winter solstice.

I am the small spark at midnight,
The gift of hope and growing light.
-from The Pagan Book of Hours

(matins, the moment when night turns to day.)

intoxication.

i've been listening to the same song on repeat for the last few days. it's a little ridiculous, perhaps, but that's actually not something new for me. i remember playing "union of the snake" on repeat as a 45, and for so long it's still the one duran duran song my mom recognizes. ha.

is it obsessive? is it o.c.d.? i think it's just that it captivates me, this new song, this new story and new vocals from a favorite voice. i want to live in it, at least for a little while.

i've always made homes for myself, in books and music and movies. i've always relied on my imagination to give me a place in the world. i've never been able to keep a friend for longer than a handful of years, but a book will always be a companion, or a song.

i was realizing the other night that i never used to think about belonging anywhere, nor did the passage of time have much impact on me. life was going to be long enough. but then came my cancer year, and a few years later, my divorce, and the year everything changed. and now, the years feel numbered, and short. i wonder if i will be able to make a home for myself eventually, or will i always be an outsider, will i always be trying to find that place i belong?

nothing is certain anymore, and i suspect it never was, but i was ignorant of that in my cocoon.

but in continually listening to this song, i realize that whether i am able to find a home someday or not, i cannot be other than i am. i no longer have confidence that life will be long enough, nor that i will ever find satisfaction in it, but regardless that it brings me happiness or not, at least i will be true to myself.

i will be me, whatever the consequence.

sunday poetry i didn't find.

waking up early and too cold to go back to sleep (but then, it was i who left the window open overnight). writing about loss, and the thin hope of regaining. transcribing daydreams. late lunch and early dinner, and all inside a book, on a mountain in the past. a quiet hour. music in my ears bringing a different solitude, and one just as welcome. sneaking vodka into my cola like a teenager, and getting stuck while looking at fabio moon's art (i love gabriel bà's work, but it's fabio's images that always kidnap me). the small rebellion of not repainting my nails.

fragment: picnic in the park.

I looked back at my friend. He was standing at the beginning of the path, the bag from the bakery in one hand, the other stuffed firmly in his coat pocket. He looked cold. But, I reflected, he was still smiling, so he must be okay. I backtracked and slipped my arm through his.

"Come on, let's find a bench."

"You said the rain was stopping."

"It has. See? Look at that puddle, not a sign of a drop hitting it." He dutifully looked where I directed, then back up at the grey sky.

"It doesn't feel like it's stopped."

"That's just because the air is wet." I replied blithely, and tugged on his arm. "C'mon!"

hallow's eve

I am the silent night's heartbeat,
A shadow in a winding-sheet.
-from The Pagan Book of Hours

a number of years ago, i had an idea to make an illuminated book of hours for pagans, matching each of the holidays in the wheel of the year with each of the classic monastic hours. i had visions of a little hand-made book, filled with lush art and simple poems.

i haven't made that yet, but i still have hopes.

in the meantime, the couplet above is the one i wrote for hallows (compline, the day completed).

one of those moments.

i saw the moon tonight. she looked just like the image in my widget there, a narrow shining line in the sky, almost transparent in her thinness.

below her, the sky shaded from gold to blue in streaks. raspberry clouds spilled out across the sky, skeins dropped and curling.

it was a very painterly scene, but she rode above the daubs of color, a silver silent note.

i stood still, too, there in the parking lot, and watched her.

she is a reminder that prayers will find you, that magic is abundant, and that you are not outside of any of it.

she is a reminder that all we have to do is look up.

autumn leaves.

i miss you.

i barely knew anything about you, it's true, but you very quickly became someone important to me.

there's that quote about friends coming in and out of your life, some you know for a day, some for years, some for your whole life, and it's generally held to be very poetic, very true.

i don't like it. i don't want it to be true. i want my friends to be my friends forever. (you might have noticed i'm clingy like that.)

so, i miss you.

and i wonder, when i think about how you left, if it was because i wasn't enough of a friend, or too much of a friend...

but mostly, i hope you're doing well, and staying ahead of the pit.

power outage.

and then there are those nights where the bottom drops out and it's like you stepped into a grey world.

it's impossible to do anything, create anything, be anything but meat and bone and no enlivening spark. (but today is a day i will never have again, and the grey girl wastes it. the grey girl eats away at my time.)

cotton.

i used to say the most bold things to you. you said you needed us, and i believed you. i didn't understand it, but i believed you, and i wrote from my heart because of it. i wrote to help the person i glimpsed in the spaces in-between your words.

i still believe it, and when i think about the strangeness of this experience, and the mystery of it, and the wonder of it, i still feel utterly grateful to the fates for letting me be a part of it.

but you don't need us anymore.

and i am so glad that this is so, i am so glad to think of you and smile, but i don't know what to write anymore, i don't know what to give you every night. and if you don't need my help anymore, then why am i here?

that's rhetorical, of course. unanswerable questions are par for this course; i'll just stumble forward, regardless, less bold but still heartfelt.

hiatus.

the room is dark, and small.

there are no more voices.

there are no more false smiles.

prayers have been said,

the moon

(or the rain,

or the night)

fills the frame of the window.

go to bed.

the day is done with,

the day is closed.

this room is yours.

for a little while,

you belong to you.

it is all a prayer.

it is almost the full moon, and i am wanting to go out under her light and sing to her. tonight the sky is clear and she rides freely through the sky; it will be better to walk out into tonight's darkness and stand barefoot on the cool wet grass rather than wait for tomorrow. i have gone out so little this year, it will be better to act on the moment and say my prayers when they rise up within me, even if it is a day early.

she won't mind.

if there's one thing i've learned about my gods it's that they know me well, and love me still. i am not a steady worshipper, i walk with them daily but haven't stood in a circle since i last had a home of my own. yet, when i reach out to them, they are there, her steady strength and his smiling warmth, just as if i am not as wayward as i am.

and maybe they see me a little more clearly than anyone else, and what to me seems like an absence is nothing of the sort to them. who can say how the gods perceive our lives?

but tonight, the moon is almost full, and she calls to me.

there is no guilt in paganism, and no sin. my gods accept me for who and what i am, how can i do any less than they?

i know i do not have to dance in the moonlight to honor my gods. i know they are within me and without me, transcendent and immanent, regardless the phase of the moon or the turn of the wheel.

it's just more fun that way.

locked out.

it feels so strange not to have sat and chatted with my friends at the blog. it feels even more strange to have an internet connection and yet still not be able to write a good night. it feels incomplete.

my friend, i hope this is just my stupid dial-up internet giving me problems, and not what i secretly fear: that the comment pages have just hit their maximum limit, that we are all locked out as a side-effect of your prolonged absence.

and it doesn't escape my notice that just last night i wrote to you that i would keep writing, regardless. coincidence, i'm sure, but coincidence is often an example of the universe's warped little sense of humor, don't you think?

in any case, good night m-sama, good night from outside, good night and sweet dreams all the same.

fragment: an elf in denny's.

We settled down with our menus, and I noticed he gave his tableware, rolled up in their paper napkin, a measuring glance before turning to the sandwich page.

- from an untitled work in progress

ad astra.

for as long as i can remember, my favorite genres in fiction and film were fantasy and sci-fi. it was inevitable that eventually i would find star trek.

i actually discovered it through the james blish novelizations of the original series, which is a bit embarrassing to admit to anyone who is also a fan of the show. but it was in reading them that i realized i already knew the episodes, from seeing them as a tiny child, and from there, i was drawn in without a struggle.

i would walk through the halls of high school, imagining i was walking through the corridors of the enterprise, and kirk and crew found their way into much of the poetry i wrote for my creative writing course. at night in the summertime, i would sit outside in the dark yard, looking up at the vast territories in which they had their adventures, and every satellite moving like a star across the night sky became the enterprise in orbit.

the only model i ever made was one of the enterprise. i never could get the nacelles to stay glued on.

it continued on into college, where i terrorized my roommate with the (admittedly) overlarge portrait poster of mr. spock. but that poster -- so big, so obnoxiously trek, so orange! -- caught the eye of the other trek fan in the dorm, and we've been friends ever since.

together, she and i sat on the floor in the dorm lounge every week watching star trek: the next generation, then nitpicked the show and replayed the best lines. once a month or so, you could find us in the library, watching a video of star trek iv: the voyage home. we would pantomime our favorite bits. we called ourselves "trek twits" and we were unrepenitent.

i went to cons, i met the actors, i got autographed pictures. i bought the books, taped every episode, bought a few toys, learned a few phrases in klingonese.

over the years after college, my interest waned. deep space nine was good, but veered off-course toward the end of its run, voyager was a favorite even though its technobabble was dense, and the last gasp enterprise seemed far off the mark; i could only watch a few episodes before giving up on the franchise. my figurines ended up getting packed up, my books slowly weeded out and given away.

i wasn't a trekkie anymore.

then this new movie came out, and it looked good. in fact, it looked exciting, and i was dismayed: i was done with star trek, wasn't i? i'm not a trekkie anymore, that's a done deal, that's something from when i was kid, right?

but my college friend threatened to strangle me if i didn't see it before our reunion at the end of the month, so today i went.

the film-makers did such a good job with that movie! they recaptured the energy and adventure of the original series perfectly. i sat in that theatre and was returned to those days when star trek awakened my imagination and wonder for space, when sci-fi was optimistic and brash. i laughed at the in-jokes, and thrilled to the rush of action and adrenaline. i was reunited with the careless joie de vivre that always lived in the best of star trek.

so, maybe i'm still a trekkie.

i won't be pulling out my latex pointy ears from storage anytime soon, but i'll always have a sense of gratitude to gene roddenberry, and to the people who have played so brightly in the worlds he created. they gave us something surprisingly enduring.

star trek will always be both our silly dress-up games from when we were children, and our best hopes for our future selves.

chair-moshing.

i'm so ready for the weekend. this week has been a combination of irritation, tedium, and sheer fakery, and i'm heartily tired with it. i'm not sure i have it in me to smile one more false smile.

normally i wouldn't be in charge of the place, but my boss came down with pneumonia this week, and as i'm the only other employee...

but tomorrow is the last of it, my friday, and a short day, too. once i turn off the lights, count the till, and lock the door, i am done...for two days, anyway. and hopefully, my boss will have made a full recovery by the start of the week.

i'd just veg away the weekend in a recovery of my own, but there's this person i'm meeting on monday...

so my only recourse is to plug in to the media player and turn it up to painful levels. close my eyes, let the music flood through me -- the guitars loud and rasping against my nerves, the singer growly and making me wanting to yell, the drums and bass taking over from my heart and pumping my blood through my body in new rhythms. at first, it only makes my head nod a little, makes my knee wiggle, but the energy builds, you know, it builds to an intolerable level.

time for a moshpit for one.

just like at a concert, i let the energy and the irritation and the anger and the joy bleed off into movement, wild maenad movement, bouncing in the chair, sight obscured by flying hair, hands in the air or hanging on to the wooden seat. this is nothing sexy, this is no choreographed flashdance, this is pure electric reaction to the music and the beat, this is dervish dancing alone and unseen in front of the computer, eyes closed, physicality overpowering the mind that can't shut off.

i have accidentally swallowed my hair, i have strained my neck, i have given myself headaches. i've read the news articles, i know i'm rattling my poor little brain in its box, but i don't care. i don't care, it's oblivion brought on by music and it's cheaper than alcohol and safer than street drugs.

tomorrow i'll smile again, and flatter, and make the ladies giggle while they buy fabric. tomorrow i'll worry, a little, about monday.

tonight, though i've gone nowhere, i flip the bird at them all, and dance.

t.k.o.

fiction infects me, it stays with me long after the book is closed. it always has.

after miss bennett, my thoughts are precise and clever; after earthsea, i sense the secret name behind every creature; after belldandy, i am graceful and step in time to the harmony of a music unheard; after the belljar, i am aware of the rot at my core; after the bard my slang circles around, witty and convoluted and archaic.

it's as if the accent of each sticks to me, sticks to my thoughts and my skill. i dare not write fiction of my own after dickens, he is deadly to my native style, and when i am particularly weak, p.j. wodehousesque acronyms crop up in my paragraphs like toadstool rings.

a writer must read, it is the other half of the practice, but if i am to write i must not read, or risk compromising my work. those books that i love, those stories i return to again and again, i have no willpower to resist them.

my favorite authors win every time.

sometimes i make lists.

favorite authors:

jim butcher
rachel caine
charles de lint
charles dickens
diana gabaldon
karen harper
charlaine harris
ronald hutton
mercedes lackey
ursula k. leguin
sujata massey
anne mccaffery
terry pratchett
laura joh rowland
william shakespeare
s.m. stirling
virginia woolf

i can't think of any more right now...

charged.

i went down to the river today. it was a cold morning, windy and wet, and i was on my usual rainy-day high. there was nowhere i needed to be, i had the entire day to wander if i chose.

i don't know why i headed over to the river, but it was perfect in a drizzly, muzzled way. if there was anyone there it made no difference, i was the only one outside, the only person being touched by the wind and rain.

the river made a little repeating surf sound against the sloping cement dock. shore birds cried once or twice, but mostly hung onto the ribbons of the air rippling out over the water.

there was a coal barge out against the far banks, hardly moving against the current. closer and coming downstream was an empty riverboat, curling sideways in the flow of the river in order to make the turn into the sheltered bay. i watched it, knowing it was possible someone i knew was on it.

i walked down to the river today, crossed through the floodwalls and stood because it was too wet to sit. i thought of nothing save for the sounds and sights. i opened up to the wind pinking my cheeks and dancing up my hair, to the water's soft whispering talk, to the low sounds of the barge coming home after a month out on the river.

snapshots.

the waning moon at sunrise, cappuccinos after work, touching the gods at bedtime, and learning to say good night again.

petting other people's cats, churches on every corner instead of starbucks, wondering what car i'll end up with, trying not to get the accent and still saying "y'all".

being called "miss" by old men and "ma'am" by the rest, reading in the mornings while eating oatmeal, watching favorite old anime in the evenings, letting the teddy bear steal center stage sometimes, flirting with women in backseats, steel-etto nail polish and a waiting jar of purple hair dye.

laughing at work, the lingering sadness that sometimes shows up just before sleep, unremembered dreams, pen and lined paper, the magazine article they want but that i haven't figured out how to write yet.

striding through the little town with a city girl's pace, clomping along like a sore thumb, halfway back in the broom closet, and the co-worker who recognized it.

the promise of independence, the need to not waste time, saving up for the tattoos, wanting to be perfect, being too self-centered to ever be a good friend, loving the adventure of starting over again, deer running across the road and vultures perched on the peak of abandoned houses.

the suitcase i am still living out of.

prayers, and magic.

cold chapters

everyone's life has a plot. i believe this. we may not understand the flow of it until much later, but there's a reason behind every twist.

back when i was a housewife, my hubby and i did weird little things, like not turn on the heat during the winter. it made things uncomfortable sometimes, but it was the pacific northwest. we rarely froze.

it was an odd little practice, but because of it, this week without electricity hasn't been all that bad. the house temperature has never dipped low enough to bother me, and cooking out on the little rv stove has just made me nostalgic for my camping days.

but it's been hard on my folks. they're older, the cold makes their bones hurt. daily tasks suddenly made complicated by the ice stormn and its aftermath would've taxed their strength, maybe to their limits. as it is, eight days of this isn't an adventure for them, and they're considering a strategic retreat to a motel.

i, however, am fine. i seem to be particularly suited to a life without electricity. this is still a vacation, one with a chill in the air, but still, easy enough.

it was a good thing i came back to kentucky when i did. maybe even necessary, as it turns out.

and when the power is finally restored (and i've had a shower, yikes!), and things are back to normal, then i'll resume my job hunt, and my attempt to rebuild my life. that will be soon enough. winter apparently had one last thing to say to me, but soon i'll turn the page. soon i'll start a new chapter.

it will be a spring story, soon enough.

wilderness days

it's uncertainty time again: no job, no place to stay beyond this week. my resources are thin on the ground.

i'm living with this weird mixture of despair and hope. i got myself into this situation, the failures of it are mine; i should have known i couldn't make it. but i also feel like if i can just somehow hang on, things will work out.

i am a pioneer of my own frontier, carving my way through the dark wood toward a new home, thinking longingly of the companionship and warmth of the friends in the world i left behind, hoping i can create a place for myself where i can be in contact with them again, but i can only keep on.

i can only go forward.


keep me in your thoughts and prayers as i go, my friends, and i'll write again from the next outpost (thank goodness for the pony express of the public library).


p.s. redrum, elena told me about your blog being gone. have you decided to say good-bye to blogbelieve? you know i'll miss you --- i consider you one of my close friends here in this made-up world. i always hoped we would become friends in the real one, too. but if you've decided it's time for you to go, all i can do is wish you well, and thank you for all your kindnesses to me. i'm glad i got to know you, and i hope i'll hear from you again sometime. take care of yourself, you're something special.