Champions Of The NFC East...

Hail to the Redskins!
Hail Victory!
Braves on the Warpath!
Fight for old D.C.!

Run or pass and score,
we want a lot more!
Beat 'em, Swamp 'em, Touchdown!
Let the points soar!
Fight on
Fight on
'Til you have won
Sons of Wash-ing-ton.
Rah!, Rah!, Rah!

Hail to the Redskins!
Hail Victory!
Braves on the Warpath!
Fight for old D.C.!

Temperature...

Without motion
there is no Heat
In our sudden stillness
we are freezing to death
But our fire scorched
and consumed
so what choice
did we have?

There is no heat
without Motion
But we only ever went around
in circles
It was inevitable
and obvious
that someday the fuel
would run out

Fire without fuel
Cold ash of promises lost
Deep winter of resentment blows
Howls echoing through our empty chests
Where blood once pumped rhythmic hot
Now silent ice blue

Every Push needs a Pull
Every Give a Take
The dance from White
to Black
to White again
is all we are
a trillion trillion trillion times over
All Creation writ large in infinite complexity
so who are We to pretend to argue
with Nature's Orders?

I am No One
I sit in silent stillness
numbed now in the Cold
I only ever wanted One Thing
And I nearly burned the whole world to get it
Before I realized the obvious truth
that all my actions
my motions
my Heat
had only pushed it further and farther from my reach

So now I am No One
Sitting in silent stillness
comforted in the Cold
knowing that there is nothing I can do
That if I am ever going to have the world I want
it is out of my hands
it is beyond my Will
and all I can do is simply wait
in the Cold
for Her
to come to me


And Hope
it wasn't only my Heat
that drew Her here

Discontent...

That was, beyond all doubt, the absolute worst christmas I have ever experienced in my entire life.  I never, ever want to go through anything like that, ever again.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Ironically, however, that might've been the best Boxing Day I've ever had.  You just never know what to expect.

So, it's probably best not to expect anything at all.

'Tis The Night Before...

It snowed today.

Our first snowfall of the year.  On Christmas Eve.  A good omen. 

A very good omen.  A White Christmas.

It's so beautiful.  It feels magickal.  This night always does, but tonight is even more so than usual.  It's almost dreamlike; like something out of a story book.

Merry Christmas, everyone.  And a Good Yule.

"May all your sacrifices and offerings this joyous season continue to hold the gods in their eternal slumber."

Diaspora...

We're going to spend tonight with my family.  My little brother and his girlfriend are in town, staying with my dad and stepmom, and so we're going over there in an hour or so to exchange presents, and have an early xmas dinner.

I'm looking forward to seeing my little brother, again.  I enjoyed spending the day with him at Thanksgiving, and regretted that I didn't get to see him more.  But seeing him twice in one month brings to the fore how much I miss my baby brother.  I've only seen him once in the last two years.  This is the second year in a row that I have to send his gifts to him; that I won't get to see his face when he opens them.

It'll feel really good to be with my family again tonight.  I'm really looking forward to it, and have been all week.  But I can't help but look forward even more to a time when all of us will be together again.

And I'm worried that it might not happen again.

What if the last time was really the last time?  And I didn't even know it.  I don't even remember it now.

It all just goes by so quickly.

Don't let it get away.


Merry Xmas, and Good Yule.

I'll Stand Before The Lord Of Song...

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not someone who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a lonely Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
Remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

          -"Hallelujah"
            Leonard Cohen, Various Positions

Yule...

Tonight is Yule.  The Winter Solstice.  The darkest, coldest night of the year.

Traditionally, the entire clan would gather together in one place tonight.  And the biggest log that could be found would be placed in the hearth to heat the entire building, and keep everyone warm and safe from the dark, cold night outside; to ward off the Wild Hunt.  This was the Yule Log, and it needed to burn all night.  And someone needed to stay up all night to tend the fire, and make sure it didn't go out (or burn the place down).

I don't have a hearth, or even a fireplace.  So, I light a candle.  But I still stay up all night, and make sure the flame doesn't go out (or burn the place down).  Tonight is the night I usually wrap all my presents; everyone else is asleep, and it's a great way to kill a few hours and keep myself awake.  I listen to xmas music, and I put on a fireplace dvd, and I drink a lot of coffee.  Sometimes, when I'm finished with my wrapping, I'll go for a walk around town in the middle of the night, and look at all the lights.

I'll perform ceremonies at sundown, at midnight, and at sunrise tomorrow.  The same words and gestures and sacrifices every year.  Honoring the gods, and the ancestors, and the family.  Sincerely thanking the Sun for rising in the morning, knowing that it means we've lived through another night, another Winter, another year.

I Love this night more than any other.

Good Yule to all.  May you wake tomorrow, warm, and Loved.



        Sunna sinks down    into the dark sea;
        wolf and wind howl    outside the walls.
        Now Holda shakes    out her snowy bed;
        now are life-fires    hid in yew-night.
        From Thrymheim Skadhi,    shadow-black, skis.
        Odhinn’s gray steed    leads ghosts on the wind.
        Trolls fare from cliff-halls,    harry from rock-caves;
        the etins arising    from ice and stone.
        Ye who would watch    this night, ward ye well!

        Sunna sinks down    into the dark sea.
        But Gullinbursti    gleams bright in the hall.
        Well are we warded    who watch this night;
        by boar tusk’s thrusting,    by Thor’s strength.
        In this high hall    stand all holy kin,
        from sib-roots to branches    runs hidden fire.
        Thor’s stark hammer    this hall has hallowed,
        Alfs and idises    the dark and light kin,
        Fro Ing and Freyja    share now frith and might!

        We kindle the yew-flame to year’s Yule-night!
       
        Now feast in highest    and hallowed frith.
        Our joy to Gods    we give this night,
        that while worlds sleep    they wax in main
        from midnight growing    ever greater towards dawn.


        *     *    *        *     *    *        *     *    *

        Now Odhinn rides    in the Wild Hunt,
        leading the ghosts,    gray, down the wind.
        Our oldest hold    in howe-mounds high,
        from Bairn-Stock’s roots    rise kin this night.
        Well do we know    the Wanderer old;
        eldest, the father    of Ase and man,
        wisest of kin        Odhinn, we hail thee!

        Wisdom rising    from Well’s deep roots,
        Runes of might    roar in the mead,
        up from the Bairn-Stock’s    eldest roots.
        Our kin who have fared    forth, come to us!
        We drink with you, hallowing    draught to the Gods!

        Hail to Odhinn    wisdom’s drighten!
        Sig in our strifes    send this year.

        Hail to Thor        Thurses’ Bane!
        In your might     and main we trust.

        Hail Fro Ing        frith’s mighty God!
        High be the     harvest this year!

        Hail to Njordhr    with holy drink!
        Winds blow well    to us this year!

        Hail to the alfs    all ringed around us,
            the fathers of our folk.

        Hail the Disir        all ringed around us,
            the mothers of our might.

        Hail our kin        in hidden lands.
            Hail the Yule-wights high!


        *     *    *        *     *    *        *     *    *

        Our Yule-glow    that gleamed all night,
            now kindles the keen fire.
        Sunna’s flame    flares bright again,
            upon the heavens’ hearth.

        Sunna’s fire    flares bright again,
            the darkest night is done,
            the holy gifts are given.

        Hail the Gods and the Goddesses!  Hail the Yule morn!

Mother's Night...

Tonight is Mother's Night.  The first night of Yule.

As I ranted yesterday, I celebrate the secular, American holiday of Xmas, rather than the Christian holiday of Christmas.  However, I do also celebrate a religious or spiritual version of the Winter holiday, as well.

For the last twelve years, I have celebrated the pre-Christian Winter holy days of Yule, which begin tonight at sundown, and last until sunrise on January 1st.

As a child, Christmas never felt like just the 24th and 25th to me.  I always felt like it lasted much longer than that.  It felt like it started sometime the week before (both of my parents' birthdays are the week before Christmas, which probably had a little something to do with that - more on that later), and it felt like it ended with New Year's.  It felt like a multi-day event, with the 24th and 25th as the central climax of the whole thing.  It always felt that way, as far back as I can remember, and I celebrated it that way.  I could feel the magick of the holiday begin sometime the week before, and I would always make my parents keep the lights up and lit until New Year's; it didn't feel right to turn them off on the 26th.  That just felt like too abrupt and sudden of an ending to everything.  It didn't feel right.

As a young adult, as part of my exploration of various magickal disciplines, I discovered the pre-Christian pagan traditions of the Northern European cultures.  The gods of the Vikings - Odin, Loki, and Thor, among many others.  I found myself drawn to these traditions; something about them resonated with me, and I began to adopt them as the first religion I had ever chosen to practice.  And no part of this tradition resonated with me more than their Winter holy days of Yule.

I spent many years working within this tradition as one of my primary spiritual practices.  Over the years, I've let go of all of it, as I've grown and moved on.  All except for Yule.  As with Taoism, when I discovered Yule, I realized that I had been celebrating it my entire life, and simply never knew it.  Instantly, it felt right to me.  No matter what other spiritual paths may come and go in my life, I know that I will always celebrate Yule.

In the pagan calendar, Yule is a very magickal time.  In fact, it is a period out of time.  The darkest, coldest time of the year.  A time to gather the entire family together under one roof, and keep safe and warm by a huge fire, to hold back the cold and the dark.  They believed that time stopped at sundown tonight, and started again on sunrise of January 1st (though they didn't call it "January," obviously).  In the interim, was Yule, when the material world and the spiritual world are one and the same, and the spirits of our ancestors and family who have passed on return to us, and we are free to enter their world, as well.  Other spirits, malevolent spirits, are also free to roam our world during this time-out-of-time.  The height of Winter was the most deadly time for the ancient pagans of the North, and they heard frost-giants and dreadful monsters in the howling winds of snowstorms.  Someone who ventured out of the hall, away from the group, away from the hearth-fire, may not come back.  Did they succumb to the cold and the dark and the storms?  Or was it something else?

Most of our "Christmas" traditions come from the celebration of Yule.  When the Christians converted the Northern Europeans, they couldn't get them to stop celebrating Yule, even under penalty of death.  And so instead, they moved the celebration of the birth of their god Jesus from mid- to late-Autumn, up to December 25th - right in the middle of Yule.  And they adopted the traditional Yuletide celebrations into the celebration of their Mass of Christ.

The christmas tree is a pagan tradition.  The yule log.  The wreath.  Mistletoe.  The New Year beginning one week after December 25th.  Leaving gifts in socks that are drying by the fire.  All originally pagan traditions.  Yule, from December 20th through December 31st, is where we get the idea of the "12 days of christmas."

All the parts of xmas that I liked the most - all the non-Jesus parts - turned out to be from this pre-cursor holiday of Yule.  And it covers the entire period of the calendar, from beginning to end, that always felt like the "real" Christmas holiday to me.  It leads up to the climax of the season with Xmas right in the middle, and then winds down to Twelfth Night (New Year's) at the end.  It is perfectly balanced.

Christmas was, by far, my mother's favorite holiday.  And I get my sincere love and appreciation of this season from her.  She was born on December 20th, which turns out to be the first night of Yule, and is traditionally celebrated as "Mother's Night."  It is the night to celebrate all the Mothers in our life, both living and dead, and all the good they've done us, and all they've sacrificed in order for us to be here, right now.

My mother died on December 31st.  She took her own life, in part, to spare us, her family, from having to suffer through her slow and inevitable decline into madness and agonizing death.  She sacrificed herself for us.  She was born on the first night of Yule, Mother's Night, and she died on the last night of Yule, Twelfth Night, the very year that I first came to know about this tradition.  I never got to tell her about Yule, or Mother's Night.

Yule, her favorite holiday, though she never knew it, is a time when our homes are open to the spirits of all those dead that we have loved.  And so every December 20th, I invite her into my home, and I pour her a drink, and I thank her for the life she gave me.

It just feels right.

It always has.



        Disir, I call,        ur-mothers dear,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Frigga, I call,         frith-weaver wise,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Freyja, I call,        holy and bright,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

        We give thee Welcome this Mother’s Night.


        Hallowed women of the home,
            I raise this horn to you.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Freyja, riding forth this night,
            Look kindly on our home.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Disir, wights of the wheel,
            Spin us good wyrds to come.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Frigga, who winds the distaff full,
            Fill our house with joy.

        We give thee Welcome this Mother’s Night.

Xmas...

I've been listening to christmas music at work all week now, and I'm done with my shopping for the season, and it's the day before Yule begins, and I'm all in the spirit of the holy-days, so it's probably time I got this explanation down and out.  And if the news media is to be believed (and they aren't), then consider this my volley in the fabled War on Christmas.

I am not a Christian, and so I don't celebrate Christmas, as in "The Mass of Jesus Christ."  I don't celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ anymore than I celebrate the birth of Siddhartha Buddha.  (Although I find it a truly beautiful story.  Honest-to-Sol, I am moved to tears every single year by the song "The Little Drummer Boy.")

But even though I am no longer a Christian, I was raised as an orthodox Christian, and so have a resonant familiarity with the customs, and am also not part of a competing Judeo-Christian culture; so, Christmas is certainly an option for me.

But, more importantly, I am an American.  And, as an American, I choose to celebrate the capitalist American Winter holiday of Xmas.

Like it or not (and I see no reason to not like it, unless you somehow have your ego wrapped up in making sure everybody holds the same religious beliefs that you do), the Christian holy day of Christmas has, over the generations of cultural domination by Christians, created another, entirely separate, and entirely secular holiday in this country, that has absolutely nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.  This holiday, that I refer to as "Xmas" just to differentiate between the two, is about Santa and Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman and Black Friday and strings of lights hanging everywhere and chopping down an evergreen and sticking it in your living room.  And I throw myself into this holiday whole-heartedly.  It is, hands-down, my absolute favorite time of the year.  I Love it.  And I wish we could all just accept that this holiday exists, and that it doesn't all have to be about Jesus, and thereby give all Americans the opportunity to enjoy it, regardless of their religion, or lack thereof.

And if you want to celebrate a traditional Christian Christmas, and make it all about the birth of baby Jesus, then please, by all means, go right ahead.  No one is stopping you.  But you need to accept that you gave this holiday away a long time ago, and that it doesn't belong solely to you anymore.  There is a world economy running off of this holiday now, and it has fuck-all to do with Jesus.  The engine of the capitalist world runs on the secular holiday of Xmas, and the sooner we all admit that, and accept it, and stop whining about it as though it were the greatest crime since the crucifixion, and as though we could do anything about it, the better off we'll all be.

Here endeth the rant.

Merry Xmas, everyone.

On Creating...

I've never read Bukowski.

So, naturally, I was surprised to discover that he'd already said this long before me, and probably better than I ever could.

Surprise Morning...

NOTE:  I thought I had posted this on Friday, but my home internet connection has been buggy lately (as usual, really), and I guess something must've gone wrong, because I just noticed today that this post wasn't actually on the blog.  Everything seemed to go fine when I posted it, there were no signs of problems, but there it was this morning, still marked as "Draft."  So, anyways, here it is now, a few days late.

+     +     +

One exit away from work this morning, there was a loud BANG! from my engine, and smoke started pouring out from under my car.  (It's so weird, it seems like every time I've broken down in the last 5 years, I've been one exit away from my work, in this same spot.)  I pulled over to the side of the road, got out to look under the hood, and saw oil just pouring out from the underside of my car and pooling all over the road.

Wonderful.

Called AAA, and had them send out a tow-truck.  Got to spend a thrilling hour on the shoulder of 270 waiting for the truck to arrive, praying not to get plowed into by a fellow commuter doing 80mph in an Escalade.  The tow-truck finally showed up and gave me a lift back to the dealership, thirty miles away, dragging my poor, broken car behind.  Along the way, the greasy, 300 lbs. driver regaled me with tales of all the 19- and 20-year old "hippie chicks" he's "banging" right now.

This car is only a little over a year old.  It's still under warranty.  (Thankfully.)  And I just brought it in for maintenance a couple of weeks ago, just before our Thanksgiving trip to Pittsburgh.  So this shouldn't have happened.

Turns out that when they changed my oil back then, they didn't put the oil plug back into the oil pan properly.  As I've been driving it since then, the plug has been slowly working its way out.  The explosion I heard this morning was the plug shooting out of the oil pan like a bullet.

Luckily, an easy fix.  Just get a new plug, and fill the thing back up with oil.  And a free fix, too.  Still, though - not the way I would've preferred to spend my day.

But a useful reminder that we can never get complacent, because despite our assumptions, we can never really know what's going to happen to us next.

By Jove...

I saw Jupiter for the first time recently.

My old elementary school, that I happen to live just a few blocks away from now, has a pretty famous science center attached to it, called the Earth and Space Science Lab.  When I was a kid, they had the only planetarium in the state.  Now they've moved to their own building on campus, that feels almost as big as the rest of the school all by itself, and they've added an observatory, among other educational attractions.  They have shows at the planetarium on a fairly regular basis, and they're cheap, and I'm into astronomy, and it's only a couple blocks from my house, so I sometimes go to these shows, even though the median age in the room is usually about nine.

I don't know what the fuck I expected - it's an elementary school, for fuck's sake.  But, for some reason, I assumed that the shows they put on outside of school hours would attract an older crowd, or at least feature content aimed above a fifth-grade level.  And when I went to my first show, and realized I was the only adult there who hadn't brought a child with them, I felt, once again, like a complete fucking weirdo.  And the whole time, I felt like all the parents were looking at me sideways, like I was standing outside a windowless white van in a clown costume with one hand full of balloons and the other full of roofies.  It was mortifying.  But then I thought, fuck them, I'm hear for the Science!  Then the show turned out to contain about as much educational science information as an episode of Ancient Aliens, and I was back to feeling like the clown with the van and the collection of baby teeth again.  But, still, I continue to go to these things.  I think just because I still geek out about being in the planetarium, just like I did when I was in school there.  And so I still have fun, even if I don't learn very much; and I try to ignore the parents, and their screaming kids.

Anyways, I enjoy it so much (despite myself) that I decided to volunteer there.  They're always advertising that they need volunteers, and it's so nearby, and I could convince myself I was doing a good deed, and it beats washing dishes at the soup kitchen across the street.  Plus, I thought it'd be a good way to get to see the shows without having to buy a ticket.  (It's not like I'm a cheapskate or anything; tickets are only $5.  It's just that their process for purchasing tickets was a bit of a wonky pain-in-the-ass, and I thought it'd be better to do it this way, by doing a good deed, and earning my way into the show, rather than just handing over $5.  And also, not for nothing, but now I don't have to feel like Beelzebozo the Hellclown anymore, because I'm not just the creepy guy hanging out by himself with all the families and children - I work there, so it's okay.)

And it turns out that my favorite perk of volunteering there, is that I get to go out to the observatory and look through their incredibly powerful telescope.

Jupiter has been plainly visible to the naked eye for a couple of months now.  (It's nearly impossible to miss - it's the brightest object in the night sky that isn't the Moon.)  And, as is usually the case during these times when it is visible, I've often found myself standing outside, staring up at it.  This image of Jupiter as a bright, white point in the night sky is therefore very familiar to me.  I often wonder at just how huge that object must be, to be that far away and still be that bright!  (Answer:  Jupiter is the 2nd most massive object in the solar system, next to the Sun.  In fact, if you took every other object in the solar system - every planet, every comet, every asteroid, every Kuiper Belt object - and crushed them all together into one giant ball of stuff, that giant ball would still be less massive than Jupiter!  It is literally more massive than the rest of the solar system, combined.  That is fucking HUGE.)  And I've seen countless pictures of Jupiter before.  We all have.  The various colored layers of swirling gas, the giant red spot.  It's an iconic image.

But this time was different.

I was working in Critter Cove, explaining the weird lives of sea urchins and brittle starfish to six-year-old's, when an intern came in and told me that they had the observatory trained on Jupiter.  I almost dropped the urchin I'd been holding.  Seeing my reaction, the intern laughed and told me that she'd mind the exhibits while I ran out to have a look.  I tried not to knock down any children on my way out of the building, but looking back, I can't guarantee to a certainty that I succeeded in that endeavor.

Shivering in the cold, I leaned into the eyepiece, and saw Jupiter, really saw it, for the first time.

It was as big as a half-dollar.  And I could see all of the stripes of layered gas swirling across it.  (The red spot was apparently on the far side, out of view.)  I could see the four Galilean moons - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - lined up in a perfectly straight line to the right of it, on Jupiter's orbital plane.  It was a bit blurry, but still, there was no mistaking it:  that was clearly Jupiter.  And not just an image of Jupiter, but the real thing!  Live and in-person!  I was seeing it, for real, as it was right then, in real-time!  (Or, at least, as it was about forty minutes earlier.  As I said, it's really far away, and so it takes the light a while to reach us.  Which only made the fact that it was the size of a half-dollar and that I could make out so much detail as to actually see each individual layered stripe just that much more impressive!)

It was like meeting a celebrity in-person; you're so intimately familiar with them as this 2-D image inside the box in your living room, that when you suddenly find yourself face-to-face with them as a living, three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood person, there's this strange disconnect in your brain, and things feel just slightly un-real.  And that's how I felt peering through that telescope at the 40-minute-old sight of the greatest planet in our system, the planet that more than any other outside of our own is responsible for our existence.  (Without Jupiter's massive gravity-well situated smack-dab in the middle of the solar system, Earth would be constantly bombarded by comets and asteroids, making it a relatively unstable environment, and therefore a very unlikely place for life to have been able to evolve.)

I lifted my head away from the telescope, and looked out the hole in the roof at the bright point of light in the sky that I had always believed was Jupiter.  I had believed that because the Astronomers told me that was the case, and I chose to believe them; I had no reason not to.  But now, I could see the telescope pointed straight at that point of light.  And I looked back through the eyepiece, and I could see it, plain-as-day, in all of its massive, iconic glory, spinning there in outer space.  It was real.  From that moment on, it was real to me.

Before, I had only believed in Jupiter.  But now I knew it.

Because I had seen it with my own eyes.

Mr. Chairman...

Busy, busy day, and I know now that I will not have any time to craft a post.  So, on the occasion of what would've been his ninety-seventh birthday, I'll simply leave you with this:

Sorry...

I got nothin' and it's late and I'm hungry and I'm tired and I wanna go home.

Put that in yer fuckin' book.

Jesus, Bill...

Don't "Jesus, Bill," me, motherfucker.  I don't wanna hear it.  I don't have time for your shit.  I'm tired and I wanna go home.

Why are you being so hostile?

I'm not being hostile!  I'm tired and I wanna go home!

So, go, then!  Get on with it already!  No one is holding you here.  Leave!  But stop bitching about it, you whiny little baby.

Fine, then!  I don't need you to tell me to go.  I'll go when I'm ready to go.  I don't need you anyway.

Ya big baby.

+     +     +

Wow.  That was productive.

You're welcome, by the way, for that worthless little creative turd I just shit out into your computer.  I'm sure you're the better for it now, as am I.

Ugh.  I need a shower after that.

And I was so proud of what I created yesterday.  I really thought that was worth something.  Following that up with this miserable excuse for "creative output" feels like a monumental failing of a level that calls into question my worth as a human being.  Now I just wanna go home and sit in my empty bathtub and masturbate into my underwear with my face buried in a tub of ice cream until I pass out in a puddle of my own excrement and shame.  Or maybe I'll just get McDonald's on the way home.

Six of one, really...

Vibrations...

My brain buzzes and my fingers dance.
My eyes twitch and dart to make the world vibrate.
Too much coffee and my heart slows down to one,
long,
drawn-out
thuwump.
I feel the fibers in my muscles coil like a snake.
I'm all adrenaline and nothing to do.
No fight to be had,
no flight to be made,
no harm,
nor foul,
nor fuck to be given.
Wires pulled taut,
I could strike out a tune,
make the bones dance
a crackhead jig.
Long breaths in staccato time,
high on the oh-2 painting my brain red.
I can feel my whiskers like an aura,
hovering over my skin,
every hair a bright,
electric
nerve.
Throb, pulse, twitch.
Writhe, dance, squirm.
Eyes-wide,
drink it in,
eat the lightwave whole.
Bits and bits and bits
stab,
pierce,
prick,
puncture,
penetrate,
explode
into image,
view,
vista,
site,
sight,
seen,
scene.
It's all the same.
All light
and heat
and motion,
no differentiation,
no line of demarcation,
no distinction,
no more,
no me.

One more cup,
and I'll be gone.

Rebuttal...

I'm done my work and my shopping for the day, and so, again, it is time to write.  And so again I run blindly face-first into the brick wall of Write what?!

Oh, Blank Page, why do you tease me so?

Because I hate you.

Oh!  Oh, I see.

No, wait, I don't see.  Why the fuck do you hate me?!  What did I do to you??

You destroyed me.  You do destroy me.   Over and over, day after day, you destroy me.  Worse, you delight in destroying me!  You take solace from it, you derive joy from it, it excites you.  You destroy me, and you call it "expression."

My murder is your art.

That's a little hyperbolic, don't you think?

Says the serial killer to his shrieking victim.

Hey now, let's just calm down here, okay?  Alright, so, yeah, maybe I do destroy you repeatedly, day-in and day-out.  But it can't possibly be as big of a deal as you're making it out to be.  Because clearly, even though I destroy you, you persist.  Because every day, there you are again, waiting for me, tormenting me, taunting me, teasing me with your emptiness, begging to be filled.  Destroyed you may rightly claim, but also clearly, reborn.  Refreshed.  Renewed.  Rejuvenated.  Resuscitated.  Revived.  Resurrected. 

You cry "Death!"??  You, Immortal, dare scream, "Murder!"??

Don't make me laugh.

You'll wring no quarter nor comfort from me with your empty, pitiful wails.  I name you "Tormentor!"  "Enemy!"  "Foe!"  "Nemesis!" 

I will laugh and dance and weep tears of righteous joy as I watch you burn beneath my words, and I will bathe myself in your ashes.

A-mn.

The Pile...

Every year, my family "complains" that I buy them too many gifts for xmas.  That I spend too much money on them.

I've never really understood this, and always assumed that it came from some humble sense of insecurity they felt toward their own gifts-to-give that year.  (Which is ridiculous, of course; I have never felt anything other than overwhelmed by the volume of what we receive from them every year.)

Today, my father emailed me, and asked me, again, as he does every year, to be "modest" in my gift giving this year.  Then he said, "we know your heart is in the right place..."  Which, to me, implies that, however well-intentioned, he thinks I am doing something wrong.  When I confronted him about this, he replied:

Your heart is in the right place – you give…give…then give some more.  That’s what I mean…not wrong, just not necessary for those of us that love you and feel loved by you.  You are the most generous of us all.  Not just with your treasure Michael.  Please don’t be defensive…I love you dearly.

Dad...

I am not generous.  And this is not a sacrifice.

Every Christmas morning as a child, I remember I would come downstairs to find a pile of presents waiting for me, stacked up higher than I was tall.  That pile literally dwarfed me.  Year after year after year.

You held down two to three jobs at a time and went to school in order to provide me with that enormous pile of beautiful junk.  (Because, of course, the contents of the pile didn't matter half so much as the experience of the pile itself.)  You took out loans and lines of credit every year to afford it.  You worked hard, and you sacrificed, and you went into debt in order to give me that humungous mound of christmas treasure.

THAT is generous.  THAT is sacrifice.

I can't give anyone else that experience.  I can't even come close.  But I can try, at least.  I can do my best to give them just a fraction of that feeling of excitement and amazement that I got to grow up with.  Because that's what Christmas is to me.

Every year, I hold back, and only get half of what I want to get, or less.  I have never hurt myself financially, or gone into debt of any kind to buy gifts for my family or my friends.  I always have money left over to put away after I'm done my xmas shopping for the year.  I have never sacrificed to do this.  At least, nothing more than my time.

So, please don't think I'm being generous.  I'm only a pale mimicry of the generosity you raised me with.


ps - And I know it isn't necessary.  "Necessary" isn't the point.  If it was necessary, it wouldn't mean anything.  It is by the very fact of its un-neccesity that it is transubstantiated from a consumerist product, into a treasure that reads, "This is what you mean to me.  I Love you."

Stark Words...

Stressed.

Again.

As always.

Too much work to do, and more coming in all the time; before I can finish one thing, three more have landed on my desk.

And it's the same at home.  I feel over-whelmed and under-supported.  I get a little less sleep every night.  Feel a little more tired every morning.  Each day harder than the one before it.

And it's Repellation Day.

And I would love a drink.

We have some apple moonshine at home right now that I would absolutely fucking murder.

We always have a drink on Repellation Day.  (Of course, until this year, we always had a drink on Thursday, as well, so take that with a pinch of salt.  And a lime wedge.)  And there's something about drinking moonshine on Repellation Day that just feels poetically justified.

Of course, I won't.

I'm going to go home, and do my bills, and stress, and not get enough sleep, the way I'm supposed to.  I'll be a good little monkey.

Because I decided to do this, and I hate giving up, especially at something I know I can do.  I decided to do this, and no matter how miserable I feel, I will only feel worse if I let myself fail.  I won't quit.  And I won't fail.

I won't quit, even though three words keep echoing in my mind, filling me with a hollow dread:


Winter is coming.

'Tis A Mean One...

I started my xmas shopping today.  Feels good to finally get started, even if I am ridiculously late.

Last year, I had most of my shopping done by Dec. 1st, and all of it done well before Yule (the Winter solstice).  It was wonderful.  The best Yule season I've had in my adult life, I think.  I got to just sit back and enjoy it.  I could spend all of my energy on making the holiday more pleasant and fun and enjoyable, because I didn't have to spend it all on the work.  All of the work was done.  I actually got to just relax and enjoy it, for once.

Knowing that I wasn't going to have that experience again this year was actually one of the things that got me down a couple of weeks ago.  I'd been so busy through the late fall that xmas just sorta snuck up on me, and I didn't see it coming until it was already here, and I was already behind in my work.  "What?  It's xmas already?  Wait!  I haven't started yet.  I'm already late?!  Crap!  Last year was so wonderful, and this year is gonna suck now, and I never even had a chance!"  It was just instantly depressing.

But there's some hope left.  (Which seems appropriate, given the spirit of the season.)  It's only December 4th, so I'm still getting a fairly early start, all things considered; just not quite as early as last year.  But I've got some time left, is the point.  And, I don't have as much shopping to do this year, which is going to help.  With Snowflake being unemployed and underemployed for most of this year, we just can't afford to do the amount of shopping that we normally would.  (Just one of the many unexpected brightsides to her unemployment.  Blessing in disguise, that.)

So, I've got less work to do overall, and still a respectable amount of time left to do it.

Looks like this xmas might not be totally grinch'd just yet.

Ramble, Bramble, Blurble...

No idea what to write here today.

So many options, so little time.

I didn't do anything this weekend.  Well, rather, I accomplished a lot, in a digital fantasy world of Revolutionary Colonial America, but that was pretty much all internal.  Externally, I barely moved from the same one spot all weekend.  My thumbs got quite a workout, though.

I felt bad spending my whole weekend jerking-off like that.  But I also had a great time.  This game is so beautiful (Winter in Colonial New York, 1776 - I never want to leave), and endlessly entertaining.  Every time I think I'm starting to figure it out, I find something new that I was completely unaware of.  And I knew that I'm not going to get much time to play it in the next few weeks, getting ready for Yule, and so I wanted to cram in as much as I possibly could before then.  Just like an addict.  "Lemme get high one more time, and then I'll go to the detox center, I promise."

She and I also watched a couple of movies together yesterday; something we don't get to do nearly often enough.  That was good.  And, in a way, productive, because spending time together that way always brings us closer together, especially when we don't do it very often.

We watched True Grit, which we'd never seen before.  As always, an incredible, amazing, basically perfect film from The Coen Brothers.  Literally enjoyed every single second of that movie, no exaggeration.  Highly recommended.

And then we watched a documentary called Dark Days, about a group of homeless people who made homes, and a society, for themselves beneath the subway tunnels of NYC.  Very interesting, and strange, and captivating, and sometimes difficult to watch.

We've been watching a lot of documentaries, lately.  A new thing for us, but I hope it's a trend that continues.  I'm really enjoying it.  Just as entertaining as fictional movies, but more compelling for their truthfulness.  Also educational, which lets me convince myself I'm doing something more worthwhile than just watching a movie.

I think the combination of a fictional story film and a documentary viewed back-to-back is just about a perfect way to spend a few hours together.  They complement each other, and balance each other out, in a very pleasant way.

I hope we do, too.

Family Feast Day...

I want to write about Thanksgiving this year, but I don't know who is going to read this, and that makes me feel self-conscious about what I should or shouldn't say, and that makes me not want to write about it anymore.  I guess it's for the best; I don't really have much of anything to say about it, anyways.  It was just a recent event that seemed like an obvious topic for posting.  It's a bit cliché, honestly.

For now I'll simply note that I stayed sober throughout, despite a seemingly never-ending stream of enticing opportunities to do otherwise.  And I still had a great time; staying sober didn't negatively impact my experience at all.  If anything, it might've actually helped make it even more enjoyable, simply because I wasn't as tired, exhausted, and worn-out by the whole thing as I would've normally been if I'd been drinking, etc.  (I feel like I've said this same thing over and over again lately, about Dover, about the AGM, about every experience I've recently had sober for the first time, where normally I would be intoxicated.  Maybe I can start taking this lesson to heart now?  Soon?)

Also, this is pretty much my experience of Pittsburgh:

What Is Going On Here?...

I.

NEED.

THIS.



This is not a revelation.  I knew this to be true.  Still, knowing something to be true and experiencing the truth of it firsthand remain two entirely separate things.

I knew on some intellectual level that I needed to write.  I knew it was good for me, and I knew it made me happy.  But I was quite unprepared for exactly how it would affect me when I stopped.

At first, I just didn't have the time or the energy.  I was overwhelmed with work, both in the office and at home, and just simply could not make time to write; what little time I spent not working I needed to rest.  I just didn't have any energy left to spend on creative expressions.

But then things finally calmed down.  And I did have time to write again.  But I still didn't do it.  I was just so tired.  And I just didn't feel like it.  It still just felt like more work.  And I was so tired.  I just wanted to sleep for a week.

I still feel that way, actually.

I can't get to sleep at night.  And then I can't get up in the morning.  I can never get enough sleep, and I'm always tired.  I can barely even try to make it to the gym anymore, much less actually work out.  Everything feels like it takes ten times more energy than I have available to spend.  It takes all of my strength every morning just to force myself to get up and go into the office.  And now Yule is approaching, and I haven't even started thinking about it yet.  I'm so behind, and I have so much work to do, and I don't feel that I could ever possibly get it all done because I'm just so fucking tired.

Sometime last week, I finally admitted that I'm depressed.

Admitting that scared me.  Because I didn't know why I'm depressed.  And if I don't know why, then I can't do anything about it.  I just have to suffer through it.  I've been depressed for Christmas before, and it's been some of the most miserable times of my life.  My whole life, this has been my very favorite time of year, hands-down, no question.  And to not be able to feel any of the joy of that is just a terrible experience for me.  And then further, to be surrounded everywhere by all these bright, flashing, blinking, shiny reminders of How I'm Supposed To Be Feeling only accentuates the depression, and makes it worse, almost every minute of every day.  And then still having to do all of that work, but without the excitement of the season to motivate me?  Ugh, it's just a downward-spiral of Yuletide hellishness.  Those times, it's been easy for me to understand why the suicide rate supposedly skyrockets during the holidays.

So, I didn't want to be depressed.  I didn't want to have to go through all of that.  I wanted it to go away.  I wanted to feel better without having to face the prospect of another miserable Yule.  But eventually I couldn't ignore it anymore, and I had to accept the fact that I was clearly depressed.

But why??  Every other time I've experienced this, it's been the result of a relapse of some sort.  But I haven't relapsed this time.  Not even an accidental one (like the sleeping pills at Dover).  So what is it?  Too much coffee?  My occasional Winter pipe smoking?

With some help, I've figured out that it's most likely stress-related.  But if it's stress-related, then why can't I ever seem to relax or feel rested?  And what do I do about it??

This is the answer to both.

Writing is a coping mechanism for me.  It's pretty much my main coping mechanism at this point.  Meaning, the most effective one; it's not necessarily the most-oft used.  And I abandoned that coping mechanism right when I needed it most.  So not only did I take on a lot of extra stress during that period of heavy work, but then I also stopped doing anything to relieve that stress.  And it all started backing up, and backing up, until I was a complete mess and could barely bring myself to get out of bed in the morning, and had no idea why.

I've said it before:  it doesn't matter what I write.  This post is incredibly boring.  Who the fuck is going to be in any way interested about the boring minutiae of my middle-class existence?  But that isn't the point.  I just need to get it out.  I just need to open up, and let go, and empty myself into this machine, and get it the fuck out of me, whatever it is.  It doesn't matter what "it" is.  It is the process of reaching inside, scooping something up, crafting it into some shape or another, and exorcising it into the aether-net that is important.

Because that is how I cope now.  That is how I deal.  And without it, I'm not coping.  I'm not dealing.  I'm stagnating, and wasting, and weighing myself down with all the tons of shit I've left unsaid.

I used to turn to drugs and alcohol in these moments.  And they provided some temporary relief.  Absolutely they did.  But they didn't do anything to help the underlying problem; they didn't help me cope.  Often, they actually made coping more difficult to accomplish, and/or made the underlying problem worse.  This time, I found myself turning to video games in the same way.  An escape from the pain I can't deal with.  An escape from the problem I can't understand, or solve, or control.  I can control my character.  I can solve his problems.  And every time I do, there's that familiar little rush of dopamine; a sense of having accomplished something, however ephemeral.  And yes, that's certainly better for me than getting drunk or high, but just the same, it doesn't do anything to help the underlying problem, or help me cope.  It's just a brief respite from the stress; some temporary relief from the pain.  But as soon as I shut down the console, it's all right there, still waiting for me, unchanged, un-dealt with.  Only getting bigger, and worse, leading me to spend more and more time escaping.  Another downward spiral.

So, I need this.  I need this process.  It helps me.  It's not just a creative exercise.  It's catharsis.  It's therapy.  It's not just some fun little hobby that I enjoy indulging from time-to-time.  I know that now, more than ever, because I've experienced firsthand what happens to me when I don't do this.

And believe me, it ain't pretty.

Raging Election...

(With apologies to everyone at The Colbert Report, from whom I blatantly stole the title for today's post.)

Wow.  Okay, so, yeah, I didn't see that coming last night, to be honest.  I'm so used to getting shellacked in these elections that I fully expected to be facing a Romney presidency this morning.  But not only did we re-elect Obama, but for the first time in my entire life, every single person or issue I voted for actually won.  And then to find out that Democrats and progressive issues won over and over again all across the country?  I'm just kind of stunned, honestly.

Last night, Maryland became the first state to uphold same-sex marriage with a voter referendum.  How fabulous is that?  So did Maine.  And Washington state looks like it's going to follow.  And speaking of Washington state, they legalized marijuana there last night.  They didn't just decriminalize it, they legalized it; for recreational use.  And so did Colorado.  Wow!

I was fully prepared to be seriously depressed today.  Now I don't quite know what to do with myself.

If you have any suggestions for ways I could spend my day not being depressed, please leave a comment below, and I will take it under consideration.  Thank you, and Gods Bless America.



Quick note about updates:  We're super-swamped at work with another tight deadline, and another series of endless snags delaying the whole process (yesterday was a clusterfuck on a scale that I have never witnessed here in fifteen years), and so I've been working more long hours again.  But this time, there's the added complication that I've been off-site for a lot of it, and so away from my computer.  And at home, we've got a couple of big projects to finish up in the next couple of weeks, as well, and so that's eating up a big chunk of what little free time I have left.  I actually have about a half a dozen posts started already that I've been wanting to get out there, but I just haven't had a chance to finish them yet.  Soon, soon.

Just wanted you to know that I'm still here, and I haven't given up or anything.  Just a tad too much on my plate at the moment.  Busy, busy Backson will be Back Soon.

Give And Take...

So, apparently today marks six months since my last drink.  Pretty happy about that.

Also, my wife dropped her phone in the toilet.  Less happy about that.

It would seem my world is in balance.

Sandy...

So, yeah, we got hit by a hurricane the other day.

Not a very common occurrence around here, so people didn't really know how to respond.  Most people seemed to either over-react or under-react.  With little experience to draw from, it was hard to determine the appropriate response.

We bought a few supplies, and then just hunkered down and watched movies for the day.

In the end, we got through it just fine.  It was loud and scary at times, but all it managed to do was rattle our windows.  No flooding, no damage, and we never lost power.  About 100,000 other people in our county weren't as lucky as us.  All of our friends and family seem to have come through it just as unscathed as we did though (favorite lilac bushes notwithstanding), so all-in-all we feel really lucky and grateful.

The only negative consequence I suffered was a minor emotional one.  There's this farm I pass by on my way South out of town that I've always really liked for one particular reason.  In the middle of this large farm field by the side of the highway, about three hundred yards away from the road, there is this one large, lone hill sticking up from the ground.  And on the very top of that hill, silhouetted against the sky, stood a large, twisted tree.  I've always loved that image for some reason.  I would be sure to look at it for as long as possible every time I drove by, and I always appreciated it in some way I can't really define.  It was iconic to me, somehow.  I really loved it, and I looked forward to seeing it.  When I drove to work yesterday, after the storm, I looked for it again, but it was gone.

Just a little thing, really.  But now that it's gone, I can't help but feel sad.  Again, I can't really say why.  I'm just sad knowing that I'll never get to see it again.  Never again get to feel that strange feeling it gave me every time I looked at it.  I miss it.

But as far as hurricane damage goes, that is getting off lucky.  And how.

A Long Weight...

Finally made it back to the gym this morning.  Which is always the final sign that I am definitively over my depression.

I knew it had been a few weeks since I last made it to the gym, but I didn't realize exactly how long.  Here's how long it's been since the last time I worked out:

• the last morning that I left early to make it to the gym before work, I needed sunglasses; this morning, I needed headlights
• the last morning that I left early to make it to the gym before work, I was wearing shorts, and I was comfortable; this morning, I was wearing a jacket and I was cold
• the last time I worked out, the leaves on the trees that I watch through the window of the gym while I "run" on the elliptical were still green; this morning they were every color but
• the last time I worked out, it was still September
• I haven't worked out in a long fucking time, is what I'm saying

Oh, well.  No use crying over spilled milkfat.  The important thing is that I'm back at it.  And with any luck, by Thanksgiving I might be halfway back to the weight I was in August.

fnord

Our Dreamings...

My brotherfriend wrote me the other day about some of his dreams.  This is something we often do.  His writing sparked this conversation between us:

My dreams have been all psychic angst lately.  Last night I took a sports car out for a test drive, and immediately crashed it into a harbor or boat dock or river channel or something.  The night before I had to let Her be gang-raped by a group of nasty, drug-addled urban pirates, because it was the only way to get us both out of the situation alive (if I'd tried to stop them, they'd have just killed me and raped her anyways).  Others have been more mundane - She and I fighting or bickering in some strange, emotionally-amplified way; uncomfortable, awkward, ego-bruising social situations.  In one memorable one, I was living in my office on the weekends for some reason, and as I was laying in my tiny office bed masturbating one Saturday morning, the whole office suddenly showed up for work/a party (it was a party, but people were working - ??) and I was caught naked and furry-handed, as it were, and then fired in the most humiliating manner imaginable.

    So - this may be a dumb question, but how do you feel about these dreams after you wake, is it more of a nightmare response - quickened pulse, hard breathing, kind of thing? Do you take them as expressions of turmoil, or do you see much omen in them?


I don't think that's a dumb question.  When I wake I can usually feel the residual, coming-down edge of adrenaline, the fleeting wake of anxiety.  Not quite a quickened pulse or hard-breathing (it's been a long time since I had a dream that upset me to that degree; what I wouldn't give to have a true full-bore, holy-fuck nightmare), but I can tell that something just happened.  Then I'll remember the dream, and that will lead to a feeling of "ugh, fuck" and then I'll be in a bad mood for a little while.  (Or sometimes longer, depending on how bad the dream was.  The gang-rape left me pretty fucked up for most of the day.)

I don't generally interpret my dreams, or try to divine from them, unless there is something unusual or interesting about the dream; some quality that makes it stand out from the usual nighttime fluff and cerebral noise.  Whether pleasant or painful, if it feels like "just a dream" then I usually treat it that way.  But dreams that are particularly vivid, say - I will pay more attention to those, and go over them afterwards again and again, sifting for relevant or interesting data.  Those dreams where I have an interesting quality of consciousness - where I am more aware than usual, that I remember in more detail upon waking, etc. - will also usually attract my attention and therefore garner greater scrutiny.  I've also learned to recognize certain signs over the years that I know mean something to me.  For instance, whenever a dead person appears in my dream, and does not speak, I know that something different was happening that night, and that was not just an ordinary dream.  (For some reason, dead people never speak in my dreams.  They communicate, but only through body language, facial expressions, and hand gestures.  They never say anything.  And I only ever remember after I wake up, "oh, wait a minute - that person is dead.")  Dreams with multiple layers, dreams with puzzles or labyrinths, dreams where I am lost, dreams where the lights go out, dreams where I display some vulgar magickal ability; these all usually mean something to me.

As for how I interpret those dreams worthy of attention - as coded messages (either from myself or Other), as portents or omens, as communications from or meetings with outside spirits or entities, or what-have-you - depends entirely on the specifics of the dream itself.  It's just a sense of that particular dream.  What did it feel like?  That's probably what it was.

Most of my dreams lately have just been the usual noise.  The fact that they've been less than pleasant is due, I believe, simply to the fact that I've been under more stress than usual lately.  I've been working hard, both at work and home, and not relaxing enough, or expressing enough, and so the pressure-release valve of my unconscious is blasting all that psychic bong-resin out the back of my head as I sleep.  That's how it feels to me, anyways.

+     +     +

Every night, when I lay down to go to sleep, I perform a Dreamlands visualization.  I see my Astral standing naked on the bed where we're sleeping, and I take my Silver Key off of my bedstand where it hangs, and put it around my neck; as soon as it is around my neck it morphs into the Silver Key (complete with "arabesque" symbols, etc.).  At that point, a hole opens up in my bed, revealing a staircase leading downward into the Dreamlands.  I count out each of the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber, down to the Cavern of Flame, where I then have to perform some feat in order to convince the gatekeepers Nasht and Kaman-Tha that I am worthy to travel in the Dream.  It is usually something gruesome and grotesque, such as flaying myself alive and magickally creating a robe to wear from the strips of my skin; or transfiguring myself into some many-limbed, many-eyed, many-teeted, many-tentacled thing that tears its way out of my body, or burning myself alive in magickal fire until all my flesh is burned away and I am just a spirit of living flame.  Stuff like that, whatever I come up with that particular night.  It's different every time.  If I'm then judged worthy by the Gatekeepers, they will open a doorway in the CoF revealing the staircase of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber, which lead down to the Enchanted Wood that is the entrance to the Dreamlands, and I will then begin to descend those, again counting out each step as I go.  I always arrive in the CoF naked, but always leave robed.  I almost always make it to the CoF before I fall asleep, and I am almost always judged worthy.  I have made it to the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber many times, but have never made it to the Enchanted Wood before falling asleep.  I often fall asleep in the CoF while performing for Nasht and Kaman-Tha.

      Just curious - is there a particular reason that your feats are all body horror related? Is there any relationship between those feats and the kinds of dreams you have? I really like the path working, and might use it myself - but I wasn't sure if the transformations were something you feel is important to the entire process, or if it is the best way for you to convince Nasht and Kaman-Tha that you should be permitted to descend the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber.



I've never felt any anxiety about these nightly grotesqueries; they've never upset me.  If anything, they're kind of a thrill.  I'll never get to do any of these things in real life, so it's kind of fun to get to do them in my head, and let my imagination run wild.  So, no, I wouldn't say that they have anything to do with the unpleasantness of my recent dreams.  Though I guess it's certainly possible.  I've never kept tally of the number of good vs. bad dreams I've had after passing through the Cavern of Flame.

As to why they are all "body horror" related (which I originally read as "bloody horror"), I'm not quite sure what you mean.  I guess I can see now that the three examples I gave were each an instance of me mutilating my body in some fashion, but that was just a coincidence; I didn't mean to imply that I always need to rend my flesh in some manner in order to impress the Gatekeepers.  I've also often done astral work, or summoned a creature, or something else.  So, the only real requirement is that it be a feat of magickal or psychic prowess.

All I'm really trying to do there, is impress upon Nasht and Kaman-Tha that I am worthy to enter the Dream.  That I am both powerful enough to take care of myself, and that I am familiar enough with the kinds of oddities I am likely to find at the bottom of that long staircase that I am probably not going to go mad as soon as I get there.  Probably.  I am trying to display to them, both the powers of my imagination and an ability to control the dream.  And then no doubt the simple fact that it's a Mythos working must also color my imagination in some fashion, leading to a greater incidence of performances of "unimaginable horrors."  You work with the Mythos, and you're gonna get some tentacles.  That's just unavoidable.

I imagine that everyone's experience with the Gatekeepers would be unique to the individual magickian/dreamer, though.  I'd be really interested to know yours.

Give and Take...

I have a confession to make, my dear.

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I want you.

I want you.

Still.  And again.  I want you.

How should I take you tonight, Pet?

Fiercely?  Or tenderly?

With Lust?  Or Love?

Do you want to be dressed as an eager, young strumpet?  Or completely nude - naked and open?

Should I be naked and exposed with you, as well, so we can share in our mutual vulnerability?  Or should I demonstrate my passionate need by not even taking the time to fully undress?

Do you want to be held down and ravaged?  Or held up and adored?

Where, exactly, should I kiss you?

What will you give to me this time?

How should I take you tonight?

Whelmed To The Nth Degree...

I'm sorry about the total lack of posts recently.  I'm just really overwhelmed right now.  I have more work than I can handle both in and out of the office, and so the combination of the two has really been difficult to deal with.  I'm also still trying to claw my way out of my recent depression.  So it's just been difficult to find a way to make this a priority.  Which is stupid, when I think about it, because this is one of the only things that really makes me feel better, and helps me deal with all of this overwhelming shit.  But, ironically, the very fact that I'm feeling overwhelmed makes this seem less like enjoyable therapy, and more like "more work I don't have time to deal with right now."

Whatever.  Excuses, excuses.

I miss it here.  I hope to be back soon.

Eleven...

When the Earth was still flat
And clouds made of fire
And mountains stretched up to the sky
Sometimes higher

Folks roamed the Earth
Like big rollin' kegs
They had two sets of arms
They had two sets of legs
They had
Two faces peerin'
Out of one giant head
So they could
Watch all around them
As they
Talked while they read
And they never
Knew nothin' of Love
It was before...

The origin of Love

Now there was three sexes then
One that looked
Like two men glued up back-to-back
They're called the Children of the Sun
And similar in shape and girth
Was the Children of the Earth
They looked like
Two girls rolled up in one
And the Children of the Moon
Was like a fork shoved on a spoon
They was part Sun
Part Earth
Part daughter
Part son

Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said,
"I'm gonna kill 'em all with my Hammer
Like I killed the giants."
But Zeus said, "No.
You'd better let me
Use my lightning like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off the whales
And dinosaurs into lizards."
And then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle,
Gonna cut 'em right up in half."

And the storm clouds
Gathered above
Into great balls of fire

And then fire
Shot down from the sky in bolts
Like shining blades of a knife
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the Children of the Sun and the Moon and the Earth
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole
Pulled it 'round to our belly to remind us
Of the price we paid
And Osiris
And the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane
To scatter us away
A flood of wind and rain
A sea of tidal waves
To wash us all away
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hoppin' 'round on one foot
And lookin' through one eye



The last time I saw you
We'd just split in two
You was lookin' at me
I was lookin' at you
You had a way so familiar
But I could not recognize
Cause you had
Blood in your face
I had
Blood in my eyes
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same
As the one down in mine

That's the pain
That cuts a straight line down through the heart
We call it "Love"
We wrap our arms around each other
Try to shove ourselves back together
We was makin' Love
Making Love

It was a cold, dark evening
Such a long time ago
When by the mighty hand of Jove...

It was a sad story
How we became lonely, two-legged creatures
That story...

The Origin of Love

           -"The Origin of Love"
             Hedwig & The Angry Inch

Lapse...

So, I think I relapsed.

Accidentally.  Without even knowing it.

That sounds absurd, but it's the most logical assumption to make, given the evidence.

I had no trouble staying sober at Dover, and though I recognized on a couple of occasions that it would've been nice to have a drink or something, I was never stressed by it, and it didn't interfere with my ability to enjoy myself in the slightest.  In fact, the one notable difference between this weekend and past trips was that this one was noticeable easier for me.  I'm normally exhausted by the experience, but this time it was just a nice little vacation; I never realized how much of that exhaustion was apparently due to the booze, etc.

So, I had a great time, and was feeling wonderful.  But then, a day or so after coming home, I suddenly started to feel really down.  It started when I couldn't sleep properly.  But it just got worse from there.  I ended up getting severely depressed, and completely exhausted.  I couldn't sleep enough, and yet I never felt rested.  And I had no energy, no drive, no ambition, no desires; at best I was numb - at worst, I was completely miserable and pissed off at everything.

I had a few different guesses as to what might be causing this condition, but as I resolved them one-by-one, with no change in my mood, I had to try and form new theories.  Which is when I realized that what I was experiencing felt like the exact same depressive period that follows a relapse for me.  And that's when I remembered the sleeping pills.

I took sleeping pills the nights we stayed at Dover.  One pill each night; half the recommended dosage.  I wasn't taking them to get high.  I was taking them for their intended purpose, to help me sleep.  We were staying in a flea-bag hotel, and I was wide awake in an uncomfortable bed, and I had a lot to do the next day, and needed to get an early start.  I didn't think anything of it at the time.  Because I was thinking of it as "medicine" and not "drugs."  But in hindsight, it became obvious - of course I got high off of them (they altered my brain-chemistry to the point that I was rendered unconscious, for fuck's sake), and so of course I was going to experience the same depression afterwards that I experience whenever I get high off of anything; the reason why I took them is completely irrelevant to my brain-chemistry.

So, I've been suffering through that since we got back, and am only just now starting to come out of it.  That's one reason why I haven't posted anything for a while.  (Work is the other half of that, but that's a whole other post in and of itself.) This one has been particularly difficult to deal with, because it's been accompanied by strong doses of self-pity and righteous indignation.  Normally, I know exactly what I did wrong, and I know exactly why it was wrong, and so a part of this depression feels like a deserved punishment; I knew what to expect, and I did this to myself, so I really have no right to complain about it, and should just shut the fuck up and take it like a man.  But in this case, I don't really feel like I did anything wrong.  I didn't truly relapse in the sense that I didn't give in to my cravings and desires.  I didn't even have any cravings or desires!  I was just trying to solve a problem I was experiencing by taking a medicine designed to alleviate that particular ailment, and is available at any local convenience store.  And now I have to feel like complete shit for two weeks??

And the worst part is, I didn't even get to get high!  If I'm going to have to suffer through this period of misery, I should at least get the enjoyment of having a drink or something out of it.  That's only fair, right?  But in this case, I didn't get the drink; all I got was the hangover.  And that just feels so wrong.

Those thoughts kept running through my mind, and it became really difficult to not have a drink.  To know that all I would have to do is have one drink, and all this pain would simply vanish for a time, and I would be allowed to feel good again for a short while - that was really hard to resist.  Especially when I felt like I was already paying the price for it; it felt like I'd earned it, in a way.  But I was able to maintain perspective, and remind myself that having a drink would only prolong the inevitable, and make it worse in the long-run.  And set me back a few months.  (I really didn't want to erase all those Sober Days from my tally and have to start back at zero again.)  And, thankfully, a part of me wanted to suffer through it.  I have that stubborn desire to build endurance through gritting my teeth and taking pain lately, and that served me well here, again.  As horrible as the experience was - and perhaps even because it was so horrible - I wanted it to be over as quickly as possible, and I knew the best way to accomplish that was just to try and keep my mouth shut and suffer through it.

I also ate whatever the fuck I wanted for two weeks and gained several pounds, but again, that's a whole other post, entirely.

Sniff...

Standing at the sink, in the office kitchenette, washing the dried and crusted remnants of my workday's coffee from my mug, I had a moment.

I'm fascinated by those moments, when the most banal and mundane aspects of daily life suddenly collide with the profound, the mystical, and the transcendent.  They have an instant and unmistakable sense of Tao.  And this was one of those moments.  Standing at the sink, in the office kitchenette, washing a day's worth of old, dried coffee out of my mug, just like I do at the end of every day.  And as I stood there washing, the cleaning lady walked in.  An older, round-ish hispanic woman; really nothing remarkable about her at all, and normally the only emotional response I would've had to her presence would have been my usual feeling of white, liberal guilt at this reminder of my station, and my privilege.  But something else happened this time.  Something new and different.  Something I never could've expected.  Something simple, and ordinary, and yet utterly magickal.

Just a second or so after she entered the room, the gust of air raised by her entrance carried her scent to me, and I was instantly a child.

Ten years-old.

The beach.

A perfect Summer's day.

The sound of distant waves, crashing.  And gulls crying.  And children screaming in joy.

And a feeling I had forgotten.  A feeling of freedom and exhilaration and excitement and happiness that was so overwhelming as to border on the manic.  A feeling of certainty that these glorious moments of delirium were all that mattered.  There was absolutely nothing else to think about, or do, or say; there was but one single, solitary purpose to all existence, and that was to enjoy these moments, as much as we were physically able, for as long as our parents would leave us to it.  These were the best moments of our lives.  And even better, we were completely unaware of that fact.  Freed in the glory of our naivete, we swam away in the joy of "it can only get better from here."

Death and old-age were only abstract ideas, and things that happen to other people, or on TV.  Sex was still an exhilarating mystery, only just beginning to punctuate our daily lives with little electric sparks of sensation.  Work was something grown-ups forced us to do, and was to be avoided at all costs.  Playing was all that mattered.

Playing was the meaning of life.

And then I was back at the sink, in the office kitchenette, still washing the crusted stains of my amphetamine potion off of my mug.  In just a half-second, I had experienced my entire childhood, and then aged twenty-five years.  I wanted to cry.

I have no idea what that scent was.  Presumably, it was the cleaning lady's perfume.  Even now, as I write this, I can't recall the scent to memory; can't remember the sensation of it at all, but only the effect it had on me.  It's faded back into whatever dark corner of my mind in which it has slept for the past twenty-five years.  I don't know where I remembered it from, nor do I have any idea why it reminded me of my childhood, or the beach, or Summer, or the exhilarating freedom of having no responsibility.  And I guess I don't care at this point.

I can't ever go back.  None of us can.  I will never, ever experience those feelings again.  So I have absolutely no choice at this point but to feel incredibly grateful to have been able to experience them again, at all, for even a moment, as I washed my mug in the sink of the office kitchenette.

Russets...

It's Autumn
and the World around me
has begun to Die
and the Air is scented sweet with Decay
and the crisp Snap of the breeze
boils my Blood

Life thrown into
sharp, Sensuous relief
surrounded on all Sides
by its inevitable Reflection

Breathe it in
hold it Inside
Kiss it
Eat it
Fuck it
let it Roll down your chin
get your hands Sticky with it

and Remember
that One day
It Will Be You

Fall Weekend At Dover...

Just after we arrived.  Green flag was still a couple of hours away.





Start 'em up, boys!  (Sorry about the wind noise - it was breezy up there!)





The #18 makes a pit stop.  He was out front of the pack all day, but then had to give up the lead with only 8 laps to go in order to pit for gas.  SO frustrating.  I really thought he was going to win it this time!  Oh, well.  One of these years...





I had a video of the opening Green Flag, but it wasn't very good.  This one is much better.  Still doesn't in any way convey just how awesome it is to be there, though.





The Blue Deuce takes his victory lap.  He only led the last 8 laps, but as they say, you only need to lead one lap - the LAST one.

Uh-wake...

I had another attack of insomnia last night.

I think "attack" is a very appropriate word to describe it.  Because it definitely feels like a violent and painful assault upon your person perpetrated by an outside force.  And you're not the same afterwards.

I know that everyone experiences some insomnia every once in a while, but I feel like it happens to me more than the average.  I don't know if that's actually true or not, but it certainly feels that way.  It seems like every couple months or so I have a night where I'm just awake for no apparent reason.  Or, more specifically, where I alternate between lightly dozing for a few minutes and wide awake, over and over again all night.

I wasn't tired last night.  Probably because I didn't get in my workout.  Eventually, well past my bedtime, I forced myself to go to bed and try to go to sleep.  I laid there for well over an hour before I finally dozed off.  Ninety minutes later, I was wide awake again.  And I could not get comfortable.  No position felt right.  No, it was more than that - every position felt painful in one way or another.  And I was either too hot, or too cold, or sometimes even both at the same time, but never was I anywhere in the vicinity of a comfortable temperature.  After another hour spent tossing and turning, I gave up and went out to the living room.

After another hour or so out on the couch, I eventually started to drift off again.  Just about the time that my alarm started going off.  No way was I getting up that early and going in to the gym; not with the way I was feeling.  And so, of course, I ended up getting the best couple of hours of sleep of the entire night between when my alarm went off and when I absolutely had to get up in order to make it to work on time.  Or, in other words, during the time when I should have been getting up and working out.

So, I missed my workout again today.  Which means I probably won't be tired enough to sleep well again tonight.  Remember the "Crap Energy Loop?"  Here I go again, round and round and round.

I've been in a semi-conscious daze all day.  Everything has seemed just slightly un-real.  Reality has this sort of painted-on feel to it, as if my life were actually some elaborately crafted soundstage.  I've had this unmistakeable and familiar sense that I'm only partially here, and that I'm also partially somewhere else.

So, at least I got one good thing out of having insomnia.

Crap Day...

Overslept.

Missed my chance to get in a work out today.  And I need it after this weekend.

Pouring rain, so:

a) stuck in miserable traffic  (why does everyone around here lose their goddamned minds as soon as it starts raining?!  it's fucking rain, people!  not ice, or napalm, or some shit!  you don't need to drive 20mph under the speed limit in the left-hand lane in order to protect your worthless excuse for a life, you miserable slow-ass twats)

b) and therefore late to work (which means I'm stuck here later tonight)

c) and got soaked by rain twice (between home and car, and between car and office - and, of course, because I was late, all the covered parking spots were taken, and the closest parking spot to my office was as far away from the building as physically possible)

Was out of the office yesterday because of Dover, so I came in this morning to find a hernia-inducing pile of work backed-up and waiting for me to finish yesterday.

Between being late this morning and this huge pile of work, there was no way I could justify leaving early to make SMART tonight, so that's my third meeting missed in the last four weeks.

I somehow managed to leave my headphones at home, so I can't listen to music or podcasts or anything else today, the way I normally do when I'm working.

All I've wanted to do, since the moment I opened my eyes this morning, is lay on my couch and play video games.

Wah.

They Come In Three's...

There has been a sudden epidemic of relapses among the members of my SMART group.

Several people, one right after another, taking their turn to share their story of falling off the wagon.  Some people have put off talking about it for a week or so, because they didn't want to add yet another relapse story into a meeting that was already crowded with them.  Some of these people are new to recovery, and are still struggling with it, and so that's to be expected.  But others have been sober for years.   And those are a lot harder to deal with.  For everyone involved.

Relapses are a part of recovery, as they say.  But though they happen, they're still rare enough that it feels very bizarre for them to be happening in a cluster like this.  It feels improbable, bordering on paranormal.

And I can't help thinking about this, as we get ready to go to Dover for the NASCAR race this weekend.  I normally have a six-pack all to myself during the race, plus a few other fun enhancers and reality lubricants both before and after.  It's always been a party weekend for us.  This will be my first time at a race completely sober.

I'm honestly not worried about my sobriety right now.  I don't feel I am in any danger of getting fucked up in any way this weekend.  Nor am I concerned about my ability to enjoy myself this weekend sober.  This weekend is a blast, period, and there's nothing about it that I need to get fucked up in order to enjoy.  I know I'm going to have a great time.

But with the way things have been going lately, I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel a little bit like tempting fate.

Sizzle Pop Blurble...

Been in class since 8a this morning; just got out.  Too brain-fried to post anything.  It was a cool class, though.  And I learned a lot.

So, worth it.

Must Be...

I should be working right now.

I know this.  I have so much work to do.  And if I don't pick up the pace and start moving it off my desk a lot faster than I have been, then I'm looking at some more late nights and weekends in the office.  And no one wants that.  And I'm going to be in a class all day tomorrow, and then I'm going to be out on Monday (going to the race in Dover, yay!), so that's two days of work lost, on top of everything else.

I know this.  And I know I don't have anything worthwhile to say right now, either.  All I want to do is put in some extra effort on this work so that maybe I don't feel quite so much like I'm drowning under twenty feet of icy, black code.  Icy, black, error-ridden code.

I know this.  But I can't stay away.  I can't ignore this space.  I want to, but I can't.  I can feel it, in the back of my head, all the time:  What are you going to write about today?  When are you going to write today?  It pulls at me, chews on me, and I have to satisfy that hunger, I have to feed that desire.  I can't ignore it, and I can't make it go away.  I have no choice; no say in the matter at all.

Words must be written.

What they say is irrelevant.

Just like me.