Quick Note: Striking the name of the Waxen One

I reverted the second page of the blog to draft form because while I was reading elsewhere, I noticed another member striking the name of a certain serpent I mention often on that page. I think that makes sense--much as the ancients depicted malevolent forces with smaller carvings to lessen the affect of the image, so should one, in the modern equivalent, strike the name wherever it appears in text. It never occurred to me to do that before, but now I'm thinking it would be good idea. So I intend to go back and edit the page to strike the name or replace it with an epitaph (as is alternatively done in some of the ancient documents I've seen). The page will return soon-- once I've had a chance to make sure all the instances are struck  or minimized in some other way.

Update 6/17/12   2:05 am: The page is back up now. With more material added, no less. :) I continue to compile from previous blogs and old writings I find on my computer. I will be sure to always strike the name in the future.

Trust and Fear

Outside the window of my bedroom there is a highway. Through the tall, south facing windows, I can clearly see a busy on-ramp across from me. Today I have learned a lesson from observing it: I have trust issues.

Now, stay with me…I will get back to that thought in a moment.

I spent today sifting through the blogs of members on the forum, and the blogs linked by those blogs, and so on. I was looking for inspiration (and distraction, truth be told: today was another rough day for my mother, who spent most of the afternoon in pain between wakefulness and sleep). What I wasn’t looking for was fallout from something that happened all the way back in July of 2011.

I won’t repeat the words I read on those blogs here (anyone who knows what that date means can find what I found easily enough), but suffice to say I was worried. In fact, gravely concerned. I have been watching the temple for years but must have been looking the other way when this happened. I don’t recall it at all. I do remember a flood of refugees hitting the general pagan forums, but I never looked to see why they had all left so suddenly. The dozens of other blogs I hunted down and read today (checking the date in question to get a sampling of reactions) did little to ease my concerns.

But what I did next is the reason why I said in my application that I was finally mature enough to take this class: I checked the forum.

Yes. Instead of being my usual self and reacting solely based on the words of others and what they say was said I went and looked to see if I could find out what was said in the first place and hear it straight from the mouth the woman who first breathed it into existence. I was prepared for it to be bad. I was prepared to find something that would sour all of this for me and confirm what I had read elsewhere on the blogs.

But you know what? It wasn’t bad, and I don’t disagree with her. I liked what she had to say. I was comforted by her honesty even in the face of everything people said to her in the aftermath. I respect her declarations and her compassionate response to the criticism of those that challenged them.  

Then there was that insidious voice in the back of my mind…

That still doesn’t change what you really fear. What if it's “wrong”? What if his name is not the one she gives you? What if she says [insert name “I have issues with/is nothing like me”]? Then what will you think of her?

Back to the cars on the on-ramp.

It’s busy on that highway. At all hours of the day and night there is a steady stream of cars. Even more so tonight because it’s Friday and people are headed into the city for happy hour. But despite that, no one on the on-ramp slows down as they approach the bottom. No one. But I would— if I was out there. Because I don’t trust them. I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust chance or fate. I don’t trust luck. I don’t trust. But eventually I do it. Eventually, I merge. 

I asked him tonight. A plastic cup of milk and a bitter chocolate. No candles, no incense. Dripping wet from a shower, in my PJs. I sat there and I challenged him.

What if she’s wrong? What if I’m wrong?

No. What do you need? Aren't you the child who cried under the shrine because she didn't want to be alone anymore? Because she didn't want to be rejected anymore? Because she wanted acceptance and honesty in her relationships with others? Because she didn't want to carry the pain again?

He fixed me. He pulled me out of the darkness and gave me the strength and the courage and the temperament to insist on existing as I was no matter what others said or felt about it. But is his essence the only essence in me? No. Is his voice the only voice I cherish? No—though I do cherish him.

Make no mistake.

 I do empathize with him, and believe strongly in his cause.  I do still thrill a bit when chaos strikes. I do still like to test the mettle of my kings. I do still press my forehead against the glass to watch the storms. I do still get red of heart at times and speak out harshly against injustice and those who perpetuate it and stand spear in hand against the forces of uncreation. I do still do the things others will not do because someone must.

But…

I also write stories and devour knowledge. I also make talismans and hone my skills as an artisan. I also like being with people and belonging to groups. I also teach. I also obsess over death and dying and how it matters to society. I also cast spells. I also like numbers and math and order. I also play video games and watch anime. I also read tarot cards and have been trying to develop a personal deck. I also sing. I also draw. I also see land spirits. I also explore, constantly. I also like liminal spaces and dream worlds and mysteries and true names and…

And…

It goes on.

I am also many things.

I will not question how much he means to me. I will not question how much I have needed him at my side. But when he asks…

Aren’t you the child who cried?

I have to say yes. I am.

Aren’t you the child who pleaded for the thing I could not give?

Yes. I am.

He loved me enough to save me. He loves me enough to let me go... if I need that.

Because that’s the question I’m really asking when I ask “what if she’s wrong?” Because whatever her answer is, I have to trust that she isn’t wrong. Once I get past the trust deal, once I merge my car into this lane running parallel to me, that question doesn’t apply anymore.

What I was really afraid of was the unspoken question underneath it. The question I needed him to answer. 

Will you still love me? 

Will you still need me to? 

I don't know. I don't know...

A Need for Doing

The difference between me and her is that even when I can do nothing, I do something. The mind is an undiscovered country. I have read Frankl and I believe in his words. I cannot control my outer world, but my inner world is always mine. It is moments like this when I wonder what she sees when she closes her eyes. When I wonder if she has only regret and emptiness. Take me tomorrow. I feel good about my life. But she regrets the husband she chose, the career she chose, and sometimes, it feels like she regrets the daughter she has.

 But I am who I am.

The parts of me that need to change will change as they need to, and I resent her attempts to do it for/to me. There is a hidden rift between us. A gulf of fantasy and willing misperception. She does not accept who I am—and since that acceptance is really all I’ve ever wanted from her, we are still exactly where we have been all of my life: smiling for the picture and playing at happy family. I am a chameleon and I can fit into her life and live her paradigm with her…but at what cost? Clearly getting lost in that fantasy doesn’t make it real.

Don’t misunderstand.

I love her. I will always love her. And I forgive her in the same breath as I curse her. But that doesn’t make this moment any easier than the one before it or the one coming after it.

Is it selfish? That I want to go home, that I don’t want to be here anymore? Yes. And that’s why I’ve chosen to stay. But that doesn’t ultimately help matters.

And I don’t know what to ask her for. Or rather, I do but know asking won’t make things better either.

Take your pain medication so I don’t have to watch you make yourself suffer. Don’t criticize me or deal back-handed compliments and then act hurt when called out on them. Don’t speak ill of my father (he’s your husband, but he’s my blood) when in my presence. Don’t ask me to make the impossible happen and don’t get angry with me when I fail to do so. Don’t lie about me to the nurse when I’m sitting right there with you. Stop worrying so much about things that don’t matter.

But I can’t ask for it. For any of it. Because if she gives that up, she has nothing left but to sit and stare at the clouds outside the window and wait for death.

And the longer it takes the worse she is.

So we’re both in this prison.

If I stay and sit with her and look toward that western horizon, tomorrow is gone for me. When I sit at my work and slip into thinking about tomorrow, I am abandoning her, in a way—and she has an uncanny sense for when I’m doing it and never fails to interrupt.

The irony is that I end up sitting at the desk in the living room by myself watching TV and beading, which is exactly what I would probably be doing back at my apartment. But there is a world of difference between doing it because I want to and doing it because I feel like I have no other option. I can’t leave. And that’s the only difference between solitude and isolation.

But there has to be something…remember? I can do nothing about any of this, but I’ll be damned if I sit here without doing something. I fully intend to take action even if it’s an action taken only in my mind. I simply haven’t figured out exactly what.

Yet. 

A Woman's Hand

I didn't ask the question, but what was said struck me. Teacher. Coach. Counselor. Maybe even Kolee-dok-Zumil (for those who get the reference...I think it is a particularly apt description for this name in general). I added the last two myself, but the core of the thought is the same.


I was born on a clap of thunder. I was an outsider, always. Chaos is my natural element--it inundates my personal and professional life. But these things...


Do they make me his or are they the reason he walks with me?Nature or Nurture? The argument proves older than modern psychology.


 My family is mostly atheist. If you ask any of them, DNA is the force which makes the bones of who we are and anything gained beyond that is skin deep. Decorative and ultimately malleable. But in my heart I think on it and wonder...


I resemble my mother. It is a fact made clear to me by my father's frequent confusing of our voices over the phone and the comments of strangers. My mother is proud of it. "We're so alike," she tells others "we even finish each other's sentences."


That is true, to a point. But when I step back and look...when I am honest with myself...we are not the same. There are things from her that are in me, but a life lived differently makes a different woman in me. Teachers changed me. Friends changed me. Faith changed me. Books changed me. I changed me.


So what if He isn't my DNA?


What if he is Kolee-dok-Zumil? Does that matter? Does it change me or merely the way I see myself? Even if he is teacher, friend, faith, and knowledge. Even if he governs my life...does that mean he was the one?


There was a moment in my hour of deepest darkness--years ago-- that I looked up and cried out that the pain was too much. That there was no reason for me to exist. I was sure of it. I was sure that even if I asked for a sign of a higher power, there would be no voice to respond. But I asked, and I was answered. And for a long time I have thought...or told myself... that it was His voice. But is that true or was I misled because His name was the first name to speak to me personally in the days that followed? I think back on the moment now and I remember that it was not the voice alone which so impressed me as to convince me to give existence another chance. It was also the touch. The feeling which frightened me and comforted me all at once. The briefest sensation that couldn't possibly be real and yet, was. The phantom hand on my shoulder.


A woman's hand.


I remember that clearly, but only now do I realize the significance. There was someone else there in that moment. Even if he was the one that came for me... he was not alone. I realize that though I asked the question at the time, I never got an answer:


Who was she?


And now I ask and again, and I ask also: Is this the way for me to find out?


I don't know yet.


But this is a mark in their favor. I am on my way to being convinced.

When He Speaks from Within Me

There is a place in my heart which is full of fury and might. A place where I am strong in myself and sure of my course. It is always an ember smoldering within me, but every now and then it roars to life and fills me with flame. Not angry flame. Not hateful flame, but something else:

Defiant flame. A flame of challenge. Prove it to me. Go ahead. I dare you.

I genuinely don't want you to fail.

I want to see you emerge from those flames as strong as before you entered. I want to see you walk in righteousness and deserving glory--but I do want to see you walk through the flames.

It is not enough to tell me. Show me. Make me believe in you.

I look forward to giving  myself over to you honestly and completely. I look forward to being wrong about you.