But it fits; these past couple of weeks have seen me working on my Book of Shadows again. Almost every pagan has one, a book they've written themselves based on their own practices of modern witchcraft, filled with their rituals and spells and personal lore. It's been years since I've thought about writing my own, but I am suddenly drawn to that subject once again.

( Read more... )

Some friends and I have been writing Halloween stories for each other. I'm actually pretty pleased with how mine turned out, so I thought I'd share it here with all of you! It doesn't really have a title, so just dive right on in!

Here ya go:

The last road in town ran out beyond the swept sidewalks of 1950s-era tract housing, out beyond hollow brick warehouses and the craggy limbs of feral orchards, out to the rain-swollen river, where it paced alongside the muddy twists and turns. As it went, the paving cracked and crumbled, gave way to gravel, and then at last, rutted dirt at the very base of a lonely hill.

( Follow the road... )

Three years ago today I ripped open a little cardboard package that had arrived while I was at work, took out the cd that was inside, and put it in my cd player to play. I sat myself down next to it, there at my dining room table, and that was it. That was the last thing I did before I heard The Black Parade for the first time.

I've been listening to it again these days. The week after I heard those songs for the first time, my dad (who had been diagnosed with cancer over the summer) took a turn for the worse. I spent the next two weekends taking the train down to Portland, seeing uncles I hadn't seen for years, reuniting with all my sisters, and sitting by his bedside, holding his hand for silent hours.

And when I was alone, that cd was playing in my ears. That music gave me a distraction from my pain and a context for my grief, and when I received a call on the third weekend that he was gone, singing along with that music in the empty laundry room was what cracked my shock and allowed me to feel, allowed to me to scream, and cry.

It was all I listened to for the next six months. It became the soundtrack of that first year, and became entwined with not only the sorrow of that year, but also with the joy and growth of it, as well. Those songs are a part of me, now.

I've been listening to The Black Parade again. This month started with old grief and memories made fresh by the season coming 'round again. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to function...and then I remembered how I got through it the first time.

And it still works.

I don't know what the next cd is going to be like. The bits I've heard so far are bright and bouncy and fun. I think I'm going to like it, but it won't have the impact of The Black Parade, nor do I expect it to. That cd came out at just the right time, just when I needed it, and the music in it was layered enough, and big enough, for me to find a place for myself in it.

It is unique.

So: thank you, My Chemical Romance. You did good.

I haven't been updating much, and I'm not exactly certain why...but perhaps it's because I feel that my life is inherently un-postworthy these days. I have a steady job; it is occasionally awful and occasionally fun. I watch movies but I do not review them at my movie LJ. I think about my stories but I rarely write them. I am constantly trying to stumble back into a regular religious practice.

Sometimes I'm happy, sometimes I'm very sad, sometimes I'm reliving days of adolescent angst.

I've been thinking of this time in Kentucky as a necessary intermission; here is where I can shore up my shaky financial situation (the inevitable result of divorce + struggle + road trip), fill in the gaps in my "I am a Grown-Up" tool-kit, and prepare for the next adventure (because MCR will tour again and now I have a taste for the road). But that's dull work, and the effort to transform it into something readable is usually siphoned off by Twittering inanities.

However, there are still small adventures to be had.

( Read more... )

I just realized the other day that I've been so focussed on acquiring the CDs on my wishlist, I haven't really been actively exploring any new music.

Help me out: What are you listening to? Any recommendations?

Well, maybe just fresh color on the locks (because my hair is as untrammelled as usual). As I said to my adorable stylist, ( life is too short to have just one color on your head. )

Last weekend I was shanghaied into being a fashion photog. See, I know this bear, and normally he's rather polite, but when he gets a notion in his fuzzy head, there's just no stopping him.

So I spent the afternoon hours going back and forth between his dressing room and wherever he decided the next location shoot was going to be. Figuring out how to do a winter shoot when the temps are in the low 80's was quite a feat, I tell you, but he brooks no delays.

If you'd like to take peek at the results of all my labor (and get him off my back), click on over to his LJ, here.

Seriously, he keeps glaring at me pointedly. Please look!

EDIT: Holy crap I forgot to "cosmetically enhance" his nose! Do me a favor and don't mention it okay? I'll never hear the end of it if he knows I posted pics of him with his nose in its natural condition. EEP.

I was only reminded of the Perseid meteor shower earlier in the day yesterday -- normally I've practically got those kinds of things written in on my calendar -- but it was in time enough for me to get excited to sit outside much later than I ought to on a work night, time enough for me to realize how much I've craved stargazing. Circumstances have kept me from going out at night these last couple of months, and I miss my night sky.

And then the clouds rolled in.

Thanks, weather.

So I goofed around with graphics filters on some old drawings, instead. ( My favorite results )

By the time I went to bed, the sky had cleared (Naturally. Once, it clouded up a half-hour before a lunar eclipse, and cleared again about a half-hour later. That was particularly mean-spirited, don't you think?).

So I sat on my bedroom floor and watched the night, hanging halfway out the window, Rapunzel-like. The waning moon was in the sky before me, a fog was rising up from the field across the lawn, and all the night animals were making their night animal sounds. I spotted Cassiopeia and Aquila. I did not see a single shooting star.

Oh well. It was a lovely, magical night all the same.

I went back to Seattle, following an inner call that pulled at me with urgency: don't waste anymore time. I grabbed my things and eagerly hit the road again. And being in the city was exciting at first, but it turned into a very dark winter for me there. After only two months, I gave up and made a retreat. ( But the Wheel always turns... )

My stay with the folks has come to an end, and it's time to hit the road again. I'm heading back to Seattle this week, to make a new start and see if I can't figure out this being a grown-up shtick.

For awhile, I will be (horrors of horrors) without an Internet connection, so I'm covering the furniture with cloth and securing the shutters on the LiveJournal. Hopefully, it will be just a short-term hiatus.

In the meantime, if you're curious to know what's going on with me, I've recently been lured over to Twitter, and will no doubt be posting random updates from my phone as the nonsense occurs to me.
Click here for my Twitter self, greenilocks.

Enjoy the winter holidays!

Sincerely,
Silverhawthorn

It was perfect. I had scouted out the area earlier in the day, and had decided that the back corner of the field was the best spot for me to have my sabbat observance. The ground had a slope that was unnoticeable until you were at the bottom of it. Standing there, tucked in against the woods curving behind me and around me to my right, the land rising away from me protectively, I knew this was my spot. It was so cozy. ( More... )

So, anyone who knows me will eventually discover I am an Anglophile. I always thought it went back to being a Durannie in high school, but no. Today my mom told me a story, about the first time we ever ate at a fish-n-chips place.

I was around 6 or 7 years old. Apparently, though I don't recall this, I was already a declared Anglophile, having announced some years earlier that I was going to go to London someday. (I did, btw, so yay for precognition in pre-schoolers!) Sitting at the table that day in the eatery, I asked about a bottle of dark liquid on the table. When told that it was malt vinegar, I -- somehow already knowing that this was used on fish-n-chips -- eagerly picked it up and covered my food with it.

And enjoyed it. And used it every time we went back.

What kind of first-grader willingly uses malt vinegar on their fish and french fries??

The kind that later learned to bake scones so she could sit down at the dining room every afternoon the summer between jr. high and high school to have tea.

*facepalm*

Back along on the other side of the Wheel of the Year, I believe I said that this year was likely to be one without any formal rituals, and so it has been. I haven't cast a circle once this year. That's not to say that it hasn't been spiritual, however. It's always interesting what I learn about myself as a pagan when I stop doing what it is pagans do. ( Read more... )

My rock concert virginity, that is! I was poking around in some old files today and found the concert memoir I wrote after going to my first rock concert, back in 2006. For the sake of being thorough (and for your general amusement!), I post it here.

Edited to add this warning: Caveat! Like all newbie concert memoirs, this is long and excessively detailed!

( Rock, er, read on! )

Several unrelated factors have recently combined to remind me that art is a skill, not a talent, and therefore, ( lift that pencil, tote that brush! )

Usually, my Lammas is bread and trying to balance the introspection of my Candlemas traditions with positive action in the community. Not this year. This year, I was in my head, I was wrapped up in thoughts from morning to night, and the grain god I know as Hlaf-weard was in a fluffy marshmallow yeast roll at the restaurant, and nowhere else. ( I explain. )

Back when I played regularly in the SCA, my friends and I had a little thing we would do as a joke: we would raise our hands in front of us as if holding a sheet of paper, and say "Here's a map of where we're not going." (i.e., "Don't go there, dude, I don't want to hear anymore about it.") Of course, after awhile we didn't even have to say anything, just raise our hands. Message sent, and everyone would laugh. I've been thinking about that recently, although in a different context.

( Here's a map... )

When I think back over these past weeks, obviously my strongest memory is of being in the crowd in front of the stage, watching those bands play their hearts out and making me feel so very alive. But hard on the heels of that memory is the memory of all the people who supported me in this journey, who kept me safe and made the trip not just about the music but about the immense well of generosity and kindness that exists out there.

( Therefore, from every corner of my heart, I would like to thank: )

Oh my, but it has been a long time since I made a post, hasn't it? To be precise, it has been since St. Louis, Columbus, Philadelphia and Madison Sq. Garden since I made a post! ( This is gonna take awhile. )