I've been reading all your messages of support. Thanks.

The "To Do" list is still shrinking. This means that the moment when I will *just* be sitting and writing is drawing nigh.

Emotional withdrawal comes with such an endeavor. Thanks for your offers to let off steam. Going to try to meditate instead.

Hopefully going out this afternoon to shop for the furniture, though it's already 1:30pm, and I wanted to get going before this. But I've done other things that have made the day productive - returned books to the Library, gone to the Pharmacy, the herb-store, and now I"m sitting resting while W takes a short walk and hopefully our schedules will finally be in sync so we can go out for the furniture part of the day. If not, then I go upstairs and work on the last little bit of schmutz/clutter.

Good wishes, this April Eve. How will we play the fool tomorrow?

BB

Well, I did it.

I went part time at my temp job so I can finish it.

Today, I spent my morning at work, and afternoon cleaning the office, in preparation for hours of uninterrupted writing. It's actually beginning to look like a space I won't mind being in. Except the chair. Grrr. Gotta find me a new 'puter chair. I don't have to be back in the office until April 13, and even then, we'll see how much they'll need me.

W's got a week off from school. Yea!

So, I know this is going to be like going cold turkey, but I'm going to try to discipline myself NOT to do email, or LJ or anything else with this computer UNTIL.... it's done.

One day at a time...

Bye, all!

Current Location: The Home Office
Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: There's never any music up here.

Okay, I've jumped off to one side of my personal fence, and am limiting my continued creative output on LJ rather than deal with the hopelessly user-unfriendly facebook, which doesn't seem to do the same thing anyway.

But when I go in and see all the people who have friended me here, I don't know but a third of the names that greet me. I know, it's the nature of LJ to be anonymous. But most of my poetic content is marked "friends only" and deals with my own musings on Witchcraft, seasoned with a fair amount of just personal news for those who know me, and whom I know, because writing individual emails might keep me from keeping my friends in the "update loop."

So, if you've friended me, and I haven't friended you back, it's basically because I don't know who you are by the name you chose on LJ. Sometimes I have a mundane name to put an icon to. But even if I do, I want to *know* who's there, reading my stuff. If you notice that you're not 'friended' and want to be, write me an email at niklas_gander@yahoo.com and tell me who you are, what connection we share, and why on Goddess's Green Earth you'd be interested in *anything* I write in LJ.

End public service announcement #BH-56943.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I haven't been keeping up my end of the bargain. All my friends have at least posted things that let me know what's going through their minds, and I've just been quiet as a church mouse (which, by the way, aren't very quiet at all...)

So, the big things:

W and I are looking to move. The house we live in has become so expensive that its convenient location is now officially a luxury that we can't afford. So, we're looking to find a place, at least 1,750 sq. ft. 3-4 br, 2 bath house with yard for less than we're paying now (and from what I've seen on Craig's list, that's not hard to do). All those who sigilize desire, sigilize away. Oh, it would help if it didn't have a leaky roof, or a place where outside vermin can enter and wreak havoc in any way. Being buddhists, we can't exactly use traps, and if things are like they are here, the squirrel that made its home in our crawl space and that we were trying to discourage using camphor is now officially a nuisance, and is developing smells that waft their way into the rest of the upstairs (which I don't think is healthy). We can't put a trap there, as it isn't a finished crawl space, and the entrance isn't big enough for either of us to fit through. I kind of knew something was terribly wrong the last time I opened the little doorway to the crawlspace and saw all the fiberglass insulation torn up right by the little door, and it looked like the little imp had piled its shit up along the doorway, probably in an effort to block our ingress...

So, nice home, yard suitable for pooch, room enough to hide messiness, and still entertain, and a safe place for a library like unto Alexandria. It would be nice to move away from the highway too...

Another thing is that W has been putting in a LOT of hours at his job, which has meant that we're almost solvent! Still in debt, but able to make monthly payments on everything. Hooray for Ganesha. Hooray for the Mound Folk. Hooray for magic that worked.

I'm still figuring out what to do about working 40 hrs a week, and still finishing the diss this year. Either I quit, and lose that (negligible) income, to finish, and then look for a job all over again, or I stay working and try to re-engineer how I spend my time.

I have a new apprentice - not a Feri one, alas, but still Craft, and that has me enthused, since I have been feeling socially a bit like an island. Ironic when I *know* this place is crawling with Craft, and yet, not a drop to drink. She's already an elder in her own right, but at this point, wants to learn from me, and I like her energy a lot, so we're going to see where  that goes.

Oh, and before I forget, If you've found me on facebook, you should be apprised of the fact that it is about the least user-friendly thing I've ever seen, and if you really want to reach me, use old fashioned email.

As ever,
Your Northern Hare

So, on MSNBC they said in an editorial that the "issue" of Gay marriage is about love.

I don't think so.

I think it is, at least in part, about enlightened self-interest.

Like, who would you rather have teaching your 9 year old boy? A Catholic Priest who has become a sexual cripple because of ... well, any number of reasons, but probably not least among them a warped spirituality that says that sexuality is not technically a part of the whole person? Or a nice pagan boy, married for twelve years to his Leather Bear, and who loves to teach because he knows what it's like to have your eyes opened up to the world?

This society is operating on so many flawed assumptions that it's a wonder it's still standing - maybe it isn't, and that's why we're so hopeful about the new possibilities of change the new administration holds out to us. Perhaps we'll get up again, after having fallen repeatedly down five flights of stairs.

Mourning all the blind, deaf and mute who will never know a rose because they're so focused on the thorns.

I bring an offering of red flowers to the Lord of Spirits

Ganapati, open the way.

          OM SUKLAMBARADHARAM VISNUM

          SASIVARNAM CHATURBHUJAM

          PRASANNA VADANAM DHYÁYET

          SARVA VIGHNOPA SÁNTAYE

            (Om, Attired in white and all-pervading,

            O, Moon-hued, Four-Shouldered One

            With smiling face so pleasing,

            Upon you we meditate for removing all obstacles.)

 

OM GAM GANAPATIYE SVAHA
 

Current Mood: contemplative

Thank the Old Ones. Another Samhain to take me out of myself. Another Samhain to try to rearrange my priorities. Another Samhain when I can petition my lovely departed to help me, as I help them, feeding them ... goat stew ... and shortbread cookes with way too much butter for any mortal's consumption, but which seems just about right when they've got the munchies ... and the liquore divina, the spirits that are traditional to my spirits.  Heh, I find that it is surprisingly unsentimental for me that I won't be able to partake this year (or, at least not much). Just knowing that they will, and that they'll be truly happy to see the gosh darn trouble we went to find a bottle of it here in the barren alcohol wasteland that is Washington State, well, the lovely, precious, saffron-colored syrupy nectar will hopefully make everyone suitably happy.

Tonight... tonight, dear ones. I remember my dead...
Raven mab Cerridwen
Ann Larricq
Ed Gierke
Cris McPh. (hope you're having a little fun over there, Twinny)
Hilda Augusta
Josefina R
Anna J. Karlsson (å! du är rädd för nån exploSION!)
G Petrus
Holmkvistarna back to the stone age...
And all my loved ones too numerous to name...
And my teachers... Victor, Cora, Harry McB, Kaptén Elin i Lönnemåla, Brita Björns, Anders i Alehagen, Mor Lisa i Finshult, Kungsbackagumman... you got your own silk-bedecked chair tonight, guys. Play nice.

And with that, my dears, I must hustle off to work. Tonight is very special indeed. Take the opportunity to love them again. As my Dad would say "It lubricates the waterworks". There is power in catharsis. There is power in tears.

Happy holidaaaazzzze to all my friends on THIS side of the veil.
Ol' Nick

Only not very ephemeral these days.

i'm frustrated....
                                                        .... with myself ....

i realize that i am *way* too preoccupied with things that don't mean a thing....
                                                                              ....... to anyone......

i bought a cookie...                  ...and waited in vain for the correct change, a penny short.

i grow impatient with those who can't be bothered to have an original thought, who spend too much time RE-acting instead of acting, RE-acting instead of perceiving, who've taken away a rich symbol from me and made me feel it trite.

The blessed hare, the trecan, caninos treis, three hares

                                                      .......... made into dust balls.

singular rip-off, and yet i find i care.  why is that?

because i'm self involved. because i'm still waiting for the penny in my cookie change. because i think its MINE.

But i'm incapable of owning anything... really .... how can this mind, which isn't at all the same from one moment to the next, own an idea?

i'm working my way up to samhain, samhuine, savin, sawin, hallowe'en, all hallows eve, the night of infernal frolick.

i must grow and change. i must die and be reborn. i must find renewal. i must think creatively to find ways to fulfill my dreams. i must ACT, not RE-act.

i must go beyond...

                               ......thayata

                                                     ...........om gate, gate, 
                                                                          
                                                                                     ............ paragate

                                                                                                                              ..............para samgate

                                                                       ...... bodhi...........

                                      so.........         

                                                                                                                               ha..............................

 

I met a most ungracious houseguest. She was a sign, a portent, and bringer of poison and necral flesh. Odd that a guest made so welcome in our home would have shown her gratitude thusly, but then I remember that not all life knows a kindness when it is met, and assumes all a threat worthy of an aggressive defense. A spider, in my clan the harbinger of rain, was now my footbane. My Wise Healer applied an ancient magical recipe, a smear of herbs and earthy clay, to draw out the toxic remnant, and I am soon on the mend.

 

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a midsummer premonition...


Niklas Gander, 9/20/2008