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?

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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.

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I am so tired of fighting all of you. Is there nowhere I can go where I don’t have to construct these concessions to the demands of other people sensibilities? Isn’t there some dark corner of the world I can escape to where I can just be myself, where I don’t feel like I spend my days apologizing for who and what I am? Isn’t it possible to go where no one will ever find me and I can spend my days in solitude, unashamed and unapologetic for the person that is me? Is that really the choices? The numbing despair of life-long pretense vs.  spending the rest of my life alone? And if I choose the latter and disappear into the shadows, will you let me go in peace? Why won’t you let me go?

It’s good to be home again. Those who know me are no doubt aware that I just spent five days in Broughton State Hospital for “evaluation”. You’ve all been talking about it, I know. There have been a lot of rumors floating about. Which is understandable, I guess, given my past (hey, I’m trying not to call you guys assholes – I really am). Rest assured that I am not crazy. In fact, my lawyers are looking into this case with some interest. Mostly because I’m not really crazy. I’m just eccentric. Make a note.

I want to set the record straight about what happened, though I’m kicking myself for feeling like I need to explain it to you. I don’t need your validation. Let’s just be clear on that, okay?

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[from late night notes]

I should be freaked out. But I’m not. I’ve felt this presence since I was a girl. Why now, though? I’ve stopped teaching. It’s been ages since I’ve cast a circle. If anything, I’ve shielded myself. Why now?

Maybe the last 72 hours stripped my defences. I haven’t slept since Saturday. I’m delusional. Or crazy. My sanity hasn’t been debated in awhile. Which is good. That’s progress, right?

What I feel most right now is a profound sense of peace. I’ve been afforded a visit from a familiar presence and an old friend. I’m fortunate that she still thinks of me and seeks my company. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Maybe I should dispense with my quest for distractions and face what I am. What I’ve always been. Maybe I should to listen more.

I wish next time she wouldn’t manifest at the foot of my bed, though. That was startling, to say the least.

It’s about 2am. I’m tied but can’t sleep. Dreams have been strange again. I saw Asheville burning. Large swaths of the city were reduced to rubble. Flying craft in the air. Not planes or helicopters. Floating, noiseless craft.

I don’t remember much else. I got up and poured myself a small bit of Rock ‘N’ Rye. Needed something stronger than plum wine. I’m drifting. As I sit here the wind is howling outside. It’s so windy I expect to hear tree limbs falling on the house. The wind chimes are making an awful racket in the back yard. As I write and watch the lead of my pencil dance across the paper, I sense movement all around me. Shadows moving. Colors shifting, just outside of my periphery. The energies swirl and ebb in the house and the restless wind seems almost to have been brought out of my dreams and let loose upon the world.

If I were a girl again I would take off my clothes and walk in the yard to feel the wind upon my skin and have the darkness embrace me. The spirits call to me, but here I sit, sipping the poison that lets me shut them out. I am grown now. I am normal. I am sane. I can’t come out and play with you.

In the corner of my eye just now I saw a woman standing in the doorway to the den. I’ve seen her before, but I never see her clearly. The glimpses are shifting smoke, like shadows taking form, only to vanish as I become aware. Already I’m dismissing it as imagination. That’s what sane people do. But I know she’s not a real woman. She’s shifting energy that I see as a person.

I’m going to finish my drink and take a hot shower. Then I’m going back to bed. The leaves that blow across the porch sounds like clawing fingers on the door or the scurrying of tiny feet. But I’m going to open the door and see if I can find my Hannibal. He’s never around when I want him to be, But he usually is when I need him to be. If there was ever a night to have a warm, furry, orange body beside me on the bed, tonight is it. Hopefully he can tear himself away from playing with the air spirits.

If I close my eyes the movement doesn’t stop. It gets worse. I just wish they’d tell me what they want.

I thought I’d celebrate reaching the 25 mark today with my traditional solo meal, but wound up instead having lunch with a potential client at Early Girl Eatery. The meeting didn’t go so well. What I thought was going to be a discussion about freelance work (which is what I do) turned into a job pitch for a tech company in Johnson City, Tennessee. There are worse ways to spend a birthday, I guess, than being offered a job by a recruiter, but I didn’t take kindly to having my time wasted. Especially today.

I told them I would think about it. As much as I love working for myself, the practical side of me would love the safety of an actual job. So far most of my business has just fallen into my lap. I shouldn’t assume that it always will. Or I should at least have some kind of plan to attract more business. Or I should consider joining a company where I can make good money and have a reasonable expectation of job security. Does that sound like fun to anyone else? Me, neither.

Anyway, today is my birthday. No more business. Aggie has offered to take me out tonight, and I’m thinking of taking him up on it. I’m fairly determined that this year’s birthday won’t be as horrific as last year’s. I worked through my birthday last year, and had a dark crash at the end of it. I’m in a better place emotionally this year. Maybe the day calls for a little time in the sunshine.

I forget sometimes that my traditions are not the same as everyone else’s. In recent correspondence with a friend about secular traditions and Yule spirit (in regard to how I celebrate the holidays), I explained my family’s peculiar tradition regarding the Yule log. I thought I would share it here.

The one and only lasting Yule tradition I have is a Yule log. The one in my possession has been maintained since my great-grandmother’s day. Every year I keep a fire burning in the fireplace for the whole Yule season, starting with the Winter Solstice around Dec. 21 and burning until Twelfth Night (around Jan. 6). The fire is started with the Yule log from the year before. And when the fire is ended on Twelfth Night, the largest remaining log is saved for the next year. This way there is an unbroken chain from each year to the next.

My family has done this for many generations, passing down the Yule log to our descendent’s. It’s a way of inviting ancestors to join you at the hearth, because technically parts of the Yule fires they made in their time are still very much present, since the Yule log has been passed down through the generations and the each new Yule fire is started with a remnant of the previous one. There are carbon remains of every preceding fire, and when you believe in the elemental spirits, that’s a big bonus.

To my family the Yule log is the most precious heirloom we can pass down. I’d save it in an emergency before anything else I own.

It’s time, kids, for the recurring rant about the rampant lack of social skills in this country. There are a lot of examples that have me complaining about this. Lately was an e-mail from a guy who introduced himself by saying;

“Whats up baby? Hit me up for a good time if you ever wanna party. I might show you a thing or two.”

Okay, my first question is; what kind of self-hating little slut does this kind of line actually work on? First off, you called me “baby”, which never goes over well. I was attending MIT by the time my friends were in high school, I own my own software development business, maintain two homes, and am a teacher to a modest gaggle of Pagans. How do you possibly think I’m going to be impressed by someone who starts off dismissing all that by reducing me to “baby”? And as for “I might show you a thing or two”, what makes you think a white boy gangsta wannabe with a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes and making gang signs could show me a thing or two? I graduated from boys a long time ago. They lack imagination.

But this doesn’t bug me as much as the pathetic boys who write me assuming that I want to get freaky just because I like girls. Yeah. That logic makes sense. I like girls, so I’m likely to want to entertain your little fantasy. So, to the guy who wrote and said;

“what’s good wit ya sexy self i was wantin to know if yo would be interested in joining me and my girl for some fun… hit me back if ur interested”

I have an idea. Why don’t I get busy with your girlfriend and you take a hike? Go to the store and buy us some wine, and leave it by the bedroom door. If we need you, I’ll call you. If not… well, there are always Movies-On-Demand. There’s some lotion by the sink. Have fun.

And what about these creepy old men who keep writing me, telling me about their successful businesses, and how they’re sensitive to a woman’s needs, and are looking for someone to have dinner with and develop a lasting friendship, and maybe occasionally watch the sun sitting over a lake? Do you really think that because, at 45, you’ve begun to notice weather patterns and the rotation of the Earth that I’m going to be impressed with your maturity? And do you really think that because experience has taught you to maintain an erection for more than five minutes that you can do anything for me that a woman can’t? I might remind you that when I’m with a woman, maintaining an erection isn’t an issue. And scientists are doing amazing things with latex these days.

And what about these young guys who post pictures of themselves holding their children? Oh, yeah. Nothing turns me on like the prospect of becoming a stand-in mommy while Young Stud runs around chasing other women who are stupid enough to think he’s somebody special because he posts pictures of himself with his kids. Hey, little Cindy Sue, would you like Mama Claire to tell you what your Daddy really likes to do with those handcuffs that you found in the drawer in the bedroom?

Let me see… what else annoys me?

Oh, yeah. Is it supposed to impress me when you tell me “I know I’m out of your league, but I thought I’d write anyway”. I haven’t given a mercy fuck since I was 16 years old. Grow a spine.

And please, please, please, no more terrible poetry. I’m not impressed that you can rhyme words or that you have a habit of reflecting on the profundity of life. Life is pain. Life is short. Sunsets are beautiful. There’s probably nothing you can relate to me in poetic verse that hasn’t already occurred to me. And unless you’re the heir apparent to Tennyson or Yeats, I’m probably not going to be impressed by your word-smithing.

So… with all that out of the way… what doesn’t annoy me?

You what I think is sexy? I think it’s sexy when you respect me as a human being, and you want to know what I think. By that, I don’t mean that you’re willing to listen to me talk, mentally tapping your fingers until I’m finished. I mean that you’re interested in engaging in an actual discussion. Once the mind is engaged, who knows where else that might lead? But please… let’s dispense with the pitiful attempts at being suave. And let’s dispense with the insulting vulgarity. If you want to get to know me, or any other woman, why don’t you just trying talking to me?

Honestly, nothing else is going to work with me. I’m an exacting taskmaster and a jealous mistress of mayhem. If you want to play on this turf, you’ll have to up your game.

I was on a space ship of some sort. There was a huge window that looked down on the Earth. It made me dizzy. I felt like I was going to fall and wouldn’t get near the window. But there was a woman there with me. She held my hand. It gave me courage. As afraid as I was, I let her take me to the edge. There seemed to be no glass, like you could take one step and fall, tumbling, for miles to the oceans below.

“Bear witness,” the woman told me. “The old gods are returning.”

I didn’t understand. She watched me. I can still see her face. Dark, almost black, long straight hair. Delicate features. Porcelain skin. She struck me as perfect. The idealization of a woman.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Asria,” she told me. “Or an aspect of Asria. As are you.”

“As I am?”

“You are an old one,” she told me. “A descendant of the pure blood. You have come home.”

Her words comforted me. They felt right. True. I didn’t feel like I was on a space ship orbiting Earth, my home. I felt like I was at home, at last, and was looking down upon my old prison. I felt like I had been released at last, and had finally found my way home. I wasn’t a realization, or a Eureka moment. It just felt right. Like an annoying, buzzing sound had been taken away and I knew I’d be getting my first real sleep in ages.

“We are all Asria,” the woman told me. “She is in all of us. She lives within us, and we live through her. Open your heart.”

“Asria is God?”

“No. You are god. I am god. We… are god. Asria is us.”

“And I am Asria?”

“Yes. As am I.”

I laughed at her, but felt guilty. On some primal level I knew she was telling me the truth. I just didn’t know how to work it through in my mind.

“So,” I asked her, “what does this all mean?”

She smiled patiently and patted my arm. “I told you. The old gods have returned.”

A lot happened after that, but I can’t remember any of it now. The conversation is almost seared into my mind, but the rest of the dream is a blur. Bits and pieces of images. Space ships covering the sky below me as I looked down on the Earth. Angels dropping through the sky, spraying great jets of flame onto soldiers. Armored women waiting to drop from floating platforms high in the air. And the woman I saw, in a room talking with other women who looked exactly like her.

The last thing I remember was standing on the steps of some kind of government building, wearing handcuffs, with dozens of angry people around me. They were all angry at me. A fat man forced his way through the crowd and raised a revolver at me. I looked at the policemen who were holding my arms, but I knew they wouldn’t protect me. They both looked away. The fat man’s hand shook as he squeezed the trigger. I looked past him, and across the street stood my old friend, Agnon, with a sad, stricken look on his face. Behind him towered a massive figure in seamless black armor, like it was a second skin or something. I wasn’t afraid. I knew everything would be fine. It brought me peace to know that my long road was finally over. I woke up when the revolver fired. But not before I felt the impact in my chest.

I’ve been trying to process this dream since I woke up. Now I’m just tired. My eyes are burning. I can’t think about this any more. So I’ll set it aside until tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be able to remember more of it. For some reason it all seems important.