlier (perhaps Ellen), that I had tried for an MFA once before, but just could not find the right fit for me and so I had decided to leave the program. This time, however, I was enthusiastic that my grad school experience would be much better. As I wandered this section of the dorm building, I found a stairwell curving up in one part of the house, and I followed it up. It seemed there was a room in the very peak of one of the gables, and I thought it might afford some privacy and a nice view... but as I climbed the stairwell, it got smaller and smaller, until I could barely squeeze through it. At the top, there was a tiny trap door just barely big enough for me to wriggle my shoulders and hips through, and then a room hardly bigger than a bathroom, half of which was taken up by a huge porcelain claw-footed tub, and another part by a desk, with only half a mattress on the floor to sleep on. I recognized this as the room I'd stayed in before during that semester of MFA work, and understood suddenly why I hadn't brought a purse with me to the play — there was no room for anything but me to fit through the door, not even a purse, let along a backpack or laptop or pile of books. I remembered hating going back to my restrictive room and never feeling like I could get things in or out easily. Then I understood that this was why grad school had never "fit" before — I had literally been too cramped and isolated up in the attic. There was some impression that this was supposed to be "my" room, but I decided, fuck that, and turned and walked back down the spiral staircase from where I'd come. Reaching the second floor, I found that one of the rooms was still free and unclaimed there — it had huge double doors leading into a spacious suite with a half partition, and huge windows overlooking the campus. The central hallway of the floor, where the steps came up from the floor below, was more like a sitting area, wide open with several groups of furniture (couches and comfy chairs) arranged for lounging and socializing. For a second, I felt a rise of panic when I realized that, if I chose that room right in the middle of everything, there was no way I could avoid people, I would definitely be mingling and socializing much more. But I squared my shoulders and decided that this was necessary, if I was going to give myself the space I needed to stay sane and healthy (and be able to accessorize with large purses for books and heating pads, and gaze out those huge windows to the horizon).

It was about then that I woke up.

My impression of this dream, which was quite vivid and visceral, was that it reflects to some extent the change in attitude I've had towards my writing recently, and deciding to embrace the idea of a "writing career" instead of turning my nose up at teaching and such as a distraction from writing. A couple weeks ago, I had two nights of dreams in a row that involved me wandering around huge, mansion-like houses with many rooms and winding hallways — getting lost in them and discovering strangers and folks in unexpected rooms where someone was holding lessons or leading choir rehearsal, things like that. I've come to think of these "house" dreams as being about my own personality (or perhaps, more specifically, my mind). When I was teaching myself how to draw several years back, I had a bunch of intense dreams in a row about being in in my "house" and pulling aside empty boxes or clutter to discover whole empty rooms I'd never known about, and the excitement of realizing that I had more "space" in which to live and enjoy than I'd known about before. This seemed almost too obvious a metaphor for "discovering new talents" by exercising a skill I had never realized I had. These recent dreams, centering on strangers being in the house and how I react to them, seems like it has to do with my ego sorting out its attitudes towards developing a more "public" face for my work... and the fact that these have all centered around or involved teaching or group gatherings in some way makes me think that it's particularly that aspect of my career that I've been trying to incorporate. It's hard to find a better metaphor for my experience of grad school before, and how my attitude has changed since then, than this idea of living up in a tiny, cramped attic with a door almost too small to fit through — so that I feel both as though I don't have a home and as though it's impossible to bring things "out" to share with others (or make my life easier, like having a purse so I could carry necessary items with me without being exposed and awkward). Moving down to the second floor and accepting that I will be interacting with others, but doing it for the spaciousness and accessibility, is a pretty good metaphor for my change in perspective recently. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, hedged in and vulnerable, I feel up to the challenge, knowing I'll also have a real "home" to come home to at night.

I'm not sure what role Joe played in all this, other than to be there for me as a guided into that deeper dream state. Perhaps I am feeling to some extent a "death" of some kind, too, a dying to the old self and a rebirth, though it is different from his literal dying. The fact that, when he was alive, he held a position of authority in my life, which he held lightly and with humor, and was also acting selflessly as a volunteer when he died, means that he's always been a kind of gentle, but forthright guide for me in these kinds of dreams (often seeming to involve life-and-death, like the dream about my unborn son-that-never-was)... even if we never were all that close when he was alive.

Flamekeeping Meditation and Divination

Days of Note: Flamekeeping (begins at sundown), New Wind Tossed Moon

Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 6:48am - 6:16pm
Moon: new moon, pisces (water/mutable)
Earth: warmer and raining all day, with some winds rustling the trees

Meditation

For a while, I sat quietly in darkness, eyes closed, waiting. For a while, nothing came. I felt my body relax as deeper trance took me and, after wandering in obscurity for a time, I found myself back on the cliffs of my inner landscape, looking east out over the long, silent waters of blue ocean. To my left, along the cliffs edge, the rocks raised to a peak where the huge, ancient Shrine of the Ashless Flame burns, stone bowl carved of the rock of the land, covered with lichen, filled with dew and rain water, over which the ashless flame flickers, a mirror to the sun, a fiery arrow pointing ever upwards.

This was where I first met Brigid in my meditations, here on the edge of the forest that led into my grove, on the highest point, a pinnacle over the sea and woods, reaching towards the sky. I laid offerings and poured libations and sat before the impersonal, eternal flame as it danced in the wind. It was months before I made the connection to Brigid as a goddess — she was, first and always, a primal force, surging upwards from the earth, rising like wellspring and steam and the scent of stone and soil as it rises with the midday sun's heat as the twilight settles in.

All at once, I was hearing her voice again, unprompted, speaking in low, steady, vibrating tones. She spoke of that power, that I have forgotten perhaps too often recently in imagining her as a goddess with body and human shape, a human face. She is, above all, the exaltation, the rising energy and force. She is not a human, but a Person of glory and light and brightness, and also of underground water and sacred sources of healing working in the dark and the mystery.

I felt a resistance to my left, the west, where the edge of the forest seemed to loom dark and thick in my peripheral vision. I turned towards the woods, saw the shadows lurking beneath the tangled branches despite the bright sun overhead. That was the place I must turn to and enter, what had been dwelling on my mind — she seemed to say, and yet, the forest was thick and dark with growth, that green sprawling and spreading and climbing over itself to reach the light that poured out upon them, each leaf finding its place. The darkness was not apart from the light, but an aspect of it, a response to it; the shadows of the forest existed because of it, not in spite of it. It was not Brigid who gifted me the Sword of Light, though she may have had a hand in forging it, nor was it in the light of day that the Sword of Light is used, but in the darkness and the night, in the mysteries and the depths. I know now whose gift the Sword of Light is to give, she told me, and turning I saw again the ocean stretching wide beneath me. Though the sun was intimate and close in its self-giving, impersonal in its distance and brilliance and illumination, the oceans wrap the earth in a surrounding embrace, so very close, dark and deep and intimate and passionate.

What, then, should I do about these flamekeeping shifts? I thought I was meant to know her more personally, but it seemed that she would always be, to some extent, the great fiery arrow, the blaze and glory, the guide and inspiration but also the drive and power — not tame, not ever so intimate or quiet as I had hoped. Should I turn my attention and energy, then, to cultivating that personal relationship with Manannan? Should I stop my flamekeeping shifts and leave the Cill? No, for the perspective and illumination of these moments of seeking her to honor her in her power and impersonal wholeness are also important. Hold these flamekeeping shifts still, but do not expect too much of them. Hold them because you honor that Light, that Flame, not because you expect personal attention or intimacy in return. It is important to remember that not all gods are tame.

Flamekeeping Divination

What does Brigid ask of me for this Flamekeeping shift?


© Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, The Shadowscape Tarot

(a) Page of Cups - She holds the golden chalice up to gaze within at the stray sunbeams and lost treasures that have sunk into the deep, shining even deep beneath these waters with the warmth and radiance from a far off sun. She is the true romantic, the dreamer of dreams, listening to her intuition and her depth of feeling with all the enraptured attention of a child. Here, there is peace and simplicity, and dreams of sunlight kissing the rocking surface of the waves.

(b) Page of Pentacles - Perched high upon the molded stone, above the curling, sleeping figure of the dragon green and verdant, powers of the earth, its lush fecundity — she holds in her hand the glimmer of invitation and initiative, of opportunities for prosperity and, more importantly, for growth. It is her gift, with her practical nature and her concerns for earthly, earthy matters lightened by her joy in the physical bounty around her. Diligence and rootedness, giving rise to the blossom, the fruit and the seed.

(c) King of Cups - Calm, patient, guardian of the deeps, strength of the sea in both its storm and the slow erosion of its caress, breaking open the rocky shores, opening and smoothing, gently claiming them over eons of murmuring and the dance of the tides. He is a protector and guide, and the quiet strength of mystery and compassion well up from within him like the waters of the ocean from the unimaginable depths, yet as close and intimate as the blood, that private sea, we carry within our own bodies and hearts.

The Story: Each card of Cups faces in towards the center, the Page of Pentacles, which gazes ahead, reaching out her gift before her in offering. This is the Central Destination story, and suggest the ways in which these energies, patterns or people may converge and meet, and what that meeting might lead to. It seems, perhaps, that I am represented by the Page of Cups, who holds a sacred chalice close, gazing deeply into the shining golden light within. I seek to know that sunlight and that warmth — and, as with the Page of Cups, perhaps this gazing and dreaming is an aspect of a romantic longing, a listening to the lessons of my intuition and subconscious. Yet, the Page faces towards the King of Cups, who faces her in return. He, too, holds a chalice, though it seems to be made of silver and does not glow with golden light — it is as if he is offering up the very essence of himself, the depths that are the seas and their dark waters. In some ways, then, it seems this story is one of mutual offering and exchange between myself and the God of the Sea, Manannan, a marriage of patience and strength of ancient seas with the liveliness and voyage-dreams of sun-gilded surface of waves. As a result of this meeting or relationship, the Page of Pentacles offers a gift of initiative and opportunity for growth, a place in which both practicality and levity have their place, or perhaps a chance to bring these gifts to manifestation beyond the realm of emotion and intuition and into the physical world as part of the earth's fertility and creativity.

It seems, then, that Brigid's advice is clear: to give myself over to this relationship with Manannan, to embrace that new meeting, and to carry my own light into that relationship, a light I have received from and learned from her. Doing this will lead not only to a relationship of mutual exchange, but fruitful, concrete results of productivity and initiative as well.

DOTR Lesson 3: Awen and Creative Work

My work with Lesson 3: Awen is, I think, almost at an end. I haven't spent as much time as I would have liked writing poetry and doing "actual creative work," but there's no doubt that I've been feeling the influx of inspiration lately and, in particular, changing some of the ways I've been thinking about creativity and creative approaches to soul-work and career in particular.

The "creative project" for Lesson 3 will undoubtedly take much longer than a few weeks, so I'm pretty comfortable moving on to the next lesson while continuing that creative work. I had been anticipating being able to spend more time sitting and writing poetry, but what has demanded my attention — practically forcing its way to the forefront this past month — is work on my website and, by extension, what I'm now coming to call my "author platform." A lot of the work that I've been doing on the wedding planning end of things has led me to reevaluate my expectations about what I'm capable of accomplishing. When it came to planning a wedding, I assumed that (a) we didn't have the money to hire a professional wedding planner, (b) tons of people manage to plan a wedding without a professional planner every year, (c) no one else was going to step up and plan my wedding if I didn't (especially not the way Jeff and I wanted it), and (d) I most obviously had the skills to do it right — in fact, to make it fantastic! Yet all this time, I've been looking at folks who present workshops, give lecturers, teach classes and in general rock the professional writer scene and thought to myself, "I could never do that! I'm just an introverted, shy type of writer-recluse who will just have to settle for being amazing yet amazingly obscure." But why? I can't imagine that preparing a talk or presentation is all that much more intimidating that planning and hosting an event for about a hundred people.... And I managed to break the latter down into a manageable goal that I could work up to a bit at a time. So, why not the other?

That's my inherent elitism coming out. I really do think that part of me assumed that I could handle planning a wedding because lots of people do it all the time without any special prep work or qualifications, and I am way more competent than lots of people even without any experience or credentials. But thinking about becoming an "expert" on something, enough for a book I wrote to be taken seriously, to have the authority of Author.... was not something I could imagine for myself. I didn't know how people became "experts" at the very same time that I was still busy thinking that most of the "experts" out there these days weren't nearly as thoughtful or intelligent as I can be. So I was working this neurotic double standard that kept me expectations far higher than perhaps they should have been while secretly harboring snarky suspicions about people who managed to be professionally successful... which just became an excuse for me to stay in the shadows and always be in the process of "working on my book" without ever finishing one.

Now I'm seeing that creative work is not limited to what I put down on the page. It's also about crafting a professional career, and that's a beautiful thing! There's no job out there that's made perfectly just for me, that I get to just step into and start earning a paycheck — precisely because any pre-made job opening couldn't be suited precisely to me and my needs. Instead, I get to engage in the creative process of making my own job, composed of the various tasks and interactions that I'm most interested in pursuing. But if I can bring a sense of professionalism to a job like waitressing, I'll be damned if I can't live up to the "professional" side of being a professional writer.

And what really brought it home for me was how I have, for some people, come to be considered an "extremist," and how out-of-control and unjust my online presence suddenly seemed to have become. Whining about misunderstandings or the limits of the medium seemed silly when I thought back to the craft of poetry when I was first learning it, and forgoing the whining of "readers just don't get me" and instead buckling down to the hard work of making my writing more accessible and clear. My online persona — my "author platform" online and in person — is not who I am at the deepest level, it is a creative work just as much as a piece of writing is, and if I feel that it's not getting through, then I have at least a large part of the responsibility to listen, to attend, to practice and respond and shape my craft so that it does.

So that's my big creative project for this lesson, and one that will continue to play a major role in the months and years to come. The biggest part of that right now is launching a new website, and leaving behind the Meadowsweet & Myrrh space. Ever since upgrading to the new design, trying to tweak and change and incorporate the kinds of features and widgets I wanted, that space has started to feel more cluttered, too messy and small to meet my needs. The more direct control over the layout and design of this new website is already making a world of difference, though I wouldn't be surprised if it needs to be revamped in the future. It will also be more sustainable in terms of the organization of blog updates, giving up the linear model for one that is more expansive, which will relieve the pressure to constantly update with new amazingly mind-blowingly awesome posts — which in turn will free up my energies to devote elsewhere, to other aspects of my writing. The website will be a good home base for my author identity even if I'm not constantly updating it (because, honestly, I don't think my personality is cut out for daily updates... I can't even sustain it in a private forum like this blog).

So I've been kept up at night several times over the last few weeks, with brain-storms roiling and thundering behind my closed eyes as I imagine all the possibilities and find myself getting more and more excited by it. Understanding that I need to narrow down my goals and set some reasonable, reachable ones (and, as one writer I read recently put it, being able to distinguish between "prolific" and "productive" in a way that frees me a bit from the pressures of guilt and perfectionism)... it's all very awesome. I look at how in two years time I was able to quadruple my readers for Meadowsweet just with a fumbling, haphazard approach in the midst of big life changes, and I imagine just what I could accomplish with an organized approach with clearer goals and a deeper insight into who I want to be as an author. Was it less than a year ago that I was thrilled to even be mentioned on The Wild Hunt? And now I've guest posted there, I have regular interactions with Jason (and frankly, because I'm elitist, I find that he's not all the hot shit I thought he was originally and there are actually things about his approach that I disagree with him about), and in general I feel perfectly comfortable considering myself part of that "in crowd." And all the while, my expectations for what I can accomplish always outstrip my current success (the old phenomenon I mentioned to Carl last time we saw him: I might have huge admiration for a publication or publisher.... until they accept and print my work, and then I figure they must not have been all that good or picky after all. Is this elitism or low self-esteem?).

I figure, if my expectations are always based on the next biggest success marker, then that might actually be a good thing — something that challenges me to keep pushing and stretching and growing — as long as I don't use it as an excuse not to try at all or to give up too soon. I recently found out that one of my favorite words — attending, which I love for its triple connotation of presence, focus and service — comes from a Latin root meaning "to stretch towards." This is what I want. I don't want to be hedged in by trolls and nay-sayers, I want to stretch towards that dream-self I can imagine myself as being, and find ways to make her my reality. She doesn't let trolls define her or pull her off track: she has a gift, and she shares it, and she seeks out those who will be receptive and makes a point of reaching out to them. And those who aren't receptive? Love will find its own way out: water through ice, root through rock.

Diary

Days of Note: New Wind Tossed Moon

Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 6:51am - 6:13pm
Moon: new moon, pisces (water/mutable)
Earth: cold and bright, down into the teens this morning, but climbing into the 30s later in the day

Yesterday was a "Wedding Wednesday" day of planning and preparing for our next "Beer & Budget" meeting with my parents next week. Had a moment of panic in looking at the amount of work still to be done, not so much because I'm afraid I won't be able to do it all, but because there's so much to do I'm afraid I'll miss something, and the sheer amount is hard to organize into an attack plan for the next six months. After talking it over some with Jeff and making some lists over dinner (a belated Valentine's Day dinner out at the Melting Pot), I felt a little more able to approach the task of drawing up a detailed plan for the next three months and a general plan for the final three after that. Like last time, this Beer & Budget meeting is going to be at least half dedicated to going over the details of what we've already gotten done, which is a lot. I'm a little worried that we haven't heard back from the officiant about our desire to meet with him in person when we're actually down in the area in three weeks (after our business trip) — I was hoping to hear back from him this week so we could let my parents know about the intended meeting and also so we could arrange travel plans with Arthur about a return trip, if he's planning on driving down with us.

I'm also a little freaked about the Do It Yourself projects I have lined up, especially the one involving the customized drinking glasses. I have still not found a reliable and classy-looking way to get the glass paint to work, after experimenting on smaller pieces like votive candle holders. Our next experiment is going to be using the sand-blasting to get an "etched glass" look, see if we can get that to work with a handmade stencil using our design. And of course, there's the lawyer consultation, and anxiety in general about the florist, and the cake that my mom is supposedly handling (though she tends to leave this stuff to the last minute), and the music (I'm still not sure Raymond is even planning on coming, so relying on him to play for the ceremony is probably a no-go), and the dress (which is not as big an issue, honestly, I have a dress picked out and some intended alterations to make, and if it falls through I have a back-up choice that's under a hundred bucks that I could order and have ready in only a few weeks). In general, it's all the little stuff that I'm worried about losing track of, especially since it seems some of our vendors have a habit of saying, "Oh, we'll email that to you!" and then needing three or four reminders before they actually do it. Long distance planning.....

On the other hand, I have been thinking more and more recently how my approach to wedding planning (using "GULP") might also work for approaching my book manuscript — since I've now told Graeme I want to have that finished by June, originally thinking I could get it out of the way so that the last few months leading up to the wedding I wouldn't have to worry about it, but getting that finished and the website launched might be a bit over-ambitious. With the Christmas gift card from Steve and Phyllis, I got a couple books on organizing research and manuscripts for nonfiction books, and "growing your author platform," thinking that, like the Big Wedding Book I got, I can read them knowing I probably won't care about even half of what they say, but knowing how other people do it can give me something to go off of and tweak to my own needs. We'll see — the books arrived a few days ago, but I haven't been able to bring myself to read them yet.

Otherwise, today was mostly work after waking up quite early in the morning. I'm dreading "daylight savings time" when it'll go back to being dark until 7:30 each morning. Had a minor freak-out with Jeff over the issue of late checks — he got in touch with the woman in accounting who takes care of that, asking if there was anything I could do to try to keep the checks more regular instead of going a month at a time without an income, and her response was to point out that my contract says turn-around time on the invoices just has to be under two weeks. It bothered me more than it should have, but this has been twice now in only three months that there has there been a lengthy delay, and the first delay was three weeks long, so clearly my ability to enforce the contract is pretty much nil (and I pointed out the injustice of this to Jeff, at length). But what bothers me is that all I was asking was for more information — even just a response back saying the invoice had been received and was in-process — and her response felt like she was chiding me for being an impatient nag. It seems to me that replying with a two-minute email giving an acknowledgement that the invoice has been received and an estimate about when the check might be processed hardly pushes the boundaries of simple courtesy. It bothers me when I am trying to behave like a reasonable person, asking how we can both work to make things easier on both ends, and all I get back is a snippy response citing "contracts" that one party can ignore at will in any case. I do have the option of sending an invoice whenever I want, and could easily make things much harder by sending invoices every week, or even every few days, instead of twice a month as I have been. That would more than double her workload, which is why I've been content to just do biweekly, but if she's not going to meet me halfway on trying to get the check turn-around time lower than ten to twelve days (and erratic, at that), then I'm not sure what other options I really have. So much for me trying to be courteous by submitting regularly timed, reasonably spaced invoices to make everyone's lives easier.

When I'm a face author rolling in dough, these things will seem like such silly worries.

In terms of spiritual practice — other than the diet, which is demanding a lot of discipline and mindfulness from me most days, I find myself wanting to spend time in meditation or, especially, out in the woods, but without the time available between all the projects I'm trying to juggle. I'm eager to explore this relationship with Manannan, which seems to have receded a bit, though when I think about it, I get that thrill of excitement almost as though I'm musing on a new crush. I've been working to bring more mindfulness and presence to my daily activities, but when I'm stuck in front of a computer screen for hours at a time, it's difficult to do — as if there's nothing physical to be present to. The weather takes a dive in temperature whenever it's sunny enough out to be inviting, and only warms up when it's gray and drizzling. The other day (two days ago, or three, I think), we woke up to a gray, misty, rainy mornings in the low fifties. I was downstairs eating breakfast when Jeff decided to run out to the grocery store before settling down to work for the day — he came back in and asked if he could open the window in the dining room to share the morning with me, and his eyes were shining. The smell of spring came pouring through the open window, and the grass in the backyard suddenly seemed to be living again the way it hadn't been all winter, though it was still sparse and patchy. It was as if I could smell the spongey give of the muddy ground, and I actually started to cry a little with relief. Jeff nodded and said that had been his reaction, too, when he first stepped out. I'd wanted to go for a walk that day, but waited thinking it might get a bit warmer later in the day. Instead, the temperature dropped again until it was just too cold to go out into the woods. We did manage to go jogging together the day before yesterday, and that helped a bit with the cabin fever. But today, my body is not feeling comfortable at all, and after breakfast I actually had an intense wave of nausea hit me which resulted in me losing half of what I'd eaten back up into the toilet. I suspect that was just drainage from overnight fighting with the orange juice... but it does worry me a bit. I feel so desperate for spring, I can hardly stand it. Sitting in the study visualizing warmth and water and fire just does not have the same effect. I miss the earth and the woods deeply, and if the cold didn't make my skin so painful that it bleeds, I'd be outside much more. (All the more reason to move to Florida, at least for a little while. That, and the fact that the stars are aligned against me ever making any career progress here in Pittsburgh.)

Tomorrow, I only have a few hours of work left for the week in the morning, and I plan to spend the rest of the day working on revision for the book manuscript and possibly coming up with a GULP game-plan to get the revision done by June. I also want to email everyone who's agreed to sign on to the Green Pagan blog project, and write up a request for a few more writers for Jason to send out on the lists. Getting that off the ground would be fantastic (I'm reading Abram's Becoming Animal now and already it's amazing — though at times even a bit too heady with the poetic language for my taste).

Diary Tarot Card

© Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, The Shadowscape Tarot

The Empress (III) - Queen of the natural world in all its fecundity and lushness, she is a symbol of mother earth and her cycles of ceaseless creativity and regeneration. A card saturated with life and color, the joy of the senses and the sensuous, she represents the pleasure we take in our creative powers and a full-body engagement with this new blossoming, the first buds opening. She is the first unfurling and manifestation and the creative urge into the world, and as such she is wild and full of passion and self-giving, though still somewhat unstructured for the time being.

Six of Swords - A necessary journey through difficulty and strife, leaving these trials and tribulations behind as we move on to a brighter future. He nestles into the warm down of the swan's back as she carries him across a dark-clouded sky, high above the stormcrows where they perch hunched and black on their sharp swords. The journey is one of respite and renewal, providing comfort and perspective - but there may also be a risk of carrying those burdens with us, the unhealthy thought-patterns, expectations and attitudes that weighed us down and drained us of our energy in the past. This journey is a time of rest and recuperation, letting go of the past and looking forward to a welcoming future ahead.

Ace of Swords - A new beginning, the gift of clarity and insight that helps us put what was once chaotic into order and gain the perspective and knowledge we need to see the truth of things, and work towards that truth with justice and reason. Perhaps the start of a new intellectual endeavor or a break-through that will lead to new ideas and insights.

Story - A story that moves from the past into the future: the Empress faces to the right, towards the Six of Swords, her left hand upraised in blessings as the butterflies dance and swirl in brilliant patterns of color before her. She is the creative urge, so closely connected with my sensuous relationship with the earth and the woods, that I have felt in the past: a joy that pulses through me and manifests in spinning words in poetry and story, but has often lacked the structure (and I, the discipline) to sustain any long projects. The Six of Swords continues the journey on the back of a graceful white swan, facing to the right again, moving through a period in the present characterized by difficulty and struggle as I work to leave behind old, unhelpful patterns of thought and allow the forced rest and withdrawal of winter to give me an opportunity to gain perspective and reevaluate. In the final card, the Ace of Swords, the journey comes to an end, the upright sword surrounded by both swans and butterflies in joyful celebration — the integration of the creative self and its denizens, the butterflies, with the fierce commitment and graceful strength of the swans necessary to make the long journey, and at their center, the Sword of Light, both poetry and intellect, creativity and the insight and clarity to order that creativity in a way that will give birth to a new beginning, new projects yet to come.