Loki | bloodteethandflame

(Loke-spam #2 by Striped Smoker on DeviantArt.)

Nineteen minutes.

I wasn’t meditating.

I was simply enjoying some quiet time after dinner, relaxing on my bed with eyes closed, letting thoughts run through my head…

I wasn’t actively thinking of L, but then, suddenly, I saw His face.

I wasn’t sleeping -I hadn’t any intention of sleeping – and yet I could see Him in front of me. I did a body inventory to check to see if I was dreaming. What was unusual was that I could still hear my kid (K) talking loudly in the kitchen, so I figured that I couldn’t have been dreaming. As a matter of fact, I could have easily followed the conversation that K was having with his brother in the kitchen – if I had to – and yet I was also experiencing this vision of L behind my closed eyelids.

I thought of how I could open my eyes.

I thought of how I could move and that vivid image of L sitting on a green hillock overlooking a valley below would have likely faded back to grey as these images usually do

… and yet I couldn’t shake it from my mind.

So I opened my eyes briefly, testing my theory, and upon closing, He remained…just as before. He was dressed in a pair of black jeans and a light blue shirt. He was, as usual, barefoot. I was standing a few feet behind Him, and He was sitting in the grass, looking over His shoulder at me, looking up at me.

I examined His face, trying to commit the details of His present form to memory: He had blue eyes, and His long hair didn’t match up with either His eyebrows or the stubble that shadowed along His jaw, as both were several shades darker than the bleached blonde of His hair. He had those familiar scars along His lips, that sarcastic grin…and He had facial piercings.

I couldn’t tell if He was going for ‘surfer dude’ or ‘suburban hipster.’

It struck me as strange, and I wondered if this was a sort of amusing game to Him; He kept tossing His head as if He was striking poses for me, and yet He slyly commented that I should stop trying to mentally inventory His face, and actually talk to Him for a change.

He was right in a way; perhaps I was trying to mentally inventory His face.

But what struck me was that I was neither sleeping, dreaming, nor meditating, and yet, I was *seeing* Him.

And even more unusual, when I tried to dispel the vision, it stayed in my mind’s eye.

So, you would not want to see Me? He pouted. He sat up straight, clasped His knee to His chest, and tilted His head prettily.

Sit with Me.

But all I could think of was how graceful was the curve of His neck as He looked up at me, and how seeing Him, feeling His presence like that suddenly engendered specific thoughts in my head that left me to grin like a smitten fool.

Perhaps you are, He drawled, and what of that?

(Perhaps those sudden thoughts that I think should remain unspoken.)

~~~~

We talked for what seemed like two or three hours, on that hillock overlooking the valley below.

I felt the rain on my face as He drew complex diagrams in the dark soft dirt. Perhaps we talked of magic or runes or other matters entirely full of important points that could only be conveyed with the help of visual representations.

I’m not entirely certain of every thing that We discussed; I mostly remember His laughter and the steady humming patterns of His voice, along with those diagrams.

For once, I didn’t do much talking.

For once, I was simply content to listen to Him.

Talk less; listen more.

~~~

Another odd feature of this interaction was that this discussion which seemed to have lasted for two hours…

actually only lasted 19 minutes.

From 9:00 to 9:19pm

Hmm.

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July 30, 2015

Month for Loki, Day 30: Delivery.

Three years ago, my older son and I purchased a silkscreen array for making t-shirts.

He and I learned the silk-screening process, and we made a few casefuls of t-shirts for different events. The t-shirt designs that he makes are created mostly for skateboarding and music events, while the designs that I’ve created are produced as needed/ordered for kink and Pagan events.

I like creating t-shirts, and it’s always a conversation starter to have a one of a kind t-shirt.

This is one of the projects that I am working on, and this is nothing more than a prototype design that I fed into the Custom Ink Lab the other day just to see how it would look before I go forward with making a screen for it.

I’ve been working on designing a less traditional mason logo – that features Loki – but I’ve yet to create one that I’m satisfied with.

Hail Loki ❤

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July 29, 2015

Month for Loki, Day 29: Schism

Well, here we are, almost the end of July.

There were some posts that I’d meant to write that I never gotten around to actually finish writing much less posting, such as

* That much promised post on polyamory and jealousy that I’d left and come back to so often that its length has grown to over a dozen handwritten pages in my notebook. The other day, I joked with a friend that if I ever cut it down enough to post it in its entirety, I’m still going to title it TL;DR

* A post concerning reluctance, runes, and shadow work.

and

*A requested follow-up concerning devotional tattoos.

As well, there were posts that I finished writing but I could not bring myself to post for various reasons. These still sit in a digital folder on the hard drive, concerning:

* A particular example of how I often get pushed out of my comfort zones. This was also by request.

* A personal background post about a spiritual re- connection that I’d made in April 2008 that followed the near-death experience of a family member.

* A poem of heiti and slippery metaphors.

One could say that I didn’t intend to post about this, but when I consider the particular requests and topics with which I’d begun the month, this topic is cake* in comparison.

What I’m about to write about is loads more pleasant and easier to discuss that some of the other requests.

~~~

Speaking of requests, I have started working on a series of drawings which are intended preparation for a much bigger project.

I love to draw, and I have been getting a lot of sketching practice, mostly with charcoals, pencil, and ink.

I was content to just keep on with the pencil sketches. Patterns started developing with my sketching, and I even started putting aside the sketches that I was more than slightly pleased with to post on my DeviantArt account.

As you may have read in one of my earlier blog posts this month, I’ve long had a preference for drawing Loki. About a year ago, this began to extend towards drawing His family too – I started drawing Angrboda, Hela, Fenrir, Sigyn, and Sleipnir. Some of my better drawings of these can be seen on my DA account.

But then I started noticing some synchronicity in what was coming up whenever I was working on new face and body studies to draw.

I’m a pretty avid people-watcher, and I started seeing a lot of ‘odd couplings’ during my walks:

– I’ve had several sightings of a pair of construction workers – a much older man with a longish greying beard and a middle-aged redhead – working at the ever-increasing construction site that has sprung up two blocks from my home. (With the extension being added to an existing hospital, and a huge new entertainment complex being built all within a mile of my house, you can imagine that I may see a lot of construction workers, but still…)

– A large grey-black fluffy wolf-like dog being pursued by several children (which reminded me of this)

(above comic created by JellyVampire on DeviantArt.)

– A tall man walking along the sidewalk, who stopped me, and asked to pet my dog. He had the most interesting light brown eyes that I’d ever seen. His eyes appeared to be almost gold.

And then the dream-visual related to this song:

…which got me to thinking about Odin and Loki catching sight of each other on the huge plain at Vigrid where Ragnarok will be fought…

And I have been visualizing that scene every time I hear Schism ever since

And for some reason, this project, this vision is growing into more than a sketch.

Perhaps it will become a painting.

Not that I am well-versed in painting, but I’ll let you know how it goes.

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July 28, 2015

Month for Loki, Day 28: A bit of Lokean levity

Two years or so ago, I was in a Facebook group named The Lokean League of Very Bad People.

The group is unfortunately gone now, but I remember that -towards the end – some of the more active members of LLoVBP engaged in many verbal sparring matches with that particularly vocal folkish Heathen group, The Odinic Right.*

Here is a ‘letter’ that was forwarded by a former member of LLoVBP some time ago:

“Credit for this one goes to Mikki Fraser and Lagaria Farmer.

If you like it copy, paste, and pass it on!

Dear Odinic Rite,
It is imperative that I get this message to you as quickly as possible. There may be no more time left for me, but you and all the others still have a chance! Recently, I was fortuitous enough to capture a member of the Lokean League of Very Bad People, and after hours of gruesome torture, was able to extract a confession. However, just before the scoundrel bit into their cyanide cap, they sprayed me with a neurotoxin. It smelled like peaches, and I’m not sure what it does yet, but I’m sure I must only have minutes left before it takes effect. Not only is the LLVBP planning a dastardly scheme that involves teapots (the ravings of this lunatic were hard to make out) it turns out that the Dark Lord Loki HIMSELF has been behind nearly every global catastrophe that has plagued mankind.

This is what I was able to learn:

Loki is the father of the Jewish race
Loki was the man on the grassy knoll
Loki is the leader of Al Qaeda
Loki hid dinosaur bones all over the world to make people doubt the Eddas
Loki was the hunter who shot Bambi’s mother
Loki and Sauron may actually be the same individual, AND he can simply walk into Mordor
Loki is the head of the Illuminati
Loki turns baby Dalmatians into coats
Loki was Joseph Stalin’s mentor
Rasputin was Loki’s avatar
Loki gave birth to Napoleon’s horse
Loki invented condoms to exterminate the white race
Loki is responsible for the “mud” races, and may also be Obama himself
Loki side-swiped Princess Diana’s car
Loki ejected Amelia Earhart out of her plane
Loki kidnapped the Lindbergh baby
Loki blew up the Hindenburg
Loki was the captain of the Titanic AND the Exxon Valdez
Loki broke up the Beatles
Loki stole the Ark of the Covenant
Loki whipped up Hurricane Katrina
Loki is the puppet master behind the Democratic party
Loki created all deadly spiders, and hides them in people’s showers
Loki reverts cured gays
Loki started Occupy Wall street
Loki programmed the Y2K virus
Loki was Mary Queen of Scott’s lesbian lover
This rabbit hole goes so much deeper than we thought, and you have to warn the others before it’s too late! And don’t forget that…. That… cough… cough… what’s happening to me? I have the sudden… urge to… have sex with a man! No! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

~~~

*I am not going to link to the Odinic Rite group, but a quick search of Google would school you on their folkish (read: overwhelmingly racist) belief system.

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July 27, 2015

Month for Loki, Day 27: Social

So you’re a social drinker, eh?

Well, I know what that means; if you’re going to have a drink, then so shall I.

-Peanut, renowned gadfly/theatre critic

~~~

If you have been following this blog for any length of time, you may have noticed that I am prone to social anxiety. It is not something that I am proud of, but it is something that often affects my daily life. As a result, I’ve developed many coping strategies and behaviors over the years. Some of them are outward physically noticeable coping mechanisms that serve to help me function better when I find myself in anxiety-inducing situations, while others are inward psychological behaviors and patterns of thought-processing that help me through difficult mentally stressful situations.

However, I try as much as I can to function as normally as possible, but on a bad day, I am likely to avoid social interaction altogether.

Sometimes this desire to avoid social interaction will carry on for several days.

At times like that, I would almost welcome the chance to avoid.

But lately, more and more, I’ve been thrust into situations that make me anxious, but I am left to find a way through somehow anyway. These situations present themselves, and I am caught having to deal with exactly the sort of social situation that I’d more than likely rather avoid.

Today was just such a day. I was informed this morning that two acquaintances of mine (whom I do not know very well at all) were planning on stopping by my home later in the afternoon. Of course, I stressed about this, and was on edge all morning. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I had been practically avoiding them socially for over a month, but things converged last night somehow, and it became obvious to me this morning that I didn’t have a good excuse to avoid them for very much longer.*

Besides, they were only planning to stop by for an hour or two.

I started to think that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

So I buried myself in the activity of tidying up the house. I doubled up my dose on my anxiety meds (something I do with the OK of my physician, of course), and then I meditated and I exercised.

In short, I used every one of my physical coping strategies to prepare myself for that two hour window.

While I was out walking, I had an interesting moment of obvious pandoramancy, as this song came up twice in the music feed on my device:

Gods bless you, Frank Turner.

You seem to know exactly how I feel at times.

~~~

But then, you know what?

The situation with those visitors?

They never even showed up.

Perhaps tomorrow, they will…but I am ready to face them.

With a clean house and a clear, calm mind.

~~~

Hail Loki…for understanding the way I tend to be ❤

~~~

* There’s a short circuit between my brain and my tongue, thus, “Leave me the fuck alone” comes out as “Well, maybe. Sure. I guess I can see your point. – David Sedaris, A Friend in the Ghetto; from Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls

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