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Yesterday saw me wrap up the last six-day work week. I will have a 'normal' five-day work week and a proper weekend at the close of my shift on Friday. Sadly, if we do not get a couple more staff members hired, that reprieve shall be brief and I'll be looking at doing two six-day work weeks back-to-back again.

I am supremely grateful to have this job. I love the work, I love my boss, and I love the clients.

I am not so good at handling trying to get two-days worth of house duties and trying to find time to relax into one day. It was really getting under my skin today. So much so that today was the most tempted I've been to want to have a real beer since I started my health-journey and set aside drinking alcohol for this year to help my nervous system heal and re-regulate itself. I let that temptation slide right on by as I poured the whole Guinness into the slow-cooker to work it's magic with the corned beef, et al. for today's supper.

So it was that I sat with my agitation and restlessness of the day. The old coping mechanism would have been to have a few drinks and numb that feeling. Today, an answer was found in walking. Once the crock-pot was set and doing its thing, I wrangled my daughter and the dog into joining me outside for a beautiful walk about of the neighbourhood. It was a picture perfect early spring day. The sun was warm; the wind held enough of winter's final farewell in it; the newly returned ospreys were spring cleaning their nesting boxes; and once more the flowers were erupting in a joyous display of form and colour.

Laundry was also accomplished. I hung the clothes on the line to dry today. It's only the third time this year. While I don't mind hanging the clothes in winter, they just don't seem to dry the same way as they do in spring, summer, and autumn. It might be that they freeze-dry and need to finish drying properly a bit inside. It's a mystery, and one that I might never solve, as I will continue to use the dryer in the colder months.

Ah well, this, too, shall pass.

Today I woke to rain. Again. It has been a very wet spring so far, and many people are grumbling. I get it. Rain's not so much fun to drive in around here; mainly due to poor road maintenance.

This time of year is long mud-bruise. It's mists hold monsters, threatens with Hoarse-hags and Grey Children. Yet I find and feel its magics. Disrobed trees that teach me their wooden alphabet, flood pools full of augury. A blurring of worlds to walk between.
~Emily Banting

On the other hand, there are morning and evening choral performances by the spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer crucifer); herons move silently through the misty days; and the neighbourhood is a riot of various shades of green, purple, and yellow from early blooming flowers. The river, too, offers different faces during the rain. Some days, it is a quiet whisper of gently rolling waves. Other days, it is a wild frenzy of white-capped waves driving toward the shore at the urging of the wind. I note those faces carefully. At 10 feet (3.05 m) above sea-level, flooding is a concern, even at low-tide during the fiercer storms.

Today at work, I watched the sheets of rain dancing across the asphalt. It was almost mesmerising. It was certainly beautiful. Tonight, the curtains of rain have parted. The sky is a tapestry of grey clouds, slowly moving away from the area. I hope they carry the rain to other spring peepers that may be calling for the clouds.

Today I managed to not only do my laundry but also put it away where it belongs. The laundry hamper stands empty (save for a kitten currently occupying it) as testimony to this domestic miracle.

I am enjoying a celebratory Ceria Grainwave as I type. All victories are being celebrated this year, especially the small ones.

I am celebrating, because this accomplishment has occurred during a time when all my demons, and even some angels, are vomiting up all sorts of things from life at the table where we dine. I might as well have a clean floor and tidy closet.

And... I am at peace with this. Better out than in, after all. Yesterday at work, I think, was a decent catalyst for this. I say this with all sincerity, I love my job and I love what I do, but it was so slow yesterday that it was driving me to resentment because there was nothing to do but stare at the phone praying it would ring just so I had a reason to justify being there. I was a very cranky witch.

Me: I'm really struggling with being here doing nothing. At least at home I have crafting to do.

Co-worker: What kind of crafting do you do?

Me: Witch.

At the four hour mark, I had my break and sat making a list of spell-work ingredients I will be gathering up this week for the new moon. For the remaining three and a half hours, I made hunting dollars. And mocked a younger co-worker, which I don't feel great about, but he started it. "It really gets boring around 15:00, oh, I mean 3:00." My response was, "You're adorable, boy scout. I know what 24-hour time is. And this will really bake your noodle, I can tell time by ship's bells, too."

Yeah, boredom is a bad look on me.

Today is the two week commemoration of the Sun going nova in my world.

I am, now, at peace with this and am curious to see what is going to come in the aftermath of that catalyzing event. The past two weeks, I have been laboring to heed the messages my anger was screaming to me.

Sekhmet of the seven arrow, fearsome and furious, you who arose from Hathor's rage, O bright and blessed one.

And, I have been working on reaffirming to myself that anger is indeed a valid emotion in the face of betrayal, and that it can catalyze change when one is stuck. I feel no shame in feeling angry, even still, though it is cooler now and needs to be tended lest it turn to bitterness. A task easier said than done. I've been doing the work each day. It is easier some days than others, and that, too, is part of the process. Thankfully, there is an endless supply of pomegranate seeds to spit on the ground.

O gracious one averter of plagues, healer of ills, mender of wounds, who hears the prayers of the ailing and the injured...I thank you for your blessings.

A revelation of this whole affair, is that while I have been doing some inner work, it was triage work. It was Band-Aids on Band-Aids to keep my soul from hemorrhaging out of me.

Frozen flight.

No longer. The sun exploded and everything thawed under an incandescent white-hot sky.

I've got work to do, and reason to do it.

~*~

P.S. Mid-to-terminal February was beastly. This is the offspring called March~

Chimera (n.) chi·me·ra /kīˈmirə,kəˈmirə/ (in Greek mythology) a fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. (in my life) the month of march. C

Find something that is hard & try to put it on the page approaching it from a different angle.

fingers empty wooly grasshopper bottle snow

~*~

Guilty fingers, putting pen to page
black tracks that linger on snow white paper.

Defying my mind that flits from thought
to thought to thought, halting only for bouts of brooding
a resting grasshopper perched on an exposed vein of rock,
moving once more when the heart brushes it aside
wrapping the exposed tenderness in a woolly cocoon,
softening blows until no thing can reach it.

Guilty fingers, putting pen to page
black tracks that linger on snow white paper.

Might this be the nudging of my angels,
the vessel of their of their patience empty at last.
"Three days." The words vibrate the silence around me
deep echoing tones of breath blown over the lip of an empty bottle.
"You are allowed three days in the tomb and then you must rise.
This is the Law."

Guilty fingers, putting pen to page
reweaving the shroud into wings.

Beyond seven mountains, beyond seven rivers, I found myself sitting perched atop a gravestone shaking dirt from my hair and spitting pomegranate seeds on the ground to read the pattern of the season within.

Geomancy of the finest sort.

Those earthen Mothers sang songs to me, dirges of the Underworld that bring life back to the land. Those earthen Daughters called me to add my voice to theirs.

I can feel the edge of winter now. It's in the fields which have seen frost-crack and flood that are waking. It's in the stirring of spirits - everywhere a crowding rush pushing through hedge, tramping the lane. The land and magic itself, putting on spring coats. - Geoff Caveld #VOH
~Hookland

Giving into their desire, I let their song fill my chest until it buoyed me upward and my feet found the ground. Dancing amongst the seeds, I left a song in the mud for dead dreams and lost visions I tried once to call into being. They are the bones of the winter wood, some still sound, some now rotted - but all loved, all treasured, if for reasons unknown or unremembered.

Back when tigers smoked tobacco, I had the desire and the eloquence to post parts of my life here; to share in common creative endeavours; and to see what could come to fruition in this vast, new digital landscape.

Then winter hit. Not a real-world winter, but a winter in the soul that slowly froze any sense of self and creativity to near absolute zero. The past years have been a trial of navigating uncertain territory. Hell, my darlings, is not fire and brimstone. It is frozen and dark, sharp of tooth and claw, and will leave you bloodied and frozen in place.

The winter wood is uncertain territory. Flood-eaten paths may deliver you to within the reach of Stay Belows, trap you in mud-mire maze. There is no easy treading. No way through without being reminded that this cold season holds a thousand sharp-toothed mouths.
~Hookland

Fortunately, there have been allies to offer silver-threads of sanity on this journey. In following this shimmering path, light has begun penetrating the coldness and numbness. Spring is about the light of lengthening days as the young sun climbs her northerly path. Warmth, hopefully, shall follow.

When the land is pulled between winter and spring - all exposed wooden bones, fields still shivering at worry of further snow - it creeks, cracks and releases ghosts. Snowbells ring at passing phantoms. Wrens sing of the joys of those spirits who have escaped the soil. #CLNolan
~Hookland.

~*~

Today's allies:

Co-Star: Today you're able to face your past logically and understand it for what it was. These moments let you notice your progress with clarity. You can trust the feeling.

----

The Ultimate Luxury~

Enjoy your weekend. Smell a tree, read a book, think with the cards for yourself, and look at your hands. What do you tinker with?

Keep going.

Camelia Elias

(Distilled from an email I printed out last August. Better late than never.)

It isn't easy. It isn't fast.

1. Reduce sources of mimetic desire.
2. Define the gap. All goals and ambitions boil down to understanding where we are, where we want to be, and the gap between the two.
3. Create an internal feedback loop. Without introspection, there is no learning. Without learning, there is no growth.
4. Own your shit.

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Ashtoreth Eldritch

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Ashtoreth Eldritch

Recent Entries

Light at the end of the tunnel~

Reframing the rain~

You take the good, you take the bad...

On that day, the sun exploded~

Wednesday writing prompt

~There will always be a Witch.

Where once there was a Witch~

A Summer Spell~

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March 2024

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