A Liminal Celebration

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“Samhain was considered to be a moment when the veil between this world and the otherworld was at its thinnest. Old gods had to be placated with gifts and sacrifice, and the trickery of fairies was an even greater risk than usual. This was a liminal moment in the calendar, a time between two worlds, between two phases of the year, when worshippers were about to cross a boundary but hadn’t yet done so. Samhain was a way of marking that ambiguous moment when you didn’t know who you were about to become, or what the future would hold. It was a celebration of limbo.” ~ Katherine May

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Good coffee, not great. Cat’s hangin’ fairly chill. Nice morning, not too cold. I must admit I’m feelin’ old – lately. It’s not an everyday thing, or even every hour. It’s kinda sorta an existential feeling. A mildly profound feeling, like when you sit oceanside on a warm Florida Keys night, seabird chattering in the dark, Full Moon fixin’ to break the horizon over the ocean, any minute. Just sit. Just sit there and contemplate the immensity before you. Go ahead, take another toke for Mr. Marley. The tide is coming in with the Moon. Doesn’t this sort of stuff leave you in wonder? Wow, I’d best shake it all off and get ready for work. Three workdays in a row, coming right up. I am so friggin tired! Life tired. News tired. Tired of trauma, which if viewed from the requisite head space is just Life; get used to it, buddy. Suck it up, buttercup. My major seductive vector this morning is cynicism – and oh woe is me romantic pining. Ooooo, nice phrase. I say seductive because I could so easily go there; all of the above. Say, ya know, Samhain’s coming is only a few days away. The Veil is being pulled back as we speak. I can feel the Ancestors mingling just Beyond. The one that’s been whispering to me lately is the one (I wish I knew her name) who was hung in Salem, Massachusetts, back in 1692, give or take. Yeh, I have a long ago Ancestor who was hung as a witch back East in Salem. My guts tell me she likely was a witch. I’ll go with that. K, off to work . . .

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

Distraction is the Culprit

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“There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry,’ said Dumbledore’s voice. ‘On the contrary… the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.” ~ J. K. Rowling

“A lot of what we experience as strength comes from knowing what to do with weakness.” ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

“Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods.” ~ Peter Levine

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Frigid Sunday morning. Cat is freshly fed. My birthday revelation was that in my agoraphobic travels yesterday morning I daftly chose to not slip into Taos to pick up some ground coffee. What was I thinking?! So here I was before sunrise scraping car windows for a quick trip to the corner gas station (2 miles round trip) for a cup of coffee.

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The previous paragraph was written on Sunday. I obviously did not finish. Let that be a lesson to me, right? A lesson in what? Distraction is the culprit – and lack of focus. I’ll blame it on the Full Moon, or the multiple planets going Stationary Direct. I could simmer up a 1000 excuses, but I have no explanation. Maybe I just have to simmer down instead. Yeh, likely so. Now . . . I’ve been feeling old and tired of life these days. There’s a lady friend I know who would likely admonish me by telling me I’m not old. Well, my dear . . . ummmm, maybe not. Maybe. Wow, I’m having a deja vu. That’s been happening a lot lately. Magic. Alas, I must disappear from this page for now. Workday, don’tcha know. Ciao.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

Winter is the Crucible

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“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.” ~ Katherine May

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“But a funny thing happens to you in a depression. If you don’t hurt yourself, you can gain tremendous insights and empathy, find inner strengths and hidden talents. It’s a mysterious process, but if you can hold on, you become a wiser person.” ~ Art Buchwald

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Monday, Monday. Quiet and dark, right on the edge of cold. They say it’s coming, next three days, the hard freeze. With the ground getting the deep chill like this, it’s possible the first snow will be a doozy. See, it’s actually 31º F as we speak. So to speak. Note to the writer here: just because you have a voice does not mean you are speaking when you are writing. Just sayin’. At the moment the cat is asleep in her bed, after I so unceremoniously boosted her from my lap. She’s been such a lap cat in her old age. What was poised naps has become full melted cheese upon the Bohemian lap blanket. These cats, they train us to feel guilty about removing them from their repose. It’s likely best to not know the full extent of our training by these beasts. They are good at what they do. So – Monday morning, after two days off. It took the whole friggin time to get this body mind and soul calmed down, and even then the task is incomplete. When the adrenals have been cranked up for years, the process of cleansing them, of palliating them, is not a short term affair. But there’s no need for perfection, because the true goal is to calm them down enough to allow yourself to make the PTSD useful. It can be done, though there is no way of knowing just how this will manifest. But ya need your rationality, first and foremost. When trauma induced thought and behaviour occur, the rational mind notes, ‘this is irrational behaviour’, and yer heart is like all no shit, Sherlock. That’s what I’m talking about. Onward. Gotta work today, then off again tomorrow. Tally, ho.

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Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

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The Clarity-Honing Nature of Autumn

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“Writing is not a matter of time, but a matter or of space. If you don’t keep space in your head for writing, you won’t write even if you have the time.” ~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

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“I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong…The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

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Since my last post Autumn marched right in and set up camp. Now, there are some leaves blowing. There are large patches of yellow on the high slopes, where aspens are turning as they will. And snowcaps. There is substancial snow up yonder. Honestly, it thrills me. Very much so. There’s been rain down here. Frost. And twilight color-shows; world-class stuff. The seasons have turned and I feel vindicated, in a way. See, I can tolerate Summer’s heat, but this Autumnal glory is what I wait for, knowing it to be a clarity-honing time of the year. Wow. I’m right on the edge of becoming philosophical; on a Sunday morning no less. Perhaps another toke? Yeh, maybe. Philosophy can wait. For now. Today I remove the blinders and bit from my thoughts. If they simply find a nice place for a nap, or, perhaps, find a solution for the mind/body problems as it relates to ennui – it’s all good. There’s a riddle for ya. Don’t ask me what it means, k? Thanks, yer a pal. And that aphorism I dangled so banally? That is possibly the biggest riddle of all. I mean, how can I do that to you’ll? After all you’ve done for me? It just don’t seem right, nohow. And on that note I’m a gonna climb aboard for the Magical Mystery Tour. All aboard!!

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.