Well I'm off on vacation Tuesday night until Sunday-ish.  I'm hoping not to have to stare down death this time but with my luck ... there's just no tellin'.  [For anyone that missed the whole sordid mess, wondering what the heck I'm talking about, it's here ... http://awenydd.covenspace.com/blog/2008/06/02/jodi_vs_the_black_cloaked_figure_called_death]

So far my hair is brown, I'm going to live with the skunk stripe, so this trip is already looking up and I'm driving my van this time instead of J's!  *Phwew!*  Should be no overheating issues.  Should!  But now I'll have two telescopes in the van instead of just the one so in case I catch on fire, there's no way he can save both telescopes and then still have time to put me out.  The best I can hope for is to be ejected from the van before the fire can get me.  I absolutely refuse to have a life insurance policy on me, I don't want to give him any more reason to save anything else in the van before me.  Oh! I could shower with my clothes on before I leave so the fire can just smolder a while!  Ooo, a plan! Good thing because it's harder to buy Nomex underwear than you would think!  <- obscure fire resistant cloth reference.

Just keep in mind that if anything happens I'd like you to all know that I will probably be just as graceful and lucky in death as I was in life and somewhere John Edwards (the psychic medium not the horny politician) will be screaming "damn it crazy women, get out of my head!"  There's always an adventure waiting to be tripped over!

See ya (or haunt ya) Sunday!  Feel free to rifle through my possessions.  [Yep, no melodrama here.  LOL!]

Last night I was in that in between sleep and awake place, or just drifting off to sleep but still aware, and I was standing in front of my parent's house (like I did yesterday, pretty much all day for the holiday.) My family and friends were all standing in the yard, out in front of me, facing toward me.  All of a sudden their faces and the yard just lit up with this wonderful warm orangy yellow light.  I was frozen, mesmerized by the way their faces were lit up by light.  It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.  It was like sunlight, but it was more colorful, more intense but not bright like it would hurt your eyes.  It was like the way the setting sun turns everything that wonderful color times 100.  Everyone pointed behind and above me telling me to look so I finally tore my eye's away to look ... there was a HUGE yellow and orange sphere right above the mountain, like the sun but much bigger.  It stretched all the way from the south to the west and I could look right at it without hurting my eyes.  Everyone was telling me that it was for me.

I sat up and looked at the clock ... one minute.  Am I quick to fall asleep and dream or what?!  No real idea what that was all about but it was really neat!  I am trying to add some Fire to my life, maybe I'm making some progress.

About six, maybe seven years ago I saw an ad in a local flier for a guy giving stringed instrument lessons. I'd never played an instrument in my life. I couldn't read music. I wanted to play the violin in elementary school but our school didn't teach strings so I didn't play anything. Well when I get something in my head, it doesn't go away. I got on ebay, bought a violin and called the guy for lessons, just like that. It's pretty unlike me to call anyone for anything and very unlikely to make an appointment to go to some strange guys house, but out of the blue I did it, and it turned out terrifically. I played for a year and a half, maybe two, and then I developed a benign tumor in my wrist. I couldn't (and still can't) find a doctor that wants to touch it. It's small and it's right on the nerve and blood vessel bundle that goes through my carpel tunnel to my left hand. One wrong move and I lose the use of my hand or bleed to death or something fun like that. Apparently it's wrapped around or through the bundle or something ... whatever ... I want it gone but no one else seems to feel the importance of that. (I'm holding out for my brother to get through med school!)

Well I quit playing for about five years. I couldn't stand the pain. I got shots ... very uncomfortable, driven right down in my wrist (OW! I thought for sure the needle was going to poke out the other side. Funny how they don't want to do surgery for fear of damage but they will skewer me without batting an eye.) But anyway, even when the pain wasn't there I still had the numbing when I played as the tumor pushed into my veins and nerves.

Well screw it! I want to play! I started playing again yesterday. It took me all day to re-learn to read music but otherwise it's just like riding a bicycle ... uphill ... in the sand ... with flat tires ... in a hail storm. LOL! And don't get me wrong, I wasn't very good when I stopped playing ... and I'm not being modest, I put the odious back in melodious ... but I'm going to hang in there unless my little pet tumor decides to hate on me some more. Right now my wrist is a little sore and I haven't felt anything there for a long time ... I hope it's my imagination or because I was poking at it to see if it was the same size, or just because I haven't played in a long time and it's tired. So if anyone has any advice, let me know if there is anything that you know of that I can do. I'd appreciate that a lot. Right now though, I miss my calluses and I'm proud of the blisters on my finger tips. It's a real beauty on my ring finger ... fun typing! :) Pain purifies right ... or builds character ... or something? My hands were built to play the violin though. The universe just HAS to let me play!!! Wish me luck (and calluses.)

Anyhoo ... I forgot how magical music is. Even when I croak out something shrill and I can kinda hear the melody in there, it's amazing how it can just jump right in sync with emotions ... or the other way around really ... it's amazing how emotions will change to sync up with the music. It's a whole different language that I think we were all born to understand it and some people are born to learn to speak it (by writing it.) And some people are really fluent! I'll never take for granted the brilliance of humanity! And there's something about the impermanence of music. Yeah, you can record it and play it over but it's not something that you can bottle up and hoard. It just floats through and away from you. It would be like catching smoke in your hand. And if you play one song too much, you get tired of it. You wear it out. You HAVE to find new music. You can come back to it later and love it still, and love it all over again, but you will always need more. It's like music gives us all a drive to procreate more music. It needs to drive us to create more of it so it has life. Music is alive and it's part of us ... it's in our blood and souls! Music is magic!

I went for a walk two nights ago, later than I hoped but I was going to go even if it was twilight. There is a place during my walk where I walk down a dirt and grass driveway, it's a slight decline, about a single lane wide, one side is the forest and a couple of camps. The other side is a mostly open field, pine trees scattered through it, high grass, sticker bushes, underbrush, and the mountains frame the whole beautiful scene. At the last cabin a path runs along the driveway. It gets steeper, narrower, and at the bottom of the decline, the trees start getting closer together on both sides. It looks pitch black at that spot whether it's bright out or twilight and it looks like you're walking into an abyss. The opening into the dark even looks circular, so it looks like a hole or a cave entrance.

Even the smell of the forest gets much stronger the closer you get. The entire dark part is only about 30 yards before it opens up again to a man made pond, farm house, and barn ... but as you head down the steeper path, there is no hint that it will open back up. It's deliciously dark, moist, still, and inky black.

As soon as you step into it, roots grow across the path and it gets rough and swampy and for as dark as it looked from the outside, it's pleasantly dark but not pitch. It smells like moist forest no matter the weather, no matter the season. I can't help but breathe as deep as I can when I get to that spot.

The part the I love the most though is how the air currents move through there. Right before the opening any little breeze is funneled right at your face. It's like the forest is exhaling it's sweet foresty breath! As soon as you step into the dark though the air is still and usually any little sounds are muffled ... all except for footsteps on the roots making almost a drumming sound and the water crossing the path from the three streams that bubble up from the ground a few feet up the bank, dragging Telluric, Earth, energy up with the water. The roots take on a hollow sound that seems very loud since that section is so quiet. There are rarely animal along there. Occasionally I'll hear the wings of the ravens that hang out there, maybe some bug noises, but even the ravens are usually silent there, seeming reverent to my overactive imagination ... and although it's incredibly silent it's not eerie. It's more like Alice In Wonderland ... one minute you're in the real world and then in a step into a hole and you're somewhere, sometime, in something else. It's pretty magical.

So I went though the rabbit hole, my magical 'entrance,' and kept going on my walk. I thought that I probably should head right to loop around back to home but I wasn't ready. I wanted to keep going. I went left down a little less overgrown road and bats decided to join me for that part of my walk. The flew from behind me past my head and would loop back over me to make another run. I was happy to be part of the hunting party even if I wasn't invited. They stayed with me for a while, we hung out. When I see bats, I think of my friend Mia. It's like a knee jerk reaction, so I chatted with Mia a while and then they left me when I crossed the paved road and down a steep bank to get to the bike trail that follows the big creek that dominated the landscape of my home town. Again, right would be toward home ... I went left.

Movement on the creek caught my attention. A blue heron took off and flew up and then down the creek. When I see heron, I think of my friend Bren. I said hello and chatted a bit with Bren via the heron.

I thought 'well, one more.' There is one more friend that makes up our traveling group of four Pagans. I was missing my friend M and it was getting pretty dark but I didn't care. Home held no interest for me at the moment. I wanted to keep going. A dragonfly circled me. Dragonflies and M go hand in hand. I hadn't even really thought of that while I was thinking of her ... I was thinking birds and air but I sort of forgot her affinity for dragonflies until I saw it. I chatted with M for a while and decided I better turn around before J called out a search party.

I sat on a bench to get the rocks out of my shoes and I heard one more animal ... a fox! I have a strong affinity for foxes so it was pretty neat for me to have all four of us together. It was a spectacular evening so I scurried home while I still had light to see.

Last night I set out again. I wanted to see how much my imagination played a part in the rabbit hole or if I was craving to read Alice in Wonderland or something. It was the same, the same as it always is ... inky, round, steep, still, and again the forest exhaled into my face as I crossed into the dark part. I crossed the three swampy areas and picked my way to dry land going down and left as I headed out of the dark part again ... away from home. This time instead of heading down the bike path I decided I wanted to see what it looked like at that time of evening to cross back through the rabbit hole. I turned and went back instead of looping around.

When I got back it was getting pretty dark. I started out later and it was dark enough that I had trouble finding the opening to get back in. I walked slower, taking more deliberate steps, trying to see my way across the water, trying to find rocks to step on. I even reached up to my glasses thinking I had sunglasses on because it was so dark. I haven't been in the woods after dark for a long time and even longer still since I was in them alone after dark. More than anything, more than breathing, I wanted to dig my heels in and not leave. I knew I'd get the 'where were you' lecture if I stayed too long. I knew I'd get the 'I was worried' and the warnings about bear, mountain lions, coyote, boogie men, serial killers, big foot, whatever J would try to scare me with to try to keep me safe from my own crazy ideas. But at that moment, still in the dark, I didn't care. I didn't care about anything at all but staying. I didn't have an ounce of fear in me.

The dark, the smell, the quiet, the entire feel of the forest just wrapped itself around me like a favorite blanket or the arms of a love. Even being as dramatic and theatrical as I can with the writing, the words just don't do it justice. I had to force myself to get moving, a slow pace to miss what I couldn't see that might trip me. The moon was up so when I got near the opening the moon bounced off the water giving me light to lead me the rest of the way out. When I was clear and I could look up to see the moon, it was beautiful ... a warm buttery yellow, with Jupiter chasing her through the still blue tinted sky. Just a few steps from the rabbit hole I could have read by the light but I turned back and it was complete pitch dark.

I looked down and there was a raven feather and the reddest leaf I've ever seen. It's a bit early for the leaves to be changing but it was laying there, deep deep blood red just waiting for me to pick it up. It wasn't until this morning that I realized that was the (fourth I think) anniversary of me pledging myself to Bran ... the warrior storyteller. I think he gave me a great backdrop for a story if I ever decide to write or tell one.

Today is one of those days that I call a "Come Together" day. (Ya know, the Beatles song.) Those lyrics make about as much sense as I'm making today.  It's like random thoughts are just floating around my brain.  What was it John Lennon called it? Gobbledygook, I think. Yeah, just like that!  Like the song though, it usually entertains me. 

We had thunderstorms yesterday, and I had the day off.  I watched the storms moving across the state on radar, slowly but surely making there way to us.  When they hit us they broke likes waves on a shore.  It was as if there was some big wall up and the storm grew and shrank and intensified and fizzled but didn't move past that wall for a long time.  They did eventually start moving slowly across the state again but it was a good hour that they stood still right at us.  It was pretty cool!  I'm lucky enough to live where the mountains mess with the weather.  Yay!

Fog ... I love fog ... more than love, I adore fog!  In my Celtic faith fog is where you are closest to the Otherworld and your Ancestors.  I do an elaborate double circle set up at Samhain, the only time I do anything elaborate or structured, and if it's foggy, I'm all over it!!!  I always do my best divination during that time.  Even during any other time of the year it's all I can do not to head to the nearest fog when it's around and chat it up with anyone that might be listening.  It's fun to drive in and out of it when I'm alone too.  I chat it up real quick while I'm in it and then wait when I'm back out of it and finish when I get back in it.  I haven't sat in a nice thick fog bank in a while.  I love the cool light moisture it leaves on my skin and the way it makes the back of my throat cool when I breath it in.  I love the way it drowns out the noise of the mundane world and makes me feel like it's just me and my spirituality in there.  I like to traipse off in the fog and ask my ancestors if I'm living honorably.  I still feel like I'm working off someone's curse.  I believe in family curses and bad luck, I think it's sticky and stays around a family ... kind of like being in a rut. 

I'm all about the weather.  Wonder what that's all about?

I'd have to say my drug of choice is a B Complex vitamin.  I run well on a B Complex vitamin, full of pep.  That might explain the "Come Together" Day though ... I might have to cut them in half. 

I'm going to get another tattoo.  I don't know what or when but it's in my head and once it's in there, there is no getting it out.  I haven't worked up the nerve to tell J about it.  He doesn't necessarily hate tattoos but he thinks it's a waste of money.  *shrug*  So are cigarettes but it doesn't stop him.  Oh that's right, we're still pretending that I don't know he's still smoking.  I guess we can pretend the tattoo was free!

I work in threes.  I think in threes.  I dig for finding correspondences in threes.  I think that's what bugs me about the secret.  It deals with mind, and possibly with spirit, but it's missing body.  It's missing the physical aspect of life and magic, there has to be something in the physical.  And if it's touching on spiritual, it's not touching it enough for me.  It's like a part of an equation that makes people think life is going to be really easy but then somewhere along the way you realize that a big part of it is missing and you can't get the math to work out.

Speaking of math, I love numerology, happy 08-08-08!  I don't really get it but numbers are like music to me, they are magical.  Math is awesome ... way over my head, but awesome nonetheless.

I'm starting to think I shouldn't read fiction at all.  When I read fiction it plays with my emotions and it sticks in my head like super glue.  Good fiction, bad fiction, funny fiction, exciting fiction, deep fiction, it doesn't matter.  I think it and think it and rethink it more.  The story, the characters, the changes I'd like to make to the story, things I would have said or done differently, so many things just run and run and run though my mind.  Sometimes I think it's dangerous to my stable life to even read fiction.  It makes me overreact and want to do silly things with my silly thoughts.  Sometimes I like the fact that it feels dangerous to my stable life, but sometimes I don't like that feeling, sometimes I don't want to think that other people's lives are ever so much more interesting than mine.  And since I like action and adventure, fiction makes me want to hop on a plane and live a characters life.  Quite annoying really.  No matter how it makes me feel or what I think about, I just can't shut it off or filter it from my life.  It runs in my head 24/7 until it burns itself out.  Movies don't effect me near as strongly as books do.  *shrug*

Not only is it Friday (I have to keep reminding myself, my schedule was weird this week) but the boss left early.  I'm pretending I'm doing taxes and we're "testing speakers" at the computer shop ... in other words, we're jamming to internet radio!!!  Do people still say jamming?  I'm so square!  Do people still say square? Not that it's important that I know what's cool.  Anyone that has a paragraph on how math is awesome doesn't really need to worry about coolness! LOL!  At least me and my family are mullet free!  It could be worse! 

I might have to leave work early, I think I'm coming down with a case of joo joo eyeballs! LOL!