Journey's Surreality Check

Shamelessly ganked from wyldwoods_feed.

"The artist and the shaman swim in waters where the madman drowns."

--Robert Moss

Wow. It has been a while, hasn't it?

I just lost my job. Through no fault of my own--I have become steadily more injured with a series of symptoms, the cause of which is presently unknown, but one of the presenting symptoms is tendinitis. It finally got so bad in my elbows that the doctor threw me out of work, and because there had recently been a transition at my place of business and I had officially worked for a different company for about ten days, I was not eligible for short-term disability, FMLA, or pretty much anything else useful.

As scary as this has been . . . I think that it has been a positive thing in my life. It's one thing to know that work is eating your life. It's another thing to really step back and have the objectivity to see, for example, not just how sick it has made me, but the fact that I haven't updated this journal in over a year. And since this journal is for a really core piece of my life, that's got to be considered a bad thing.

At Twilight last year, probably the most important thing that happened is that I talked with my trio of shapeshifters about working less with Coyote and more with Fox. Much to my surprise, Coyote was just fine with this. I have always known that I would have a life transition to Fox at a certain point--probably around the time that I had children. No children yet, but . . . it was time. Maybe it was past time. I swore I was going to stop crippling myself. I think this is a step in the right direction.

Beyond that . . . in the process of losing my job, the question of what I want to be when I grow up has inevitably come up again. I'm still not sure I know, but one of the things I'm looking at is a possibility for when I get well enough is applying to Cherry Hill Seminary to do my Masters in Divinity. What do you do with a Masters in Divinity from a pagan seminary? In my case, nothing that's likely to lead to job opportunities. But it's something I really feel called to do--have for years. So, since I wouldn't be applying for next semester anyway, I'm re-visiting the question of getting involved with the local pagan community. I've always been a little reluctant to do this, not because of the specific community, but because I was very burned by church politics while I was growing up. To me, so many pagan communities are just church politics wearing a funny hat. But I was called to serve when I was twenty-five, and I've been trying to do this on my own, making my solitary connections with other people. I think perhaps it's time to see about broadening my scope.

Nothing else exciting here. Still alive, still kicking, and ready to go on to something new, I think.

I'm finally doing it. I'm going to Twilight Covening. It's an opportunity for more intensive study than Rites of Spring, and I've known for a few years I needed to start going--I feel a little stagnant. And finally, I live close enough I don't have to fly, which means I can justify the cost of a second pagan gathering during the year. Yay!

Well, somebody who doesn't read this LJ asked me to unpack that statement about psychically bleeding, and after I'd done it, it seemed like I might as well put it here, too. Some of this will be repetition from earlier in the journal, but I don't think I can sort it out well enough to do the explanation without it.


While I have a larger sense of Deity(s), I mostly interact with the universe/higher power/world around me through this trio of shapeshifters whose medicine seems to influence and/or describe my life. My two primary powers are Coyote and Raven. Coyote is obvious, vocal, and not shy about biting me on the ankle if he thinks I'm screwing up. Raven . . . a lot of people never see me be Raven. Raven seems to be the power of making and unmaking, and power makes me nervous--especially when it's mine.

Coyote and Raven do not, generally, get along. This is consistent through most stories about them. Antipathy might not be a strong enough word. Coyote typically has my left ankle and Raven's on my right shoulder, so you can imagine what this tug of war can do to the rest of li'l ol' me. I never sat easy in myself until Fox showed up. Fox is not really a guide or a guardian for me--Fox is where I need to center myself. Fox stands between Coyote and Raven and keeps them from making a hash of my life. For me, Fox is usually home and hearth, and the ability to see just far enough ahead and react quickly enough to protect the things that are important to me.

Which is a long way of coming around to . . . I am so not standing in Fox right now. I can't find my center. I have nightmares where I get up and walk around the room feeling threatened and can't wake up, and I don't swear I don't get up out of my body and really walk around the room during them. I have dreams of shapeless things on black wings swooping down and sweeping up the things I love. The finances are in trouble, I can't find a job, and I keep seeing a small spirit lurking around the house which I think is RH's and my potential child, that keeps not finding a home. I hate where we live (the apartment's fine but the neighbors make me very unhappy). I need RH to be more grizzly bear and less teddy bear, sometimes. We can't afford a house unless I get a job. RH has paid a semester of tuition for nothing, because his damned institute of so-called higher learning has nothing for him since December but have his prospectus in hand and not say anything, including whether it needs revisions or he can just start on his dissertation. At a time when I'm worrying about the finances.

I feel like I'm losing my Self just a little dribble at a time. Which is probably why the metaphor comes out as "bleeding." I'm really to the point where, as much as I continue to act, I feel like I'm reduced to prayer. I'm not good at prayer, and not for the reasons responsible spiritual people in my life cite as most people's problem with prayer. A lot of people are very good at asking for what they need, and forget to say thank you to Deity(s) when good things arrive. Me, I'm pretty damn good at thank yous. I'm terrible at asking for help.

Leaving aside the question of who I ask. Which is a sticky question. I have strong enough feelings about Gods and Powers that choosing to pray--especially to make an offering with prayer--feels a lot like jumping off a cliff. Prayer is, historically, an attempt to bargain with the gods. And the hazard of bargaining with the gods is that if they come through with their end of the deal, you don't always know that they think you've promised in return.

I've gone into spiritually charged situations bleeding before. I think I'll be doing it again at Rites this year. I have too many loose ends and too much frustration. It's kind of asking to pop.

I don't talk about Fox, much, but Fox is where I need to stand to keep Coyote and Raven from having a fist-fight inside my head. And I'm not standing there.

I know I've talked about this before, but after a recent conversation and what's been going on behind my eyelids while I'm asleep, I guess I'm going to talk about it again.

Dreams are just dreams. I do not believe in dream interpretation--I'll go as far as admitting it might have relevance for somebody, but not me. With that said, I have dreams that people envy, cringe from, or that just make them look at me like I must be completely mad deep down inside. I tend to dream in science fiction. I'd say I dream in fantasy, too, but my line between fantasy and the real world is not where most people draw it, and in dreams it's even hazier. I've been hiking on mars. I've jumped out of a tower while the seas boiled. I've been partially discorporated and turned into a superhero. I've been an alien computer drone inhabiting a revenant.

I . . . and some of my friends . . . also have what kenilyn and I used to call psycho dreams. They usually come in runs that continue for a period of time, and those of us who are deeply connected tend to have them at the same time. These are the kind of dreams which, without being true dreams, feel significant. They also tend to be violent, psychologically torturous, and often leave me more tired than when I went to sleep. I have been shot, stabbed, and dropped out of a tornado. I have watched people killed violently, and then watched it happen again like someone looped the scene, and been completely unable to interfere. I have watched friends turn into strangers and watched my husband not know me.

True dreams are their own category. Which is funny, because they don't have much in common, except that they're true. Sometimes, they're something that will come true in the future (usually vague enough in specifics to annoy the crap out of me), and sometimes, they're something that is or will be metaphorically true. I have met the Goddess in this type of dream, twice, and the Mother of All Worlds, once. Sometimes, they look a great deal like psychodreams. When they do, blood and plague and darkness define them. I work under the assumption these are true dreams, because all of my jati and most of our nearest and dearest have them.

I don't include my real nightmares under the heading of true dreams. I had one of those last night. Those, for me, are the ones where I get up and walk around the room. When I go to turn the lights on, nothing happens. I don't have to be asleep to have one of these dreams, and when I realize I'm dreaming, I can't necessarily wake up. On those occasions I've looked for the source of the dreams, I have found a malevolence in need of casting out or fighting or such. Oddly, that's not the bit that bothers me most. What bothers me most about these is that I can't swear I haven't actually gotten up out of my body and walked around the room.

Pre-reg is in the mail. I'm jazzed. And hoping for decent weather.

I also have this nagging feeling I should take a baby afghan to Rites this year. Which I suppose means I'd better get off my butt and finish one. But I'm so busy all of a sudden.

Not last night, but the night before, I was reading in bed. RH was already asleep. I felt something jump up on the bed--like a cat. The cats don't sleep in our room, so I decided it myst be some weird way RH had moved in his sleep (we have an air bed, so moving around feels different than it would on a conventional bed). Some time after this, I became aware that something was watching me from just to the side of the bed. I couldn't quite make out what it was.

Now, this apartment was mostly pretty "clean" when we moved into it, because it had been painted and re-carpeted and the floor sealed and all that good stuff. The closets felt a little funny, but it's more of the emotional ickiness factor than anything lurking in them--I need to run around and hit them with my jasmine and peppermint candles, but I haven't quite gotten to it, yet. Also, the woman living in the apartment below us does not have the coping skills to deal with her children, so I didn't discount the possibility of ickiness or something nasty coming up from below. (Again, I want to do a formal ward, and there have been so many things to do involved with the cross-country move that I just haven't gotten to it, since it didn't feel urgent).

So when I put down the book and shut off the light, I had a look at what was watching me. Or tried to. I couldn't get it very clear. I scanned the rest of the house and then did a quick banishment. Now, when I do this sort of thing, I specifically only exclude baneful things--same as when I ward a house. Beneficient and neutral things are not excluded. It means I occasionally get curious visitors, but I also don't shut out things/people that have a need to find me. Sure enough, that-which-was-watching-me didn't go. Instead, it moved over and nested on the bed between me and RH, just around my left hip.

I started to ask it some questions, but I'd get halfway and suddenly realize that was I was asking was irrelevant. And it wasn't saying anything or particularly interacting. And suddenly, it occurred to me that this was a child. I think RH's and my potential child, looking for us.

I was feeling really joyous at the time. Now I'm feeling kind of depressed that if it is our child, there's no little group of cells available to welcome it at the moment.

I know I've sucked at putting in my Rites of Spring notes from the last couple years. Did I ever put in my notes on dowsing?

kenilyn is moving into a one-bedroom apartment across the complex, prior to RogueHistorian's moving in with me sometime in May. She finally has keys to the place, which she hadn't been in when she picked this unit (she'd been in one like it that needed more repair) and I'd only seen through the windows. And she had a little surprise when she got into it.

Last night she commented, that the apartment manager is going to wonder what's up with her when he comes in to calk, that the first things she moved in after getting the keys are wind chimes, a crystal ball, and wildflower seeds. The fact that the whole place smells heavily of sage smoke may raise an eyebrow, too.

So, yeah, I got home from Phoenix last night and she asked if I wanted to go help sage the place. It's a cute little place, but we walked in and the atomosphere just felt a little heavy. She lit two mini smudging sticks and we each started at an end of the place and went to town.

She had mentioned something in the closet, but when she showed it to me, I didn't notice anything. Apparently, that was one of the things I should have noticed. When I went by the door, I was convinced it was an outside door and hit it accordingly. When I found Kendra inside it, I was surprised I'd forgotten it was the closet in question. Her sage was going out, so I went and got the matches to bring them back . . . and walked right by the open closet door.

When I mentioned trying to drive anything in there out, I realized I had it wrong. It wasn't a Thing inside it. "It's a hole," kenilyn said. And, of course, it is. She grew up with one in her bedroom; she'd know if anyone is. Here's where the dowsing comes in. When I took the intensive on dowsing and black spirals (points of sha, rather than points of chi) were described, I finally understood what was up with that bedroom growing up. So I dug for my dowsing notes because I couldn't remember how to disrupt one. Well, you disrupt one with a crystal pointing toward the line, and yet, I don't think that would help with this--though it would probably taint the crystal in a serious and probably permanent fashion.

I finally stood inside it, because it was bugging me and I wanted to have a look. And yeah, I was standing in a black spiral. But it wasn't just a black spiral. The back of the closet opens out somewhere else, like it's a continuing hallway. As I stood there, I could feel a wind that wasn't really wind blowing on my back, tugging at me, trying to blow me out the back of the closet. I stood in it, trying to see down that hallway, and as I did a dragon (best description I've got, sorry) came toward me from within it, trying to either reach me or make it into the closet itself (I'm not sure which).

At this point, I suggested she close the door until we either figured out how to disperse the mess or she was there to keep a lid on it.

After some thought, I have a question that still doesn't have an answer: If the entire flow of that . . . structure . . . is out, why is the dragon trying to get in?

kenilyn and I each independently came to the conclusion that dispersing the hole and/or closing the door may not be the correct thing to do in this instance. The best action may just be to keep whatever's in the closet inside. (And find a way to keep it from eating her Disney memrobelia in storage). We also each, independently, came to the thought of runes as a way to strengthen the ward/seal, so I dug out my notes from Dr. S.'s class on runes and one or both of us may poke at that later.

kenilyn said we're getting too old for this shit. My thought is that, as we get older and more experienced, it just takes more to trip our Weird Shit barometers, and a certain amount of Weird Shit gets wise and stays away from us. Consequently, when we do run into something, it tends to be bigger.

Funny, it says I haven't posted in 20 weeks. That'd be about the time my ex-job went all soul-sucking on me.

Two weeks into the new job, my chaos zone's gone active again. Monday night, I dreamed my ex-co-workers were dressing me down for leaving them in the lurch. Tuesday night I was doing tech support in my sleep (never restful, this). Wednesday I lost an earring and my badge. The badge turned up; the earring didn't. (It was part of a pair a friend made me, and one I wear a lot. I'm very bummed).

Thursday morning, I realized I'd forgotten to wear the coyote earrings I usually wear with the sweater I had on. Shortly afterward, what looked like Coyote (but turned out to be a cardboard box) turned up dead in my path on the freeway. (Better than a Coyote having that little sense of self-preservation). I managed to dodge. I did not manage to dodge the flowerbed that the sign I was avoiding was cleverly nested in in a parking lot, and have the damage to my bumper to prove it. Friday, I did remember the Coyote earrings, but a major system went down at work a number of times, and the folks who'd know how to fix it were out all day. In attempting to fix it anyway, I took down several major services and almost couldn't get a critical server to function again after a reboot.

I can take a hint. I'm trying to make my coyote ears and yip out a laugh. Because I just have to go with it until circumstances change. Oddly, even though it's stressful, it's obscurely comforting. My life has been a spiritual dead zone for the past five months or so.