We've had simply the most lovely weather, here in the nation's capital, for the past few days and, well, that's my excuse. I've been outside, in the garden, too much to blog. Life is short; there are a finite numbers of perfect days poured into each life. You can't waste them inside.
Go look at these amazingly gorgeous images of women over at Moments of Grace. I love lots of them, but the bored, little, punk angel may be my complete favorite. It says so much about how the aesthetic of Victoriana translated into the Goth movement.
Lunea's musing about tribe. What's interesting to me is how, these days, tribes span the globe. I feel lots closer to folks all over the world than I do to, say, my wingnut neighbor across the street or to my sister the idiot.
On the other side of the planet, Aquila qua Hecate is celebrating the feast of Brighid, a time for burning out the dross. In a way, for me, that process begins at Lughnasadah. I begin yanking out the stalks from the dead day lillies, watch the tiny yellow birds clean the seeds off the lovely, twisted branches of woad, continue yanking out bindweed, start watching for falling leaves and acorns. More and more stuff is "done" and the dross can be yanked and thrown into the sacred compost pile And the process goes on through Mabon -- eat it up now, it will spoil later -- through Samhein -- let's celebrate the dying that's happening everywhere around us right now -- through Yule -- clear, clean, crystal, not much organic mess left -- and on to Imbolc -- burn out the remaining mess, we need to get ready for the life that's coming!
Picture (and lots of other v interesting stuff) found here.
Deborah Oak finds a swimming pool and well-apportioned kitchen to be magical tools. This Lughnasadah, I used my iPhone, the great magical tool of the 21st Century, to ground a circle of madly scattered women, two of whom had had the ultimate 21st Century meltdown: a bloggered computer.
Forget athames, chalices, drums. Upon which modern magical tool do you depend?
Tomorrow is 8/8/08, the eight day of the eight month of the eight year of this benighted century. I'm not a big student of numerology; I'd say that numbers and I have a difficult relationship, but there must first be some relationship for it to be difficult. My left-brained self, she has a v difficult time w numbers.
But somehow, w/in Tarot, numbers make more sense to me. The Eights are interesting. Eight is twice four. In Tarots, the fours are where things get so stable as to become, perhaps, stuck. In the Gaian Tarot, "Eights illustrate the test of taking action out in the world to make your dreams a reality, in their respective elemental suits."
For a long time in my life, almost every reading that I did for myself resulted in the 8 of Wands showing up somewhere. That's good. Movement. Going places. Heading towards goals. The Eight of Cups is v similar. Something's missing! Let's go find it!
The other evening, as we sat down to eat following our Lughnasadah ritual, my iPhone went off. One of the other witches in my circle said, "It's your son calling; his picture came up. And, whoa, that's a good song for him." Here's the ringtone for Son on my iPhone:
111 - year - old reptile finally becoming a father E
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Officials say an indigenous New Zealand reptile regarded as one of the last living remnants of the dinosaurs will become a father for the first time in decades at the age of 111.
Henry the tuatara and his younger mate Mildred produced a dozen eggs last month after mating at the Southland Museum on New Zealand's South Island in March.
Tuatara curator Lindsay Hazley said Wednesday Henry has lived at the museum's special enclosure for Tuatara since 1970 and had shown no interest in sex until he recently had a cancerous growth removed from his genitals. He was now enjoying the company of three females and might breed again next March
Been thinking a bit about the connection/overlap between mystics of all religions and Wiccans.
Poem by St Theresa
The Flower
All the earth with snow is covered, Everywhere the white frosts reign; Winter and his gloomy courtiers Hold their court on earth again. But for you has bloomed the Flower Of the fields, Who comes to earth From the fatherland of heaven, Where eternal spring has birth. Near the Rose of Christmas, Sister! In the lowly grasses hide, And be like the humble flowerets, -- Of heaven’s King the lowly bride!
What I don't understand about physics would fill libraries, but one thing that I have been able to grock is that the simple act of paying attention changes the object/situation/person/phenemonon to which attention is paid. I get that because that's the basic teaching of Wicca.
And so, perhaps it's because I'm paying attention (aka, perhaps it's "all in my head," as if that meant it's "not real"), but suddenly yesterday, the day after Lughnasadah, it all began to change. I went out yesterday afternoon to dance in the pounding August rain and there, just as I was about to go ahead and dance all the way into the stream, was a chilling breeze that made my bones cold and sent me inside for hot tea and a warm shower.
And there, this morning, as I finished the one task that I'd planned to do by Lughnasadah but hadn't gotten done -- cleaning out the garden shed -- was the change in light, the breeze in the leaves, the different "feel" that signals the lovely, slow arc of the year, from Autumn to Winter. I wanted to be at the Ren Faire w/ G/Son, I was thinking of a pumpkin-carving party, I was remembering my favorite recipes for soup.
It's only a glimmer. Here in the swamp over which they built our nation's capital, we're still likely in for six or eight weeks of heat. Son, DiL, and G/Son are at the beach. Congress is adjourned. The farmers' markets are still full of corn, tomatoes, zucchini, basil, and peaches. And yet, and yet, and yet, if you're engaged in that most magical act of all -- the act of paying attention -- you can hear the distant flutes of a changing season, the shifting of the leaves from green to gold, the birds feeding up and getting ready for the long flight South, the chill in the rainy air, a different quality of light in the morning mist.
A witch's job is to turn the wheel. And round and round the wheel must turn.
One of America's most brilliant bloggers, Molly Ivors says that: all women's romance novels are based on either Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, or Pride and Prejudice. Molly reminds me of the sexist mistake behind the famous notion that there are only two stories in all of literature: A Young Man Goes on a Journey and A Stranger Comes to Town.
Me, I was always falling madly in love with the Heathcliffs.
Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.
Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.
Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year.
In comments below, the incomparable Anne asks for a harvest poem. The best one in the whole world, and a perfect one for Lughnasadah, is, of course, by Mary Oliver:
Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith
Every summer I listen and look under the sun's brass and even into the moonlight, but I can't hear
anything, I can't see anything - not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up, nor the leaves deepening their damp pleats,
nor the tassels making, nor the shucks, nor the cobs. And still, every day,
the leafy fields grow taller and thicker - green gowns lofting up in the night, showered with silk.
And so, every summer, I fail as a witness, seeing nothing - I am deaf too to the tick of the leaves,
the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet - all of it happening beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.
And, therefore, let the immeasurable come. Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine. Let the wind turn in the trees, and the mystery hidden in the dirt
swing through the air. How could I look at anything in this world and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart? What should I fear?
One morning in the leafy green ocean the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body is sure to be there.
Goddess, I love that. Let the immeasurable come. Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine . . . How could I look at anything in this world and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart? What should I fear? One morning, in the leafy green ocean, the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body is sure to be there. With apologies to Rumi, the buckle of my spine is running after the unknowable, calling, "Hey! Over here! Come touch!"
Tomorrow is Lughnasadah and a Dark Moon. How can you look at anything in this world and tremble and grip your hands over your heart? What should you fear? Once again, once again, once again, as it has for thousands and thousands of years, as it has ever since Native Americans bred teosinte into maize, once again, tomorrow morning, in the leafy green ocean, the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body is sure to be there.
The blessings of Lugh and the blessings of Lugh's mother upon you and yours.
Eight days. Eight days out of the entire year. For Wiccans, those are the Sabbats. Eight days. And even then, we can't set them apart, take the days before them off to prepare and the days after them off to recover. Eight. Eight times every year. Eight sabbats. Eight days, just a bit more than one week, out of every year.
I swear in the days still left, we'll walk in fields of gold.
There was three men came out of the west, Their fortunes for to try, And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn should die. They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in, Throwed clods upon his head, And these three man made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn was dead.
Then they let him lie for a very long time Till the rain from heaven did fall, Then little Sir John sprung up his head, And soon amazed them all. They let him stand till midsummer Till he looked both pale and wan, And little Sir John he growed a long beard And so became a man.
They hired men with the scythes so sharp To cut him off at the knee, They rolled him and tied him by the waist, And served him most barbarously. They hired men with the sharp pitchforks Who pricked him to the heart, And the loader he served him worse than that, For he bound him to the cart.
They wheeled him round and round the field Till they came unto a barn, And there they made a solemn mow of poor John Barleycorn. They hired men with the crab-tree sticks To cut him skin from bone, And the miller he served him worse than that, For he ground him between two stones.
Here's little Sir John in a nut-brown bowl, And brandy in a glass; And little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl Proved the stronger man at last. And the huntsman he can't hunt the fox, Nor so loudly blow his horn, And the tinker he can't mend kettles or pots Without a little of Barleycorn.
AP: Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck a homeless man with his black Corvette in downtown Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said the man was splayed on Novak's windshield.
I'm not sure about why the adjective "homeless" is required in this story. What if it said this ...
Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck an unemployed man with his black Corvette in downtown Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said the man was splayed on Novak's windshield.
What if it said this ...
Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck a United States Senator with his black Corvette in downtown Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said the man was splayed on Novak's windshield.
What if it said ...
Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck a returning Iraq War veteran with his black Corvette in downtown Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said the man was splayed on Novak's windshield.
The appellation "homeless" is added to assure us that even if the guy died, nothing would be lost.
Son, DiL, and I walked it together, w/ some women from my wonderful circle. And I will do it again. And again. And again. I will do it until women are free. Equal. Empowered.
One of the primary ways that I define myself is as a reader. And while I know that one can read with fingertips as well as with eyes, for me, my eyes are, I think, more crucial than any other sense. I spend most of the day, every day, seeing, reading, looking. My sense of sight is crucial to my comfort with my moon in Taurus; my Younger Self needs to see my surroundings: the wallpaper on my walls, the flowers and trees, and the dance between sunlight and shade in my garden. And so many acts of love and pleasure, which, for me, are rituals of the Goddess, involve sight: Son's strong back, DiL's swingy new haircut, reading a book to G/Son, both of us commenting upon what's happening in the pictures as well as in the written story.
Earlier this month, G/Son spent a weekend w/ me -- and it was the kind of weekend that sends me home going, "OK, Goddess. Yes. Thank you for chemo. Thank you for whatever it took to get me to this point, to let me have this weekend, for the ability to dig my fingernails into the cliff and just HANG ON so that I could get to here, you crazy Bitch, You." G/Son was, his doctor assured Son and DiL, over his bout of pink eye and fine to be around other people. I didn't even have to give him the eye drops that made him cry.
We had the best time ever.
Three days later I got a bad summer cold and I figured that I'd caught it from G/Son and I figured: cheap at the cost. Rumi:
I would love to kiss you. The price of kissing is your life. Now my loving is running toward my life shouting, What a bargain, let's buy it.
Gradually, my sore throat got better and my runny nose got better and my cough got better and almost everything got better but my eyes kept getting worse. Sometimes, I am a dense, silly, old woman. Finally, about midnight last night (of course, it's ALWAYS midnight on a Saturday, isn't it?) I realized: I not only caught a cold, I caught pink eye.
I did reiki on my eyes and it was some of the best reiki I've ever done. I felt the same heat pouring out of my hands, into my eyes, that I felt the first time I ever had reiki, when my madcap friend R. did reiki on my broken ankle and I felt heat pouring out of her hands, through a thick plaster cast, into my broken bones.
And I couldn't begin to sleep.
I got up, got dressed, drove to the 24-hour pharmacy and begged the pharmacist to give me something. I admit, I considered going to the emergency room, but that's v. expensive and my experience from a few years ago, with an infected ear, is that nice old ladies in an emergency room on Saturday night tend to get to wait until, well, it's triage, and I understand it, and when I show up with a stroke or a heart attack I want to move to the front of the room, too, but, IMH experience, an old lady with pink eye isn't going to get taken care of at the emergency room until the inexperienced intern is v, v, v exhausted, the old lady is kicking herself for not staying in bed, and the sun is making mad love to the Eastern sky.
And, even then, in the middle of the night, exhausted, in misery with my eyes itching and watering and sore, there She was. A huge, just-short-of-half Moon, orange and low on the horizon, magic and, as always, My Mother, There for Me, hanging in the sky, invoking everything deep and delightful and making me glad that conjunctivitis kept me up all night and drove me from my bed to my car. And maybe that's, looking forward and looking back, eyes blue with spice, St. Alia of the Knife aware within her Mother's womb, maybe that's what it really means to be a witch. To see the Mystery and the Magic and the Meaning even in the very midst of pain and misery and physical deterioration. And to revel in it.
The pharmacist didn't do what I wish he'd done, which was to tell me, "Sorry, lady, you are SOL." He sold me some dumb drops that did fuckall nothing and that I am going to bury this week as a way of eliminating ineffective bullshit from my life. Creep.
Finally, the sun came up and I did something I almost never, never do; I called my doctor on a weekend. Here's how long it's been since I did this. I expected to get a number for an answering service. There's a job that's gone the way of the buggy whip manufacturer and the lady who laces the stays in your whalebone corset. Of course, now, you just leave a message and your doctor gets an email and she calls you back within, like, 20 seconds and calls a prescription into the pharmacy and, in less time than it takes to adjust to the 21st century, you go pick up eye drops.
Sweet Mother, thank you.
I imagine that dozens of my ancestresses must have had pink eye or its equivalent. They may have spent weeks in absolute misery. For me, one dose -- one dose -- of eye drops brought relief from one of the most maddening infections EVER. By the second dose, I felt well enough to begin knitting, reading, sitting at my altar. I'm still contagious, but won't be tomorrow. Am I grateful to the scientists and doctors who developed this drug? Does a witch dance in the woods?
Do you ever do magic that moves across time? I do. I started doing it when I was in law school, applying for jobs, and kept getting the sense that an older and "living in the future" Me had thrown magic back to me to use as a lifeline, was doing magic in the future that reached back to Me in the "present." And since then, I've done it "both ways." My "present" Self often throws magic back to my younger Self, to help her through, and to my "future" Self to help her, as well.
And, today, I can't shake the notion that, back in some cave, or hovel, or shack, or on some ancient, nomadic trail, or that off in some terraformed, cradle-to-cradle foundation, from some future time/place, from a distant star that still shines/will shine upon Earth's Moon, some ancestress of mine, finally healed of conjunctivitis or some other infection of the eye, threw some magic forward/back to me, here, now, in the 21st Century, in desperate need of healing. Or that, some future Self, looking back/forward, as I always try to do when I feel this kind of a-chronological healing, to me, here, Now, threw some serious science/magic/advanced-enough-there's-no-difference back to me, to me, depending upon my eyes.
What intrigues me is how non-hierarchical this is. Yeah, as the article notes, there's still a "decider." And we haven't, yet, reached the point where someone speaks for the trees, or the squirrels, or the bees in this process. But I can imagine crowdsourcing being used in The Fifth Sacred Thing to figure out what to do about the invaders.
If Wicca is an ecstatic religion, how do we achieve, maintain, and use ecstasy? How do we allow ecstasy to achieve, maintain, and use us? How often and, if not, why not?
Neither staying nor going ever prevent the heart from breaking. All we can hope to influence is in what place and under what conditions the heart breaks open, because it will: unavoidably, regularly, and without concern for whatever else we might wish to be doing.
I've been pondering this article all morning, amazed at the truths it tells and the things that it gets, well, if not wrong, only, at best half right. The point of the NYT story is that average Americans have been sinking deeper and deeper into debt, while the companies that loan them money have been doing very well indeed. And that's an important point that needs to be made.
What intrigues me, though, are the points that the article can't help making, although it does try and elide them. Note that the financial troubles of the woman in the story are, more than anything else, the result of the fact that she needed a hysterectomy and had a burst appendix. In many countries all across the globe, those events wouldn't threaten financial ruin.
But as happens with many debt-laden Americans, an unexpected illness helped push Ms. McLeod over the edge. In January 2006, her doctor told her she needed a hysterectomy. She had health care coverage, but she could no longer work at a second job.
She made matters worse during her recovery, while watching home shopping channels. “Eight weeks in bed by yourself is very dangerous when you have a TV and credit card,” Ms. McLeod said. “QVC was my friend.”
Later that year, Ms. McLeod realized she was in trouble, squeezed by her mortgage and credit card payments, her $350 monthly car bill, rising energy prices and a stagnant salary. She started to sell knickknacks, handbags, clothing and other items on eBay to help cover her heating and food bills. She stopped paying her credit cards so that she could afford her mortgage.
A year ago she was back in the hospital, this time with a burst appendix. Her condition worsened, and she lost the use of one kidney. She spent 19 days in the hospital and six weeks recuperating. Her prescription-drug costs added to her expenses, and by September she could no longer pay her mortgage.
Throughout the article, there's an emphasis upon the woman's responsibility for her own problems. (Ms. McLeod, who is 47, readily admits her money problems are largely of her own making.) She left her husband! She wanted some nice handbags and some jewelry! (NO discussion, at all, of the role that advertising may play in this issue.) There's no discussion about how government-paid-for health care and government programs to force employers to give employees time off from work for health problems could have helped Ms. McLeod. Nor is there any suggestion that perhaps some visiting nurse services (remember visiting nurses? from the 50s and 60s?) could have helped her to focus on other activities during her recuperation. I'm not sure exactly why, but something about this reminds me of how absolutely horrible the waiting area was in the local 24 hour drug store when I had to sit there at 2:00 am a few years ago to fill a prescription for an ear infection on a Saturday morning after a Friday night in the emergency room. And I just kept thinking, though my pain and exhaustion: lots of lost opportunities here. Lots of lost opportunities to foster health and healing and better lives.
Similarly, "rising energy prices and a stagnant salary" are mentioned in passing, as if they were simply facts of life, and not deliberate policy decisions by a Republican-controlled Congress, WH, and court-system (and, since 2006 by completely ineffective Democrats. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, I'm looking at you).
Should Ms. McLeod have done a better job of understanding the terms of her credit (babe, I want a Kelly bag worse than almost anything in the world, but NO handbag is worth 28% interest!)? Sure. One wonders how she graduated from high school without a basic understanding of this concept. (Oh, yeah, that's right. To the extent that high schools even teach consumer math, they generally do so with materials provided by BANKS AND CREDIT CARD COMPANIES!) But Ms. McLeod isn't the problem here. Where's the NYT story where the chairman of Wachovia gives up his stock options and golden parachute while readily admitting that the bank's money problems are largely of his own making?
And, explain to me again, why aren't we in the streets with pitchforks? Well, being told that the problems are our own fault plays a role in keeping people at home and depressed rather than in the streets and angry. And the NYT, where do its interests lie?
Extra bonus points: Count in comments the ways in which the photo is judgemental.
I know that all life is a manifestation of the Goddess and that the Eaters must, in turn be Eaten, and that it is this very process of consumption and decay that is Sacred. And, yet, I wanted to tell you today that I fucking hate my fucking little Sisters, the fucking mosquitos, and if I find the fucking one who lives in my car and chews up my ankles and calves while I'm driving and can't do shit about it -- when I find her, I am going to kill her and you can just add it to my karma tab and we'll work it out later.
My Circle of Amazing Women counts each dark moon, each full moon, and each of the 8 major holidays as lasting three days. And, so, if the "real" moon is on a Wednesday, but it's easier for us to meet on Friday night, we do, and we consider the energy every bit as real, the feeling as strong, the magic as effective. (It's a convention born of the kind of schedules that women in Washington, D.C. keep, but it has never failed to "work" for us. Maybe it's "derivative" and modern; maybe it's "East Coast," maybe it's, here in the center of world politics, political. Whatever it is, it works for us.)
By my Circle's reckoning, today "is" the Full Moon. The "real" Full Moon this month, at around 7:00 am on Friday morning, was so strong that it kept me out of bed, full of dance, and crackling with electricity and life until about 4:00 am on Saturday morning. Staring at the cool orb behind the branches and leaves of the oak trees, jotting down insights into my Book of Shadows, silently communing with the night, I sang my "Hymn to Her" over and over and over again.
And I spent part of "today's" Full Moon time sitting in the hot July sun, surrounded and grounded by the low, droning sound made by crickets in the afternoon heat, breathing the hot, gardenia perfumed, afternoon air, and listening to the small plot of land upon which I live. And I spent part of it at my altar, going through my daily practice.
I believe in daily practice like I believe in breathing, and bathing, and laughing every day, and in the beauty of the Darkest Goddesses. Over time, my daily practice evolves, but what stays the same is the need for my daily practice to be, well, daily. I ground, and if there's not time to do anything else, I think that a witch who has grounded has performed her daily practice.
But almost always, I also invoke the powers of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, and a constantly changing group of Goddesses. Today, appropriate, I think, for the time when we harvest corn, tomatoes, okra, cucumbers (beloved by the Egyptians), blackberries, and cherries, I invoked Ponoma, after reading Sia's lovely post, along with several Others, and always culminating with my beloved patroness, the Goddess of crossroads, liminal spaces, change and flow and transformation, and birth, death, the Moon, witches: Hecate.
I lit candles dedicated to two different specific spells. I pulled a tarot card to give me something to consider. I tranced, and, in trance, danced, naked, adorned with flowers, and sweating in the July afternoon heat, to my place of power. I prayed my two important prayers and I listened, again, to the land. I invoked what I need, using my wand -- an old crooked branch that G/Son always picks up and says, "Your wand don' work?" -- and I swam back home from that "place," back down my street, and up my steps, and inside to the middle room on the left, to my altar.
And, as so often happens, the gate opens, photosynthesis carries me away, I remember that I am part of everything and that everything, oddly enough, is happily part of me, and then, before I dissolve all the way, all the way, all the way into everything, slowly, I come "back."
They're the State flower of Maryland, but the grow really well in Virginia, too. Perennials, they can grow in some shade, which, in my yard, is a good thing. I like them because they'll bloom for several weeks here at the end of July, when most flowers are finished, providing color until the fall mums come in.
The sun has been making such intense love to Earth that the deck burns my feet when I walk outside, barefoot, to make love to the Earth with my feet. My gardenias, that I harbor inside all winter long, living, as I do in Zone 7, are blooming. If you walk outside in the heat of the mid afternoon in July, in Virginia, the gardenias on the deck surround you with a scent that makes you very, very certain that the Goddess loves us, and wants us to be: ecstatic.
Witchcraft is a religion of ecstacy. I believe that if I believe nothing else. And, this hot afternoon, surrounded by gardenias making such love to the Air as only a lover devoted to nothing but love could possibly make, I am, well, I am in ecstacy. But it's polyamoury. The gardenias can only make this kind of rare, refined, mad love to the Air when the Sun helps them. And, it's all good.
The woman who lived here before I did was a potter and she left several of her lovely large pots for me. This year, I planted nicotina, sweet potato vine, and a dark coleus.
This is Sage Bergarten, German Mountain Sage. It is mad for the mix of sandy soil and wood chips in my herb bed. In late October or early November, I'll cut it and hang it up to dry. I'll burn it all winter in a tiny incense burner that my world-traveler brother gave to me, on a small block of charcoal. It will purify the air in my ritual room, ground me, remind me that summer is coming, when the sun is so hot that the sandy soil stays many degrees warmer than the air for hours after the sun has gone down.
Not sure exactly why, but this year, the fig tree is going wild. Usually, the birds and squirrels take about three bites out of every fig and leave me, like, two figs. This year, I may have enough to bring some inside to ripen just for me. I'm happy to share, but I do wish they'd leave some for me.
My chipmunk was a wild woman this morning, dashing here and there and up over the herb bed and behind the grass and under the coleus and in between the helibore. I warned her, "Look out. You know that cat, Smudge, from across the street, is looking for you. If I can see you, you know that Smudge can see you."
There was a time when people marched against their governments when their governments oppressed them.
Arise children of the fatherland The day of glory has arrived Against us tyranny's Bloody standard is raised Listen to the sound in the fields The howling of these fearsome soldiers They are coming into our midst To cut the throats of your sons and consorts
To arms citizens Form your battalions March, march Let impure blood Water our furrows
What do they want this horde of slaves Of traitors and conspiratorial kings? For whom these vile chains These long-prepared irons? Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage What methods must be taken? It is us they dare plan To return to the old slavery!
What! These foreign cohorts! They would make laws in our courts! What! These mercenary phalanxes Would cut down our warrior sons Good Lord! By chained hands Our brow would yield under the yoke The vile despots would have themselves be The masters of destiny
Tremble, tyrants and traitors The shame of all good men Tremble! Your parricidal schemes Will receive their just reward Against you we are all soldiers If they fall, our young heros France will bear new ones Ready to join the fight against you
Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors Bear or hold back your blows Spare these sad victims That they regret taking up arms against us But not these bloody despots These accomplices of Bouillé All these tigers who pitilessly Ripped out their mothers' wombs
We too shall enlist When our elders' time has come To add to the list of deeds Inscribed upon their tombs We are much less jealous of surviving them Than of sharing their coffins We shall have the sublime pride Of avenging or joining them
Drive on sacred patriotism Support our avenging arms Liberty, cherished liberty Join the struggle with your defenders Under our flags, let victory Hurry to your manly tone So that in death your enemies See your triumph and our glory!
Actually, this story reminds me of one that Jason and I both covered a while back in Virginia. Fundies took the local board of ed to court and got the court to say that the board of ed had to let the fundies send home announcements for Vacation Bible School, etc. Some local Pagans took advantage of that ruling to make the board of ed send home an announcement about a Pagan event for children. Fundie moms went batshit on their blogs, the community was outraged, etc. Almost none of them "got it." Gee, this is how other groups feel when we xians do it. Guess there's a good reason for the separation of church and state, after all. Nope. They were too busy being "threatened" and "outraged."
Eventually, I think the board of ed decided that it would just stop sending home announcements from any non-school group (originally, they'd sent home announcements from things like the local Dept. of Recreation, which gave the fundies their hook).
It's a city of monuments, sculpture, public gardens, and, of course, government, which, even as sucky as it's been for, well, for ever, I adore. In my most important and memorable dreams, I wander through these monuments and past these marble statues of Prosperity, Truth, Commerce, and Justice.
I came to D.C. as a far-too-full-of-myself (some things never change!) five-year-old, stepping off the train from Chicago at Union Station with my mom, my brother and sister, and one tiny turtle (the kind they used to sell in drug stores). I was born in the college town of Boulder, Colorado, where I learned my mad love for mountains, but I'd never seen anything -- anything -- that spoke to my deep soul the way that this city of marble and high ideals spoke to me. We moved because my dad took a job writing speeches here, but he had a meeting in Cincinnati the week that we got off the train. My mother, may the Goddess guard her, took three little kids (and a turtle) to the Hotel Continental just around the corner from the office where my dad was going to be working. For a week, we lived in that hotel and, every day, Mom would take all three kids (but not the turtle) out for a long walk in the city and through one of Washington's many, many museums. We'd walk until we were tired, at which point, my brother, Joe, who was, I swear to the Goddess all of four years old, would (after the first day) just hail a cab.
When Son was young, I was a young, single mother on a school-teacher's salary. We spent, I warrant, more time wandering the (free!) museums of Washington, D.C. than most other mothers and sons. Son adored the Air & Space Museum, but, Goddess knows, we covered every inch in every museum up and down the Mall, more than once. Do you ever wish that you could remember "the last" time that something happened? I don't remember "the last" time that I took Son to the museums in D.C.; I'm sure at the time it didn't at all seem like "the last" time. But eventually, he got into high school sports, found girlfriends, got busy studying for SATs, and there was, sadly, a last time. It may have been a trip to see the Boating Party by Renoir at the Phillips, but I can't be sure. I do have a vague memory of lunch afterwards at Teaism.
This morning, G/Son and I got up early, had strawberries and orange juice, and headed down to the Mall. Nonna miscalculated how early you need to get down there to get a parking space. We were a little early.
At two-and-a-quarter, G/Son's started asking one of the first questions for which I ever got in trouble: What's going to happen? It's an attempt, as my mother knew and resented, to figure out how to be in control, to prepare, to master the situation. I have a different approach than did my mother. I provide the kind of detailed information that I'd have appreciated at two: We're going to get in Nonna's car; you can have your water bottle while we're driving. We're going to drive downtown, past the beautiful Potomac River that Nonna loves, we'll go to the dinosaur museum, see dinosaur bones, and then we'll get back in Nonna's car, drive to your house, and tell Mommy and Daddy about it.
We got down a bit early, so we walked around the Mall for a while, waiting for the dinosaur museum to open. We fed a muffin to the v brave pigeons of D.C. We chased a v bold D.C. squirrel who lives out of the trash cans around the Mall refreshment stand. We looked at the Enid Haupt garden and tried to decide if the fountain inside the Sackler Gallery was a reflection of the outside fountain or another one, inside. We decided that we preferred a fruit bar to popcorn from the little red cart. We watched bees and butterflies in the outside butterfly garden near the dinosaur museum.
And, there, although I'd forgotten it for decades, it was. The Carousel on the Mall. People who hate Washington, D.C. just don't realize how many lovely hidden treasures it has. And one of them is the carousel just outside the Smithsonian Castle on the Mall. I used to spring, and it was "springing" back then, for a ride for Son on that carousel, with its old-fashioned animals and carousel music and bright lights. It was still closed when G/Son spotted it from across the Mall and said, "Nonna, is that a merry-go-round?" We went over to investigate and, there it was, the blue horse with a blue saddle of G/Son's dreams. He told me, "Nonna, I've got to ride that blue horse." I've lived too long to disregard a message from the deep psyche/the Gods like that one.
We waited, and waited, and waited for the nice man to show up and start selling tickets. We had a fruit bar and a bottle of water and we decided that the beautiful blue horse was named Herman. We waited some more. When Nonna suggested that we walk around and come back in a bit, we decided that was a bad idea. When other little kids began to get in line behind us at the ticket stand, we agreed: She doesn't want to ride Herman; she must want to ride the zebra. He doesn't want to ride Herman, he must want to ride the black horse with the lightning strikes on his saddle. She doesn't want to ride Herman; she wants to ride the blue dragon.
We got (hell, yes there are benefits to always needing to be in control) the first two tickets, were the first two on the carousel, got to Herman before anyone else. G/Son was pretty accurate about which horses the other kids wanted to ride; well, he's the witch's grandson. (What's going to happen? What does your intuition tell you?)
And then, we were doing it. Life caught us up in the moment and all the waiting was over. The music was playing, the lights were on, Herman went up and down, G/Son sat in the saddle, absolutely equally divided between the mad joy of Pan and the odd terror of going too fast and having too much fun. Nonna (a late-coming advocate of Pan's side of things) stood near Herman's head and said, "You're doing great. You're having a good time. This is fun! Whee! Go, Herman!" G/Son alternated between calling out, "Go Herman," and yelling "Hold on tight, everybody!"
Too soon, but not a minute too soon, the carousel slowed, and it was over. We gave Herman a hug and a pat on the neck, and said, "Good job, Herman. Thanks!" We got off the carousel and got into our stroller. G/Son told the man operating the carousel, "Thanks for letting me ride the blue horse on your merry-go-round!" and the man just cracked up.
It could be my last time on the carousel. I could die on the way to work tomorrow, driving past the lovely Potomac River, But it might not be. When we left, we called out, "Bye, Herman! See you the next time we come downtown!" I just want to remember every time so that, if that time is the last time, I'll still be able to recollect it, re-live it in memory, enjoy it over and over.
Who knew that I'd get this amazing blessing of being a Nonna? Once, in my wicked youth . . . .
Nah, I can't pretend that it's anything but lagniappe. And it is lagniappe, lagniappe, lagniappe. May it be so for you.
I had dinner with two of my very dearest friends in the whole world last night and I remembered just how liberating it is to sit and talk with the people who really understand you, who provide you with endless reasons to admire them, who will call your name at Samhein when you are gone. Once, in my wicked youth and childhood, I must have done something good.
At one point, we got to talking about: Where would you travel to if money and time were no object? Both E and S are better travelers than I, and they both had lists of more exotic places than I have. With my moon in Taurus, which S kept insisting was no excuse for me, I like to stay home, living my well-ordered life, among my lovely things. But if money were no object, which, I admit, can make travel much more palatable, there are two places that I'd like to go to before I die.
I'd like to be in Sweden, home of my maternal ancestors, on Litha, when the sun shines all day and all night long and people hop in boats to go across the water to Denmark to buy beer, when they go to small cottages in the mosquito-infested woods and entertain their neighbors.
And, I'd like, in deep midst of deepest winter, to see the Aurora Borealis when the dancing sky is at its peak, which apparently happens every 17 years.
Where would you go, if you could go first class, if money and time were no object, if the urge to travel overtook your love of staying home, tending your garden, drinking a cup of tea?
e.e. cummings - Buffalo Bill's Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat Jesus
he was a handsome man and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death?
I admit that I am surprised. I expected Hillary to vote as he voted, in order to show that she's supporting him, in an effort to get him to continue to pay off her campaign debt. Instead, as she so often, although not always, does, she did the right thing.
But she was shrill. She cackled. She was a "ball-buster." Marc Penn! The announcer in her commercials sounded too much like an announcer! She said, "Not as far as I know" the fourth time she was asked if Obama was a Moslem! She's likeable enough! People were "just more comfortable" with him.
Good poetry begins with the lightest touch, a breeze arriving from nowhere, a whispered healing arrival, a word in your ear, a settling into things, then like a hand in the dark it arrests the whole body, steeling you for revelation.
In the silence that follows a great line you can feel Lazarus deep inside even the laziest, most deathly afraid part of you, lift up his hands and walk toward the light.
And gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here and hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks that fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day.
It is my fucking body. If I take a whim to tattoo it, I will. If I take a whim to shave my head, I will. If I take a whim to cut my toenails, I will. If I take a whim to get an abortion, I will. On a whim. Because it is my fucking body and there's just no compromise between you, who apparently believes that my body can become state property for the use of the state's interests, and me, since I believe that, well, that it is my goddess-damned body and not the state's. One could have hoped that someone whose ancestors were considered property might have had an understanding of this point, but, turns out, possessing a penis make that point irrelevant.
You stupid, naive fucktard. The fundies won't vote for you no matter how fast you sell me down the river. And I, I am going to have to get v drunk to make myself vote for you. And you'd better hope that John McCain starts gaining on you, or my checkbook, well, I won't be in a hurry to open it. You stupid, arrogant, male asshole.
I'm a woman, a Witch, a mother, a grandmother, an eco-feminist, a gardener, a reader, a writer, and a priestess of the Great Mother Earth. Hecate appears in the
Homeric Ode to Demeter, which tells of Hades who caught Persophone
"up reluctant on his golden car and bare her away lamenting. . . . But no one, either of the deathless gods or of mortal men, heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit: only tenderhearted Hecate, bright-coiffed, the daughter of Persaeus, heard the girl from her cave . . . ."
