Oh mah god, the dead has a-risen

Two things rose from the dead today:

Me, after about 5 hours of badly needed sleep immediately after work. Those dark circles under my eyes have lost a little of their lovely purple sheen.

And...

My MIA prof wrote back to me today! Hu-fuckin'-zah! She said she'd be happy to write me a rec, so i was FINALLY able to send off the application today after it had been languishing in my car for the past month.

Please oh please accept meeeeeee, Indiana Universit-eee...

This weekend was really nice. A little qualifier: Since i'm going to be leaving the area soon, a lot of my friends (all three of you, you know who you are) have been wanting to see me before i go, and while i love the visit, these drives are really taking it out of me. After next weekend's trip to Roanoke, i'm not going anywhere for a while. I need sleep bad.

But I love visiting, so i'm stuck. So one weekend to myself, then i run around like a nut again.

And like i said, this past weekend was great. I went up to West Virginia to see Jody & The Gang. She outdid herself this time in terms of remoteness with this campsite. The poor underside of my car! Ruts, rocks, scary metallic clangs as i imagined my exhaust system being torn limb from limb.

No phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury, and all owned by a really sweet hippydippy guy. I say that in all niceness here. He let us stay on his property for free, then insisted on paying us because we ate some of his food. Not a chance!

He even had a few horsies grazing in the field. I'd walk by, and i was struck by how neat the sounds are that they make when they're crunching grass. A nice solid sound.

One of them came up to me while i was rummaging in the trunk for a flashlight, which was weird. I do not know how to act around horses. Just because he came up to me doesn't mean that he's going to let me play with him, right? Or not. I don't know; that's the problem. Do you rub him on the nose, or pat him on the head? I know how to behave with cats, but horses are way out of my league.

I'd feel a snuffle and i turned around and there's this bigass HORSE right beside me! Even weirder when he was sniffing my back. I felt like i was in a tame version of Jurassic Park, except that i knew i wasn't going to get eaten. Or maybe i would-- i was told later he likes to bite. Playful bites sure, but he's a horse with big horsie teeth. And as Baxter Black once said, you triple the hilarity and the pain when you throw a horse into the equation. He turned out to be nice though, and i have no teeth marks in me.

We camped on a ridge overlooking all these rolling WV hills, and it was lovely, a perfect spot for a full moon ritual.

Lately i've been feeling a little out of touch with my pagan side, and it's been trying to get in contact with me in various ways. Like the dream i had about the baby bird-- i think Mom was, you know, Mom, The Goddess, trying to look out for me. She's communicating, but sometime's i'm not listening, so i really needed last weekend to ground myself again.

It was really beautiful. Jody, Susan, Dawn, and Jennifer did a terrific job and created such a wonderful space, and i felt a little guilty for just showing up. And I was smoking a cigarette right before ritual-- Bad Mary!

So mellow that night. I think Jody felt weird because we all seemed so subdued, but for me, it was exactly what i needed. i've been running around all over the place lately, and it felt good to focus and be quiet and truly peaceful. I talked in soft whispers, and when i called the North Quarter, i felt it. Sometimes i say the words and it's hard for me to visualize it at the same time, but not then. That's rare for me.

I see the North as a quiet, dark, mountainous place, all glittering snow and a full moon in the dead of winter. I see North as the land of the dead, a place where everything slows down and stops, where there is a time of rest. You can't keep constantly regenerating all the time, like flowers. Flowers can't bloom all the time, they need a dormant period, and that's how i see the North. Dormant, quiet, dark, stable.

North used to be the only Quarter i called for a long time, then i branched out. I needed to get in touch with other aspects of myself, particularly Fire. I was scared of Fire for a long time because i have a fear of being burned. I think that's one of the worst things that could ever happen to you, in my mind at least-- to be burned and disfigured and in terrible pain.

But when i started to look at other ways Fire was good-- the quick change, action, heat, passion, the urge to get up and MOVE!-- i realized how much i needed that. One of the best things i ever did was on my 28th b-day: i set up on altar to Fire, saying that this was the year i'm going to go out and do the things i want. Nothing says No Time Like The Present better than Fire. That was the year i applied to Drexel, started writing like crazy, kicked into high gear with ESOL, started Bindle with Vali, and fell in love with her. As you can see, Fire has its benefits!

I need to slow down though. I think life is slowing down for me. i'm a slow methodical woman currently living a fast-paced life (fast paced for me, anyway). Which is not a bad thing-- just like you have to stretch out of your comfort zone, you can't be on fire all the time either. After i move and get settled in, i think i'm going to switch to low gear for a while. As long as i don't stay in low gear, of course, all will be well.

So. I guess that explains why i craved the quiet mellow vibe of the circle that night. We sat in a circle facing out, our shoulders touching, and we drew down the Moon. She never looked more feminine than she did that night; she all but winked at me. I winked at her back, the cheeky chicky! ;)

It felt good to touch, to have a warm solid person next to you. We swayed and chanted something Jody found and revised:

I am the first, child of the moon,
Goddess come down, come down from the moon.

Raise your eyes, to the light of the moon,
Goddess come down, come down from the moon.

Kiss your hand, and bless the moon,
Goddess come down, come down from the moon.

In my mind's eye i saw a silvery spider web forming a sphere around us. When we talked about what each of us saw, Jennifer mentioned a white light funneling down the center in the circle our backs created. So then i came away with the image of white light being poured like milk in the middle, swirling and funneling up and spilling out everywhere, all over everything, touching it and making everything glow. I think of both images at the same time, of gossamer webs and rich thick white light. It was really special.

Jody wanted to make the chant rise and then fall, but i just wanted to chant in the same low voice, over and over. Yes, it is all about Mary and what she wants, lol.

I slept like a log that night. I felt snug as bugs in rugs.

Jody and the rest want to buy property together in a place just like the one we'd camped in. I think it's great for them, but it's not really for me. I think at first the idea had some appeal, but a while back i decided that farm-livin' isn't the life for me. I came to this realization before i met Vali; i want to reassure her that she isn't changing my plans just to please her. It's not like that at all. I like the country fine, but to live there again...when i see houses tucked into the hills far away from anything, it doesn't make me feel peaceful. it makes me feel isolated and lonely and cut off. I need to be around people. I need to have some connection to the outside world. Having voices around me (not just the ones in my head, you wanks), talking to me, feels reassuring. That's why i love talking books and NPR, and that's one of the reasons i love LJ. I love people talking to me and telling me stories. I feel more connected to my friends who have LJ because i can see how they're doing.

I hope they do get property together soon. I would love to visit them. But our visions of where we want to go and what we want to do with our lives are very different now. But that's cool. They're still my family. It's absolutely a family, and not all family members want to do the same thing. I'm lucky to have friends who understand that just because i'm going away and separating a bit doesn't mean i'm out of their lives.

A few fannish thoughts before bed

The next time you read a story and want to send feedback, please preface your praise with the phrase: What is he, like, ten years old or something? It doesn't matter how old the pairing-- hell, i want you to say it when you read Imogene Coca/Irene Ryan slash. And if you do read this magical pairing, do me a favor and send a link my way? Talk about your show of shows! hubba!

lol, i kill me. I'll do it for you if you'll do it for me, baby. One of these days when my brain can actually concentrate on fic.

Has anyone else had the urge, when they saw the blank spaces in Speranza's Scrabble story, to write in their own dream sequences for Fraser and Kowalski? I love that it's blank-- it makes me think that in their dreams everything is peaceful, but i see white space and i want to fill it up.

For Kowalski, it would be so easy:

Leather clown suit, whipped cream, aw gad Frayze, not da red rubber nose, not dat Frayze, ah've got dat dere housewife's knee, oh, dat really butters my muffin, dat's so queer...BURMA!

For Fraser, it's a lot harder. What goes on in there? All i can think of is him on his knees being disciplined by a sadistic schoolteacher, his arms bound cruelly behind him before the severe looking woman in the prim starched dress and hair in a tight bun. And then, the spanking...

Whoops, sorry, that would be my dream, not Fraser's. But c'mon, who hasn't had the sadistic schoolteacher fantasy? Just me? Well, fuck.

I pledge my allegiance to you, Mary Sue.

No, Ray, it's "Benton loves DARTH", you idiot. He's a Phanton Menace fan, jeez...

In case you're wondering, none of this was a snark. Scrabble is one of my favorite stories ever. I love to be silly about what i love is all.

I kind of got sad today when i read about people trying to like something else besides boyband slash. I mean it's cool if you truly want to jump into other things, like Dale with Stargate and Emmy with Buffy, but if you love what you're doing and you're not hurting anybody, who cares what the rest of the world thinks? It's still writing, no matter if it's boyband stuff, FPS, or original fiction. I felt bad because i got the feeling that you guys are trying to distance yourself from what you like in order to make someone else happy. But that's not the point of hobbies, is it? This is for you, to do whatever you want, and if the rest of the world doesn't like it, they can just go jump in the lake. Know what i mean?

I'm having such a TV sitcom message-at-the-end moment here: Now, dears, if your friends don't like you because of who you are, they weren't really your friends to begin with, now are they?

Garsh Davey, I never thought of it that way...

Now, where did i put my vacuum, pearls, high heels, and riding crop? Fraser's coming over for dinner and i must look presentable.

I have no class

in all senses of the word, but especially tonight. Some doofus accidentally sliced a power cable at the community college, and that means Free Night! for me. I knew there was a reason why i hadn't planned a lesson yet, yeah sure, pull the other one, Mary...

It was kind of comical to call up the zillion and one people in class, who haven't come to class in weeks, and people who haven't set foot in the door yet-- i wanted to cover all the bases-- and say what sounded much like: This is Mary. No class tonight! And not ever, is what they're probably thinking. Goofballs.

And no, i'm not being patronizing, honestly. It's just really hard to talk to someone over the phone in a nonnative language. You lose all the physical cues you'd normally get to do. But i do them anyway, gesticulating madly for a blind audience.

But now? Oh, what to do, what to do...

I read a nifty kid's book called Clockwork by Philip Pullman, that was a start. It was just like the storyteller character said: great beginning, don't have the ending figured out yet. But i enjoyed it all the same.

Maybe i'll get set on my mixtape assignment. "Assignment", listen to me. Like this is major work. But it is, or it can be. And i want to do a really cool one.

Here's the Mission Improbable:

The Theme of your tape should be:
Tell a story with the songs. From beginning to
end. The person you make a
tape for should be able to (from listening to the
tape from start to finish)
tell you what you're story was supposed to be
about.

Yikes.

But what a challenge! I want to pull out every audio recording i have, scan all the titles, jot down the ones that i think are cool, and build the story around that.

Or not. Anyway, i'll cheesedick it enough so that when i'm done, i'll at least have something nifty for me. Sure, i'm supposed to be making it for someone else, but he's not the real reason i'm going to go nuts on this thing.

I. have. a. plan...