I am blessed.
I know why I am here. It is a disctinction not many people have. Were you made for a reason? Do you know your purpose?
I was made to hurt.
I’ve known this for a long time, but I have never had words for it. In truth, I still don’t. These statements are simple truths that can not capture the reality of it.
My purpose, is pain.
Knowing why you exist is freedom at its finest. It gives you sanctity, and peace of mind. For me, there can be nothing else.
I have such a capacity for suffering, that it would be foolish not to exercise it. Is a dancer born who does not need to dance? And if the dance is denied, can a dancer be fulfilled?
Must not an artist create or die?
Who can call himself a man who does not lust after a woman. And being denied, does he consider himself a man? Nay, his shame is great enough to hide his face.
All things, all people, have a nature. It is to that nature they are born, and there is no escape from that. Do you know your purpose? Truly?
Can you say, as I can say, that you are fulfilling your destiny every moment of your day? If you can not, then you are a slave to yourself, and a poor servant of the highest. And has not our highest said that no servant may judge another?
We are alike you and I, in that we are meant to serve the highest. Each of us. But in no other way can I be compared to you. If you would like to know the truth, my suffering is ecstasy even as it is torment. The highest has said that there is nothing beyond this world. There is only escape from it and return to it. I shall return again, always to fulfill my purpose in ecstasy. Can you say the same?
(From the writings of a nameless fetish. Servant of Jean-Toma Richeu. 230th quadre of the third prophet)
((more to come… perhaps))
Betwixt & Between is tonight. I’m on the way home so I can take a shower and change clothes and maybe grab a bite to eat before we go. I find myself wondering how long the show is. I’ll know soon enough.
The weather is going to go a little wild this weekend. I could feel it even if people hadn’t been talking about it all day at work. It’s been rainy and cloudy for two days now. Apparently the weatherpeople are forecasting for snow tomorrow. Freezing temperatures all weekend long. I’m okay with that, I plan on staying inside most of the weekend. With any luck, I might manage to get a good portion of a little project that I’m working on done. That would make me extraordinarily happy.
If not, oh well. You do what you can. ;)
I spent a good portion of the day at work today doing some final work on a large import/export process for a new pricing model that we’re implementing for barrier options. It’s much more interesting than it sounds. Honest. It wasn’t my project, but most of the team was being tapped to complete some crazy projects on a crazy deadline. Since I didn’t have a hand in any of the craziness I offered to take any overflow that needed to be done. Within 20 minutes I had a project. Yay me.
Friday, April 11th, 2008:
I’m very tired. I slept alright last night, but I didn’t go to bed until nearly 1. I worked the late shift last night, and of course, this morning I have to be in at 8. Apparently there is a new retail worker term for this. I never heard it until George mentioned it last week. A Clopen. I’m pulling a corporate clopen. Oh joyous me.
So I posted a slew of entries last night. I’ve been meaning to for about a week, but things have just been busy in other ways. I’ve been working a lot, although it doesn’t feel like I’m getting a lot done. I’ve had a viscious toothache for a few days now. It is mostly gone, just a bit tender still.
I’ve been thinking a lot about some changes that I need to make to my life. For once, changes that my Gods have pretty much demanded. I haven’t so much been ordered to do these things as I’ve been informed that they are the next step, and that it’s where I need to go.
“Step out of the shadow into the full light of the sun.”
That’s the big part of it. Gwyddion is very adamant about it. I’m uncertain as to all aspects of what he means there. It could be interpreted so many ways. Of course that’s the fun of it, isn’t it?
I’m taking it as two fold. First, it means that I can’t hide anymore. There is a great comfort in keeping aspects of my life hidden from the world. Not that I truly hide anything, but most people don’t ever really have the opportunity to know me. They can know everything about me, but not really know me. That scares me in a few ways. One, I’m not sure how to change it. I have some ideas but I don’t really know. It would be nice if I had an instruction sheet.
Secondly, and just as scary, what does that mean for my life as a witch? I don’t hide my practice, but I don’t really advertise it either. I am very conscious of the fear and stigma that still surrounds my practice in our culture. Assuming that I’m more open, that people can more easily see who I am, what is the liklihood that I’ll have to deal with peoples fear and prejudice more often than I’ve had to in the past? The odds seem clear, but I suppose I’ll just have to live my life as consciously as I can, and take whatever comes as it comes.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about who and what I am. In the heart of things, who am I? I can’t stand in the sunlight if I don’t know where the sunlight is. More and more, I am drawn to this concept of stillness. Of waiting. Of patience. I’m not sure I like it. I’ve spent the last decade of my life learning how to act directly. It was a lesson I sorely needed. But after all of it, I find that the more important piece of it is something that I was born with. And now I have to struggle to get back to it. Not just to understand it and utilize it, but to make it my base state. My mind yearns towards stillness and quietude. When I am still internally, I can move externally with any speed or grace. There is a precision to action from that balanced point of stillness. I don’t know that it’s the way for everyone, but it’s clearly the way for me.
More another time…
“You are blind.
You have yet to open your eyes, because you are comfortable with them closed. You will not keep that privlege for long. You perceive only what you expect, and you did not expect me.
Do not think that I do not have compassion for you. I do. But your comfort means far less to me than the safety of my family. I am here, and soon you will have to live side by side with us. There have always been a few of us here, living amongst you. If there weren’t I would never be able to be here now. We are less different than you will think, and more different than you truly imagine.
Look for me on the 20th of June. Know me.”
—
It began with an anonymous letter. It was May 5th, 2007. Nobody knew what it meant. Rumor mills tore through the internet and eventually the newspapers. Every few days someone would come up with some new interpretation of what the letter meant, who wrote it, why it was posted, and what was going on.
The experts were mystified. Nobody could even figure out how it had been done, let alone who did it or where they were. The letter had appeared on every government website home page world-wide. It should not have been possible for each of those sites to have been hacked. When the site administrators went to remove it, they couldn’t find it. It was already gone. It left no trace. The news had already picked up on it by then.
It had been translated into over a hundred languages. It meant the same in each of them. Something was going to happen June 20th. The world largely ignored the notice. The nerds were fascinated as nerds always are. The fringe evangelists spoke of the second coming. Most interesting were the obsessives who were sure it was something special. They organized meetups and meetings to discuss ideas. They studied the text of the letter, and assumed that how it had been delivered didn’t matter, only that it had been delivered.
In Chicago, on June 19th, one such group was meeting to discuss what might happen tomorrow. They were from all walks of life. Jessica was a financial planner, Michael an interior designer, Beth and Ross were independently wealthy, something to do with bottled water. Ethan was an student at Columbia, and Sam was a computer programmer.
They were a motley crew, and there were many others that came at times, but these six were there on the 19th. And that is where our story truly begins. At Ethan’s urging they were outside, on the rocky shore of Lake Michigan, enjoying the weather. It was late afternoon and the sun was no longer visible behind the tops of the buildings west of them. The air was warm and the sound of the lake dumping itself upon the stones and sand was ever present. They had arrayed themselves on the large stones in a rough circle.
Each of them had a different idea of what the letter was about, a different idea of what would happen tomorrow. Oddly enough, one of them was correct. But as is always the case, the correct interpretation of the letter did not get spoken aloud. Ethan had too often been trodden for his unusual beliefs. He would not speak them in public. Instead he would noncommittally discuss the well put ideas of the others, all the while gathering their thoughts and interpretations to make more sense of his thoughts.
Beth, her honey-brown hair french braided down the right side of her head, continually pulled her skirt back down over her knees as the wind lifted it, and spoke at length about the terrorist attack that would come tomorrow.
Imagine a world just like ours, one that is taken of the same roots, of the same evils and illnesses. But imagine, that the history that we have forgotten, the history that we have placed behind us as nothing but superstition and myth, were not myth, but a living culture. Allow for a moment, this living culture to breathe in your mind. Let the world hunger for it. Let yourself imagine what the world would be like if the gifts of yesteryear were not actually gone as we believe them to be. What if a mans voice could actually touch the heart of those around them, actually evoke emotions and create a change in them? Perhaps a woman who can wield the forces of nature, who moves with them and can change the weather with her thoughts. Perhaps she can’t control herself during the expression of her darker emotions. Maybe she even blacks out.
Imagine the expression of sex to be the ultimate act of creation, not just the creation of a child, of some new life. Imagine the expression of sex creating something desired by those touching, those warm sliding bodies heated against each other for a common purpose beyond la petite de morte. What could they create together? Who is the child down the street, the blind one who sees better than you do. Who does he turn to when the sunlight is too bright for him. Why would a blind child hide in the darkness? What secrets are his parents hiding from him and the small town they live in?
And what about the president of Magic Inc.? Who is he anyway? How did he start his legendary company? How did he manage to make the world believe that he was for real? What’s going on with his children? The ones he keeps at home behind locked doors. Homeschooled and never seen in public. Why are they so sheltered?
What about the otherkin, those beings who walk among us, but are not truly human? How would we cope with Faery today, if we could figure out who they were and where they were, would we hide from them? Exploit them? Embrace them? What if they knew we were here? What if they knew what we planned? Would the Djinn stand still for the quiet holocaust of the people? Would the stories of the girl in the garden enchant us still, or would they be terrifying reminders of all the things that could befall us?
How does the world cope when a school teacher can read your child’s thoughts to see if he did his or her homework? To realize that his uncle has abused him? Perhaps our world is not ready for these things. Perhaps it is best that magic and myth are left in the past, in the history that we pretend is legend. Perhaps not.
The floor on the el this morning is incredibly sticky. My shoes make that crackly tape sound every time I move my feet. It’s kind of disturbing, as though the train car was trying to absorb me.
I didn’t sleep well last night. It’s not that I feel poorly this morning, or that I overslept a bit (when don’t I?). But I went to bed with all my frustrations hanging over me, and I woke up with them still there. Things feel unsettled again. Not so much things directly affecting me, but affecting the people around me. I’m worried about my friends and family. It seems as though all of us are completely worn to the bone these days, and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of a break in the near future.
Dark moon is coming. I can feel it. Part of me wonders if the waning of the moon is a good part of what I’m feeling. I’ve been noticing more and more how deeply I’m becoming affected by the moons cycles. As we get nearer to the dark moon I seem to be getting more distressed. Is it just me, or am I more aware of a larger pattern that’s affecting all of us?
I get the major feeling that there is some work that needs to be done to help rectify all of this. I don’t know what it is, I’m not certain. I need to meditate on it, but I know something needs to be done. This exhausted state of being we’re all in can’t go on. It has to be changed.
The el is unusually crowded today. Not sure what’s going on there or why it is that way, but it is. There are people crowding in everywhere. A kinda cute boy all the way on the other end of the car. Can’t see him very well now. I barely got a seat.
I hope it’s not a Cubs game or something. Something you should realize about Chicagoans, if you don’t already know it. You’re either a sports fan, or you HATE all the sports teams. If you like it the crowds make you happy. If you are indifferent you hate them for the sole reason that on game days, or even non-game days when people are in the mood, there are sports fans everywhere. They clutter the streets and busses and trains like rodents, scratching at the pavement and gnawing at the precious personal space of non-sports-appreciating residents.
In short, Cubs fans are a plague upon the city. I suspect Sox fans are as well, but the White Sox exist far south of where I live and work, so I don’t have to deal with them. When the Cubs fans are out, they are everywhere, and I must suffer.
It’s going to be one of those afternoons where it feels like I’ve gotten absolutely nothing done, no matter how much I actually manage to accomplish. I want to clean my room when I get home. That will be enough if I manage it. After that just me and my computers and some programming and maybe some posting to the blog. Maybe some work on some other personal projects.
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