Wednesday, December 9, 2009
I need to buy new matches--I'm not wholly sure why this is significant, except in the way of small things that bring one's mind around to larger ideas--leaps of thought that link back to little things. Like needing new matchbooks, because the striking strip on all the ones I have is worn down enough to be near-unusable.
(It leads to awkward, silly moments starting up a circle--try to call Fire when your matches won't strike?)
There's a post I never finished on here, from Mabon last, and I think I'll put it up after this, just to have at least half the record of what I was thinking then. It ran out (the posting) when I started to consider family, and Rosh Hashana, and once more the intersection of self and spirit and tradition.
"It is impossible to say just what I mean."
Now it's nearly Yule after a Samhain that passed almost unnoticed in a flurry of business and busyness and bloody-minded theatrical determination, wending into an Autumn of stress and discontent, and striving toward all sorts of things while subsequently falling shortish of that 'start again' of Summer. Now, the first reall snowfall past (experienced in Cambridge, MA, in a spring coat, woefully unprepared for the truth of Winter) it grows time to take a look at what I've stored for the oncoming cold, and what-all I mean to do with it. Tonight I feel very scattered and stretched out--a good time to try and pull things back together and focus.
My match lit the first time, for this candle-lighting. I'll take it as as good an omen as I'll get for self-reflection.
I do not, I think, give myself enough credit for changes made in the past--the things I have done, rather than the things I yet wish for myself. Myself as I am, considered, current. I had a tarot reading from a friend recently which pointed all so many signs upward, and a giant smack in the face from both her and the Higher Powers saying "Give yourself some f*cking credit! Be proud of what you've done!" But I am much more Virgoan than I think I am, sometimes, and letting the criticism rest is often difficult.
I've been working on applying to graduate school--balancing the application process with theatrical work that ought to inspire it, the stress of money and time, the pressure to make much with little--I am so tired of hearing people ask how I am, recently. How I am is very well, on a level of happy-self: I had a marvelous weekend, catching up with friends, meeting new people, driving free on the highway and getting back to some neglected bits of experiential, sensual art-y self-hood I had been missing. I need to hold onto that, and not the next part. Because how I am on a practical level is much less happy: I'm stressed about money, about work, about this show I have to design under pressure and budget and some nagging misgivings, about time and location and all sorts of seasonal-affective crud.
But underneath the pile of crap? I feel like there's something brewing. Like if I can get through this winter, this show, these next couple months, there's an idea that wants expressing. There's Art that wants to be made, and it's just on the tip of my mind, and it matters. Something to do with masks, and myths, and oh very likely emergence from the Underworld--Inanna has been much on my mind lately. There's a mask-maker in Cambridge I want to go work with, take a week in February when the snow is deepest and the light is slow returning--go up, and reward myself with learning for Imbolc. Return, and get to work on creating something new, something my own, something independent of lame scripts or finicky scene changes, budgetary restrictins and other people's drycleaning. I love being a Designer--I love telling stories with my designs, sure.
But sometimes? Especially recently?
I just want to get back to being an Artist. Perhaps I ought not to wait until Imbolc.
This practicality is getting me down. I love pulling people together, celebrating the changing season with this fledgeling Crown Heights Coven Collective Crew and singing silly songs in Circle--revelling in new-baked bread, fresh dirt from the Botanical Gardens, apples in honey for Rosh Hashana and Mabon. I'm so proud of how a bit of a notion on a rainy Equinox has made a small something wonderful, a way to greet the Sabbats and Jewish holidays in tandem, in appreciation and simplicity. This Yule ritual scheduling is making me grit my teeth--be practical when all I want is everyone in a room for the night with tea and tarot, quiet conversation and maybe just the magic of the sun rising in the morning on a group of happy, sleepy people, together in simplicity to greet the unconquered sun.
More and more my touchstones are the simple things, the things that heat the Hearth inside--cooking for others. A cup of tea and a candle. The smell of yeast rising. The shape of the face as a mask takes shape, arcs rising through the plaster. Reconnecting with books in boxes. The perfect chain of songs on Pandora. Fiddle music in my ears and the incidental morning walks in my pajamas, falling back asleep in a warm bed--alternate side parking achieved.
I will not let the Winter pass in grumpy bitter slush--I lost my favorite season to stress, I refuse to let another pull me down.
From the journal entry after that last poem posted (mildly modified for seasonality)--
Thalia and Athena, you Ladies who look on thespians and artisans--grant me a return to the Work of my heart and my hands. For my heart it is sore and my hands they are empty, and I cannot just keep trudging on, Artless. Brigid, help me relight the fire in the head, for Winter is past and Winter has returned.
Tomorrow, I will clean my room, which has of late been disgustingly reflective of the clamor in my mind. Friday, I will cook. Saturday, I will cook more, and celebrate a reconnection of friends for Thanksgiving, Yule and Hanukkah all rolled together into one. I go home on the 18th for Hanukkah with my family, candles blazing against the dark, my grandmother's latkes and the coupl songs that I'm fairly certain are preserved in my family alone--and try not to wince at the line about 'martyr race', as ever. Comfort in consistency. Reconnection in cleansing, reconnection in connection, reconnection in repetition, and for Yule?
It takes nothing but a sunrise to bring me back my peace.
(It leads to awkward, silly moments starting up a circle--try to call Fire when your matches won't strike?)
There's a post I never finished on here, from Mabon last, and I think I'll put it up after this, just to have at least half the record of what I was thinking then. It ran out (the posting) when I started to consider family, and Rosh Hashana, and once more the intersection of self and spirit and tradition.
"It is impossible to say just what I mean."
Now it's nearly Yule after a Samhain that passed almost unnoticed in a flurry of business and busyness and bloody-minded theatrical determination, wending into an Autumn of stress and discontent, and striving toward all sorts of things while subsequently falling shortish of that 'start again' of Summer. Now, the first reall snowfall past (experienced in Cambridge, MA, in a spring coat, woefully unprepared for the truth of Winter) it grows time to take a look at what I've stored for the oncoming cold, and what-all I mean to do with it. Tonight I feel very scattered and stretched out--a good time to try and pull things back together and focus.
My match lit the first time, for this candle-lighting. I'll take it as as good an omen as I'll get for self-reflection.
I do not, I think, give myself enough credit for changes made in the past--the things I have done, rather than the things I yet wish for myself. Myself as I am, considered, current. I had a tarot reading from a friend recently which pointed all so many signs upward, and a giant smack in the face from both her and the Higher Powers saying "Give yourself some f*cking credit! Be proud of what you've done!" But I am much more Virgoan than I think I am, sometimes, and letting the criticism rest is often difficult.
I've been working on applying to graduate school--balancing the application process with theatrical work that ought to inspire it, the stress of money and time, the pressure to make much with little--I am so tired of hearing people ask how I am, recently. How I am is very well, on a level of happy-self: I had a marvelous weekend, catching up with friends, meeting new people, driving free on the highway and getting back to some neglected bits of experiential, sensual art-y self-hood I had been missing. I need to hold onto that, and not the next part. Because how I am on a practical level is much less happy: I'm stressed about money, about work, about this show I have to design under pressure and budget and some nagging misgivings, about time and location and all sorts of seasonal-affective crud.
But underneath the pile of crap? I feel like there's something brewing. Like if I can get through this winter, this show, these next couple months, there's an idea that wants expressing. There's Art that wants to be made, and it's just on the tip of my mind, and it matters. Something to do with masks, and myths, and oh very likely emergence from the Underworld--Inanna has been much on my mind lately. There's a mask-maker in Cambridge I want to go work with, take a week in February when the snow is deepest and the light is slow returning--go up, and reward myself with learning for Imbolc. Return, and get to work on creating something new, something my own, something independent of lame scripts or finicky scene changes, budgetary restrictins and other people's drycleaning. I love being a Designer--I love telling stories with my designs, sure.
But sometimes? Especially recently?
I just want to get back to being an Artist. Perhaps I ought not to wait until Imbolc.
This practicality is getting me down. I love pulling people together, celebrating the changing season with this fledgeling Crown Heights Coven Collective Crew and singing silly songs in Circle--revelling in new-baked bread, fresh dirt from the Botanical Gardens, apples in honey for Rosh Hashana and Mabon. I'm so proud of how a bit of a notion on a rainy Equinox has made a small something wonderful, a way to greet the Sabbats and Jewish holidays in tandem, in appreciation and simplicity. This Yule ritual scheduling is making me grit my teeth--be practical when all I want is everyone in a room for the night with tea and tarot, quiet conversation and maybe just the magic of the sun rising in the morning on a group of happy, sleepy people, together in simplicity to greet the unconquered sun.
More and more my touchstones are the simple things, the things that heat the Hearth inside--cooking for others. A cup of tea and a candle. The smell of yeast rising. The shape of the face as a mask takes shape, arcs rising through the plaster. Reconnecting with books in boxes. The perfect chain of songs on Pandora. Fiddle music in my ears and the incidental morning walks in my pajamas, falling back asleep in a warm bed--alternate side parking achieved.
I will not let the Winter pass in grumpy bitter slush--I lost my favorite season to stress, I refuse to let another pull me down.
From the journal entry after that last poem posted (mildly modified for seasonality)--
Thalia and Athena, you Ladies who look on thespians and artisans--grant me a return to the Work of my heart and my hands. For my heart it is sore and my hands they are empty, and I cannot just keep trudging on, Artless. Brigid, help me relight the fire in the head, for Winter is past and Winter has returned.
Tomorrow, I will clean my room, which has of late been disgustingly reflective of the clamor in my mind. Friday, I will cook. Saturday, I will cook more, and celebrate a reconnection of friends for Thanksgiving, Yule and Hanukkah all rolled together into one. I go home on the 18th for Hanukkah with my family, candles blazing against the dark, my grandmother's latkes and the coupl songs that I'm fairly certain are preserved in my family alone--and try not to wince at the line about 'martyr race', as ever. Comfort in consistency. Reconnection in cleansing, reconnection in connection, reconnection in repetition, and for Yule?
It takes nothing but a sunrise to bring me back my peace.