Day #21 in my Search for a Soulmate

The Witch’s Book of Days (Kozocard, Owens and North), has a very Celtic tone to it, but I did love reading about today, the 31^st of October.

 “On this day, be aware of your personal totem as your “ally” and personal guide.  This is whatever totemistic guide you have most resonated to, who has most helped and assisted your path.  This day is given a blank rune, “Odin”, signifying unlimted potential, wide open possibilites, the blank canvass on which to paint, the sum of all totalities.  The Ogham symbol is Koad, meaning Grove and signifying the sum of all knowledge, past present and future.”

My search for a Soul Mate is slowly rev’ing back up again … this seems like a good day to strart giving it some of my attention again.

My own DayBook entry earlier last month (September 22^nd) described the Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Cake Festival, celebrated in Japan, China, Vietnam and other places, and it was at that time that I ordered my first-ever Moon Cake mold.  Have never made a moon cake in my entire life, but there’s no time like the present, even if I had missed the actual day of the Festival.

I love it when things work the way they’re supposed to, as that so rarely happens.  The first step was to “season” the mold itself, which was made out of wood.  And how does one do that?  Well, the old me would have sprinkled some salt and pepper on it for “seasoning”, but I’ve come a long way since my early Jessica Simpson, “Hi, I’m a walking idiot!” days.  I have a cast iron skillet now.  I know what “seasoning” is, when it comes to cast iron skillets, and I was right.  “Soak in oil for two days.” said the instructions.

Did so.  In any event, the oil soak brought out all of the beauty of the wood, and I had the most gorgeous moon cake mold drying out on my counter … so beautiful I almost didn’t want to use it.  But I did.

The wonder of “You-Tube” is never more evident than when you sit mesmerized, watching 10 separate videos of Chinese women babbling away happily in Cantonese, demonstrating the fine art of making moon cakes in their kitchens while you gasp in admiration, “Oh, THAT’S how you do it!”  It looks so easy when they do it – even though you just know you’re going to end up with flour all over you, the ceiling, the floor, the bewildered cats, and bits of dough hanging from the light fixtures.  Also, they put salted egg yolks in theirs, which I have no intention of putting in mine because it sounds so … yolky and salty.

And why is that?  Let’s go to the experts!  Okay, I don’t know any experts, so let’s Google it:  Most moon cakes consist of a thin, tender skin enveloping a sweet, dense filling, and may contain one or more whole salted egg yolks in its center to symbolize the full moon. Very rarely, moon cakes are also served steamed or fried.

According to Wikipedia, “traditional moon cakes have an imprint on top consisting of the Chinese characters for "longevity" or "harmony", as well as the name of the bakery and the filling inside. Imprints of the moon, the Chang'e woman on the moon, flowers, vines, or a rabbit (symbol of the moon) may surround the characters for additional decoration.

Moon cakes are considered a delicacy; production is labor-intensive and few people make them at home. Hence, most prefer to buy them from commercial outlets, which may range from smaller individual bakery shops to high-end restaurants. The price of moon cakes usually ranges from US$10 to US$50 for a box of four, although cheaper and more expensive moon cakes can also be found.”

Woo-hoo!!!!  My next occupation!  Making Moon Cakes and charging $50 for four!  I’d be rich in … (counting fingers) … so in one day, I could make … so, in one day I’d earn … okay, maybe not RICH, as in the “1% getting her ass justifiably kicked by the Occupy Wall Street people”, but …

And of course, this one will have to be an “invent my own recipe” version of a Moon Cake, mainly because I have no idea where to come up with a can of Lotus Seed Paste … even a Google search wasn’t much help.  Of course, all the above mentioned Chinese women are cheerfully boiling Lotus seeds on their stoves and then mashing them like potatoes, as though everyone could just amble down to the local deli and ask for a pound of lotus seeds, no questions asked, no raised eyebrows, no “Say WHAT?!?” tossed at you by the stock boy at the Stop & Shop.

I did find a can of almond paste, so perhaps that will do, and I can have an “Almond Moon Cake”, which will shock any Chinese reader to no end, obviously …assuming I can tolerate the taste of “almond paste”, as I don’t believe I’ve ever had any.  And I found some freshly grated frozen coconut at an Indian grocery store over at Shawsheen Plaza a week or so ago … a container of chopped dates … some chopped nuts … well, we’ll see how it goes.

Later:  Yummy!!  Actually, I’m sure a line of Chinese women would spit it out and howl “Phooey!” (or whatever it is they yell when confronted with a taste they weren’t expecting), but since I have no idea what lotus seed paste or red bean paste taste like … I had to go with the almond paste.  Mixed that with grated coconut, chopped almonds and chopped dates, and it was actually yummy.

However, I’m going to have to grade this a 50/50 attempt.  The mold worked.  (yay!)  And by “worked”, I mean I could remove the cake once I’d pressed the dough and filling into the mold, and then toss it proudly on a cookie tin.  However, maybe someone who is gifted at making Moon Cakes could answer these questions:  by about the fourth cake, the impressions from the mold were getting more and more faint, as the carvings in the mold  were filling with moist flour.  And two, I suspect the yolk wash recipe was a tad off, as it was a thick wash and brushed away what impressions were left.  (The wash I used:  one yolk, 1 teaspoon sesame oil).  And I used a basting brush – was that too strong?

Still, it’s always fun to learn new things.

Since Massachusetts falls apart in a light breeze, you can imagine what happened in the “Wet October Snowstorm of 2011”.  Woke up when the power went off, around 11:00 p.m.  Opened the curtains to get some ambient reflective light … was promptly blinded by a snow removal guy who turned his headlights on “blind to kill” and pointed them directly at my window.  Don’t ask me why.

Shortly after that, there were several huge crashes, as large tree branches came down directly in front of my living room window … (*sigh*) … and we finally got the power  on sometime around 4 or 5 a.m.  Went back to sleep.

Awakened at 7 a.m. this morning with horrible tendon cramps in BOTH legs, pulling my feet up towards my shins, and if you don’t think that was godawful screamingly painful, think again.  I literally started howling “Help me!” because I had no idea how to get rid of the cramps, and couldn’t stand on either leg, because both feet were twisted to the side and pulled up … I ended up massaging them for a good fifteen minutes, while crying my eyes out from the pain.  This was followed by three to four hours of ankles feeling so weak and stiff and sore they felt like I’d twisted both of them.  I’m going lame, aren’t I?

But it was par for the course – this week has been hell.  I spent Saturday morning at Lawrence General Hospital where they sucked fourteen gallons of blood out of me … okay, I lied.  Six tubes.  But still.  Then off to the local credit union.  Ever notice how wonderful everything is when people are trying to sell you something, and then as soon as they have you …?  In this case, I had to wait a good twenty minutes before getting waited on, and even the evil empire, the Bank of America, did better than that.  Although, the credit union isn’t charging me for using my debit card, so …

Soul Mate Search Day #20: More Things I Learned from Damien Echols

Another thing I learned from Damien Echols since I last posted:  “égrégore”, even though I don’t think he ever used the word.  This occurred to me while I was working (and by “working”, I mean “trying every single time I lay down and tried to sleep and failing miserably”) at creating the dream walking space.  It was frustrating.  I kept thinking, “What the hell??  The man managed to meditate for hours in the bowels of hell – (and by “hell” I mean the State of Arkansas) – why can’t I do this???” 

But so far at least – I couldn’t.  A few times I wanted to grab my cell phone, hit the icon for “Dial A Complete Stranger With A Working Brain Currently Hanging Out in New Zealand” and demand, “Give me some pointers, here!  Lessons!  Lessons!  Snap to it, bucko!”  Unfortunately … well, let’s start out the long list of complications snagging that scenario with, as I said two posts ago, he’s already more technologically advanced than I am – I’m the one who doesn’t have a cell phone, and he’s already probably calling half the planet and chatting away cheerfully, darn him.  Instead, I continued with the mental construction of the Dream Space.

My dream walking space has its origins in a vacation, and a weird spooky story, but here goes:

Okay, so I’m in Venice, Italy, the first time I’d ever been there.  This was basically a vacation – I’d already been to Rome, Florence, Milan and the Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua.  I walk into a market area near the Ponte Rialto (Rialto Bridge), which had been created there fairly recently.  I should say that from the moment we arrived by train from Milano into Venice, I loved the city.   Fell madly and passionately in love with it.  Felt very comfortable and at home in it.  Looking back on it, it does seem odd since I’d never been there before, but at the time it didn’t even seem odd that I felt that way.

So here’s the part where I scare the [bleep!] out of the person I was traveling with.

I walk into this small piazza and am immediately extremely dizzy.  I feel I’m going to lose my balance and lean against a building.  Then I enter an odd state where I’m seeing one scene (the “present day scene”) with my right eye, and another scene (“the old scene”) with my left eye.  And my perspective keeps shifting, which is why I’m getting so dizzy.  There are points of similarity, but there are differences as well, between the two scenes.  And I’m so freaked out by this, I assume I’m having some sort of stroke or something, and am trying to hold myself upright against the building  and wondering if my medical coverage actually covers anything in Italy.

I start describing what I’m seeing to the person I’m with, although some of the sights are outside of my current field of vision.  (i.e., “There’s a fountain over there, it has a scene of women at a fountain on it, there’s a church around that wall, there’s a staircase behind that pillar, you can’t see it from here; if you look you’ll see a lion’s head on the balustrade, it’s marble, the steps are marble too, the lion’s head has an indent in the stone where I can put my thumb …”  And I’m going on and on, even describing a canal that doesn’t exist anymore.

And what’s even more strange?  In my head I’m saying all this in English.  To my friend, I’m speaking some of it in an unintelligible language (which turned out to be Venetian).  Tuscan Italian I know; Venetian I don’t.  But I was partially babbling away in it, because a resident nearby understood some of what I was saying.

I end up describing my husband and children – and I should clarify at this point that in this lifetime, I don’t have a husband or children.  I babbled a back story about this former husband of mine.  He used to be a fisherman, now he was off fighting the Turks and was killed fighting the Turks.  He came back once from battle, and I ran all the way across the city to the Arsenale to meet him the first moment he returned on shore.  I washed and scrubbed him at that fountain I mentioned when he came home the first time because he was so filthy from being at sea for so long.  The second time he didn’t come home, and I lost my will to live and stopped eating and died.  I left our two children orphaned although both survived.  And while I can’t remember what year it was now, I do remember the year was  correct – when I came back home to New York, I looked it up and during the year I named, Venice had been engaged in sea battles with the Ottoman Empire. 

I kept spitting out the phrase, “Filthy Turks!” throughout the narrative (or other comparable epithet we won’t repeat here) , although, goodness knows, I have no reason NOW to be annoyed at people from Turkey, as I’m sure they’re all very nice, and present day people of Turkish descent can stop spluttering in outrage, thank you very much and have a nice day.

You have to understand, I was babbling this entire story in a weird mixture of Venetian and English while backed up against a wall, and when I got to the part about abandoning my children by dying (basically by starvation/suicide), I started bawling!  The person I was traveling with had very little idea about anything I’d just said, but this was when the resident – a very nice woman – came over and repeated some of it back to me for clarification.  She also couldn’t figure out how I spoke such perfect Venetian a second ago, and couldn’t understand her when I came out of that “fugue” state.  Because after I’d burst into tears and said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” (about the children) – I came out of it, and started seeing the current state out of both eyes again.

In an effort to help, the woman told me to visit the priest at San Marco, the magnificent Venetian cathedral at the center of the city, because she seemed to think I had abandoned children in this lifetime and was consumed with guilt about it.  She thought I would feel much better after going to confession.

Needless to say, after this experience, I didn’t have too much trouble believing in recincarnation, but that’s another story for another day.  It does lead towards the location of the dream scape I was creating:  it’s  constructed out of an imaginary second floor of a building in Venice, overlooking a peaceful canal and the laguna itself.  I was mentally creating this space, adding details like floors, paintings on the walls, tapestries, the reflection of dancing water on the walls and ceilings … also thinking, “I’ll bet other people would like it here …”  Really, it was so beautiful and peaceful, I just loved it.

Me, during that same trip.  The person  was actually trying to take a photo of the gondoliere (guy in the foreground), who she thought was cute; I just happened to appear in the photo behind him; I'm the small blob in the back.  There had been a pretty significant flood that year, and we’re all watching the recovery efforts.  (That also explains why I’m wearing high-water boots!)  This was not the piazza where the shift in perception happened – this is near Saint Mark’s. 

Anyway, this was when the word “égrégore” popped up.    The psychic and astral entity of a group; a group's meeting place, so to speak.  I’d just finished thinking, “Other people might like it here, too,” and just then envisioned the room I’d created morphing into something of an old world classroom.  We – that is the students – are all lounging on soft pillows; the instructor is … well, instructing.  I think the lesson that day was, “How To Meditate when You’re In  the Bowels of Hell” or something.  Now I REALLY wanted to hit that “speed dial” and “send” button.  “Hey, you know what you should do next?  You need to create a …”  Well, he’ll figure it out; he’s pretty smart.  It’s still me that has to catch up.  Back to practicing.

Still working on my Daybook.  Anyway, as I come across an herb, I also add it to my recently found daybook.  I have begun adding more recipes, information, beliefs, pictures, etc.  Today it was yarrow, because the Real Witches Year (Kate West) discussed Yarrow for today’s entry, and I was thinking that maybe I should start up a Book of Shadows, and not just a daybook.  Googled “yarrow” and came up with all sorts of interesting stuff.  Finally!  Some decent spells, recipes and associations.  Obviously, I wasn’t quite this inspired when I was in Wicca 101.

Then I had to go back and teach myself how to create an outlined index of multiple chapters of books, with a working index and a table of contents, all with clickable links.  Brunhilda never had it so good.

Learning is something like skittering across the face of a spiderweb – you start off in one direction, veer off into another, slide off gracefully into a third, not so gracefully into a fourth, and then can’t remember how it is you ended up reading something about  … whatever it is you’re now reading about.  In my case, Sacred Geometery. 

Well, it began with  Damien’s recommendation that his readers check out the Llewelyn Catalog.  Did so.  Was reading Shirley Andrews’ rehashed Lemuria and Atlantis, which (a) he did NOT recommend, which is fortunate or I would have regarded him with one eyebrow lifted skeptically, and (b) the author mostly lifted from Churchward and Cayce, both of which we could have read on our own.  No one asked for a re-hash of them.  I keep hoping there is some new discovery from the Bimini or Pacific Rim areas that are interesting enough to take notice of, but alas … apparently not, or at least not since the last time I looked into it.

She mentions the discoveries of the Advanced Digital Communications Company, supposedly Canadian but working out of Havana, Cuba.  Paul Weinzweig and Paulina Zelitsky were apparently scanning the area around Cuba, and found some interesting things under water … no one knows what those things are yet, though.  Unfortunately, the last recorded information about anything they were doing dates from 2000 to 2005, more or less, and the photographs are nearly impossible to decipher.  Rumor has it they abandoned the site along with National Geographic over money issues, so it’s just sitting there under water, decaying.  The Cayce foundation was also nosing around, but there is nothing current from them, either.  This is how we’re entertained, in a book last printed in 2010?  How … timely.

I’m one of those annoying people who prefers to have statements annotated and footnoted – and prefers to have her footnotes from a variety of respected sources.  I don’t care if the author hands me a theory or a supposition or a best guess – as long as she identifies them.  In this case, Andrews’ footnotes were so random, sporatic and so poor, I had to start researching things she brought up to find out the REAL story behind them. 

Children of the Law of One.  Starseed Children.  Both of which she mentioned as though they had actual relevance and substance; neither of which I’d heard of, and neither of which did have actual relevance and substance, when I looked them up.  Everything I found on either subject sounded as though it was a self-aggrandizing pile of steaming hoo-haa invented by women who no longer had working brain cells.  They’re behind the times.  Science has moved much closer to spirituality as of late.  The broads promoting this stuff might want to take that into account and try proving things they claim scientifically.  Or at least logically.  If they can.  I ended up rolling my eyeballls in disbelief throughout most of her seriousness on these topics.

However, scanning a reference to Children of the Law of One, I found reference to Sacred Geometry … the reference being something idiotic, like:  “if you don’t know Sacred Geometry, you will never know enlightenment!”  Uh-huh.  Really?  You’re sure about that?  Why does he or she  sound like those evil Southern Baptist Church Ladies of West Memphis, Arkansas?  In any event, I disputed that assertion loudly, without even knowing what Sacred Geometry was, just because those nasty black and white comments are so like those delusional demons who protest at veteran’s funerals and think they’re saints.  Bottom line:  when you split things into black and white, you are bound to be wrong.

In other words, back up historical comments with other historians and not authors who have written previous articles or books on Atlantis.  That’s like silly Christians who back up their “proof” of Noah’s ark with quotes from the Bible and are such pinheads they have no idea how useless, unimpressive and silly that is.

Pausing here ... will continue later.

Damien Echols and My Daybook

Day #19 in my Search for my Soul mate

Well, I have to say, Damien Echols gave me a boost in the … er, well, he gave me some inspiration, as far as this project went.

You probably have to understand who this guy is. He started out – in the world of ‘Public Figures’, that is – as a teenage high school dropout in the backwater of West Memphis, Arkansas with a penchant for the gothic, the wiccan, Stephen King and Metallica. In a small town packed to the gills with empty-headed, black-souled and vicious Southern Baptist Church Ladies, his behavior immediately pegged him not as a young man forging his own unique creative path through life and art (as it should have), but as a demonic Satanist, capable of murdering small children in cold blood.

Naturally, when three cub scouts turned up dead in that small pitiful town, all official eyes swiveled towards Damien and his best friend Jason Baldwin, who had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime. That was irrelevant, according to the Puritanical Salem Witch hunters of West Memphis. Thanks to a coerced confession out of a third teen with an IQ of 72 – a teen who obviously knew nothing about the case and was merely repeating what the police wanted him to say – by an incredibly corrupt and hopelessly incompetent West Memphis Police Force, (and thanks also to an evil and hopelessly corrupt judge), Jason ended up sentenced to life without parole, and Damien ended up on Death Row without a shred of physical evidence against either one of them. Were it not for an HBO film crew who caught this backwater explosion of appalling nitwitted evil stupidity on film, Echols would have been dead by now.

They are, thankfully, both quite alive and now free (see previous entry), thanks to an outpouring of intense revulsion directed at the State of Arkansas by practically the entire planet, after that film aired. And you know when even the drug lords of Columbia, South America are nauseated by the actions of Arkansas officials, things have gone pretty far afield. Particularly when the residents reward such appalling corruption by sending the key perpetrator – see evil and hopelessly corrupt judge, above -- off to the U.S. Senate. (See Senator David Burnett, Senator from Arkansas. And then people wonder what’s wrong with Washington, D.C. Look no further. He is still protecting his own corrupt hindquarters by sending minions – mostly women - off to post anti-West Memphis Three sentiments on message boards to this day. The guy needs help.)  Then there’s another batch of obsessive women who so desperately want to see Damien back behind bars you’d think he turned them down for the high school prom or left them at the altar. Hell hath no fury and all that …

Damien Echols and wife, Lorri Davis Echols

All of that aside, let us return to Damien Echols, the innocent man sitting on Arkansas’s Death Row after Senator David Burnett’s corrupt trial, which Burnett held in support of the evil felons making up the West Memphis Police department.

After a very brief stint of understandable self-pity, Echols pulled himself together. Got married. And what emerged into the sunlight not all that long ago was an enormously creative and spiritual man who had spent nearly twenty years educating himself, studying, writing journals, writing and publishing an autobiography, writing lyrics and short stories and gathering to himself a huge body of supporters, readers and admirers. (Not to mention the supporters who helped to finance the DNA analysis which proved that none of the three teenagers were anywhere near the crime scene.)




For me, he was basically “Mr. Signpost”! I was ambling in one direction; came to a crook in the road, was cheerfully sideswiped by Damien Echols one morning in August and ended up pointed in a relatively different direction altogether. My very own Carl Frost moment, minus the snow.

I had read Damien’s writings and was so moved by them I read more and more, and got all sorts of ideas about how to proceed with my Soul Mate search project. The man writes so well he reads like he’s sitting next to you in a rocking chair on the front porch and chatting amiably about one thing or another. And really, considering where he started out in life … a high school dropout from the statistically retarded State of Arkansas being beaten up by their evil injustice system, he’s downright amazing – his literacy, his style and his attitude. (One and only promotional line: Almost Home, by Damien Echols. At any online bookstore near your computer. His journal is on wm3.org).

As you’ll recall (or probably you won’t, so I’ll remind you), everything had stopped at the “write your negative thoughts down on small scraps of paper and burn them” instructions. I still have a metal mixing bowl sitting on my dining room table with small scraps of paper in them. I had so little faith in my own luck and so MUCH faith in my own clumsiness, I just didn’t want to start a fire in a bowl in my apartment; and have been seriously dragging my feet since then. In fact, it’s been so long, I can’t even remember what I wrote on those scraps of paper, and ought to open them and read them one of these days.

One way Damien sent me flying off in another direction was by mentioning Michelle Belanger in one of his journal entries. I didn’t realize I already was (vaguely) familiar with her until I’d already taken his lead and ordered one of her books. From there, I logged onto her website and uttered the somewhat insulting, “Hey, that’s the chick from Paranormal State!” Which is true, but she probably could have gone without being identified as a “chick”. Oh well, too late now.

Michelle had written several books, one of which is entitled Psychic Dreamwalking. If I’m not mistaken, I have had a few (and far between) experiences of becoming conscious while dreaming, if only for a micro-second. As I read her book, I began to suspect the experiences I had weren’t episodes of "dreamwalking", I suspect they were episodes of "lucid dreaming" – moments of being aware that you are dreaming while you are still in the middle of the dream.

At the same time, I had begun re-reading anthropological articles and books about the ten days of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which occur right around the time of the Autumn Equinox. Why I was doing that, I will explain momentarily. Nothing I read divulged the true Mystery of the Mysteries, because in those days people could die for releasing any of those secrets or mysteries, and it must have been a believable threat because no one did.

The Greeks must have had one hell of a “Homeland Security” system in place to scare that many people into silence for that long. Or … here’s my suspicion: the awe inspiring Goddess Demeter is … wait for it … REAL!!! … and people protected her secrets out of love for 2000 years until the Southern Baptists of Arkansas showed up and murdered everybody! Hmmmmm. Things to think about.

Anyway, I knew all about the theory of the ergot on the barley causing hallucinations after initiates drank the kykeon, but I also knew all of the arguments AGAINST the ergot on the barley: (a) if that was all it was behind the Mysteries, people would be recreating the Mysteries at home, and didn't, and (b) all of the women initiates would be spontaneously losing infants all over the place, because it causes all sorts of horrible side effects. And how did the awesome huge jet of flame go flaring up into the sky over Eleusis? This was Ancient Greece. Flame throwers weren't around, and no one has found pockets of gas under the town. People would have noticed initiates erecting a huge pine tree and setting the top of it on fire, so I’m pretty sure THAT didn’t happen … someone would have mentioned it and didn’t. I found myself thinking, "Wow, I wish I could have been an initiate in those Mysteries to see what really happened ..."

And then, all of a sudden it occurred to me: [insert "Eureka!" music they always throw into cartoons when a light bulb goes on above some character’s head] Hey! Is it possible to dream walk into the past, into history?

And speaking of which, why is it that winnowing baskets – the same baskets the initiates carried into the Eleusinian cave as part of the initiation - all looked the same no matter where on the globe they were created? Like, how is it that the Ojibwa winnowing baskets in North America look the same as African winnowing baskets, before 1492? Or did they start looking the same after 1492? More importantly, do I get an award for the most irrelevant question set in the middle of a paragraph of 2011? Yes? WOO-HOOO!!!

But I digress. Belanger didn't discuss dreamwalking into the past - only how to pass along important messages, how to have sex in the dream space (well, that would cut down on wear and tear on the sheets, I guess), and most importantly, how to always ask permission first, or you could scare the *&^%$ out of someone, dreamwalking in on them when they weren't expecting it - but nothing about dreamwalking into history.

Trying to figure out what the difference between dreamwalking and lucid dreaming was, I also went and bought Mark McElroy’s Lucid Dreaming for Beginners. In answer to the question of the benefits of lucid dreaming, he says, “Live your fantasies … visit third century Rome. Go sky diving – without a parachute. Give yourself magic powers. Buy everything your heart desires. Meet your favorite celebrity. Heck, seduce your favorite celebrity! …)”

Ohhh-kay. On one hand, visiting third century Rome was closer to what I was seeking - the Eleusinian Mysteries went on for 2,000 years and so started waaaaay back in Greek history - but no, on the other hand, this really isn’t what I was hoping for. Exception: seducing your favorite celebrity? Helllllo, Viggo Mortensen!! No, wait. Hellllllo, Gil Birmingham! No, wait. Helllllo, Stephen Bowman! No, wait … (just kidding!) This sounded like an interaction with your own imagination, not dreamwalking.

Using Viggo Mortensen as an example, would the real Viggo Mortensen wake up the next morning and wonder who that ravishing succubus (humble, aren’t I?) was that he was boinking all night in his dreams? Not likely, as I would have been interacting with my imaginary version of Viggo Mortensen, not the real thing. I think we’re still discussing dream walking, not lucid dreaming.

Speaking of succubi, this raised another question I couldn’t find an answer to. Why is it always assumed that succubi and their male counterparts (incubus-es? incubi?) are demons? You come across people raising the question in all sincerity on Ask.com and getting answers from even more annoying church ladies (or maybe they're the same ones from Arkansas) with withered-up and desiccated nether regions protected by sterile granny panties, and sniggering prepubescent boys trying to play “Skeptic”.

No one ever answers the simple question. Why the assumption of evil? Are they just passing along old wives’ tales? Has anyone ever seen one? Why assume they’re evil? Because they think sex is evil? Why do Westerners (translation: Christians) automatically think sex is evil? Too many people in this world just don’t question their own assumptions. Bottom line: why aren’t succubi/incubi merely spirits who enjoy the activity for what it is? More importantly, does this count as yet another completely irrelevant question in the middle of a paragraph? Yes? WOO-HOOO! Twice in one entry! And where is Damien Echols when you need an answer to something??? The guy is supposed to be really smart after all that self-disciplined studying he did for the last 20 years. Oh, right, I think he’s in New Zealand. (*sigh*) Someone tell Peter Jackson to quit showing him “Lord of the Ring Outtakes” and shove this question under his nose!

THE DAYBOOK
Back many, many years ago I had started a Day Book. There is (or was) a witchy little shop I loved, on East 9th Street in the Village, Enchantments, where I went through Wicca 101. Another reason why, when I read about Damien, I thought, “Thank goodness I lived in New York”, where they tend not to arrest you and throw you on Death Row for going to Wicca 101 classes.

If you ever find the store, not only is it the best-smelling store on the planet, they have the coolest stone carving of the “Green Man” hanging from the wall in the back of their tiny garden; something you never expect to find in lower Manhattan.

Anyway, I’d started the Day Book back in the Enchantments days, in lieu of a Book of Shadows (the book where witches are supposed to keep their spells and recipes) since I was pretty green around the gills (much like Elphaba) and had no spells or witchy recipes to record, beyond the usual, “Oops, I just accidentally set fire to the kitchen …”, or “Darn, I just blew up another cauldron.”

I was not a talented Wicca student in those days. Or these days either. Ever seen those funny Halloween decorations of a witch who has just crashed into a tree on her broomstick? That would have been me for real.

As it was, I went through the course, enjoyed it for the most part, made some new friends and then forgot about it until now. I’d also forgotten I still had that Day Book and spent an entire evening searching for it, hoping to start making entries again – I didn’t even expect to find it, but I did.

Anyway, the reason I’d pulled the Day Book back out again was to record one of the most beautiful examples of lyrical prose I’d ever read. Damien had written:

“On August 31st I’ll sit up all night long to see September in. At midnight she’ll begin to stir and stretch. When September opens her eyes I’ll be the first thing she sees.”

I absolutely loved that when I first read it. Now HERE was a guy who definitely should have been born and raised in the northeast instead of Arkansas; we are definitely a part of the country that makes a big colorful to-do about Autumn and fall leaves. But back to my dream-walking into history idea, I may be closer to being able to do that than you might think! Check this out!

The good news of the week is:

"Particles shot from European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) labs near Geneva, Switzerland to Gran Sasso, Italy, reportedly surpassed the speed of light by 60 billionths of a second. The experiment was part of OPERA, a project designed to test the oscillation of small particles called neutrinos." (URL: http://marquettetribune.org/2011/09/27/news/speed-of-light-comes-to-halt/)

“The report has sent scientists into a tizzy because "a particle traveling faster than the speed of light would violate causality. In other words, an event can have an effect on an earlier event," Michael Witherell, vice chancellor for research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, physics department, told TechNewsWorld. Though the difference of speed compared to light is small, it could challenge the entire law of physics, open up the possibility of time travel and play havoc with longstanding notions of cause and effect. A lot of science-fiction stories are based on the concept that if the light-speed barrier can be overcome, time travel might theoretically become possible." (URL: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/219577/20110925/particles-faster-than-light-neutrinos-opera-cern-einstein-s-theory.htm)

So, either (a) we've just discovered warp drive and can act out "Star Trek" for real, or (b) we can go backwards in time (yay! I want a ticket for THAT ride!) OR – (c) the Swiss miscalculated and their findings are incorrect. But think about it ... the Swiss miscalculating??? Come on - Just not possible. I'm leaning towards time travel. Or … well, okay … being a Ferengi might be fun for a day, too. :) And the really sad news was that most American media sources thought the idiotic Republican candidate squabble for president was more important than this news story!!??? I don't get it. Most exciting scientific news story in the last 100 years and it ended up mostly on the back pages. Unbelievable.

More URL’s:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/22/science-light-idUSL5E7KM4CW20110922

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/story/2011-09-22/particle-travels-faster-than-speed-of-light/50518790/1

http://marquettetribune.org/2011/09/27/news/speed-of-light-comes-to-halt/

So … the Daybook was something like this: if you were Hindu, this is what you might have posted on October 1st: that being the first day of the Festival celebrating Durga, the personification of the active side of the divine “shakti” energy of Lord Shiva, the ferocious protector of the righteous, and destroyer of evil. Durga is usually portrayed as riding a lion, and carrying weapons in her many arms.” So … for my Daybook entry on October 1st, I would record everything I could find about Durga, perhaps her picture, and some ideas as to how to celebrate her festival next year, (And yes, I agree with you, that graphic above DOES look like “I Dream of Jeannie” when she’s inside the bottle.)

Whle I was recording that, I made another brilliant discovery (I am learning the strangest things lately, thanks to that kid from Arkansas): why does frankincense smell like … cloves and anise and grapefruit? And what IS frankincense? (Pitter, patter of feet to “Google”): Hmmm. Resin of the Boswellia tree. Obtained by slashing the tree. Over harvesting is endangering trees. (blink) (gasp) They slash a tree for it???? The poor trees! Oh, lovely. Frankincense going the way of the American buffalo because human beings are so greedy and stupid.

Why Women Who Don’t Know Their Roots Should Never Make Daybooks: So I was over at Whole Foods. Reason: one of the root recipes for harvest time I recorded many, many years ago required burdock root, which I’ve never tasted, as I had no idea what it was, what it looked like or where you’d buy any. Only that it was supposedly very good for you. Someone said they’d seen some at Whole Foods, so off I went.

Produce packed in the stands very tightly together, so I picked up something that looked like it might be a root only to discover it was actually a radish, although it sure didn’t look like the small red, round radishes I was familiar with. Long, white, huge – looked like an albino carrot on a diet of excessive growth hormones. But since I’d picked it up already … I had to buy it, and was now stuck with daikon – a Japanese radish. A rather costly mistake. Had no idea what those tasted like, either. Never even heard of it. Brought it home, scrubbed it off, cut off a slice … {chomp!} … {chew, chew, chew} … {pause} …. {face turns bright red} …. {insert sound effect of five-alarm fire bell at local firehouse} … OH, JUST KILL ME RIGHT NOW! Like I don’t have enough body parts catching fire at the moment. (See knee socks of fire, previous entry somewhere)

Bottom line: if you love torturing yourself with really spicy stuff, try one of those, you’ll love it.

* *Apparently, cooking them reduces/eliminates the bite. Grated a root, added half a Bermuda onion and garlic, egg, bread crumbs added some spices and made some decent patties out of it – like those grated potato pancakes. Fried it up in olive oil. Not bad at all. Another recipe for the Day Book, October 1st, still celebrating the Autumnal Equinox!

Next entry:  what all of this has to do with my Search for My Soul Mate!