from sharp objects, so I've
had to sharpen my wit.”
I read an article today that brought me a lot of relief, even as it reminded me of how inherently silly religion is. Mostly, my relief came because I can identify with this chica’s suffering. When I come home from a business trip or lunch or dinner with clients, the first thing I aim to do when I come through the door is get my bra off. This poor lady had been bound up for over 250 years.
Okay, I should probably explain.
I’m talking about a statue called “Goddess of Abundance”, which was made for St. James Priory in Bristol, U.K., about 400 years ago. Well, 250 or so years ago St. James Priory became the parish church of Rev. John Wesley (founder of the Methodist movement), and he hid her boobs behind a crudely fashioned lead breastplate. Wesley held sermons in the room where the statue stands, and is thought to have obscured her boobs to avoid distracting his flock during prayers (you know how men are – if breasts are present, much less bare breasts, they won’t hear a word you say).
The Goddess of Abundance had been bound ever since. And none the wiser. I mean, who knew? Conservators working on the 900-year-old building, where she graces a fireplace, found her charms concealed behind the cuirass. She has now been freed of her excess “clothing”, to the sympathetic relief of women all over the world.
I, for one, will show my support (or evident lack thereof) by letting my girls play free tonight as I’m watching television (okay, that’s pretty much every night – but it’s the thought that counts). Anyway, I’ll tip a glass of wine to the Goddess of Abundance, who has finally, after 250 years of having her boobs be bound by convention and the inappropriate giggling of men, found her breasts basking in the warm sunlight again. Ladies, we should all show our support in a moment of sisterhood with a long sigh of relief. At long last, the girls are free.
Okay, my first reaction when I heard that a North Carolina senator had called my hometown of Asheville “a cesspool of sin” was, basically, “Who the fuck is James Forrester?” It turns out he’s a knuckle-dragging, Tea Party nutjob from Gaston County who’s determined to see that people like me will never have the same rights as everyone else. But I can take that. I’ve been fighting these morons my entire life. It doesn’t bother me what they say or think about me. But when you insult an entire city? Could a politician possibly say anything more self-destructive?
I’d never heard of this idiot before this, so I did some digging. His moronic insult of Asheville came about as an extension of his war against gays and lesbians in North Carolina. I won’t be surprised when this guy is found in a men’s bathroom somewhere with pants around his ankles, being hammered by some buff young stud named Darius or Tres. That’s where these guys seem to come from. When a community leader, politican or religious nutjob has a hard-on about suppressing gays and lesbians, it’s usually because they’re running desperately from their own natural sexual inclinations and can only feel in control of those impulses if they’re oppressing other people’s urges and orientation. You deal with your own uncomfortable questions by attempting to eliminate those questions in your surroundings. But those natural urges always win out.
It appears that I lack some basic, fundamental part of the female genetic code. If you know me, this isn’t a revelation. I’m cute and fuckable (I’ve been told), but I’m only female in the biological sense. No one would ever mistake me for a girlie girl or suggest that I am anything other than a power mad goddess who abuses her minions for fun and general recreation.
My lack of certain female genes was never more apparent than I went I found myself today at a haven for old ladies and housewives, a Michael’s super crafting supply store (think old ladies and cross-stitch), pondering the mysteries of different feathers and their colors, shapes and sizes. T gave me a fairly simple task, she thought – to go to Michael’s and pick up some feathers and suede leather cords for her, with specific instructions as to size, color and shape. But once there I realized that some fundamental information had been left out of my carefully written directions, and I lacked some innate female understanding of all things craft related to be able to pull it all together on my own.
So. What did I come back with? Even though I adhered to the spirit of the instructions (if not the specific intent), the feathers I picked out weren’t the right ones. They were, luckily, usable. I dodged a bullet there. But then I made up for it by screwing up on the suede leather cording (I got the right width, but the wrong thickness). *sigh*
The whole point of me going in T’s place to begin with was so that she could stay home and catch up on her crafting back orders. But poor T had to stop what she was doing anyway and go to Michael’s to correct my screw ups. I wasn’t even invited to tag along on the return trip. I suppose to spare me the shame of admitting to the cashier that I don’t know a thing about crafting.
All this is said with a lot of humor. I know my place in the world and what I bring to it. As T was leaving, she said, only half kidding, “You poor thing. You couldn’t make something for yourself from scratch if your life depended on it.” I disagreed, and pointed out that I make the best margaritas on the East Coast. You may laugh at that, but in my world that is a skill that cannot be overestimated, and I am very proud of my abilities. So there. Let’s see T go to the market and pick out the best limes and sea salt for the perfect margarita. Or, better yet, let’s see her fathom the complexities of a lemon drop martini. Neener neener. We all bring something to the table, do we not? Even if that something is, on occasion, the wrong feathers, all is forgiven after one goddess inspired margarita.
First off, I know the RSS feed isn’t working. I dunno why. It validates fine, and I can find no reason why it’s not working. Personally, I believe WordPress has an issue, and no one is addressing it. Although, admittedly, if a lot of people were having the same problem I’m having, there would be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Anyway, if anyone has an idea of why an RSS feed that validates fine can’t be recognized as a valid RSS feed by systems like Facebook and won’t show up in RSS feeds on other blogs, I’d appreciate a heads up.
As for everything else, I’ve been thinking about this blog and my increasing apathy where it is concerned. You would think (I’ve been told) that someone who sits in front of a computer all day, writing code and using the Internet, would be all about social networking and blogging. But I’m honestly too busy. I have too much to do to waste time getting into heated arguments over which of the latest mindless Hollywood drivel is the best movie, or which of the most popularly talentless rappers deserves the golden pimp cup.
Honestly, outside of my work, I’ve been enjoying the fact that, at the moment, I seem to have a relatively pleasant life. A new girlfriend always changes one’s outlook. Long walks in the woods help cleanse the soul. And teaching presents its own challenges and time requirements. Long story short, amid everything else that’s going on in my life, blogging doesn’t seem all that important. I think Americans spend too much time examining their own existence anyway. We should all spend more time examining the content of our lives, and less time blathering about the mechanics of it. Who cares if you went to Starbucks? I’m happy for you if you enjoyed your coffee. But shouldn’t savoring the coffee be the experience, in and of itself? Doesn’t it cheapen the experience when it becomes more important to blog or tweet about it than actually enjoying the moment when that experience happens?
So… you can see why I’ve largely abandoned my blog. I don’t need, or want, the validation of advertising every moment of my days. I would much rather live in the here and now. I’ve found much more peace in my life since I’ve started spending more of each day experiencing my life, rather than examining every moment of it for clues as to who and what I am. I’m trying to spend less time pondering who I am, and more time being who I am.
I don’t know if I will ever post entries here to any extent. In my priorities, it doesn’t rate highly. My girlfriend is more important. My students are more important. My work is more important. My cat is more important. If there is time left over after everything else, and I find myself sitting in the office in the wee early hours of some mornings, sipping rum spiked coffee and wishing I could sleep, I might post something here. But lately those moments have proven few and far between. That works for me.
I just found out that my auntie Veronica has named one of her new kittens after me, “because she’s damaged and has special needs”. Hehe. I got a good laugh out of that one, and I needed it. There’s been too much work and not enough time around here for ages now. I needed to de-stress a bit.
Anyway, think you can look at this photo of these lovelies and figure out which one is Claire?
Okay, maybe I’ve just turned into an old grump, but I’m really beginning to be annoyed by a number of disgustingly happy people. Hey, look. I’m glad when someone decides to get married. I really am. But when the wedding is six months away and I’ve had to hear about how deliriously happy you are about getting married for three months already, aren’t you milking it a bit? And do I really have to listen to this saccharine stuff for another six months? And once you actually do the deed, are we still going to receive daily messages about how deliriously happy you are?
No, I’m not talking about anyone in particular. Friends of friends of friends. But I still get the backwash from the manically happy, as the warm fuzzies spread through my female friends and associates like a virus. Okay, fine. I get it. They’re happy. But enough, already.
It reminds me of the yuppies who have children and proceed to act like they’re the first people on Earth to ever procreate. Yes, we’re genuinely happy for you. But we’ve seen this act before. Maybe it’s cute when little Billie snarls up his face and looks like Elvis Presley at the age of two months. But a year down the road we’re just encouraging bad behavior by applauding it. Teach the kid to cook pasta or something. That would really impress me.
Okay, it might make me a bad person, but has anyone else wondered why most spells that Pagans write seem to incorporate really bad poetic verse? Is it just me? This leads to the obvious questions. Are bad poets somehow drawn to Paganism? Is spell-work one of the few places these poets’ terrible verses are acceptable? Or is there something inherent in Paganism that turns people into bad poets? Does the Goddess and the God have a special place set aside in Summerland for the writers of the worst poetic verses?
Life is pain. Love is compromise. What one has to decide is how far you’re willing to go to reinvent yourself to please another person. We all want to make our significant others happy. But what happens when they don’t really like who you are as a person? What happens when they fell in love with an ideal, only to find out that the day to day reality is very different? How do you maintain, preserve and nourish a relationship when your very being drives your partner batshit?
I’ve always been a misfit. I’ve always been the one who walked between worlds, tethered to reality by slender gossamer threads that strain and stretch but, amazingly, never seem to snap. I’m far from perfect. But I don’t know how to be someone else. I’ve worked too hard for too long to fashion myself, with duct tape and bailing wire, into something that could reasonably pass as a human being. It’s not easy to put together a coherent product out of all these ill-fitting, disjointed parts and have the whole thing just work. Isn’t it an achievement unto itself that I’m not sitting in a padded room somewhere, drooling and shutting out the world, miles away from reason and blame?
I’m always amazed when I log in to my web site and discover that I haven’t posted anything in months. It’s the first day of August, and I haven’t posted anything since May 21st. Not that I’ve really had anything to say. I’m just surprised at how quickly the days of my life are slipping away from me. Anyway, I was never all that interested in blogging. For awhile it was a good way to communicate with friends. But now that we’ve settled out our differences and admitted that we had very little in common, I’ve mostly been focusing on work and teaching.
It’s the teaching part I’m writing about today. Without any real intent to do so, and dragging my feet a little, I’ve accepted a few students who want to learn more about my particular brand of hereditary Paganism. They’re intrigued by the idea that my beliefs came from my mother and grandmother, and not from a book in a library that mixes a lot of truth with a whole lot of rubbish. They also find it interesting that I abhor the label “Wiccan” (mostly because it’s been so abused and twisted). So I’m a witch, but not a Wiccan. I’m Pagan but not a pagan. And yet I still seem to understand a few things about the world, magick and metaphysics in general. How is this possible?
Sometimes in a quiet moment I will stop and reflect that I am, for the most part, rather good at being me. I’ve cobbled together enough bits and pieces of myself to approximate a human being. And if no one looks too closely, the image holds up. Of course, sometimes it’s necessary to hold people at arm’s length so they don’t get too good of a look so that they see the cracks and the holes that I’ve filled with debris.
I spend most of my days trying to get through the day, walking the razor’s edge between productivity, creativity, normalcy and a total collapse. The commercials ask me if I have thoughts of suicide, and I laugh. Every day. For decades. But I’d never do it. I’ve gotten this far out of a stubborn determination that I’ve worked too hard on this particular project to throw it away in a fit a self-pity and desperation. But I also realize that it might not be entirely normal to think about it so much.