Food, Health, Kids, Keystones

It's Monday, the first two kids have made it safely back to Pittsburgh and we're in for another round of intense germ-fighting with the second two. Though it seems to be going better -- Jerilynn's cough, which apparently persisted all of last week without any relief, has almost disappeared after less than 24 hours with us. So I consider that a win. On the other hand, she managed to dump almost an entire water bottle full of water on herself and the bed in the middle of the night last night, put a pillow over the spill and then promptly forgot about it until after breakfast this morning. So all the sheets and the bed padding are back in the wash for the second time in as many days, and I'm hoping the soaked couch cushions won't be too much worse for wear if we can give them the day to dry out. But it means instead of spending the morning in bed resting, the kids are both out in the living room and I have no space on the desk to work, so I'm in our bedroom. With iced coffee. Trying to chill out a little bit.

It's weird how different the two pairs of kids are. Josh and Savanah are very clearly the loud, bossy ones, very intense, and you have to explain things to them two or three times (like about which shower door to use). They listen, they insist they understand, and then when they mess up they always have some weird justification for why they just weren't paying attention and they'll argue with you about it for very stupid reasons instead of just apologizing and trying to be more considerate in the future. (Even though I gave S her own dedicated trash can and tissue box, we're still finding random dirty tissues stuffed into couch cushions, though while Jeff was making the airport exchange yesterday I did a pretty thorough cleaning of every room in the house.) Jerilynn and Fiona, on the other hand, are pretty good at listening the first time, and Fiona especially is about ten times better at listening and thinking things through before doing something than her oldest sister is. But if they do make a mistake, they're much more likely to try to hide it and lie about it, hoping to just not get caught, instead of trying to justify or explain it away. If they do get caught, they just say sorry and try to downplay it and move on as quickly as possible (and all of this is more true of Jerilynn than Fiona). Totally makes sense, if they're dealing with other family members who are super bossy, tending towards melodrama and eager to argue every minor point until they're blue in the face. So on the one hand, J and F are the "easy ones," but on the other, you never know when you're going to discover some weird thing after the fact. Like when they arrived, several outfits in their bag were damp and moldy. No idea why or how it happened (J says the bag got wet during their layover in Chicago, but even if that were the case, that doesn't explain the mold). We were planning to wash everything anyway to try to degermify everything (which is how we discovered the mold to begin with), and it's easy to blame Emily for being an incredibly bad example of cleanliness and not bothering to do simple things like wash the kids laundry (apparently, each kid only has enough outfits to last a single week... and that's regardless of weather or season, which is kind of insane and makes us wonder where the hell Jeff's child support money is going if it's not to buy his kids some decent clothes). On the other hand, J did just demonstrate that she's prone to spilling things, hiding the fact and then forgetting about it. On the other other hand, Jeff and I are at least paying enough attention to realize this and then take the necessary steps to keep things clean, instead of leaving everything for our fucking legally blind housekeeper to take care of when she comes by once a week. At least J hasn't said anything about the gluten issue (I think the talk we had with her during solstice hit home), but she is still obsessing about her weight and talking about how she needs to eat less because she's too fat. Disturbingly, Josh said something similar last week about how he's too fat. I really, really hate the fact that these kids live in a house with people who are so immature and insecure that they have to project their own weight and health problems onto their children. Not to mention that most of what they eat is meat and butter based meals, so even though neither of them are actually overweight by any stretch of the imagination, it's probably true that they do need to eat more fruits and vegetables than they are probably getting at their mom's house. Did I mention that being a long-distance stepparent sucks?

Speaking of weight and health, though, Jeff said the other night that he's hit his lowest weight and fat percentage in something like two years, which is awesome. We've been doing lots of hiking and spending time outside on weekends (and also these two weeks in the afternoons with the kids), which I'm sure is helping, though biking to work also probably helps. I'm wondering if the cooking with Leah is also making a difference, since it's a chance for Jeff to experiment with food. I know that Jeff really loves thinking about and working with food, and sometimes I feel bad that cooking just doesn't interest me that much. It's not that I don't enjoy and appreciate (and understand the value of) good, healthy food and how that impacts my body and my physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual health. But I just don't spend much of my time thinking about cooking, it doesn't interest me that much. Cooking is like chemistry -- there are lots of really interesting ways to combine things, and some people love that experimentation and exploration. I'm a hunter-gatherer, not a cook. I like having simple foods I can eat right away whenever I'm hungry, especially fresh fruits and veggies, and I don't have the interest necessary to spend lots of time in preparation and experimentation. That's awesome if other people do, especially if they don't mind sharing the results. But left to my own devices, I pretty much always revert back to hunter-gatherer mode, not complex agricultural we-have-to-burn-this-with-fire-before-it's-edible mode.

I think this might also have parallels with health and exercise. Someone shared a link on Twitter to a blog post written by a fat-acceptance/fat-positive blogger, in which the blogger proudly (read: maybe a bit defensively) declares that she just isn't interested in being healthy, and that should be okay, who are we to judge her? Now, I can totally understand if what she means is that she isn't interested in the kind of compartmentalized, weekend-warrior exercise-routine madness that some people do. Personally, I've always rather liked trying out different exercise routines, and I've been my healthiest when I've done a combination of meditation and regular exercise like that... but just like cooking isn't for everybody, that approach to exercise isn't for everybody either. I do think it's probably a bad idea to conflate this with "being healthy," though, in the same way it's a mistake to think that because I don't care much about cooking that therefore I don't care about the quality of the food that I eat and how it affects my body. For some people, particular forms of exercise are like hobbies, that require all kinds of special equipment and training. But you can be perfectly healthy without doing that kind of thing, and plenty of people who are into that stuff aren't necessarily all that healthy. Same thing with food. You can really love food, but not necessarily eat shitty bad-for-you foods all the time. In fact (and this is one of those fat-shaming bingo phrases that people freak out about, but I'm going to say it anyway): the better food you eat, the more you actually enjoy it. So go nuts, eat lots of food. And be whatever shape and size you are. The point is that there are many, many ways to be healthy, and lots of them are easy and natural. We are biologically designed to be healthy, and living in the kind of civilization we do -- with sanitation and indoor plumbing and a wide variety of medical practices from herbal remedies to acupuncture to modern Western medicine -- most of us won't die of things that might have killed our ancestors. But saying you don't want to be healthy is like saying you don't like breathing. I just don't believe it. Everyone wants to be healthy and feel good, and to be physically capable of doing the things they enjoy doing without feeling sore, exhausted, breathless or queasy.

The problem isn't that we're being super-judgy by expecting people to want to be healthy... it's that a lot of our social structures and institutions undermine what should otherwise be a completely natural aspect of our lives. It'd be like if, in order to get fresh air and not die of lung cancer, you had to drive out to special "fresh air bubbles" in the countryside once a week where membership cost $100/month. Yeah, if that were the case, then people would be perfectly justified in saying they resent having to put even more of their time and money towards that and they're just "not that interested" in fresh air. Likewise, when most people have to earn a living sitting in a tiny, dimly lit cubicle staring at a computer screen and eating grease-drenched meals out of a food truck during a "working lunch break".... they might feel resentful at being expected to put even more time, energy and money towards good food and exercise, when those things should be naturally, easily and freely available to everyone. I mean, you're already putting so many hours into a shitty way of life just to get by, and then people expect you to give up your free leisure time to do something that's unnecessarily difficult instead of being able to use that time to do something you want to do? That totally sucks. But this is a social problem and requires a social solution. If, instead of demanding that healthy food and lifestyles be readily available to everyone and that obstacles to healthy living be reduced or removed, we throw up our hands and say we're just "not interested in being healthy," we're doing not only ourselves but everyone else a disservice, too. We're making it harder for everyone to be healthy, by not demanding that healthy living be a viable, natural way of life supported by social infrastructure.

Speaking of things that make health easy... I wish there was an easy way to make iced tea. Jeff and I have been drinking this iced coffee (instead of soda) which is super easy to make -- it's just an instant organic coffee mix, combined with a tiny bit of sugar, almond milk, some chocolate or other flavoring if desired, and then heated (but not boiling) water added to top it off. Shake until frothy for an iced latté drink. The result is a luke-warm mix that can be poured immediately over ice or stuck in the fridge, and you can make it in small enough batches that one jar will last one or two days, which is the perfect amount and a small enough container that it won't get shoved to the back of the fridge and forgotten about like all of our taller containers. Making iced tea is a pain in the ass. I haven't found a good way to make iced tea quickly in a way that doesn't involve not only steeping the tea, but then allowing the mixture to sit and cool for another hour or so before being able to put it in the fridge, let alone drink it. Leah mentioned finding a good iced tea recipe for us, but most of the ones I've seen online involve adding all sorts of extras like fruit juices and herbal blends to change the way they taste. Again, I feel like there's an assumption that my disinterest in cooking comes from not enjoying the taste of food, or because cooking is hard, rather than from the pretty straightforward fact that there are just things I want to be doing with my time other than elaborate prep that takes longer than the meal. I tend to drink tea plain whetever kind it is and I enjoy simple teas, anyway, so a complex iced tea recipe with all sorts of extras and lots of steps is probably just going to leave me even less motivated to make iced tea than before. Anyway, what I want is an easy to way to make "instant" iced tea that won't result in a jar that's too hot to pick up for an hour but that still allows the tea to steep relatively quickly. I think the best approach might be to brew a super-strong concentrate, and then add cool water to end up with the same kind of luke-warm mix as the iced coffee, that can be put over ice right away or stored in the fridge.

The fact that I've spent even this much time thinking about how to make iced tea, instead of writing about something else, is starting to discourage me. But I'm taking the morning to do some free-associative journaling, since I spent all of last week working on my next column for Aontacht.

Speaking of which! I've been expanding the outline for that column series, so now it's definitely going to be at least four parts, but possibly more. I've been thinking about ways to expand this series into an e-course that will last four to six weeks, with emails going out about twice weekly with short articles, follow-up resources and recommended exercises. From there, the entire thing can probably be expanded into a short ebook of 60 or so pages. I'm also trying to brainstorm something similar for SageWoman, so that each of my columns can be the building blocks for longer works that we can produce through FF&C as online long-distance learning courses and ebooks. Only doing one podcast episode each month will give us lots more time to develop these other aspects of FF&C, instead of always leaving them on the back-burner and spending all of our time on the podcast research and editing. I'm hoping that after we get some feedback about the correspondence e-course, I can develop an in-person workshop along similar lines, especially for people in the local area. It's one thing to talk in broad, abstract terms about the importance of grounding your spiritual practice in the local landscape. It's a totally different thing to actually teach people directly about the specifics of their own landscape. Since Aontacht has a wide readership in the U.S., Europe and Australia, it's pretty much impossible to get specific, though I do end up using a lot of examples from my own bioregion since that's what I'm most familiar with. But what I'd really love to do is actually work with people to transition from "this is why it's important to work with the local bioregion" to "this is how these big ideas translate into specific relationships and practices involving this bioregion." I can only really do that if I work in-person with people who live in this area. But starting with a basic structure for the workshop and/or multi-workshop training course by building up a long-distance e-course is a good place to start and makes the work much more manageable.

I do love working with people in-person, though. It was awesome going to the ponds twice last week with Savanah and Josh, not only because it gave us more time outside but because the critters we encountered were quite different on the different days. Including this beauty:


Who hung out only a dozen yards away for much of the time we were there. This brings me back, again, to why it's so important to show up and do the work, even while acknowledging just how big a role grace plays in how our spiritual encounters in the wild are going to be. I've been reading a lot about Taoist philosophy and, to a lesser extent, ritual (especially movement-meditations like QiGong and T'ai Chi) -- I'm very drawn to the simplicity of these types of approaches, and I feel like it would be very beneficial to inject some of this simplicity back into modern Paganism. I know lots of Pagans are drawn to the elaborate, arcane ritual work of ceremonial magic and reconstructionist traditions, and I do enjoy crafting rituals like that for some holidays. But for daily work, I think developing a strong foundation of simple practices that open us up to the presence of spirit(s) and grace is really important. I think that's why I've enjoyed working with and building on this idea of the "keystones" so much. The Keystones are so important to a landscape, and their presence can be seen everywhere if you know how to look for the signs, but actually encountering them directly is often a moment of grace, an encounter with mystery and surprise that you can't plan for, though you can definitely seek it out. This is why, as good as meditation and visualization is, I don't think it's sufficient for regular spiritual work. It's too easy for that kind of work to devolve into navel-gazing, and if you're going to be doing that kind of work with any intensity, you almost need some kind of teacher or mentor to hold you accountable and keep you grounded in the world beyond your own mind. If you don't have that kind of teacher or friend, you need to make yourself an apprentice to the world itself, and show up to the world around you as much as possible in order to be open to the presence and grace of the divine acting in the world. My best meditative practices have always been sitting quietly in a natural setting watching what's going on around me, rather than the times I sit inside in my own home, eyes closed, trying to "clear my mind" (or visualize some natural scene, for that matter, though both of those techniques can be good for getting to know your own mind). As usual, I think it comes down to balance, and knowing how to cultivate the kind of self-reflection that makes natural observation and movement-meditation the most effective and meaningful. When developing this e-course and ebook, I want to focus on finding a way to strike that balance with the lessons and exercises, so that regardless of the student's strengths or weaknesses, they will have some things that challenge and stretch them in one way or the other.

Jeff just stopped me to let me know that, astrologically, right now the moon is new (in fact, literally right now, as I'm typing this, it's both new and only about ten minutes away from being at its peak elevation for the day) -- so, this is a good time for intention setting. Tomorrow, something's going on with Ares (blanking on the details), which means that things are going to move pretty fast towards whatever intentions I'm setting today. So I think the rest of this week would be a good time to finish working on the outline for the remaining columns for Aontacht and maybe start brainstorming ways to expand that into an ecourse. I want to be able to launch the ecourse for FF&C Pro Members by Beltane, May 1, if not sooner. I'd also like to be a good way done with the book so that the final ecourse lesson can include an offer to purchase the book for people who want to continue working with the Keystones more in-depth.

But now, it's lunch time! Soup!

Into the Mountains

A lot has happened over the past week or so that I should really at least jot down here, but things keep coming up (like the fact that my webpage database got corrupted and restoring it is going to take a lot of time and energy away from things I'd rather be doing).

Jeff and I were supposed to attend Pantheacon over President's Day weekend, but I was struggling with migraines the week leading up to it and, considering that it cost a huge amount of money for the travel and hotel, we decided to cancel the trip and use our days off to spend some time in wilderness retreat instead. This plan backfired somewhat because the local hotel we booked for a few days just to get away from the house and change up our routine ended up having terrible mattresses and I had to sleep on the floor for two nights on a pile of blankets before we decided to check out early and just go home. But they did give us half of our money back, so... yay?

We spent most of our time exploring the area near North Bend and Snoqualmie, including Mount Si. Hiking and fresh air made a huge difference with my headaches, but since coming home again they've started to come back. I've narrowed it down to environmental and/or stress-induced causes, or maybe a bit of both. I've been meditating and exercising regularly in the mornings, which seems to have a small effect, but by the afternoon the headaches return, so I'm getting in half-days of work at best. I'm getting more and more frustrated, since the pain seriously impacts by ability to concentrate for long periods of time. Not only have I not been able to get back to podcasting stuff at all, but now even my writing is starting to be effected. (But who cares? It's not like I have a functional webpage at the moment anyway... ::sigh::)

So at this point, I'm sorely tempted to just take a permanent vacation in the mountains and not come back until it's well and truly spring. Jeff is supposed to start teaching me how to drive again; I don't know how quickly it'll come back (considering I only ever drove a minivan and the last time I was behind a wheel was more than a decade ago). For now, I'm kinda stuck.

So here are some pictures from our weekend in the mountains.

Happy Ali Is Happy

I have nothing of deep spiritual insight to add at the moment, but I did want to follow up with a post noting that, for the most part, I am exceedingly happy with my life right now. Like, not just "I realize intellectually that I should be happy because things are going well, but mostly I feel tired" kind of happy. Actually happy, the solid kind of happiness that can become a foundation, the kind of happiness that you can build on.

Partly I think this is due to my writing. NaNoWriMo has given me a legitimate excuse to spends hours every day writing creatively, something I haven't done in a very long time. I find that the energy it gives me spills over into my other work — on the podcast, on the blog — and so that work is also becoming easier, getting more "flow" to it.

Another part of this is that, because I start every writing session with a tarot reading and ten minute meditation, I have somehow tricked myself into re-establishing a daily practice. Because the meditation is not all that long, I have far fewer excuses for not doing it; and because it's main purpose is to quiet my mind in order to help me transition into "creative writing mode," I don't concern myself with making progress or accomplishing anything by it as a result. This is, of course, the best way to approach a daily meditative practice — at least, so I've heard over and over — releasing attachments to outcome and providing yourself with a pause in which to embrace silence as a path to the divine. But I am such a perfectionistic workaholic that I have always bent my whole intensely-wound will on being really awesome at non-attachment... which, obviously, somewhat defeats the purpose. (Gods, please do not let me jinx this practice by writing about it here and making myself aware of the trick I've played on my perfectionism!)

Likewise, the tarot reading is not a reading for myself, but for the next scene that I'm working on in the book. So I avoid the kind of spiraling navel-gazing self-obsession that my attempts at daily tarot reading has led me to in the past. In other words, I'm practicing non-attachment with my divination as well, and the only records of my readings are (instead of an obsessively kept journal) the creative writing that results, which is shaped not just by the divination but by the plot outline I'm working from and the characters who want to have their own say. (There is one character in particular who dominates every scene she's in and just will not shut up and let others talk... I will have to find something to do with her. Jeff suggests giving her a yappy dog to keep her busy and distracted.)

I am so deeply proud of the work we're doing with the podcast, engaging in topics that really interest me and giving me lots of opportunities to explore new ideas. I feel somewhat liberated from the pressures that blogging had brought with it, which means that when I do blog (on my own personal website), I enjoy it more.

Also, it's beautiful here. The weather is finally getting chilly, but it continues to be sunny on and off most days, and the same flock of pigeons hangs out on the roof of the condo across the street, and the same crow surfs the power line above the smoke tree, and I am finally (weirdly enough) feeling at home here. I am not sure when this started to happen, but I noticed it when the kids came to visit us in October — I finally feel grounded and centered in this place, I finally feel like I'm starting to understand the patterns and moods of the landscape here. I still spend far too much time inside during the week, between the writing and the podcast research and editing, but weekends are wonderful chances to go out exploring, and Jeff and I are still volunteering as naturalists, which is another of the reasons I feel grounded and connected and happy.

I feel too often this blog becomes a place for me to rant about the things that bother me when they're bothering me, and it can seem like they dominate my days when really they are passing concerns. I feel deeply happy and fulfilled in my life right now. Oddly enough, I am exactly where I wanted and hoped to be by this time in my life (child-free by choice, with an awesome man who loves me and just got an adorable new haircut, living in a beautiful city that doesn't dry my skin till it bleeds in the winter, doing creative work that I love and find meaningful...). I am so full of gratitude and amazement that this is my life. Sometimes I wonder if my minor freak-outs are largely due to the fact that, damn it, I want everyone to have such an awesome and fulfilling life and so many times it seems like instead people are engaged in senseless self-sabotage. Non-attachment, Alison, non-attachment. Lift them up into the light and let them work their own way out, since that is really the only way it works anyway.

My remaining goal is to finish this book manuscript by the winter solstice. Perhaps an arbitrary date, but it's a pretty big astronomical alignment that kind of nicely wraps up my Saturn Return years. It would be nice to go in to the dawning of a new year and its lengthening days knowing that a major life goal of mine (to write a novel) has been crossed off the list.

I guess that means I better get started, then...

**

Edited to add: Duh! Then there's my relationship with the gods, specifically Artemis (yeah, that's right, I said it!) and Brigid (yeah, that's right, I'm not so deity-dumped as I thought). Turns out that when Brigid suggested we see other people, she meant some sort of kinky holy threesome, and I feel a roundness and wildness to my relationships with deity now that astounds me and fills me with energy, inspiration and gratitude. So... rock on!

Glorying in Dry Land

It's strange how difficult it is to give up something that, in many ways, has been a burden and distraction for me for the past year and a half. I'm stepping down from NUP and from the PNC more broadly.

It is surprisingly hard to let NUP go, now that I'm in the last stages of transferring the administration of the blog and all its social media integration to the new admin. I am so immensely proud of the work I've done on NUP, and the work that so many others have put into it through their writing and their guest posts and photographs. I've also been devoting a couple hours a week to trying to manage and promote NUP since it got rolling back in April 2011.... It's become a habit of mind to always be brainstorming, somewhere in my subconscious, what my next NUP post would be.

Deciding to pursue NUP as a project of the PNC was the first time that my work as a Pagan and Druid truly crystallized in my mind. As Plotkin describes in his books on the cycling stages of life, many people go through a "Wander in the Cocoon" phase, when they withdraw from society and go wandering in the wilds to find their truest calling. Sometimes this wandering is literal -- visiting strange, exotic locations -- and sometimes it's more figurative or psychological or spiritual. For me, it was a little bit of both, and it seemed to last forever. But, Plotkin says, if we commit to the work of every stage of life and try to live most fully in the present, that is the only way we are ever able to eventually move on. I was the Wanderer for a long time before things fell into place. And when they fell into place, I found that I was suddenly no longer wandering. I was the Apprentice at the Wellspring.

NUP was my first apprenticeship. I had become a student of ecology and deep ecology almost without realizing it, and it suddenly clicked into place that in all my wanderings, what I'd discovered was that more than anything, I wanted to talk and write about nature spirituality. I thought perhaps others wanted to read and talk about that, too, and so I approached Jason with the idea of pursuing the concept as a part of the Pagan Newswire Collective. I was turned loose to do my worst... and the result was a group blog with some of the most amazing people I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Together, we managed to make NUP the most popular and well-read blog of the PNC collective.

So it's hard to step away from that. My pieces on NUP have more than double the readers that blog posts on my personal blog get. That's the nature of the internet beast these days -- with a glut of information out there, aggregate news sites and group blogs attract a lot more readers, they know they can get all that they need in one place. So it's really, really hard to step away from that, to give up the chance to reach more readers.

On the other hand, NUP has been a bit of a thankless job. I got no support from the national staff, who eagerly gave themselves impressive titles and then settled back on their heels and asked everyone else to take the initiative as part of the "autonomy" of the blogs and bureaus. So instead of making good on the clout earned through celebrity in order to promote and spread good, thoughtful, engaging writing... that clout was squandered.

I know full well that I don't get to sit at the popular kids' table in the Pagan Cafeteria. At best, I was for a time a bit like the yearbook editor, with the popular kids relying on my hard work to make them look good and feature their photographs most prominently in the collages (okay, the metaphor is stretched, bear with me). But trespass on the popular kids' table at lunch, and you get smacked down and reminded that hard work doesn't mean you're not still a geek and a loser. And I was tired of getting smacked down. I was tired of having to hang around people who clearly didn't like or respect me, even if I did love the work I was doing. I was tired of fending off personal attacks thrown at me in the public arena by the very people who were supposed to promote and support my work as part of NUP. I was especially tired of the attitude that my hard work on NUP somehow was something to feel embarrassed about, as though I didn't have something better to do, as if the disorganization and incompetence of the people at the top was a mark of their superiority. Diana's response especially, that the concerns of the PNC were "narrow" and not a big part of her life.... as if to say that the care and energy of the volunteers who make NUP and the other blogs possible was something beneath her, that she couldn't be bothered to handle the responsibilities that she chose to take on....

Well, anyway. There were a lot of reasons to leave.

But it's going to be a challenge to change my mental habits. To realize that I no longer have the NUP project as something that needs to be nursed and looked after. That's someone else's job now. In a lot of ways, it feels like an anchor has finally been cut, a deadweight released. In other ways, it feels odd to relinquish control over something you've put so much time and energy into... to give up on that vision of what you thought it might become and let someone else take on that responsibility and make something of it instead.

I have FF&C to think about, and that work has been so amazingly rewarding and fruitful already. I go into that work guided by a vision and a direction. Rather than feeling like I'm always scrambling to grab the attention of the popular people so maybe they'll throw me a bone, I have a deep sense of integrity about the work I do for FF&C. Maybe it's just that, for now, we're skirting under the radar of the trolls and the haters.... But all of the listeners and readers and fans have been so full of support and enthusiasm. It's a joy to do this work.

I read an article analyzing Obama's strategy in the presidential debate this week. There is a technique in debating where you bombard your opponent with a slew of falsehoods, half-truths and strawman arguments, in the hopes that he'll spend all his time trying to debunk you and never have a chance to get out his own message.

In a lot of ways, I felt like the work I did for NUP was constantly at risk of getting pulled off track by that kind of tactic, especially when it came to behind the scenes. Not so with FF&C. With FF&C, I feel like I am finally staying "on message" and really having the chance to explore and share the things I truly care about, the things that most fascinate and inspire me.

The internet is a weird place. Bad press can be addictive. You feel like you have to defend yourself against idiocy. I know for a long time I've worried that my work would be remembered according to the false characterizations of the trolls and haters who were way more popular than me, had tons more readers. Every time I came across someone judging me (especially judging me as a person) without having even bothered to read my work, it really hurt. But at the same time, damn did it drive traffic.

But I don't want to deal with that stress anymore. I'm sick of trying to placate the Bitchy Popular Girls in the Pagan online community. I much prefer to go off with the other nerds and enjoy their company.

It's like the surface tension of water, I told Jeff earlier. When you've been drowning in bullshit so long, sometimes it takes a lot of effort to break through, to scramble to the surface and leave the bullshit behind. But when you do eventually make it back to dry land, and you can stand upright again and feel proud of your work and hold your head high and take a deep breath without worrying what kind of stench is going to invade you from every direction......

......Damn, it feels good.

In Which Ali Rambles About How She Was Never Loved Enough As A Child

I just had a realization, a minor revelation about the source of some of my anxiety about wanting to do so much and feeling like I never have enough time.

I am blessed to know a number of amazing, creative people.

Take Heather, for instance. I've never met her, I'm just a fan of her blog. In another life where our paths could have crossed in person, she seems like the kind of person I would have been friends with (or maybe not — who knows if we might have remained strangers — she often sounds as awkward and introverted as I am, which is another reason I like her writing). Today, Heather shared a post on her blog about committing to writing one poem for each day during the months of August and September, building on her experience in June and July when she created one index card's worth of art for each day.

My first thought was: Awesome! That sounds so inspiring! I want to do that!

My second thought was: How in hell can I make time to sit down and write a poem each day? I spend most of my time feeling tired and half-burnt-out from all the other self-assigned projects I've taken on, and I have more naturalist training coming up, and another season of FF&C starting in a week, and I can barely commit to fifteen minutes of prayer at the altar or thirty minutes of Tai Chi in the morning....

These are my third thoughts. When I realize that, instead of feeling frustrated that there are too many things I want to do, I should stop for a moment and thank the gods that I know so many inspiring people. People who make me say, "Awesome! I want to do that!" People who know how to live their lives with grace and guts, even when shit is hitting the fan and they feel like they can't keep it together, who still manage to be honest and strong and kick-ass.

So some of my desire to do all these awesome things is to show support and appreciation for the work of these other brilliant, strong, creative people. Because I never really got that kind of support. I wanted to be a writer from early on because my first grade teacher made a passing comment about how she liked my stories. I don't remember anyone ever giving me that kind of compliment before, but I remember my parents' pride in hearing it. For a while, I wanted to be a nature writer and study science (I was very specific, the way kids sometimes get, I wanted to be a marine mammalogist) — I kept a naturalist journal where I made detailed sketches and took notes on all the local flora and fauna down at the creek near my house.... until the day when I found a newborn rabbit that had been dug up from its burrow by a neighborhood dog, and I brought it home with me in a shoebox and was ready to stay up and nurse it all night, but my parents said no, they would take care of it... and in the morning, I woke up to find its body cold and stiff curled up in the box where they'd left it on the back porch.

So I wrote poetry. Dark, morose poetry. My freshman year of high school, I wrote a poem every day. I filled notebooks and notebooks with really bad poems. I slouched in the back of geometry class and wrote poems in backwards handwriting, from right to left. My mom bought me a novel written by a girl who was only eighteen — and I thought, this is the expectation, then. I have to be good enough to write a best-selling novel by the time I'm eighteen. I didn't. I write and I write and I write... but my parents never read anything I write anyway. My senior year, I organized a school-wide arts festival, the largest in the school's history, complete with art gallery, fashion show, live music and poetry readings. My mother filmed hours of other people performing.... but the camcorder battery died within the first 30 seconds of when I finally got up to read. I still haven't been able to write a book manuscript. I have a publisher who said he'd love to publish anything I wrote, just send a manuscript his way whenever I'm ready..... and I still haven't been able to write a book.

What's my excuse? I don't know. I want to do everything, but somehow time gets away from me and I waste hours not getting anything done. Every time I see someone doing something amazing and creative, I want to read their work or take the time to really deeply consider what they've said. I've spent three days — three days — taking notes on a book that's only 150 pages long, so that we could do an hour-long FF&C episode on it. Why? Because four years ago I criticized something else this author wrote, and he came back at me asking for a detailed review of exactly what I thought was wrong with the book.... and I never got around to giving it to him. I didn't tell him to fuck off, I didn't point out that a critical review of a book did not obligate me to pick apart his every argument for logical fallacies, I didn't point out that the critical review I did give the book had plenty of specifics in it already.... Instead, I have spent four years feeling like I owe him a detailed critique, promising myself that someday I really am going to go back and read that book a second time and go through it bit by bit..... and now that I'm reviewing another of his books, I'm leaving no stone unturned, no argument left unexplored. Nevermind that, at this rate, we'll never record the episode, and that even if/when we do, he'll probably never listen to it, and even if he did, his response (like those of listeners) will probably be that I went way overboard and "over-analyzed" what was a very short book and my expectations for it were too high and so therefore my review isn't important..... Why do I do it? I don't know. Because I would want someone to give that much thought and put that much effort into a critique of my work. Because I believe if someone puts the time and effort into creating something, they deserve the same attention and effort in return.

And because giving this much thought to it has deepened my understanding of my own ideas. Yes, that too. But ideas that never have a chance to catch their breath or find their own expression because I feel like I'm constantly in a race to find a better way to express them, or constantly trying to weigh them against the ideas of others, to refine them and deepen them. I am a perfectionist, not just of things but of ideas themselves.

I realize that I feel deeply sad about some of this. People are eager to think little of you. My recent blog post about being "deity dumped" received numerous enthusiastic responses from people full of advice — much of it kindly meant. But an even more recent post, exploring an aspect of my practice in crafted, delicate language, a piece I was proud of writing and that I felt was much better from both a technical and an emotional perspective.... received almost no comment. When I admit that I think the work I do is valuable, and that I work hard to be respectful and to listen deeply to others, I'm told I am arrogant and holier-than-thou.

I feel the strong desire to stop. Jeff, and even my parents, have remarked about how different my attitude towards ebooks is now than it was a few years ago. I used to hate them. I used to think that they would ruin the genre and jeopardize serious reading (not to mention libraries and public access to information and the ability to pass down books through the generations as sacred objects of power). Now, I really enjoy the convenience of wanting a book and being able to download it within seconds. What they don't seem to get is that I am thinking like a consumer now, instead of a writer. I gave up. I no longer think that anyone would read the kind of book I would want to write. I no longer believe that, no matter what I did, my parents would be proud of me or ever really hear me.

So I spend a lot of my time trying to really hear others, to really listen. There are so many people doing so many amazing, wonderful things. I could spend all of my time running around amazed and saying "Wow!" and never get anything done. Even now, the podcast is practically little more than that — me sharing the latest crazy-awesome news and thoughts from other people.

But I find myself burnt out and tired. I find myself wondering why I still feel so stressed out and busy all the time, when all of the deadlines are self-imposed and nobody would really notice or care if I dropped offline for good and never posted another update or recorded another podcast episode or wrote another line. I could just stop. I could give up and watch television all day, and no one would think any worse of me. Plenty of people would be downright jealous. Lots of people dream of being able to eek by on their spouse's single income and not have to work for somebody else at a job they hate.

But this ramble has gotten way out of hand. What I wanted to say was, maybe I can find another way to honor the creativity and inspiration I find in other people: to say thank you and celebrate them, without feeling the pressure of needing to pour all of my attention into that and leave no time for my own work. Maybe some kind of simple ritual, similar to the offerings I make in the mornings to my gods, ancestors and spirits of the land. A ritual that will help me to set boundaries while still showing support and gratitude. I want to think about this more....

New Moon Rededication

Not sure how three months slipped by without an entry. Oh, wait... yes I do. (a) A new job, and (b) I rather hate the new blogger dashboard layout.

Updates? We haz them.

The new podcast project has been an amazing success, and we're nearing the end of our first season with hundreds of listeners. I'm working regularly, perhaps a bit too much... there were times throughout the past three months, because of the rush to keep ahead of schedule with this summer's craziness, that I was close to burn out — August will be a nice break. My hope is that we will hit a stride that will let me work consistently but not obsessively (they say the first few months of a new job are always the hardest). I also feel as though some of the more subtler transformative effects are starting to work their way in, as well. Hard to articulate exactly, but I feel as though I have a new focus to my work and a vision for this project that I'm following, and it's become much easier to tune out the online social media noise that used to feel so overwhelming and drag me so far off center. In general I feel more confident about my work and happier doing it, instead of feeling like it's pulling teeth. The down side: I am not writing as much, either for my personal blog or No Unsacred Place. But I'm writing just as consistently for both as I would during my times of writer's block back when that was all I was doing, so maybe it just feels like slacking off compared to the huge amount of work I put into the podcast regularly.

On the writing front, though, I do have a new writing gig: a column for SageWoman Magazine. On top of my column with Aontacht Magazine, I'm feeling pretty happy about my writing. I think I actually prefer writing magazine columns to blog posts, the format lends itself to more thoughtful writing with more time for reflection (and revision!) in between each.

The child custody issue culminated when Emily took Jeff to court (because a father wanting to see his kids is a punishable offense, now? she asked for a "relief hearing" because, in her bizarre world, Jeff was the one being stubborn). Anyway, the judge was buddy-buddy with Emily's lawyer and sang Emily's praises for being a noble homeschooling stay-at-home mom (without ever asking for any evidence of Emily's assertions that this way of homeschooling, on a schedule that just would not allow the kids to be away from her for more than a couple weeks at a time, was absolutely necessary and "best for the kids"). So Jeff, who had no lawyer, didn't really get a fair hearing at all, and the judge left him alone in the room with Emily and her lawyer acting as mediator, clearly not impartial or fair. Even so, in the end, they agreed to all of Jeff's requests except Emily refused to allow more than four weeks with the kids. Still, four weeks is better than the two she was originally demanding. Still, the illogic and injustice of it galls me, and when I'm stressed I do still find myself back in that courtroom, playing out all the things I could have said or done, ways that I could have humiliated Emily for being a controlling, selfish bitch. As it is, it seems they found me intimidating enough (her lawyer had a minor freak-out and accused me of "making fun of her," like we were back in middle school, and in response to nothing more than me smiling across the court room at my husband). But before we went into court, Jeff and I agreed that we'd done everything we could and it was in the gods' hands, and I trust that everything will work out for the best. All along, what we've wanted most is some kind of reasonable resolution instead of this endless game of Emily saying no but never giving us her own terms, or when she did, terms that were so vague that they were clearly an excuse to whittle away at Jeff's time with the kids after the fact. Now at least he has firm dates set, and she can kiss our asses. (I won't even go into the ridiculous song-and-dance they did about Christmas, and how panicked they looked when I pointed out that none of the kids four parents, nor the kids themselves, are Christian.... like I was just about to spoil Emily's whole good-suburban-Christian-mom routine.)

So Jeff is with the kids up in New Hampshire now, along with Melanie, and they've been having a great time, except for all the other stuff going on (like Melanie not feeling well, and Biff potentially needing to go back into the hospital while she's away, and the summer being unusually hot up in New England). I miss him a lot, but it's been good to have the place to myself for a little while. Well, me and Cu.

I've pretty well trained Cu not to bite, finally, after Leah let us know (she cat-sat while we were away back east for the court hearing and visiting my parents) that he was biting her when she came to check on him. Playful nips, nothing mean-spirited, but that's not acceptable. I was being too lenient with him anyway, and it's been easier to break him of the habit with just the two of us, since he can't just turn to daddy for affection and ignore me ignoring him for being naughty.

What else? I did finally unpack some of our sacred objects and set up and rededicate the indoor and outdoor altars like I'd planned to when we first moved in. I'm doing daily devotionals at the indoor altars now, which is good. I'll take a picture or two to post here eventually, at some point. The indoor altar isn't quite complete, as we still need to incorporate certain symbols for Jeff's deities and mine and decide if any other items need to be included. The outdoor altar is very simple, as usual, just a candle, a vase of cut flowers, te wind chimes and a bowl of sea shells.

I bought a treadmill and a standing desk / drafting table so that, eventually, I can walk while I work. My work on the computer doing research and writing has started to take up a lot of my time, and I haven't been as good about exercising as I want to be, so getting a treadmill seemed like a good solution. I've had it two days, and I'm enjoying being able to move while I work — it helps my concentration and lets me work up a good sweat. I just need to find a more comfortable way to type while I walk, and I'll be good to go.

I've started doing Tai Chi in the mornings. It rocks.

I got an iPad. Forgot to mention that — it was a (somewhat early) birthday present from my parents, and I have to admit, it's even better than I was expecting. I'm using it regularly for ebook reading and researching articles for the podcast, plus there are some really useful nature apps, like flora and fauna guides and moon calendars and such. And productivity apps that are useful. And some pretty nifty drawing apps that I've played around with some (though I haven't been as good about keeping up with my naturalist journal as I'd been hoping). So, yes, I'm very pleased with it. It will work as a good replacement when this laptop finally goes (it's on its last legs now) and I get a desktop family computer for Jeff and I to use so he doesn't have to use his work laptop when we're at home.

I think the hardest thing about getting used to Seattle has been not living near any parks. The SVN training and teaching is fantastic, but it's not exactly "alone time" in the woods like I used to have with Frick just a block away. As much as I love our place, it's very hard for me to not be near a park I can walk to — much harder than I expected, actually. I realized that it's the first time in my life that I haven't had some sort of wooded park within a few blocks.... which means, until now, I've been very, very lucky. It also means I need to work on finding alternatives and ways to cope. It's been hard.

Setting up the altars again has helped somewhat. It also helped when, for my flamekeeping shift the other night, I went whole-hog and performed a full ritual, complete with circle casting and calling the quarters and the traditional prayers and such. I attended a summer solstice event with Jeff and Leah put on by the local OBOD group, and it was really fantastic (in the community sense, if not an amazing, elaborate ritual or anything), and it made me realize just how much I've fought against being too "revivalist" in my Druidry, especially with pressure from people online who all seem to be taking the hard line towards reconstructionist polytheism. Being Wiccan now is almost taboo to hear people talk, and yet.... it's startling to me to discover that in many ways, I'm closer to that spirituality than I will ever be to a reconstructionist. Trying to embrace that has been part of this growing confidence I have about my own path, and moving away from being so reactionary and governed by the opinions of others online (even when I didn't realize that's what was happening).

It's led me to rededicate myself to the Living Druidry work that Jeff and I were doing together when we first began dating several years ago, and that turned out to be so fruitful for me at the time. Once Jeff is home, he's agreed that we'll make weekly trips to the local woods (probably Carkeek) to do our meditations and rituals in the evenings the way we were doing back then, and I hope that will help some with my restlessness at not being close to the woods.

Just yesterday was the new Claim Song Moon. I'll be journaling some about the various topics for contemplation included in this month's lesson.

So I think that about covers it.

I really miss Pittsburgh. I miss hanging out with Arthur. I miss Frick Park. I miss hot summers (though not as hot as they've been having this year!). I am still not really settled here. I still don't know what the seasons are like, little things like that. When I think about how long we've been here already and how it still doesn't quite feel like home — and yet when we were back in Pittsburgh and Lancaster briefly, that didn't feel like home either, really — I start to feel a little bit panicked, like... what if I'll never really feel at home again? What if this is what it's going to be like from now on, just one issue after another, one stress-ball after another, always something new, always a new project, always a new controversy, a new issue to deal with, a new way in which I'm discovering how inherently limited my perspective is and yet surrounded always by people who aren't forgiving or patient but full of self-righteous anger.....

It's not that I'm not happy. I have been very happy and feeling energized and optimistic recently, and having good work that I love doing is a big part of that. But happiness and joy... they're different. And I do sometimes still feel homesick.

The neighbors are having quite a party across the street. I'm going to bed to read some and snuggle with my Cu.

Storyteller Spread Day 4: Witch's Task

I'm on Day 4 of using Dianne Sylvan's Storyteller spread, today pulling the card for the fourth position, representing The Task.

This card represents the task set forth by the wise elder whom the hero meets in the depths of the forest when she first sets off on her quest - a struggle or challenge that the hero must face and overcome using what assets she has brought along with her. (As a result of facing this first challenge, the hero is afterwards given two gifts, represented by cards 5 and 6 later in the spread.)

The card I drew for this position was the Page of Pentacles. This card is a fairly positive one, representing new opportunities and possibilities coming into manifestation, and a sense of stability and security in the physical world. The Page of Pentacles is one who has self-discipline, diligence and commitment, but still retains that sense of youth and curiosity that makes her unafraid of moving forward to try new things.

I'm not quite certain exactly how this card fits into the spread at this point, and it may become clearer as I move on and draw more cards.

I was going to skip drawing supporting cards, since tonight is another late night and I'm very tired, but I just felt like I should do so while I'm in the moment, even if a deeper exploration of the cards' meanings has to wait for tomorrow.

The two supporting cards I drew were: the Fool and the Hierophant. These are powerful cards, especially to be supporting the Task card representing the initial challenge on my journey. Each card faces in towards the center, the Fool and Hierophant both looking towards each other and towards the center, primary card of the Page of Pentacles (who faces forward). The energy of this three card spread of primary and supporting cards definitely seems to be concentrated on the center card, with intense energies from the major arcana supporting cards acting as balance to each other and quite literal support of the center card. The Fool, on the one hand, seems to reflect the youth and eagerness of the Page, the willingness to jump in and get started, to take a risk and begin. The Hierophant, on the other hand, reflects the grounded, more material or physical nature of the Pentacles suit - he is concerned with the rules that govern the spiritual life and the laws of nature which all things follow in order to maintain harmony.

So it seems that these three cards suggest, maybe, that my first challenge will be a new opportunity on the material plane - a new job, for instance - that will require both youthful enthusiasm and risk, and self-discipline and steady work. Luckily, it seems like these energies are helping and mutually supporting each other, all working towards the same goal, rather than pulling in opposite directions (as they might have been, if I'd drawn them in a slightly different order in the three-card spread). The suggestion or advice seems to be to take the plunge into hard work, to make the leap into a task that will require commitment and study.

In a lot of ways, this seems to represent pretty clearly what I'm involved in right now, both with my volunteer work and with my efforts with podcasting as a serious career shift. In both situations, I face a new job or task that demands both committed effort and the courage to take a leap into the unknown. And in both case, the long-term goals are not as important as the willingness to just take that first leap, that first jump into the work. (The two major arcana cards certainly seem to suggest that this challenge, right in this moment, is momentous enough that putting my full weight into facing that challenge and taking on that task will have profound effects rippling out, no matter what the specific consequences are.)

That's about all I have in me for tonight, though. I hope to take some time (tomorrow, maybe) to look at the spread that I've drawn so far and look at these four cards - Nine of Cups, Ace of Cups, Eight of Swords and Page of Pentacles - all together in the same spread, in relation to each other instead of in isolation or in the context of the supporting cards. I'll see how much energy I have tomorrow for that kind of work....

Diary - Depression

I am, as they say, in a bad way. I am not happy.

Which is not to say that I don't have moments of happiness - I do. There is still plenty of laughter and enjoyment in my life. There's an Ani DiFranco song (to quote from my personal canon) that goes:

i think i could accept all these dark colors
as just part of some bigger color scheme
if it wasn't for that drippy string quartet of sadness
underscoring each smiling scene

And that's pretty much it. Not a drippy string quartet of sadness, exactly, but the creeping tense eerie straining hum that transforms a normal shot of life as you'd expect into the quiet-before-the-storm in a horror movie. There is a constant stress underlying every moment, and I am sick to death of all of it.

~~~

Part of it is Emily. She is hellish. I am continually astounded by how awful she is, how heartless and cruel and manipulative, how intent she is on punishing Jeff for moving away. It would be enough if she would just content herself with legal machinations to keep him from seeing the kids, or even from being able to Skype them regularly (both of which she's doing to the best of her ability). But on top of that, she sends emails that are obviously and explicitly meant to suggest that somehow it is Jeff's fault, that he should feel guilty because she is incapable of organizing her life or controlling her schedule, that someone his refusal to capitulate to her every whim is a failure on his part. She says she's "very surprised" that he hasn't called the kids in the past week, but then when he tries to arrange for time to talk to them she says their schedules are just too busy and the most she can do is a regimented hour-long conversation during which she sets a timer to allow each of them only fifteen minutes. That she doesn't even have the competency or control to actually enforce these idiotic plans just makes it worse! We have to deal with her constant self-justifications and cruelty towards Jeff while all along knowing that she has very little control over her own life. She is utterly unreliable even when it comes to her own stupid demands. I almost wish she would enforce such a regiment - since it's much more likely that she will instead fall into a habit of signing onto Skype later and later, finding excuses why she can't stick to the pre-arranged schedule, until we'll end up with a situation like when she first agreed to bring the kids over on Saturday mornings, and soon began to sleep in and not get them to us until lunch time. At that point, Jeff just had to start driving out to pick them up himself. With a Skype call, that's just not an option, there is no way he can compensate for her failure. Her weakness and learned helplessness just makes the times when she lashes out all the more frustrating, because you know that it is from her own weakness and incompetency that she draws on that secret fear that she projects towards everyone else. She does not know how to be a functional human being. The only way she knows how to get her way is to become a dead weight that everyone else must carry, a dead weight spewing insane accusations and guilt like a vile phlegm that covers everything.

I am so tired of carrying that dead weight around. Jeff and I want the best for the kids, but we also want the best for us. I want him to be the good, loving, involved father that he so wants to be and that he always has been - but I can't see any way of staying involved with the kids lives without also being forced to have dealings with their parasitic, selfish, manipulative mother. There is no reason why being a father should be a miserable duty that precludes personal happiness. There is no reason why being a stepmother has to be that way, either. I am not upset that it is hard - I knew it would be difficult, as learning how to adapt to and handle complex family relationships always are. But I'm angry and frustrated that there seems to be absolutely nothing we can do to stay in touch with the kids that Emily won't use as a means to abuse and punish Jeff. She is, in the most literal sense of the metaphor, like a fucking antiChrist. Instead of a loving, merciful bridge to the divine Father, she is the vindictive, hateful gulf that we have to cross as our only way of connecting with the kids. Having to go through her is almost worse than not being able to see the kids at all. The whole relationship gets twisted and warped, bent to her selfishness, dragged down by the gravity of her dead weight.

And I'm angry - at myself, and at Jeff and me together - for not being strong enough to do something about it. I'm angry that we even have to deal with this at all, that we don't have the financial resources to fight it, that the lawyers we hired to be on our side just drained us of all our money but accomplished exactly nothing for us except wasting our time. I'm angry that there seems to be no good solution, that a single dead-weight woman could so effectively ruin Jeff's relationship with his kids, that we can't just scream her into submission and make her see just how terrible a person she is. But she probably knows, in any case. I can't imagine all this guilt-tripping and manipulation is because she actually likes herself.

I don't want to indulge in the part of me that is angry and wants nothing more to be violent towards her, to reduce her to dust and sniveling worms. I'm not going to deny that part of me, but I know that it won't do any good. I suppose part of me wants the power to do such a thing simply because it would give me the opportunity to be merciful. I want so much for us to be the better people - but what is that, what would that mean in this case? I can't see how it's right for us to accept all of her conditions and demands and then allow her incompetence to slowly erode away our time with the kids and our relationship with them. How will that help anyone? But then, fighting the good fight, leaving us miserable, frustrated, exhausted in every sense of the word, staining our relationship with the kids with the constant strain and stress of it all? How is that any good? What is the good thing to do here, the merciful thing? How can you be merciful and kind to a parasite, someone who has made herself a parasite by her own choice because she is too afraid and weak to be anything else? And how do you protect the kids and their dream of family? How do you salvage that ideal and preserve the heart of it, to sustain their hope and optimism in a scenario like this? How can you come out and tell them everything their mother is doing out of her own selfishness and smallness, without destroying the mother archetype for them, or the father archetype for that matter? (On the other hand, how could it be any worse than the way Emily is warping and twisting that archetype into one of supremely powerful helplessness, the manipulative passivity that she models for them on a daily basis?)

~~~

When you are out of options about how to move forward on the mundane plane, that's when you turn to magic. Rereading Dion Fortune's novel Moon Magic recently, that's what I was reminded of. Work things out on what she calls the "Inner Plane" - work things out on the level of imagination, thought, intention, will, inspiration, the place where we connect most directly and most deeply with the gods and with Spirit and with the Song of the World - and they will work themselves out on the physical level. I always believed that love will work its own way out. I want to believe that. But I am at a loss as to what to do magically to help this situation. I'm not sure what kind of work can be done. Calling on Emily's higher self or whathaveyou.... Doing some kind of banishing or binding..... I don't know what work needs to be done. I'm unclear about where the problem lies, and unclear about our intentions and how we can or should shape them.

I don't know what work needs to be done on myself, either, for that matter. To make me stronger, calmer, better able to handle the strain of this work. I want to believe this is like the crucible where I am being melted down to be refined, shaped into a sharper instrument, a better vessel for Spirit. But instead, it just feels like a coffin, a tomb, with the pressure of earth - all the material weight of the world and its fucked up practicality - bearing down on me so that I can hardly breathe. I need to find a creative way to overcome this, to push through this. Or maybe not push, even, but simply to get through it somehow.

I've been doing a lot of crying recently. Weirdly, that seems to help. Just allowing myself to grieve over this situation - the whole situation - and its injustice and cruelty and frustration. I feel blocked creatively, it's been so long since I had that Fire in the Head, that spark of inspiration. I sit down to write, and nothing comes but the same dull old rote, the same superficial rot that everyone writes. I have nothing to say. I am in no position to say anything at all. I'm broken down into silence and sorrow.

Anne Lamott says there are only two prayers really that we say in our heart of hearts: Help me! Help me! Help me! and Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

It feels like so long since I was able to pray with gratitude - all my prayers are just the grunts and groans of the beast of burden trudging along beneath the yoke, asking for some leniency, for a rest, for a burst of energy to get me through, for a better way. I am not happy, I am just surviving, getting by. I worry about myself - that I might be in the midst of a depression. I know I've been here before, when I just can't see the end to the work and the work itself seems pointless and not any good or help to anyone, and all I want is to die. Not literally, but to die to this old, feeble self that isn't any good for the task at hand. To find some release from the blockage, to become some slip of a thing, a ghost that can pass through to a new place.

But then I get angry that I am always having to die, that this is such a never-ending process of being remade, that I should always have to be facing some new obstacle or problem instead of settling down into a stable, steady life of happy productivity and contentment. I resent that there should always be this pressure on me, that I should always be expected to use all my strength. What if I want to put my strength towards some purpose that I choose, pursue something that I love or want. It feels as though I didn't choose this, though I guess there is the argument that actually I did, at least at some level. That I might be the one putting the pressure on myself, and that it might go away if only I would just stop.... just makes me angrier. I don't know how to simply stop, especially when there seems to be no good solution and passivity just seems likely to make things worse. I feel chained down, and yet there's that part of me that wonders - that worries - that the chains are as thin as a spider's silk that I could break in a heart beat if I wanted to.... so why don't I? I know about freedom - and the very moment when you realize you are free is the same moment you see that you have been free all along - so why don't I feel free? What level of consciousness am I pushing towards, here? And why isn't it enough to just stay where I am? I do not believe in this eternal progression or working towards salvation - so what exactly is the point of all this pointless struggling?

~~~

Last night, I was up until at least midnight. Jeff was snoring, so he slept in the den, and I spent a good deal of time crying and praying and blowing my nose and watching the cat adjust and readjust himself in the next of blankets at my feet. I prayed to Brigid and Manannan, asking for their help and guidance, asking them what I should do.

And the thing is, simply crying, allowing myself to sob, I sank deeper even than the constant strain of stress and frustration that has been weaving through my life these days - and there, underneath, was still that inexplicable and strange pulse of fierce joy. Somehow, even that deep, there was fierce joy. How could there be joy there, and if it is there, why can't I bring it through, bring it up to manifest in my everyday life and the lives of those I love? Why should such a fierce joy wallow like a dark puddle at the very bottom of a dank and collapsing well - why shouldn't it rise with all its power and strength to overwhelm the stupidity and stress of the every day and open the way, like a surging wave or wellspring or an all-consuming fire? Why should I have to sink so low to dip my hands into a small and muddy pool? It is not fair! Why shouldn't love and joy rise up to wash everything clean and clear away the debris? Why shouldn't it break up this heavy fog of confusion and pressure with sunlight burning off the mist of morning? I know it's there! What keeps it from rising up to manifest?

Is it me? Am I keeping it down? How could I be responsible for that, when I feel so helpless and impotent so much of the time? When I've been working so hard to clear the way and nothing seems to help? This fierce joy that lies like a vast ocean beneath and in all things - how could I be enough to block it, and why would I? I just don't understand what I'm supposed to do, or how I'm supposed to do it. I don't know what will help, and what will hinder. I don't know how to stop being a blockage and become a better vessel.

That's what I want to know.

Seeking Clarity on the Seven of Cups: A Three Card Spread

The choices before me are many: some will lead me astray down a path that is unhealthy and harmful, some will lead me on a path that will be fruitful and beneficial, and others will lead me back here again, to relearn the lessons I have not yet learned. I ask for clarity and insight into the nature of these choices, that I may choose wisely.

(1) What choice will lead me to a path that is unhealthy and harmful?
(2) What choice will lead me to a path that is fruitful and beneficial?
(3) What choice will lead me here again to relearn the lessons I have not yet learned?

(1) Page of Wands (3) Three of Pentacles (2) Ten of Pentacles


Page of Wands: A card of child-like innocence, enthusiasm and charm, often representing someone of exuberant activity and light-heartedness. The page is the less mature, more child-like expression of feminine qualities in the masculine suit of the energetic wands, and so it is a card of spark, initiative and change, of activities pursued with joy and innocence and no ulterior motives.

Yet here it appears in a position representing a harmful or unhealthy choice, and I admit that I see myself as having little in common with the Page of Wands, who calls attention to herself with charisma and enthusiasm and delights in her own outgoing personality at the center of activity. It may be that this card warns me against attempting to behave as a Page of Wands might simply because I perceive her energy and personality as of a kind more desirable to others, and so more likely to make my work popular. One cannot pretend to innocence or light-heartedness, and at times like these I must acknowledge that, though I am often full of joy and gratitude, it is not the joy of a light heart, but a heart broken open with grief and longing. Others may attract happy followers and supporters through their child-like innocence, but that is not truly a choice for me — it is likely that, instead, I would only appear immature and unskilled, fumbling and silly instead of lucky and skilled.


Ten of Pentacles: A card of culmination, completion and marriage, particularly the marriage between the material and the spiritual realm. This marriage — a union of art and aesthetics that expresses itself through material media in patterns of balanced and harmonious form — brings with it an acceptance and relaxation into one's natural place in the world, appreciating all the wealth and beauty of the physical realm and a prosperous, happy life. Hard work and diligence to patterns of tradition have brought about success and prosperity, and that prosperity circulates throughout the world as each passes on the gifts to the next, for this is the nature of wealth and prosperity in the natural world: flow, exchange and participation in the larger, immortal patterns of the universe.

This card appears in a position representing a choice that will lead to a fruitful and beneficial path, and it certainly seems to indicate this. There is a formality within this card, the number ten evoking not only the marriage of spirit and matter but that union expressed through the Tree of Life. There is structure and formality in this card — a distinct contrast to the more unpredictable nature of the Page of Wands — and I do find myself resisting and rebelling against this idea as potentially limiting and restrictive. Yet I also realize that I have often thrived best in circumstances that demand formality and structure, and that my work has often been to bring sincerity and depth to these structures and patterns, to bring life to them by imbuing them with my own passion and love. I am again reminded of the amber-less stars of my Flamekeeping meditation, and the instruction to fill these pieces with my own life-blood and energy. Tiny silver suns — star-like, like the pentacle symbol itself.


Three of Pentacles: This is a card of beginnings, a resolution of the tension and duality of two in the on-going process of manifestation, especially the expression of skill and intention in the physical world through craftsmanship or artistic skill. It is also a card of teamwork and joint endeavors, the two working together to create a third as an expression of their union and blending of skills. In my deck, this card depicts a couple in a process of creation: an elfin female lifted upon the shoulders of a male, sliding her fingers along rock which gives way as softly as clay, to carve the stars and interweaving arcs of the pentacles. Again there is the hint of the spiritual expressed through the material form, the stained-glass beauty of the stars suspended within the solid rock.

This card appears in a position indicating a choice-that-is-not-a-choice, a path that will more than likely lead again to this place of indecision and uncertainty amidst an array of too many possibilities. In some ways, I can see how the message depicted in this card has led me here to begin with — my relationship with Jeff lending me support and encouragement that for a long time I had done without, inspiring me to pursue work that might not have seemed possible a few years ago. As a result, I have accomplished a great deal, and yet the work seems only to have begun and I know that there is much more to come. And so, it may be that this sense of partnership is meant to mature into a more independent form of self-expression on my part, not so dependent upon the support and direct involvement of Jeff. Perhaps I have become too eager to take his advice and rely on his guidance and suggestions about how to pursue my work; these may be good suggestions for him, but they may not work for me, and the time may have arrived when it is necessary for me to discover my own methods for doing my work. The role of my partnership with Jeff is, perhaps, ready to mature from one of direct support and involvement in my work, to one of cultivating and providing a stable, comfortable home within which I feel empowered to take the risks that I feel called to take.