[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.

[This is a story I came across on the College Media Network. I've had people ask me what it's like to be a Pagan. Well, read this story. We all have these kinds of stories to tell. - Claire]

When 17-year-old Shaun Derusha informed his mother that he would be unable to return to Purvis High School until she met with his principal, Denise DeSadier thought he was joking.

She had received neither letter nor phone call indicating any sort of misbehavior from her son. Such would have been the “proper” procedure for any institution purveying the attainment of education, but DeSadier agreed to have a conference with the involved administrators at her son’s school in hopes of reinstating her son’s place.

Her son explained to her that he had no idea what was going on, that he’d been called out of one of his classes by the administrators and a security guard to have his backpack rummaged through and personal questions about particular parts of his lifestyle fired at him. He failed to realize how serious the situation was until he found himself suspended under the suspicion that he’d threatened the life of some of the students by way of demon possession.

“It was believed that he planned on summoning demons to attack select students at the high school,” his mother told me.

DeSadier left the conference feeling her son had been severely wronged due to the fact that he and their family are practicing witches. A more formal name for their religion is Eclectic Paganism. It is hardly surprising that in a Bible-belt town with less than 3,000 people would frown upon such a lifestyle.

The family is no stranger to ostracization and the “cold shoulder” when people find out their religion.

“When people found out that we were practicing witches, they took it very very negatively,” DeSadier responded when asked how her family fit into this small town. “We are not part of their community. If only people would realize that there is no demon-summoning within our religion, there is no devil worship”

DeSadier felt as though Derusha had not been given his “due process” when these accusations had been made and when the school would not allow her to review the witness statements under the grounds of protecting the privacy of the three students involved.

Principal Ace Bryant of Purvis High School informed me that he was unable to disclose any information about the situation at all, but he did assure me that any disciplinary action taken against students that will leave some sort of mark on their permanent record were all investigated thoroughly and fairly. The online handbook of Purvis High School forbids intolerance of inequality, harassment or conduct that would make any student uncomfortable. If there was a problem that a student was too afraid to venture towards the principal’s office with, he or she could use AnComm’s online reporting tool, Talk About It, that is designed to bridge this communication gap by allowing students to anonymously report issues and engage in safe dialogue with school personnel.

Either way, the damage to Shaun’s record is done, as he was profiled in a way that would make words such as “Columbine” and “VTech” come to mind.

After taking an evaluation meant to grade his mental stability, Derusha was allowed back into school. When asked why the family hasn’t pursued some sort of appeal or lawyer for that matter, DeSadier responded that her son is a very mature thinker.

“Shaun just wants to graduate and move on in life. He won’t move because he feels that then they [discriminators, instigators, and those who are very close-minded] win. And he won’t give them that satisfaction.”

How strange it is to lie there in my bed, listening to a stranger breathe in the darkness. Every move she makes sends electric panic coursing through my veins. I was weak. Selfish. Needy. I knew when we met at the bookstore that we would end up here. I knew when we were eating dinner how the evening would end. Every bite of food was laced with innuendo. Every sip of wine passed parted lips as eyes gazed across the rim of the glass. We both knew what we wanted and hungered for. By the time we wound up sitting on my front porch, kissing and giving a good show to my Fundamentalist neighbors, we were already breathing deep of one another. I knew what she would taste like long before I helped her take off her clothes. There was never a question about where she would sleep tonight.

Okay, now that I’ve waxed poetic, why am I sitting in the living room writing this? I would much rather slip my arms around her waist, breathe her sweaty musk, and snuggle up against her warm, naked body. So why am I sitting here?

Sometimes you get so used to the silence that a rustle of cloth is like a grater being pulled across cabbage. The soft, wet smack as she licks her lips in her sleep is like someone moving a hand through a bucket of water. Her quiet breathing is like the ragged bellows on a forge. I love each and ever sound. But between is the Silence. Only in the silence can I hear Claire. If the silence goes away, will Claire go away, too? Will I become some robotic thing that exists in the backwash of the sounds of her being?

I’m afraid to fall asleep because I’m afraid I’ll wake her. I’ll move. Or fart. Or start talking in foreign languages. I might wake up screaming from another horrific dream, to find her sitting there wide-eyed, staring at me and glimpsing the full measure of my maniacal disposition at last. Maybe if I stay awake she’ll still be there in the morning. We can have a quiet, uncomfortable breakfast together before she slips off back into her normal life and the waiting arms of the boyfriend she forgot to mention (who’ll never know of the night she slept with the seductive witch).

Maybe that’s why her breathing is keeping me awake. It reminds me of the normal life she must have, far away from the darker shades of mainstream consciousness. Tomorrow as she sits at her desk in some office, if someone gets close enough to her, they might hear the same rhythmic breathing that I did. They will hear her; alive, vibrant and real. They will barely notice, rushing along on busy schedules. And unlike me, they will not be haunted by the defining reality of willingly setting aside their own sense of being and normality for the savored few moments of lying in the dark, listening to her reality swarm around the room in the guise of steady breathing.

I can’t sleep because I don’t want to sleep. I want to listen to her breathe. In the morning when she’s awake and the memory of impulsive experimentation is fading, she’ll realize, like so many others, that there’s a disturbing glint in my eye. So tonight is all I have. Maybe her breathing seems so loud to me because it’s framed by the silence of my reality. Mine is displaced by hers, and it frightens me. Even as I savor it.

Well, now that I’ve sat for awhile in the familiar silence of the living room, I’ve grown sleepy again. I’ll risk a return to the bedroom. And if her breathing is too sweet a sound for me to bear, I’ll find ways to coerce her into making other noises. I’m sure I’m creative enough to entice her into staying up all night. I am nothing if not skilled in the fine art of distraction and redirection. If nothing else, doing something other than just lying in the dark will drown out the breathing for awhile. And if I’m lucky, we might drown out the silence, too.

I’ve never been one to identify too closely with male gender roles. Sure, I’m bi-sexual, and toy around with the “lesbian” label, but to me I’ve never felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body. I’m a woman who likes being a woman. I just happen to like girls. The point is, I’ve never been compelled to dress like a man just to reject the social bias of certain gender roles. Sure, I don’t wear slinky dresses or put on much make-up, but neither do I get crew cuts and dress like a male businessman.

But I know people who do.  I know people who feel strongly the need to dress the exact opposite from the way they feel society wants them to. It’s all about thumbing your nose at expectations. Not to say that it is for all. Some gay women simply don’t feel like women; breasts and vaginas be damned. It’s a very individual thing. Every gay person handles her on his own self image in the most comfortable way for them. So I’ve never had a problem with those women who dress like men. It’s who they are and, more importantly, reflects who they want to be.

So… when I read a story about a girl in Mississippi who has been told by school officials that she has to dress a certain way to be included in the school yearbook, it breaks my heart. Partly for the girl herself, but partly because I realize how very far we have to go in this country before gays are treated as equal human beings. And don’t begin to give me this crap about how gays have the same rights as everybody else. That’s like a white cracker in the 60’s telling a black person that racism doesn’t exist. Unless that white cracker had used separate water fountains, sat in the balconies of movie theaters, or eaten in the kitchen at restaurants, it’s quite likely they never honestly experienced any form of racism (because it wasn’t directed at white crackers). What might seem to you like a fair and equitable system doesn’t seem that way when you’re on the other side of the glass looking in.

The girl I’m talking about is 17-year-old Ceara Sturgis: a straight-A student, a goalie on the soccer team, a trumpet player in the school band, who is active in Students Against Destructive Decisions. But despite being an exemplary student, Sturgis created a stink when she decided to pose for her senior photo in a tuxedo (rather than the drape customary for girls). Needless to say, school officials went off the deep end. Sturgis received a letter from the school in August stating that only boys could wear tuxedos and have since refused to include the photo in the school yearbook.

How wrong is that? Ceara Sturgis is going to be excluded from the school yearbook because she won’t dress girly for the camera? Gay students should not be punished because their sense of self doesn’t match the requirements of their prejudiced teachers. School is a formative time for all young people. No student deserves to be singled out because of their sexual orientation. It’s bad enough the abuse she must get from some students because she identifies herself as gay. Now the school is going to support that abuse by denying Sturgis the same rights as the other students? All because of her sexual orientation? And don’t give me that crap about how rules are rules. If your childrens’ high schools required that all boys take their senior photos wearing pink tutus, you’d feel very different about it.

My heart goes out to Ceara Sturgis. I’ve been where she’s at. Most gays have experienced this sort of discrimination, in one way or another. We’re constantly reminded that we’re second class citizens. As long as we dress and act like everyone expects us to, no one objects to our existence – in theory. But when we do that, we’re all made to feel like we’re living a lie. And I, for one, am very tired of living my life like I’m far behind enemy lines.

For once I’ve actually finished up with work before the sun went down. What does that say about my life, that anything less than a fourteen hour day makes me feel like a worthless slacker? It doesn’t matter that the project is finished and I can breathe. Somehow if there aren’t a dozen other details waiting in the queue, I feel like calamity will fall upon my head at any moment. Sometimes I think that I’ve been paddling upstream against the current for so long that when there’s nothing there trying to sweep me away, I suspect that it’s only because I’ve fought my way in the calm headwaters before the very gates of Hell.

I suppose I could have put that less melodramatically by saying simply that leisure time creeps me out. I always suspect there will be a bill on the other side of it.

So… what am I doing with my free time? I’m sitting on the couch eating Chinese take-out and searching through the endless terrain of media possibilities. To paraphrase a song, “I’ve got 1,000 channels of shit on the TV to choose from”. And I’m wondering where I go from here. I’m restless already, and it’s only Monday evening. What do I do with myself for the rest of the week? I won’t be able to start on the next project until I get the client’s server security codes next Monday.

It’s strange to look back on my life now, and where I was a year ago. Or better yet, two years ago, when I was in a different frame of mind, having visions and hallucinations, missing time and struggling just to get through each day, forgetting where I was sometimes. Or even who I was. If not for the hospital reports and the testimony of friends, I might not even know what I did in 2007. If not for friends, I wouldn’t know how I came to have the ever-so-stylish scars on my wrists.

They told me I could fix myself by keeping busy. Boy, did I ever take that one to heart. I’ve worked myself nearly to death since then. And except for a string of brief relationships last year and the occasional anonymous sex, I’ve stayed busy enough to keep the voices and images at bay and build up a small fortune in my bank account. Is that what I’m afraid of? Am I afraid that if I stop and catch my breath I’ll start falling apart again? More importantly, if that’s what I’m afraid of, what if I’m right?

A week off frightens me. The next project should be wrapped up by the end of October. Then I have nothing else scheduled for the rest of the year. If a week frightens me so much, what about having two whole months off? I don’t have another commission until January. Will I still be sane by 2010? Isn’t that really what I’m afraid of? If I don’t have 101 things on my plate to burn off every last joule of creative energy so that I’m too tired to dream, might I be afraid of winding up on the couch again with me feet tucked under me, watching the shadows move across the ceiling like wisps of smoke, whispering my name? Could I really wind up there again?

I suppose I’m wondering if it has to be work. Isn’t there something I can do besides mind-numbing computer programming to push back against the dark and scary places? Well, besides seducing identity confused college girls into anonymous sex? Couldn’t I take up painting or basket weaving? Maybe I could teach a class on avoiding the real issues. That would be fun, and perversely satisfying. I could live by avoiding dealing with my issues by occupying my free time teaching others the same. Giving back to the community and all.

Maybe I’m just afraid of being left alone in this big old house with Claire, who I know is mad as a hatter. She’s nice enough. She’s cute. She’s fuckable. But it’s hard to miss that mad glint in her eye. Am I the only one that creeps out?