Honest Scrap Award

This is rather late in coming, but good things are always welcome, and I guess a little shameless plugging of others’ work is fun too.

Heather at Say The Trees Have Ears nominated me for the Honest Scrap Award back in October. I love reading Heather’s blog, and find a lot of inspiration in what she has to say, so I’m sure that you (the few who read this blog!) will too. Thanks again Heather.

Here are the rules:

1. Share 10 honest things about yourself.
2. Present this award to 7 others who have encouraged you or whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design.
3. Let them know of the award and the guidelines.

Here are the seven others (unfortunately, or rather fortunately, Heather nominated many people whose blog’s I follow–I’m going to try not to do any repeats!):

1. Heartshadow at Flamekeeping

2. Star at The Song and the Flame

3. Erin at The Adventures of Ranger Elf

4. Vee at Athenaeum for the Artist

5. Erynn at Searching for Imbas

6. Lupa at Therioshamanism

7. Caelesti at Politics and Polytheism

And here are 10 honest things about myself:

1. Some people are cat people. Others are dog people. I am a bunny person. And not just in the sense that I prefer rabbits as pets to anything else. Technically, in the Chinese zodiac, I was born in the Year of the Tiger, but for the longest time I assumed I was born in the Year of the Rabbit. Due to lunar calendar confusion, I didn’t discover this until a short while ago, and it baffled me. If you know anything about the Chinese zodiac, you know that a Tiger is pretty much the last thing I am, and if you know me, you know that the Rabbit fits my personality very well.

2. I have the worst eyesight of anyone I know.

3. My hot-button topics are: any issues where science and religion meet (or more frequently, collide); public education and young adult empowerment issues; the environment and humanity’s impact/interaction with it; and book crimes (censorship being the most prominent topic, but understated dismissal of genre fiction as “real literature” is another). Touch upon one of these topics, and I can go on for hours.

4. I learned how to be kind and considerate from others from my parents, but mostly from working as a softlines (clothing) associate and cashier at Target. I always say, “thank you” and “hello” and “have a nice day” to associates at any store. I always leave 20% tips. I always hang or fold my clothing when I am finished trying them on, and I always carry them out to a rack or attendant. I always hold the door for people walking in or out. I always try to let people out of a driveway when there is a lot of traffic (when it is safe to do so). Thank you Target shoppers for showing me the lowest depths humanity can come to, and also showing me how to rise above it and be a nice person.

5. My favorite things to bake are cookies and scones.

6. If I decide that I like you, it will take a lot to change that decision. If I decide that I don’t like you, it usually won’t take much to change that decision. There are levels to my friendships: it takes a lot of XP to level up with me. To use a gaming metaphor. Very few have made it to the truly “best friend” level; most are comfortably on the “I enjoy talking with you and am interested in your life but we won’t hang out after school/work/whatever” level. In fact, most of my friendships existed completely within school. Sad, but true, and something I’ve resolved to change since… I’m out of school.

7. If I hadn’t been set on majoring in film, I may have been a fibers/crafts major. If only I had learned to crochet earlier!

8. I was born on the Capricorn/Aquarius cusp. If you know anything about the western zodiac, you may know this makes for some really strange and often wildly opposite motivations/impulses/inclinations.

9. I love space. I love the science of space, the wonder of it, the vastness, loneliness and beauty of it. I love stories set in space, and I sincerely believe it is humanity’s destiny to move out into the stars and discover we are not alone.

10. It’s very difficult for me to see myself in a year, let alone five or ten years. What I’ll be doing, where I’ll be, who I’m with. In fact, it’s been a big blank pretty much since the end of junior year in college.

 

So, feel free to check out my friends’ blogs, and I hope they inspire you as much as they do me. Friends I’ve nominated, feel free to participate or not.

 

Texas Rain

Though the clouds had been hanging overhead all morning, it didn’t start to rain until a low rumble of thunder had sounded like a horn heralding an army. And then the sky unfolded. I sit here listening to it flow, then ebb away again quietly. As time passes, it rushes out more heavily so that the glass of the windows drum like thunder, which I haven’t heard since the first low peal about an hour ago. And then just as swiftly it seems to die again, so that I can hear individual drops falling off the leaves and petals of the bougainvillea outside in the front garden.

I suddenly race outside to drag pillows from the chairs in the front garden. In less than a second I, and the pillows, even though they have only been out for a short time, are soaked through.

This is Texas autumn. When you live in a place where October and November may still mean 100 + degree weather, or stifling humidity from hurricanes and sudden, swift flooding, showers like this one accent the gentle, pleasant weather and seem to say, “See? Texas knows how to take care of its citizens too.” After years of extraordinary drought, rain like this opens the mouth of the earth, and makes it sing.

This year, the latter half of October and November have unbelievably pleasant, gentle, cool and filled with sunshine. Storms, some small and gentle, and some loud and frightening, are bringing the world back into green life after several years’ worth of parched brown summers. In the northeast, autumn is a time of death, decay and oncoming cold. This year’s Texas autumn is a time of abundant green, and blessed relief.

I think when I sat down and began to type, I wanted the rain to inspire me to say something spiritually moving or wise. It hasn’t given me any great insights, except that to listen to it is enough. It is enough that this is where I am right now, listening, sitting, thinking, and letting the rain bring back life to my own parched soul.

 

Samhain

In the lands where the ancient Celts thrived, October was the time of settling cold, final preparations for long winter, and the death of the old year. In the lands where some of their modern descendants eventually came, the leaves are turning gold, red, brown; the breezes are growing stronger and more chill; the sudden storms of summer are giving way to steady rainfall and in extremes, frost appears at the window. It is easy to see how traditions of the dying year can thrive in this environment.

In the lands where my ancestors came, the leaves remain on the trees; the long drought of summer is largely broken by storms, though the heat remains; there is no chance of frost until January. Maybe. My choice to honor this time of year as one of the memory of death and the meditation on the cycle of endings and beginnings may take a bit more effort to embrace, because the natural world around me seems to be alive, even thriving, after the extreme thirsty summer and the blessed new rains.

And yet, I choose to align myself with the patterns of the Celts because while externally my world isn’t preparing for a long sleep or death, internally, my own world is descending into the long dark-half of the year. It is the end of summer, samos.

Scél lemm duíb: (I have news for you:)
dordaid dam, (the stag bells,)
snigid gaim, (winter snows,)
ró-fáith sam. (summer is ended.)

Other pagan voices on Samhain:

Alexei Kondratiev

Beyond The Fields We Know

Gus diZerega

Ali at Meadowsweet Myrrh

 

The Journey of the Monarchs

One of the most wonderful times of year in Texas is October, when the monarch migration is in full swing, and swarms begin floating through the city streets: wandering through traffic, dipping into gardens, gently drifting, replacing clouds in an empty Texas sky over houses and neighborhoods. Every year I’m thrilled by it, and this year is no different.

This afternoon, on a rare, gorgeously perfect day, I stood in my balcony doorway and watched scores of monarch butterflies drift over my house northward. I almost felt like telling them, “You’re going the wrong way!” but I know that it isn’t so. I feebly tried to capture them on my camera, but such is the nature of a terribly slow digital camera-phone and the fleeting, ethereal creatures flying by scores in the sky that I was unable to get more than blurry specks in my pictures.

As they drifted over the roof of my house like a crest of a wave, some fluttered down to my mother’s rosebushes and plants in the backyard garden, and others wandered into the tree in a neighbor’s yard, disappearing so quickly into the landscape of my neighborhood that their presence was lost in a twinkling. Only when they rose up again and showed themselves clearly against a blank sky did they remind the world of their wandering status, their itinerant existence. Only when they had to move on did they distinguish themselves from the natural workings of this small  world. Birds kept flapping around as though irritated, hungry but not hungry enough to forget how poisonous these annual visitors are. My parents’ dogs ignored them, sprawled in the grass and only rousing themselves to bark at passing joggers through the fence or defend the background from squirrel squatters. I’m not sure, but I saw several cars proceeding slowly down the street, so as to watch the procession (or to avoid getting butterfly splatters on their windshield).

As I watched, I could not help thinking of the time when I was living in Philadelphia that a twitterpatted and territorial butterfly kept me company while I intruded on his park bench. He had looked similar to a monarch, but he wasn’t. His presence had also seemed like a sign, or an omen, but I knew it wasn’t. Nonetheless, seeing his wings on the white pages of my book gave me the same shivery, gentle feeling that I get when I pray, or meditate, and feel connected to the inherent divinity of the universe. So now, in the presence of scores of these butterflies, I wondered if I would feel the same shiver down my back, the same deep heartache.

The sunlight glanced off of wings, off of the leaves on the tree, sending confusion through the air as leaves morphed into monarchs, and monarchs faded into leaves. It took about thirty minutes for the entire swarm to move through. A few stragglers floated by later. Some time after that, one or two flew over and then none at all.

 

Speck Post: Anger

Or, what I am currently thinking about.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in the process of trying to find a job, and move out of my parents’ house, where I have been living since I moved here from Philadelphia about a month ago.

I’ve noticed that whenever I came home from college to stay for an extended amount of time, I undergo a peculiar kind of regression. When I come home, I feel like I become my younger self, my high school self, and I feel like I am often treated as such by other members of my family.

I was not a happy high schooler, though I hid it well. I repressed a lot of anger, resentment and hurt, so much so that I have a continued problem with my temper, getting frustrated, bitter, and even hysterical (in my own repressed, silent way). It’s inherited, I know, but that doesn’t help to alleviate it, or even help me to avoid it as I continue to live here. It also doesn’t help that with each day I long more for the day when I can come home and be alone; totally relax, and not have to muster up enough energy to interact happily with my family. It’s not their fault–they like to talk, understand. But a steady stream of interruptions, a steady amount of noise and interference, and a continued call for my socially acceptable mask wears away at my patience, and eventually exposes the simmering temper I try to keep under a lid.

What I am thinking about: what is the source of my anger? Is it a symptom of being a loner and having to continue to act with the people I love and share a home with? Is it a result of not having a place where I can just be completely “off”?

Is it deeper? Is it one of the wellsprings sourcing my depression? If so, what is it that I am so angry with that tiny irritations, like a slow Internet connection, seem like a personal affront or attack from the Universe itself?

 

Stag Moon

One of the things I’m trying to do with my path is made a coherent and meaningful calendar of holidays– holy days. While much my calendar is based on a personal journey, and sort of follows several different stories at once, one of the numerous threads I’d like to incorporate into it is a small observance at the full moon each (more or less) month.

These observations are carefully tied into several other ideas and concerns of mine, but at the core, the lunar holiday schedule is based off of Amergin’s Mystery, as it is sometimes called. I’ve picked and chosen names for each full moon based on the lines in the first part of the poem. Beginning the full moon after Samhain, I hope to implement something a little more substantial than what I currently have right now with the full moon of Wind.

But since the full moon of October 4 recently passed, and since I am trying to start getting the mindset needed (or desired) more available to my brain, I want to ponder what it may hold for the coming month–the moon called Stag.

 

Language of the Flame

Tonight is my Flamekeeping shift. I’m trying to take this time to be more definite in my beliefs, and laying out a solid plan of practice. As I sit and ponder, I struggle with the all too familiar, growing knowledge that often haunts me as a writer: what I say cannot capture what it is I am feeling or understanding. Sometimes, it is very close. Other times, my words utterly fail in the face of pure perceived experiential knowledge.

The more think about my path, and the more I sit and look inside myself and try to define what it is I believe, the more trouble I have with this inability of language to capture what it is I feel about the world, about myself, and about my place in it. These key ingredients to a coherent set of assumptions about the world–spiritual beliefs–should, if anything should be communicated, if only to myself for greater clarity. The closer I seem to come to something, the stiller I become, waiting for it to manifest as a clear thought that I maybe, maybe will finally be able to capture on paper. The closer, the quieter I become, straining hard to hear it sound through my inner ear.

Still closer, and still elusive.

As I focus on the flame tonight for Brighid, I think of how easy it is to see the hotness of the yellow color, to feel the tiny warmth radiating and the pulsing light gently wash on the immediate surroundings. How easy it is to perceive, and understand, without the medium of words. Even my words here, trying to describe what I see, and what I feel, take far more time to process and only then approximate my experience.

An Seanchas Fior is a path based primarily on the power of words to shape our lives, to form patterns to live with. My path therefore appears to be founded on something weak, insubstantial, and ultimately, inconsequential. Words are a product of our imagination, stories the product of words.

But suddenly a last thought shimmers through my head as I prepare to extinguish the flame, and go to bed. What if, my thought whispers, what if it is the other way around?

What if words are a product of stories? This seems logical. After all, our experiences of life came first, and our words came second to try to share them. Thus, my world, based upon words, is actually based upon stories, not words; on events, not things.

What if, that tiny thought says, what if that path, and everything my world stands upon, is a flame–an event based upon the interaction of other things, which are themselves, a result of the interaction of other things. What if words are in fact far more powerful than we often consider them to be: what they fail to capture may not be a thing at all, but an event–insubstantial, but not inconsequential. Their power, or lack thereof, hints at the truth: that what they fail to capture cannot be captured at all.

I am a flame, ready to ignite, ready to be blown out. I am a word on the breath, ready to exhale, ready to fade.