I’ve been meaning to post these – two new reviews by me up at Facing North:
In case you might have missed it, or don’t follow my other blogs, I am a feminist. I have identified as such since the age of 4, when Sean J. told me boys were better than girls and rather than punching him in the nose, I simply said “Well I’m clearly better than YOU!” and walked away. Read more
23
Jul
This local public art project that asks people to identify locations of strong emotional memory actually seems like a useful energetic map for magical types. 
Our emotions are usually are first conscious sensor for anything non-physical, so recognizing areas of "frequent break ups" or "true love stories" or "great chidlhood moments" might help us understand why we react to certain areas in certain ways. Also, since building emotional frequency often helps a spell manifest, it’s especially useful to know areas where you might more easily tap that human energy if the needed emotion is one you’re striving to experience but haven’t yet.Tags: magick, wicca, spellcraft, minneapolis
Today did not go as planned. My writing buddy had to cancel our scheduled coffee, but since I was already wearing a skirt – and I don’t just wear a skirt casually – I decided to go for coffee on my own. Unfortunately, MetroTransit bus system seems designed to keep college students contained to one part of town and to prevent anyone from outside that area from entering. Since the bus I needed to get to Espresso Royale had just passed me on the way to the bus stop, and another would not come for a good 25 minutes. I climbed on the next bus I saw coming assuming it would still go on up University and I could at least enjoy a slightly shorter walk to my destination.
It did not.
Instead I found the bus careening down 35W, and I found myself deposited at Roseville Mall. Roseville may boast expensive stores, but free wireless for a writer looking to work it does not. So I sucked it up, bought a ticket to the next movie I could tolerate the idea of seeing and then took myself for lunch at a restaurant where the waiters attempt to ply you with booze when there’s a pretty good chance you’re on your lunch hour.1 Lunch was pleasant enough – read Proven Guilty 
It was totally worth it. Not only was it totally worth it, I am elated I got to see it by myself.
If you are in any way magically minded, you will want to see this movie. It explores layers of the conscious and subconscious, lucid dreaming, dream projection…all sorts of fantastic ideas we talk about but rarely try to express visually. While I know some old-school shamanic types get hung up on “well that’s not how it looks to me,” we can shove those aside into the Gallery of Point Missers and carry on with the exploration. There are certain TV shows and movies I bookmark as teaching tools, though I’ve yet to really use them: the tarot episode of Xena, What Dreams May Come
Thank you spirit of G.O.D for sending me to that movie, and letting me enjoy it alone so I can process it wholly on my own terms.
- In the US drinking alcohol at lunch on weekdays is frowned on. We gossip about you Europeans and the beer in your workplace refrigerators with tones of scandal but looks of envy. [↩]
19
Jul
Right now on the Divorcing a Real Witch book I’m feeling sort of…stuck. I’ve got the survey up and going, but I’m not getting a lot of response from the bloggers I’ve asked to help me out so far – and really, that’s up to them. I disappeared from the community just as I was achieving trajectory, so the “who the hell are you” reaction is understandable. Also, there needs to be research into neopagans the technological divide. Our keep-to-the-fringe tendencies makes us a community of very early or determinedly late adopters. I’d be utterly unsurprised if some Wiccans were sitting in a cave arguing about using cigarette lighters for fire right now.
This isn’t writer’s block. This is the old-fashioned inertia that creeps up on me when I’m doing something important, something that might change things, something that scares the living hell out of me. It’s also why I feel depressed, disengaged and ever so slightly self destructive. Like it or not, I am an artist, and I am intense. Right now the like it is on “not” because I want to just crank up the back of my brain like it’s an old fashioned car and set it to working and writing, but I can’t quite find the handle.
There’s this section of my consciousness that’s just puckered. Anxiety is sealing it closed. I’m thinking of the people who don’t want me to write, who are convinced that they have the authority to say I don’t have the authority, who will threaten all sorts of bullshit because of some imagined story that has nothing to do with what’s genuinely going on with me. People who resent me for making money. People who just want control over me still. Worse is that I might get harassed by people who pay way too much attention to me, while the people I want to reach might ignore me altogether. How much would that suck?
So today is a day of One Small Thing.
I’m doing this blog post. I revised my Llewellyn article. I also did some revision on the overview for my book proposal. That’s something. I’m also a little hungry – and in Write Yourself Right Cameron does say something about HALT (don’t get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired – which are my four primary emotions.)I pre-made salads this week to make sure I ate healthy at lunch; I can grab one of those. After that, I can write a thank you not to the sponsors of our Doctor Who meetup.
I need to come up with an article appropriate for the Witch’s Voice – it’s a lot harder to do now that they have no regular guidelines. I’m drawing a massive blank, too. I’m also not blogged ahead on Fat Chic, which I find distressing and unusual – but typical in July.
18
Jul
To give you all context, this week was thrown out of whack by a minor disaster eight days back.
- On July 18th, we were all ready to go see a movie with friends. We stopped for drinks first. Friends ordered food, went to bathroom after, and one friend collapsed in the bathroom. Evening ended with friend in Intensive Care on a respirator, unconscious.
- The next few days were spent with my friend/hospitalized friend’s wife. She’s deaf in one ear and he was sent to the public hospital because the ER team felt it best for his condition. Turns out he went into anaphylaxis. No effort was made to educate him about his allergies.
- My friend was released on Wednesday afternoon. Complaining from Mike about my not being home. Complaining met with not obscenity but with similar words that were much deserved. On the same day, I attempted to bring my friend to Como Conservatory since his oxygen levels were low but stable. This did not work as intended – the bright sun triggered some wacky, humidifying antics in the fern room. I parked him in the area between the zoo and the conservatory, and I wandered around awhile. I have pictures. You’ll probably see them on here eventually.
- Play date with Joel on Thursday. We watched True Blood and I told him about my week.
- Friday we were supposed to go to a Twins game, but I was breaking out myself (oh JOY) and the humidity was godawful.
- Saturday was the Doctor Who meetup. There’s some – hopefully resolvable – weirdness.
But the basics of all this is that I haven’t done a lot of intentional writing. I’ve done my morning pages (mostly) and I did get my most recent Llewellyn article in first draft. While we keep trying to reschedule the movie, at the rate we’re going if we try to get the same group together the movie will have left theaters. So I’m off to see the Sorceror’s Apprentice today, and here’s to a week of getting back on track, my garden in order and my writing underway.
As it is, my garden needs my attention, my blogs need my attention… and dammit, I need my attention.
14
Jul
I used to think of grown-ups as these magic giants who could answer any question and open any jar. I am not yet one of these magic giants, I am simply a larger child who still needs her husband for jar and wine bottle opening, and who is highly averse to suggesting any answers, ever.
I miss my magic giants. These shorter copies they left behind just don’t know any answers either, and they’ll be damned if they admit it.
OK, the survey is up and ready to go. If you or someone you know is neopagan and has been divorced for 1 year or more, please ask that person to participate in this survey. It is intended to grasp the range of experiences happening within the community for a book and a possible online documentary.
I am looking for
- Neopagans who have experienced divorce
- Those who have been divorced for one year or more (it takes about that long for all the consequences to come to bear)
- You need not identify yourself fully – pseudonyms are allowed
- You can skip questions that are not relevant to you or are too upsetting for you to answer, or complete a survey page and simply leave it
You can go to the survey at survey.dianarajchel.com.
I went and checked out another writer’s group last night, and I left with the feeling that:
1. As a writer, I am utterly, violently outclassed by that entire group. These writers are really, REALLY good. Every single author I heard had something that’s definitely publishable and fantastic.
2. Their “every genre” is not likely to include “occult nonfiction.” While people went out of their way to be welcoming – and they really did – the first two responses I got to “I specialize in occult nonfiction” were:
“Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
and, “Should we call the police?”
I realize this was meant as teasing to some extent, but I got the sense with this group that jokes aren’t always entirely jokes. Especially since one woman at the table was showing the guy that asked me the oxymoron questions how she used her Smartphone to access Bible verses. It’s true that not everyone there is religious, and while I’ve been the sane public Pagan for many years, little things like that still make me profoundly uncomfortable; anything that says “look, I’m Chrisitan!” in a non-religious environment makes me just as twitchy as people doing “look! I’m Wiccan!” in groups that are meeting for say, political purposes.
It’s also a true old style writer’s group, where everyone reads out loud. I am terrible at the read out loud style of feedback on written work. So what I can contribute is highly limited, and I often find myself resenting the time taken up listening to someone read who does not necessarily know how to perform.
Although everyone was perfectly nice (more or less) and the guy next to me was friendly enough to share his obscure Italian beverage, at the end of the night the room we were in triggered an asthma attack forcing me to leave in the middle of the presentation from the guy who was the nicest to me, and on the way out of the room I stumbled in a drainage hole and did some sort of damage to my right foot. I take that as a bad omen all around.
It’s a shame. I was really hopeful about this group, especially since they don’t conflict with my water aerobics schedule – and I have decided that in terms of priorities, it’s
1. Writing
2. Exercise
3. Writer’s groups – and this can be lowered. Getting some sense of fitness back matters almost as much as the writing does right now. It’s partially calculated – I need to look closer to traditionally attractive in any author’s photos and public appearances – but it’s also because I’ve been sick for a very, VERY LONG time, and the disease if finally controlled enough that I can do something to recover. I really don’t know what my body’s baseline actually is, I just know it’s somewhere more muscular than where I’m at right now.
I freely admit to a lot of skepticism about astrology. That said, over the years I’ve become far less skeptical than I used to be. Stuff really does seem to break a lot more during Mercury Retrograde. Weird, intense and oddly dramatic stuff happens whenever Uranus swings its influence around. (Uranus, a guaranteed pain in the ass?) While I probably should blush to admit it, I do check my Astrozone monthly forecast and mark dates where I need to duck and cover.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t find some aspects of it just plain silly, so I’m kind of looking forward to this next book poking fun at it coming out. I’ve been around women who only talk about the men in their lives in terms of their zodiac signs. It’s crazymaking to me, undermining the basic values I uphold that every person is responsible for his/her actions, and that your nature is simply the challenge you carry with you – not something that determines your actions for you.
Still, I have to admit. How to Spot a Bastard by His Star Sign: The Ultimate Horrorscope
On a related note, Gordon over at RuneSoup has a new theory of using divination forecasting in business. It actually looks a bit handy.