Preparing To Venture Forth



This is the first time I’ve seen the Sonnet Cycle printed out ... all 70 pages of it. I guess I knew I’d churned out that many sonnets, but holding the pages in my hand somehow makes the volume of them more real ... more solid. Attach a check ... mail it off. Poetry contest.

You’d think this was a sign of courage, or of confidence. Nope. This is a sign of ... defeat, in a way. The Sonnet Cycle touched upon a lot of subjects, one of them being the obsession with Piero Barone aiding me in a passage through horrific grief with his beautiful voice. The Sonnet Cycle will have taken about 5 months to unspool. Even though the obsession itself has lessened, I still fully expect my heart to be shattered by him in nine days’ time – which is when I bought tickets to see him and Il Volo at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan. When I bought the tickets, I still had the reasonably attractive face and smile I was born with. I’m not saying I was stop in your tracks, drop-dead gorgeous ... I’m saying that the face I saw when I looked in the mirror was MY face! I was used to it, familiar with it, comfortable with it. Now I have no idea who that face in the mirror belongs to. Certainly I was quite a bit more positive and enthusiastic than I am now. I had planned to make a comforting weekend of this trip home to New York, have lunch with friends, maybe visit Enchantments again, the works. Now I’ll be lucky if I work up the confidence to go at all.

So I thought I’d send the Sonnet Cycle out now – before my heart is shattered into a million frozen shards of ice, and before I’m inspired to permanently shred the thing. Actually, in his defense, I have no reason to believe he’d react cruelly to an twisted, unbalanced, swollen face ... really! Nothing he has ever done makes me think that. To the contrary, everything he has done suggests he is extraordinarily kind and good-natured.

But think back now, and consider the "unlucky hand" I’ve been dealt over the last year or so, and then ask yourself why I would expect kindness – from anyone or anything: the universe, the world, a tenor from Sicily ... even Mr. Signpost. The answer? I wouldn’t expect kindness, of course – I would expect the polar opposite. And that’s why I’m sending that sonnet cycle out now, getting it out of range of my shredder. I’m expecting the absolute worst in nine days’ time. Par for the course and all that ... and that expectation has nothing to do with him, really.

It has more to do with me, despite Sekhmet’s use of Damien to block me from continuing along that emotional path. I can’t quite seem to get my expectations turned around. But then, I can’t think of anything that has happened which would convince me to do that. I get punched in the gut so regularly; I can’t even recover from one sucker-punch before I’m doubled over by another. That’s just the way it has been going over the last year or so.

28 August 2012
Two sides of a wolf’s head ... on one side, I had a beautiful dream. It was beautiful because nothing happened in it. I went to the concert and was so mesmerized by the performance, I forgot all about myself, my dead feet, my cramping legs, my swollen, deformed face ... and had a wonderful time. Nobody noticed me, nobody looked at me with pity, it was a wonderful evening. The dream was merely a fragment of a moment, but I absorbed a great deal in that one moment. I think it was triggered by one of Damien’s re-tweets about happiness, which I will go back and hunt down when I have a moment. But the end result: I’m far less intimidated and frightened than I was, even yesterday. Something changed, anyway.

The other side of the wolf’s head: I keep forgetting all of the pieces I need to send the Sonnet Cycle out. Yesterday I forgot the envelopes and the checkbook. Today I remembered the envelopes but forgot the postage stamps, the instructions and left my debit card at home so I couldn’t go to the Post Office anyway – or even buy lunch, come to think of it. The next day I forgot my flash drive all together. I’m thinking, "Are you TRYING to shoot yourself in the foot every five minutes?!?" Because – damn! – that’s what it feels like I’m doing.

29 August 2012
Must have been another long-lost memory jostled to the surface by some tweet or another, no doubt one about the forthcoming full moon, or blue moon... all of a sudden I recalled a lullaby Mom used to sing to us when we were young. She did NOT sing a version about "God blessing" anybody, she sang this one, that started out with the oak tree – probably yet another reason why I love trees – and larks – and maybe even roses:

I see the moon; the moon sees me
Down through the leaves of the old oak tree.
Please let the light that shines on me
Shine on the one I love.

I hear the lark; the lark hears me,
Singing a song with a melody.
Please let the lark that sings for me
Sing for the one I love.

I kiss a rose; the rose kisses me,
Fragrant as only a rose can be.
Please let the rose that comforts me
Comfort the one I love.

Here was Damien’s tweet about the moon: "The blue moon is the night after next. She'll be my last full moon in NYC. Have you decided what you'll wish for?"

Great. No wonder I forgot it. He reminds me he’s moving to Salem, of all places. [Mumble, mumble, frickafracka, stupid place, grumble ...]

I learned a while ago not to wish for anything because I’ll get the exact opposite. I mean: how many times have I wished that the Sky Sadist would stop punching me in the face every other week? That something good would happen ... as opposed to a never-ending string of death, disasters, near fatal illnesses and accidents? And what was the result?

30 AUG 2012
And it also somehow escaped my notice – once I came to the realization that Piero wasn’t going to give me a moment’s thought or attention so it didn’t matter WHAT my face looked like ... or if my nose was running like Usain Bolt... or if I was drooling so profusely I could serve as a stand-in for Niagara – that in five day’s time I was going to be in HIS PRESENCE. I unexpectedly started shaking and my hands turned ice cold. 

(Photo - Piero and his father, 2012)

Actually, I’ve never had an obsession like this before, so I felt like I should humbly track down and then apologize to all my high school girlfriends whom I ridiculed for their obsessions, all of which I thought were silly at the time because I considered myself so much more intelligent and self-possessed than they were – as I recall, one of them was so obsessed with one of the Backstreet Boys she was last seen crying and wailing when one of them was photographed with a girl. And now, here I was. Payback was indeed a bitch, now that I was going through it myself.

It’s not as though I regarded him as someone greater than any other man on the planet ... wait a minute. Who am I kidding? Of course I think of him that way, he’s Piero Barone of Il Volo, but that’s not the issue. The issue was more that this was the man whose voice had soothed me as I crawled through the depths of hell after my brother’s death, through accidents, nerve damage, illnesses and crippling surgeries, which is really an intimacy you don’t get with very many people. This was the man whose voice I heard in my dreams. This was the man who had inspired untold metres of passionate poetry. And in five days time I’d be staring up at him, from a spot somewhere south of his thighs. OH GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE, I SHOULDN’T HAVE BOUGHT THOSE TICKETS, I’VE LOST MY MIND!!!

I still find it incredible that a nineteen year old boy has a voice like this ...

Damien and Sekhmet Part II ... and My Fear of Il Volo

"The Tickets" have arrived. I’m trying not to throw up in fright. Spent an hour looking into a mirror, trying to smile ... wincing at the sight ... and then getting frightened. I don’t even want to leave the house ... and in a few week’s time, I’ll be traveling to Manhattan. Part of me is whispering, "I’m afraid ... don’t make me do this, please don’t make me do this..." to myself. I have a different face than I did a mere month or so ago.

But another part of me won’t let me back out.

Is this courage? Limping into Manhattan with a twisted face and a perpetually running nose, swollen from steroids, to face someone whose beautiful Sicilian tenor voice unknowingly helped to begin to pull you out through the other side of your own personal hell, knowing that it is quite possible that he may glance at your face and then turn away in ... what? Disgust? Disinterest? Dismay? Or worse: pity? Do I need to spend an entire concert sitting right in his line of sight and praying, "Please don’t look at me, please don’t see me"? How small and pitiful my world has become.

I begin to suspect that surmounting the fear of traveling to Salem would be courage; fear of traveling to Manhattan is merely vanity. But I’m afraid, nonetheless. My heart has been sliced to shreds from so many other things lately; I’m being asked to lay it down on a sacrificial altar again. I don’t want to. Oh, I so don’t want to. I don’t trust the universe anymore.

The truth of it still: I still can’t face Salem without self-loathing and tears, while I feel safest and most at home in Manhattan ... even after September 11th, I went back to work two days later because Manhattan is such a source of familiarity and comfort for me ... so if I’m going to go anywhere, it is the best place I can be to face this new and unexpected fear, vanity driven or not.

As if to cuff me rather abruptly upside my head ... Sekhmet appears with Damien again. In Manhattan, of course. It’s very difficult to describe the impact of the two of them together without sounding ... I don’t know ... weird.

(Photo by Damien Echols)

Individually, they’re awesome anyway: Sekhmet the All Powerful, the Healer, the Eye of the Sun, sparkling with thunderous solar magick, Purifying Goddess of the Desert; Damien the Magus and the Teacher, acolyte of the Holly and Harvest Kings, lover of the North Wind and the snow, and (I loved Henry Rollins’ analogy) a gleaming, fire-tempered, razor-sharp blade of a samurai sword.

Put them together, and – at least in my world anyway - now they’re a powerfully silent sonic boom, a portent, an omen, a sign of something. A new something, like a star nursery, lighting up what was once a remote corner of the universe, laying in darkness. Together, they make the air shimmer and undulate in waves.

Damien has no idea, I know this, but She’s got one huge paw laying on his shoulder. A benediction of sorts, I keep thinking. She really does use him to speak. He’s her low, rumbling growl. The two of them together make my head turn, expecting something. They immediately have my complete attention, although I’m not quite sure what the message is, yet. The two of them are this massive wall I can’t get through, can’t go around, have to confront whether I want to or not. Seeing them together makes me want to cry.

That Damien showed up (completely unexpectedly) in the first of the two psychic readings (the only accurate one) where the psychic was also seeing Karnak – Sekhmet’s temple in Egypt- is now getting even spookier. Given THAT scenario, maybe I should have expected this development – the two of them standing side by side - but I really didn’t.

This isn’t as breathtaking as the earlier photo of the two of them looking like an impenetrable force of nature; this time he photographs her and comments, "She's as lovely as ever." and took a closer photo of the ankh in her hand.

Although drawn, I find myself unwilling to look too closely at them, mainly because the two of them are such powerful symbols of change, of communication. My change. Being pushed or pulled towards something. When I’d much rather cower behind closed doors and hide, and to beg people not to look at me, I suspect I’m about to be pulled back out – and I don’t want to be. It hurts to be.

He made me smile a day or so ago, in an interview – he said he didn’t want to be remembered as one of the West Memphis 3. I read that and, OK, while I didn’t exactly think, "Oh, was he one of the ...?", I did realize that I’m past there, already. I rarely think of him that way, unless he’s brought the topic up for some reason. One minor exception: I still love reading his prison journal, so I suspect at some very minor level that will always be there somewhere, but it is far from being the first thing I think about him, or when I read his tweets. I tend to see him as the Magus and Mr. Signpost now. I might also start thinking of him as Sekhmet’s low, rumbling growl, if this keeps up.

I’m trying to make sense of all of this.

"The Tarot is a living being. It has its own intelligence, a personality you can feel every time you use the Tarot. When you take the Tarot cards in your hands, you do not hold an impotent document or an inanimate book. The Arcana of the Tarot are a real tool that allows you to invoke or evoke an immaterial and invisible mind. These Tarot cards are the visible appearance of an invisible form of consciousness that can communicate with you through the medium of the Tarot deck."

DeBiasi, Jean-Louis, The Divine Arcana of the Aurum Solis, 2011, Llewellyn Publications, p 7

The Divine Arcana, so far anyway, is an interesting book. Definitely lacking in historical footnotes at critical moments, but interesting. I’ve been reading the history of Georgius Gemistus — later called Plethon or Pletho — a Greek Neoplatonic philosopher, "one of the chief pioneers of the revival of Greek learning in Western Europe", he advocated a return to the Olympian gods of the ancient world. Fascinated by his reasoning in advocating a return to the Olympian gods, and right at the height of christian fatal retaliation for heresy, I’m reading John Wilson Taylor’s 1921 dissertation for the University of Chicago, Georgius Gemistus Pletho’s Criticism of Plato and Aristotle, hoping to learn something – and desperately wishing I’d gone further than one year in Latin.   Damien - Mr. Signpost - does it again: this time he had re-tweeted something about Hermes Trismegistus, which sent me off to the Emerald Tablet, which immediately sent me off in this direction.

Interesting factoid I’ll bet most christians don’t know: Thomas Aquinas "[so] far succeeded in reconciling the doctrines of the church with the philosophic thought of Aristotle that, for two centuries after he wrote, an attack on Aristotle was construed as evidence of hostility to the church."

Taylor, John Wilson, Georgius Gemistus Pletho’s Criticism of Plato and Aristotle, University of Chicago, 1921, p. 6

Say that again? An attack on Aristotle was construed as evidence of hostility to the church? Did I mention that Aristotle pre-dated christianity by a mile and lived in a thoroughly pagan society? No? Consider it mentioned ... although many scholars suggest he was an atheist. Point still remains.

So far, all I’ve gotten out of the dissertation is an amusing discussion amongst the ancients of the divine "Fifth Element" ... I say ‘amusing’, because if they’d known the truth (i.e., that the "Fifth Element" was in fact a hot, naked, comic-book sketch of a chick who falls from the sky into an air cab piloted by Bruce Willis) ... it would have saved me a few hours I’ll never recapture of squinting at the text and mumbling, "Huh?"

Sex, Sin and Sumerian Magic

Recovering from a fund raiser held at Sal’s, my favorite Italian restaurant, in Lawrence. Stayed out way past my bedtime, drank too much and paid the price in severe leg and foot cramps. So for the last couple of days I’ve been limping and hobbling around the apartment, groaning. I dusted, reorganized my altar, washed clothes and dishes, sewed another blouse, taught myself how to set in a shirt yoke, set up a small "study corner" and bookcase under one window in the bedroom. Damn. I’m acting like such a June Cleaver girly-girl I’m making myself sick. So I went back to reading Old World Witchcraft in an attempt to witchy-witch myself back to normal. Better witchy-witch than girly-girl. (Note to self: hey, you should needlepoint that and hang it on a wall somewhere). Arrgh! I’m corrupted beyond all hope! Someone needs to slap me silly!! OK, forget the needlepoint. Next thing you know, I’ll be wearing lace granny panties and knitting tea cozies.

Anyway. Old World Witchcraft . Same author – Grimassi - who wrote about streghe, or stregone, or whichever term you want to use. But even he tiptoes around the reality that the concept of "Do as ye will an’ harm none" certainly never came from the old world, I don’t give two figs what the Gardnerians say.

One of my favorite courses in my final year at the University of Michigan was "Mesopotamian Witchcraft and Magic" – about which you would think: "Wow. THAT had to be an easy course!" And once again, you’d be dead wrong. YOU try reading ancient Sumerian runes sometime and interpreting who a given spell was being cast on and why. We used to get into the biggest classroom debates with each other. And some of those spells were absolutely disgusting.

The point was that, in those days, people went to the Sumerian magi to not only get protective spells, but to get love potion spells, zap people with curses, etc. First thing you read in the "girly-girly" books on "How to be A Witch" is "Never use spells on other people without their permission!" And you think, "Well, what’s the frackin’ point, then, you pinhead?" If everyone fell in love with you on their own without even blinking, you wouldn’t need a love spell, now would you?

You can get some idea of why Aleister Crowley finally got so fed up with the "girly-girly" version of witchcraft he stomped off in disgust and became known as "The Great Beast". True, a lot of women who knew him personally also thought of him as the "Great Perv", but there’s not much I have to say about that. Same thing with the injunctions against using dream walking to spy on people. WHY NOT? Because it’s rude? If we’re all connected, how much privacy could we each have, to begin with? I should add, before people start getting nervous, I still haven’t been able to engage in any dream traveling and spy on anyone anyway. I suspect it’s the anti leg-cramp meds. Would I, if I could? I can’t actually think of anyone worth spying on, so probably no, I wouldn’t; I want to watch the Eleusinian Mysteries. I just don’t like being told I absolutely can’t do something, or I’ll be punished in the hereafter. Sounds like the wiccan version of Dana Carvey’s Church Lady raising her blue haired head again.

I also have a real problem with the girly-girlies trying to make it sound as though it’s a traditional "no-no" while they’re slapping your wrist with their dainty little white gloves. It’s a western culture no-no, certainly. Traditional? I don‘t think so. Sumerian is about as traditional as you’re gonna get, historically speaking, and I sure didn’t see the Sumerians running around flapping their hands and squealing, "Oooo! Naughty spell! Bad! Bad!"

Anyway, a few days ago, Damien re-tweeted a quote issued by Sacred Leather: 

"The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills."

Aleister Crowley

Never heard of "Sacred Leather", so went and looked at them. Found quite a collection of floggers, whips, cat o’nines, etc. Beautifully made, actually. Started to smile. Wasn’t sure a titillating flogging or two qualified as "the normal sex instinct", but I had absolutely no room to judge anyone as far as that went. What exactly IS a "normal sex instinct"?

Picture it: Manhattan. Some time ago. Met Bob, a head hunter, while looking for a new job. Ended up as a friend of both Bob and his wife. Bob & wife – when they weren’t working with suits filling legitimate 9-5 job openings - were actually in the sex ... excuse me, the "adult entertainment" ... trade, but next to nobody knew that. They owned a collection of call-in lines. Two of us who did know that were Suzanne and myself. She and I met because we were both looking for jobs and Bob introduced us. Suzanne and I used to go out drinking and picking up guys together.

Only time in my life I’ve ever been in a three-way with two voyeurs: business man from out of town wanted two-on-one action and some voyeurs. I have no idea how he and Bob met, but bottom line was that Bob pimped us out with the cover story that he and his wife were pimping out their coed daughters and had to supervise. Sick story, but the guy seemed to fall for it, sadly enough. Suze and I played the coed daughters, and pulled it off only because we got ourselves good and soused ahead of time. 

It was one bad casting job since the only thing she and I had in common was our bra cup size – we looked nothing alike. Didn’t even require sex; B&D mostly. I made enough money to pay 3 months rent, and at that age, that’s a lot of money. Anyway, Bob handed us a few bucks; Suzanne and I went out earlier that evening after work and bought floggers in preparation for being pimped out that evening to an unsophisticated dom. Guess where we went?

No, not Sacred Leather, the Pink Pussycat, but they had a whole bunch of floggers! I looked at the Sacred Leather website and started lopsidedly grinning. The website brought back unexpected memories of my one and only experience as ½ of a silly hastily thrown-together sub tag-team. Would I do it again? Hell .... no. Once was enough. I was young, horny - and incredibly stupid, or I never would have gone along with it.

And it seemed that Crowley was correct. How had the businessman been twisted enough where he thought "disciplining" two (supposedly) college girls was exciting – with their (supposed) parents looking on? How had Bob and his wife been twisted enough to the point where they enjoyed diving into the sex trade in their spare time? How had Suzanne and I been twisted enough that we got giddy and drunk at the idea of going along with Bob and his wife for this pimping-out plan?

And in answer to your question: yes, they hurt. They stung and burned like hell, those things. Some people find them very erotic, and that’s fine. Me, I’m fine with being threatened with pain – and I’m not sure why that is, but I guarantee you it’s a holdover from a previous life, because my parents certainly never went to town on the physical punishment end of discipline - but I’m not so good with the pain itself. I’m a serious wuss, actually.

Do not misunderstand me. I do not subscribe to the judeo-christian concept of sex equaling sin by any stretch of the imagination. But I also don’t believe that the appalling "sex" crimes we all keep hearing so much about - Penn State and the Vatican come to mind - have anything to do with sex anyway. Mostly, they have to do with power, with rage, arrogance, with control, with acting out childhood abuse, with dominance, with violence, with everything except sex.

I was brought around again to the question I was going to ask Damien someday. First time I asked this, he was in New Zealand for the first time; here we are – he’s in New Zealand for the second time almost a year later: why is it that incubi are always considered to be demons? That they are always identified as such, along with their feminine counterparts, the succubae, strikes me as yet another judeo-christian finger-wagging response to "sex" – i.e., in the judeo-christian world view, they would have to be demons, because they equate sex so completely with sin. But why should they be?

The reason that the question came up in the first place was a matter of personal safety. These days, you never know, when you spin the "pick-me-up" roulette wheel, whether you’ll get a glorious man who truly believes in the sacredness of sex, or another Craig’s list serial killer. So why not a spirit who truly believes in the sacredness of sex?

The reason the question came up the second time had to do with a twisted face, a non-stop running nose, and violently cramping legs and feet any time I tried exercising them, or even straightening them out and trying to point my toes. Needless to say, anything that might resemble having fun - in that sense – has been shot out the window, possibly for good. I remembered the erotic dream I’d had a while back that was interrupted by vicious leg cramps. Even if I managed to up the meds high enough that the leg cramps didn’t happen as often, would the meds also put an end to the big "O"? Besides, I still had the twisted face. At least temporarily. Perhaps permanently.

"Normal sex" in my world now simply meant, "getting the biological urge met". An incubus seemed the safest and least painful way to do that. So WHY was an incubus considered a demon? Why not an angel? Why couldn’t I invoke one? "Get the urge met" without screaming in pain as though I’d been mortally wounded because all of my leg muscles seized up at the same time? And as self-conscious as I was about my face now ... trying to meet someone new was so out of the question it had passed "ridiculous" last Thursday.

If he knew me, I suspect that Damien - Mr. Signpost - would not only treat the question as a serious one, but be one of the few people whose answer I would trust, who wouldn’t make "Church Lady" judgments as he answered the question. But he doesn’t know me. It’s not as though I could tweet him the question right out of the blue. So, I’m back to trying to do research on the topic, and you’d be surprised how many stupid women – christian, witch AND pagan – still have the "sex is sin" thing stuck firmly in their heads and couldn’t be trusted to offer an honest, thoughtful answer. (*sigh*)

Day #4: My Life as a Fright Mask

My nose is still running like a leaky faucet, and my smile is still completely lopsided, although I’ve stopped dribbling on myself for the most part. My eye can finally close, so I can toss the eye patch out the window. I’ve finished with the steroids, so the bursts of intense rage should start to go away. They haven’t so far ... I’m desperately trying to keep that under control. The monstrous leg and foot cramps continue. I’ll be seeing the neurologist on Thursday.

I’m at home on another week’s vacation, doing all sorts of things. Another blouse. Sewing buttons on the blouse I made during my last vacation. Hanging curtains in the bedroom. Setting up a new altar.

The other idea I had – along with an actually usable Daybook – was a book of tales. It occurred to me a few entries ago that very few of us grow up hearing the tales that, say, ancient Egyptian children knew as they were growing up, or Roman children heard about Zeus and Hera and the Olympians. Or that Greek children heard about Koré and Dionysus. That Irish children learned about Brigit. Scandinavian children heard about Thor. Why don’t we all know the story of Isis and Osiris the same way we all know the stories of Winnie the Pooh? Or Demeter and Persephone? Instead of only celebrating the days that Iris traveled around the country, collecting body parts, why don’t we read the stories as well? And there are so many stories to learn! And so many gorgeous pieces of art that tell the story as well.

Here’s an interesting example: we’re in the middle of The festival of Nemoralia (aka Festival of Torches) which was celebrated by the ancient Romans either on the 13-15 August or on the August Full Moon, in honor of the goddess Diana. Diana is and has been worshiped, according to Grimassi, by Italian streghe, long before anyone even heard of christians.

Naturally, this festival was later adopted (translation: outright stolen) by Catholics as The Feast of the Assumption. I do love Ovid’s description of it, though:

"In the Arrician valley, there is a lake surrounded by shady forests, held sacred by a religion from the olden times... On a long fence hang many pieces of woven thread, and many tablets are placed there as grateful gifts to the Goddess. Often does a woman whose prayers Diana answered, With a wreath of flowers crowning her head, Walk from Rome carrying a burning torch... There a stream flows down gurgling from its rocky bed..."

On this day, worshippers would form a shimmering procession of torches and candles around the dark waters of Lake Nemi (Nemi, from the Latin nemus, meaning sacred wood or sacred grove), Diana's Mirror. The lights of their candles join the light of the moon, dancing in reflection upon the surface of the water. Today's festival is held in the Greek fashion.

Hundreds join together at the lake, wearing wreaths of flowers. According to Plutarch, part of the ritual (before the procession around the lake) is the washing of hair and dressing it with flowers. It is a day of rest for women and slaves. Hounds are also honored and dressed with blossoms. Travelers between the north and south banks of the lake are carried in small boats lit by lanterns. Similar lamps were used by Vestal virgins and have been found with images of the Goddess at Nemi, so Diana and Vesta are sometimes considered to be the same Goddess.

One 1st century CE Roman poet, Propertius, did not attend the festival, but observed it from the periphery as indicated in these words to his beloved:

"Ah, if you would only walk here in your leisure hours. But we cannot meet today, When I see you hurrying in excitement with a burning torch To the grove of Nemi where you Bear light in honor of the Goddess Diana."

Requests and offerings to Diana may include: small written messages on ribbons, tied to the altar or to trees; small baked clay or bread statuettes of body parts in need of healing; small clay images of mother and child; tiny sculptures of stags; dance and song; and fruit such as apples.

In addition, offerings of garlic are made to the Goddess of the Dark Moon, Hecate, during the festival. Hunting or killing of any beast is forbidden on Nemoralia.

Can you imagine how beautiful that procession would have been? All of those torches and lights, reflected in the dark waters of Lake Nemi along with the light of the full moon? Two weeks ago, I should have reminded myself that this festival was on the horizon. If I didn’t have an offering, I could have made one out of flour-salt clay, and baked it. So I needed the flour, the salt, perhaps a cookie cutter, definitely acrylic paint to decorate the offering with ... all of this should have been already created and awaiting today’s festival! Being hit with this today, it’s almost too exhausting to contemplate, pulling this together at the last minute. Besides, I’m going out to a charity event tonight ... I hardly have the time to do anything.

Lake Nemi, by the way, is located in Lazio, Italy and is a beautiful, tranquil volcanic lake (see photo) – absolutely gorgeous. In fact, it still looks like it probably looked back then.

Day #3 of My Life As a Fright Mask

Drought! Plague! Pestilence! Worst corn crop in two decades. Figures. I know! None of you reading this are actually here, are you? This is my own personal hell, where my favorite grain of all time dies in the soil, right? See, if I were someone else, it would have been the BEAN crop, or an apple tree blight or something. But because it’s me, it’s the corn crop!! Ahhh, it all makes sense now! We’re in a hell of my own personal intent!

OK, fine. Maybe you are here. But I’m sure this is my fault, too; another arm of my own peculiar gypsy curse. Not sure what I’ve done to the gypsies, since I’m pretty sure I don’t know any gypsies, but maybe one of them can clear up the confusion.

Delayed awareness: two entries ago I was commenting that the only way I could think of to stop my biting the inside of my mouth every two and a half seconds was to viciously slap my own face, as hard as I could. I wasn’t doing that in public, I was, however, doing it at home. To the degree that I had ugly self-inflicted bruises on myself. Well, I have to admit that it worked. My face was so bruised and swollen from the self-abusive face punching that I stopped biting myself. But it took me a little while to realize: I’m on steroids.

Correct that: I knew I was on steroids for the Bell’s Palsy; I didn’t realize the effect that steroids has on women: murderous rage. Agression. Hostility. Short-temperedness. At one point in my self-directed rage, I had asked, "Why am I acting like this?" And I heard a voice from someone, somewhere, calmly: "You’re on steroids." Startled, I went and looked it up on Web MD. Yup! Those were the effects of steroids on women!  I realize I’m short tempered and crabby to begin with. Steroids just made it 100x worse.

Personally, I think that I need a better Day Book to learn from. On August 11th, I went and looked up the day on my three daybooks. The Pagan Books of Days is completely empty for August 11th. The Real Witches’ Year talks about the color orange.

This was from the Witches’ Book of Days:

"Puck Fair. Dress in boyish clothes and with your female friends enjoy a night of playful masculinity!"

After 2/10ths of a second’s contemplation: no, no, non, nyet, not happenin’. First of all: why would I do that? Second of all: why would any of my female friends want to do that? Third: what exactly IS "playful masculinity"? Grab my crotch and yell "Gotta get me some o’ THAT!" at passing bimbos? With my luck, one of those passing trollops would have taken self-defense classes, see me as a threat to her safety, and level me with a well-placed kick in my non-existent nuts. I already have enough physical health problems. Grab a basketball and head for the courts? I’m five feet, two inches tall! I can’t even see the basket, much less be able to dump a ball into it! Fourth: what are "boyish clothes"? Jeans? Most women already wear those. A jock strap? How weird and uncomfortable. And fifth: um ..... no.

I’m still not sure why the writers of this day book saw the 11th as a bizarre cross-dressing event. Not my thang, sorry. Luckily, Wikipedia has another version of the Puck Fair:

Every year a group of people go up into the mountains and catch a wild goat. The goat is brought back to the town and the "Queen of Puck", traditionally a young school girl from the local primary schools who crowns the goat "King Puck". The "King" is then put into a small cage on a high stand in the middle of the town square which signifies that the festivities may begin. The pubs stay open until 3.00 AM, which is a legal exception due to the fair as all bars in Ireland normally must close at 2.00 AM, this is a source of contention for the local police ...

Scholars speculate that the fair's origins stems from Pre-Christian Ireland, from the Celtic festival of Lughnasa which symbolized the beginning of the harvest season, and that the goat is a pagan fertility symbol.

Now, I have no intention of torturing and imprisoning a wild goat. I am a Capricorn, so have some idea who the "pagan fertility symbol" is. Not quite sure what to do as far as celebrating Puck Fair Day, though.

See, this is what we’re missing. The quintessential Daybook Writer. Damien was a genius at this – if you go through his prison journal, it’s much easier to use that as a Daybook than some of these dumb books. DAMIEN!!! Write a Daybook!

He was best at the preparation, or the anticipatory side of things. Because he saw things so far ahead, he would be perfect at saying (for example): "You’re going to need a carnelian crystal 4 weeks from now. Look for an occult store or an online vendor and buy a ...", or "Prepare your grocery list for the Harvest Feast next week. Here are some ideas."

These other books spring things on you without warning, and you don’t have the advance notice to celebrate things properly. He could also connect his passion, the Tarot, to his Daybook.

(*sigh*) Well, in the meanwhile, until Mr. Signpost figures out that the world is in desperate need of his talent for writing daybooks ...or Tarot books as well ... I’ll have to continue with mine. He was also saying that he wanted to do Tarot readings. Fortunately for him, I’m still completely set against going back to Salem for anything, so he’ll never get the opportunity to do a Tarot reading that practically screams, "She’s under a contagious curse! Step back! Very carefully! And now ... RUN LIKE HELL!" (I wonder how that would show up in a tarot reading, anyway?)

Tonight – my obsession is in the United States, in Minneapolis.

Day #2 of My Life As a Fright Mask

This morning the squinty-eyed, snot-dripping, drooling fright-mask gimp – which is to say, moi – tried out a breadmaker she hadn’t been able to use, mainly because Kohl’s had re-boxed a defective machine and re-sold it to her. No dough kneading paddle.

Yes indeedy, yer Southern Baptist capitalism ideals hard at work in Kohl’s Department Store, boys ‘n girls! Screw the gimp and go straight to heaven! I’d finally found the time and energy to buy a replacement paddle off of eBay. The first loaf is underway. I’m still not convinced it will work properly, but we’ll see.

In any event, the second of the two Lammas feasts was last weekend, so the "home baked fresh bread" part of it was for that.

While doing that, I tried to teach myself to drink coffee in a diner without horrifying the other diners. I knew I looked like Stevie Wonder what with the head twists getting my mouth situated around the cup. Still dribbled, though. Kept saying, "F**k me," which ended up sounding like "uck knee" because I was having such problems with "f"s and "m"s, but fortunately, the only two people near me were grandparents, both of whom seemed to be hard of hearing. "Son of a itch" is also problematic, what with the "b" no longer pronounceable.

No drugstores carried a flat eye patch, only hard, plastic convex ones. I bought headbands to hold a satiny eye pillow over the right eye, in order to keep the eyelid closed, as I was having such bad reactions to adhesives. CVS only had eye bandaids.

I tried one, and within 3 minutes, the adhesive had begin to liquefy in the high heat and run into my eye, which couldn’t close. The chemical burning was appalling, and I frantically ripped off the bandaid, taking a lot of my eyebrow with it. Thinking: I know women who would pay a mint for an eyebrow wax like that – again, I’m not one of them. Yes, that was me in the CVS parking lot, muttering, "Uck knee, uck knee, uck knee!" while staunching the eyebrow bleed-out.

I swear, in a very short period of time I will look just like a browless Norma Desmond. Well, on one side of my face I will, anyway.

Later on, I got a call from one of my co-workers, based in North Carolina, who happens to be a nutball christian. I love her, but her condescension towards every other religious practice but her own is ... well, it’s sickening, really. Jesus himself never acted as disrespectfully towards others as she does. Her POV: iffn ida only axe Jaysis innew my hort, he’da healed me bah now!

I yell non-stop for ten minutes about any deity who blackmails deformed gimps just so he can pocket their membership dues, until I hear my friend laughing. I’m not sure if she’s laughing because I’m so measurably predictable, or because I sound just like Daffy Duck with my deformed mouth. "Dethpicable!!!" Fine. Now she can happily go tell her pastor she battled with a lisping heretic and score some brownie points. I need to learn not to pay self-righteous, condescendingly rude christians any mind. Really. When she insults MY deity, I hang up on her.

I have come to make the lower realities like the higher realities, and the outer realities like the inner realities. I have come to unite them in this Temple Space, where they reveal themselves through images and symbols.

Gospel of Philip, 69:1-4

Images and symbols. Hmmmm. See now, that’s the Jesus I could respect – the mystical and intelligent one from whom one might learn something worthwhile. 99.99999% of his followers strike me as your basic retards, or sex-starved pedophiliac demons. I swear, he’s probably hanging around doing regular Homer Simpson impressions - (clapping one hand to his head and yelping "doh!") – every time one of his followers does or says something that proves one (dumb as a doorknob) or the other (sex-starved sicko). Guy’s gotta have one hell of a headache by now.

It does make me think of Sekhmet, though. Sekhmet, the only deity who has ever healed me of anything. She’s never demanded that I "axe her inno my hort", but she’s one of those powerful deities that isn’t standing around waiting on me, either. I have no idea why I didn’t think of her first when I came down with this miserable palsy. Ever since the cancerous tumor on my forehead arrived, and the non-stop series of disasters and heartbreaks which followed it, I haven’t done much as far as "religious studies" go. I can barely remember the invocation ceremony. True, I didn’t need an invocation when she healed me of my lifelong phobia without even blinking, but with that, I was being told that either I lost the phobia or I died. With Sekhmet, I’m always mindful of her personality: she fully expects me to do what I can to heal myself before I invoke her. Otherwise, she regards me irritably as incorrigibly lazy. She’s not my handmaiden; she’s my deity. She’s the Blazing Eye of the Sun, the Lioness of Courage. I really love Sekhmet.

I start poking food into the right corner of my mouth instead of my left to strengthen the muscles on the dead side of my face. At the grocery store, I bought a box of those chintzy imitation New York soft pretzels. They’re nothing LIKE New York’s soft street pretzels of course (Damien! You’ll miss the pretzels!), but they are somewhat chewy once you nuke them for a minute or so. Chewy’s good. Chewy gives your face muscles a workout. I take all of my medications on schedule. I spend short periods of time without the eye pillow, to practice moving the eyelid. I begin to prepare an invocation. I watch Cinema Paradiso. (If you’re wondering what that has to do with anything, pay attention to the muscles in your face when you scrunch it up and start crying pitifully at the end of the film. That film slays me, every time.)

Sekhmet is a great healer, sometimes called the Great One of Healing, and her priests and priestesses were known as the greatest healers in the land.

In honor of Damien’s infectious excitement about the upcoming Harvest Moon, I downloaded Rosemary Clooney’s version of "Shine On, Harvest Moon" (there are maybe a handful of women singers whose voices I can tolerate – Rosemary Clooney is one of them) into my iPod and am listening to it.

"Witchcraft has always been a religion of poetry, not theology."

Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, Special 20th Anniversary Edition, p. 32

The sonnet cycle returned. Just when I think I’m crawling out from under the curse I’ve been under, I’m proven decidedly wrong. People I work with have commented on it ("You really do seem to be under a run of very bad luck!") My boss’s boss hugged me (he NEVER does that) and then asked jokingly if I needed him to kill a few chickens for their entrails – it made me burst out laughing, actually, until I wondered how HE knew about the age-old method of identifying and then lifting curses. He’s a scientist!

In a way, it made me feel better ... I no longer felt like I was being overly narcissistic and self-pitying. So many other people had noticed the serious run of accidents, injuries, surgeries, disasters, heart-breaks, odd illnesses, one right after the other ... it wasn’t my imagination at work. It FELT scripted, far beyond coincidence. People would say, "I’ll pray for you," and it was all I could do not to scream, "No! Don’t!" because that always made it worse. I just reeled from one horrible moment to the next, without much of a pause between disasters. The agoraphobia wasn’t a mental aberration – it was perfectly logical. Every time I turned around something horrible was happening.

It certainly felt like chaos, but I couldn’t find an explanation for it. Still can’t.

Woman with Two Faces ... the Curse Continues

I’ll try to recover and get back to my Daybook in Progress tomorrow, but in the meanwhile ... the next disaster ...

(left:  "Woman with Two Faces" (reversed), Pierre R. Lespes, Brooklyn Art Project)

My right eye won’t close now and the eyelid has to be taped down. I have a skin allergy to the tape, which is leaving big red welts on and around my eye, and disfiguring my eyelid, which is now sagging and purple. I can no longer smile. I dribble water out of the right side of my mouth when I drink because I can’t hold the right side of my mouth closed. I can’t open the right side of my mouth wide enough to eat anything, so have to poke food gingerly into the left side and hope it doesn’t fall back out. Worst of all: I can only flare one nostril in indignation, instead of two, and boy, if that doesn’t interfere with my catalog of facial characteristics, I don’t know what does.

Delayed results of the facial surgery? Probably not, but who knows? Stroke? No, but everyone thought so at first – there’s nothing I love more than being rushed into emergency rooms as a "code red" with an oxygen mask slapped over your face. Lawrence Hospital, my usual nemesis, actually reacted pretty "emergency-ish" on Monday; I was impressed. Triage nurse looked at me, frowned, said, "Smile at me". I did, and she tossed me on a gurney and rushed me off for a cat scan, assuming a stroke was in progress. Another nurse rushed in and slapped an IV in a vein – they all expected to be pumping clot-busting drugs into me any second now.

Diagnosis for the reason I woke up with half of my face completely paralyzed? The reason I am now the woman with two faces? Bell’s Palsy. Bell’s f**king Palsy. On top of everything else.

Came home from the emergency room (again) looking like a distorted and terrifying Halloween mask (again), depressed as hell and ready to jump out the nearest window ... again. I should probably - again - confess that I live at ground level, so that’s really not as suicidal as it sounds, and actually involves climbing up a small stepladder to wiggle out the window and sprawl on the ground at eye level outside the window. So no, it wouldn’t have killed me, injured me, or even scraped my knee. It was the principle of the thing. I mean, it was obvious that the Sky Sadist was killing me off in increments, why not make it easier for the freaking SOB?

I toyed with the enticing idea of taking up smoking again, just to calm myself down, except I didn’t have any cigarettes. Also, since I can’t coordinate my lips enough to suck on a straw, I’m pretty sure trying to smoke would be a waste of time anyway. (*sigh*)

But I had come home, looking for perhaps a little comfort and escape, but doubting now that I would ever find any comfort. Or escape. The only person who could have comforted me had dropped dead. The agoraphobia I was battling after the disasters leading up to Jim’s death returned suddenly – home had once felt like the only safe haven there was; now it was the place where my face had twisted in on itself in the midst of sleep. Agoraphobia and somniphobia collided. Fear of leaving the house, combined with a fear of sleeping while I was IN the house. I picked up the headphones again and went back into sonnet cycle mode.

I also discovered that, coincidentally, all sorts of fraudulent communications had impacted BOTH of the only two people I really paid attention to anymore, and both of them had felt compelled to say  something about it on the same day. Not that I believe in coincidences.

Piero had to release a brief video saying, "I’m not on Facebook; I only have one Twitter account, don’t pay attention to what people are saying." His was actually pretty calm ... and I had no idea what people WERE saying, so was confused by the announcement until someone explained it to me.

Damien’s was a series of angry tweets about people apparently spreading rumors saying that he didn’t like his supporters – or something along those lines – and HE was obviously pissed off. I don’t know what incident provoked Damien’s explosion, since I have no contact with any of his supporters; I do know what provoked Piero’s video: a fake twitter account – which I’d seen but already figured out wasn’t him a long time ago. Apparently, the fake Piero had recently tweeted, "A REAL fan would only pay attention to the music and not to whose face was prettier!" – which was SUCH a hissy-fit, girly-girly thing to say, you had to laugh.

Think about it. He’s a teenage boy. A teenage boy would have thought, "Actually, a REAL fan is a gorgeous chick with oversized boobies who would ride the mechanical bull for 24 hours without stopping and not assume it meant anything permanent," but he never would have tweeted it if he wanted to maintain his teenage girl fan base. Which – and trust me when I say this – I’m pretty sure Piero does. I would have burst out laughing had I seen it when first posted, because really, any guy posting something that ridiculously girly would have been banned from the testosterone club for life – I can’t believe that anyone actually thought that was him. (Also, the fake Piero tweeted that nonsense in Spanish, which was another obvious giveaway: he’s not THAT fluent in Spanish. Plus, even taking into account that he’s a teenage boy, he’s not that stupid.)

Needless to say, while I’m still dribbling things out of the side of my mouth, and while I keep biting my tongue and the inside of my mouth, and while I keep viciously slapping my own face in a desperate attempt to get myself to wake up and pay attention and stop biting the f**k out of myself, and while snot is still running out of one nostril because I can’t sniff it back in, and while I cannot close one eye, and have big red welts all over my eyelid due to tape allergies, yes while all of that is going on, we will NOT be returning to any search for a soul mate any time soon, unless I decide that I really enjoy making myself miserable. The effects of Bell’s Palsy can last anywhere from a few weeks to forever. Anyone wanna start a betting pool on THAT outcome?

And see, this is how sadistic and evil and vicious the Sky Sadist is: all of this happened exactly one month before seeing Piero in concert for the first time ever, and in a seat so close he can actually see me from the stage. I won’t be able to smile, to cheer, to sing along ... nothing. Only have the use of one eye, so won’t be able to see him well. All I can do is drool on my shirt and dribble snot out my nose.   Can you HEAR the demonic guffawing from the Sky Sadist, bruthahs and sistas?? Can ya jes’ HEAR it? Yeah, so can I. Sounds very Pennywise-ish.

The Next Wave of Death IV

I awakened this morn with a face ripped in two:
half stone, half love; twisted and torn, a betrayal.
I cried out in fear but could only keen and wail
at unfamiliarity, the horrid view.
This is the expected Salem face, bitter brew;
self loathing; my old comfort is worm food, stale
and of no use; I would unsheath a blade, impale
the death-mask face if one would guide my hand anew.

The first face would have looked into the eyes of my
love in a short time. The second face, the ruin,
slack-eyed, lip-twisted, lidless visage, out of tune,
is the one he will look down upon and despise.
Four weeks remain until disgust spears my cocoon
until shatterment, and my beating heart excised.

©Snake’s Trail, 2012

Deep, deep breath.

Okay, so after posting the comment about the Minchiate Tarot (see last entry, 29 JUL 2012), Damien posted this morning:

People always ask me what I want to do in the future. Really, it comes down to this: writing books and teaching the tarot. I love the tarot. It's my passion. It kept me company when I was on death row. (3 AUG 2012)

I should ask him about the Minchiate Magus one of these days.