So.
Here I am with things on my mind, and I’m feeling ashamed and ridiculous that I’ve allowed the situation in my life to come to this point.
I’ve no one but my self to blame, I know, and occurs to me that…maybe… what is about to happen to me is a lesson. A lesson for me. A lesson for my husband, V. And, by association, my youngest kid.
And it is coming.
This post has been knocking about my brain for a few weeks, perhaps more.
I’ve been having difficulty writing in this blog lately, and I’m not exactly sure why.
I have no shortage of topics, actually, it’s just that once I sit down and start typing, things seem to go awry from there.
But I’m determined to write about my adventures learning about (Futhark) runes lately, because, dammit, I’ve been trying to learn about runes for a long time.
So here it goes.
~~~
I’m ashamed to admit that I bought a set of runes about six months ago.
I’d initially ordered a set from a Norse shaman/craftsman around April or so, but after a few months, I received word from him that things weren’t going well. The tree branches that he’d been intending to cut the blanks from kept coming up cracked and/or damaged, and therefore, the wood supply wasn’t any good for cutting blanks for a rune set.
I should’ve taken that as a sign that maybe this wasn’t the right time for me to learn about runes, but I’m an impatient sort of person, and I thought, well, I’d like to get a set to hold me over.
So I did this past June.
And when I took them out from the bag, I was immediately…depressed, for reasons that I’m not going to get into right now. But I did what I had been told/read/seen that I was supposed to do next upon receipt of runes. And everything seemed OK.
Three different sources gave me an overview of different ways that one can ‘get to know’ the runes once they are in ones’ hands.
One source said to say their names aloud, study them, meditate on each one, and that was that.
One source said that I should sleep on them — one at a time — and write out the resulting dreams.
And another source said that the other two ways were fine, but the best way would be to do a ritual with them – involving fluids – that I’m still trying to sort out, because there’s debate on which fluids are best.
I don’t want anyone to think that I don’t take this seriously, because I do…
But I will say this, it strikes me as very true that runes are interesting, and I’ve been having some very interesting times with the runes.
First, Laguz gave me some very interesting dreams way back in August. Some of the ink came off of my Laguz rune when it got wet during that week when I first focused on it. Somehow I wonder if that was, in some way, appropriate.
And the Ingwaz rune made for some very tasty baked goods, and an interesting time concerning yard work, physical work, and growth during the week that I first focused on it.
And then, Othala. I would like to say that Othala upright is my favorite rune. I’ve felt drawn to it the minute that I first saw it — but what Othala ended up being was a rather forceful representation of a few things that I *really* need to work on. No matter which way I see Othala interpreted, it always seems to come up to remind me of things that I should work on, especially when I’d rather not. Othala, I love you, but you can be a lot to take.
Kenaz is another favorite. Kenaz, like Othala, could generate its own post, with all my feels about it.
Dagaz and Mannaz were tricky…as were Sowilo and Eiwhaz. Just when I thought I was certain that that was the rune that I was seeing, I’d realize that it was actually another rune entirely. Or maybe those four like to shape-change when I’m not looking.
Fehu. Fehu, no pun intended, is what started it all. Because, if I never mentioned this, there is a mark on my bedroom door, that looks basically like Fehu. I think that it has been here since the day that we moved in, almost 3 years ago.
But then again, there’s another person that lives in this house that thinks that it looks more like Ansuz.
And no, I haven’t focused on Ansuz yet, so I don’t want to speculate.
The other day I wrote a post to open up the month of November as a month for Odin.
And now the post is missing. It’s not even listed as a Draft in my Dashboard here…which is fucking strange, to say the least.
Did anyone see it before it disappeared?
Let me know.
Thanks!
This is a drawing that I did several months ago that I have been meaning to post.
Today is as good a day as any, I suppose.
cra·zy (kr
z
)
Someone once said that to follow the path that others have laid before you is a very reasonable course of action, therefore all progress is made by unreasonable men.
— Adam Savage, American industrial/special effects designer, actor, educator, and host of Discovery Channel’s MythBusters
I wanted to be crazy, and I advise you to be crazy. To be weird. To be unreasonable. That’s my favorite one. People are always saying, “Oh, come on, be reasonable!” And I want to shout, “No! I don’t want to be reasonable!” I want to be completely unreasonable. I want to change the world. I want to change the world creatively. And I want other people to be unreasonable with me.
— Matt Goldman, American record producer, engineer, mixer, and songwriter
This song is stuck in my head:
And no matter how many other songs that I listen to, it just won’t budge.
I don’t know if it’s stuck because it makes me think of my girlfriend, J, our upcoming weekend (Sept 14-17th), and my various small anxieties about that…or if it’s some other thing that the Universe could be nudging me to think about.
Either way…
I don’t want to look like some kind of fool
I don’t wanna break my heart over you…
I’m building a wall, every day it’s getting higher
This time, I won’t end up another
Victim of Love…
.
On Friday, I went to the mailbox, and found that V had ordered me a gift.
I wasn’t expecting it.
My newest piece of jewelry
V says that when he saw this anklet on display, he thought of me, and he thought that I should have it. He also claims that it seemed to be the only one that they had that struck him this way. (Which is odd, since I don’t wear a heckuva lot of jewelry, so neither of us are prone to buying jewelry very often.)
It’s sterling silver, and V tells me that the beads are amber.
Personally, that would be interesting, but that’s not what surprised me about his unexpected gift of jewelry to me: it’s the wolf that surprises me.
V said that other anklets had dolphin, flower, or bird charms, or, barring that — more beading — but that this one was the only one that had a wolf.
And it was the last, perhaps, only one.
So he bought it, and had it mailed to the house.
So, I put it on, and I find that I can’t stop thinking about wolves, and especially about exactly why he’d been drawn to pick the wolf.
I mean, if he’d chosen something with a bird charm (perhaps something raven or sparrow like), *that* would make a lot more sense to me, because I’m always thinking and talking about crows and ravens…or the fact that we’ve had a few interesting interactions with birds lately…
But a wolf?
I was puzzled and a bit surprised, because I don’t talk about wolves at all nearly as much as I’d talk about birds or horses…and yet, it’s not as if I don’t like wolves. I do.
More so, and here’s the interesting part: it’s not as if I hadn’t been thinking of wolves lately, it’s just that those thoughts weren’t something I was sharing with V. (A few days before, I had shared a text with Heather S that described a strange dream that I had in 1997…but I’d never told V about the wolves in the dream; just that I shared a text of it with Heather.)
And yet, there it was.
He couldn’t explain it either.
So, first, I thought, as I had done this before, that the wolf might have attracted V because it was his attempt to find something ‘Morrighan-like’ or ‘Freyja-ish’ because we had been talking a few days before about how I’d thought of the Morrighan as my patron goddess for years, but it wasn’t because it was maybe, possibly Freyja…but even then, he would know that a bird would have been the more appropriate choice for either of those two with the options that he’d described as being in front of him. (Though he also knows that Freyja likes cats, too.)
He did admit on the Freyja note, that he did like — and thought that I would like –that it had amber. But that was secondary to his attraction to it.
So, then I thought that he’d picked it because it was ‘different’ or ‘only’ or some such, but he did admit that the amber was the only thing that had any connection with his thoughts about my spirituality.
So, not the wolf, the amber. But there were other ones with amber, he said.
But still, a wolf.
I then told him about Loki’s wife/consort, Angrboda – whom he admitted that he’d never heard of before — and I even showed him the simple (and I think I find somewhat oddly adorable) picture of Angrboda from K’s D’Aulaire’s Norse Myths, to help him out with a visualization of Her, but he shrugs.
Does she have something to do with wolves? he asked.
To which I replied, Well, They had a kid who was a wolf… and I pointed him to D’Aulaire’s toothy grey blobbish rendition of the Fenris-puppy.
He shrugged.
To which K helpfully added, See, Dad? She’s a wolf-mother!
And now, so are you, K giggled at me. You’re a mom…with a wolf!
Great band, V grins.
~~~
Do you like it?, V asks.
I nod.
So I hope that you’ll think of me when you look at it, V said.
And think of me too, blurted K, just wanting to be involved in the conversation.
~~~
But then, there’s today…
And things have been grumpy and difficult.
So, the only thing that I can think of when I look at the anklet today is that it is a reminder that when things get rough…
This mother gets thrown to the wolves.
Honestly, I am almost ashamed to admit that I didn’t know what ‘fracking’ was!
But this is important stuff, especially if you care about the environment and finding alternative energy resources for our future. Thanks!
(Actually written 22 June 2012 in my personal [read: paper notebook] journal)
Once we arrived at the campsite, we were tired, but we didn’t lay down until very late in the evening.
So I was laying there, thinking about how devoutly I wished that sleep would come.
Then, I began thinking about how out of touch I felt with spiritual things.
I found myself wishing again, that I could talk to the gods in my dreams.
I wanted an explanation of sorts; I wanted something to explain as to whether or not…I was being noticed(?)
Something tense, sad, and dark was bubbling up within me, within my thoughts.
And so began a seemingly mundane dream, interspersed with wildly shifting images, shapes and faces, concepts and colors. These then became rapidly cycling mental impressions and imagery of my siblings and parents, and I looked around to find myself sitting by myself at a Formica table, in a mostly empty diner. What I saw around me seemed something out of Hemingway’s short story, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.
The atmosphere struck me as both peaceful and yet a little bit melancholy, as I was surrounded by muted voices from people with drawn, insomniac faces, lit under bright, flourescent lighting.
And then it came: Like a narrative voice-over in a movie scene, a young boy’s voice rang out clear in my head, loud and close to my ear, and he said:
Even though my Father doesn’t mind (doesn’t like?*) you talking to him, I think that you should know that…you have a spider on your face!
The boy’s voice sounded caught, breathless, as if the presence of the spider was a sudden and unexpected interruption, and he’d actually meant to tell me something else entirely; there was something meaningful that he’d come to explain…
But I suddenly awoke, my face tingling, to find myself swatting from my face an actual spider.
It was a little grey spider, with bright red points on its legs and back, and I’ve no doubt that it actually had been crawling on my face.
I watched as the spider skittered away over the rumpled sheets, disappear over the edge of the mattress, and unto the ground.
The spider was real.
And I am left wondering, now.
Who is the boy? And more importantly, who is his father?
~~~
* The boy’s voice, though rather loud, seemed to swallow a word there, and I couldn’t tell if he said ‘mind’ or if he said ‘like.’
It bothers me, as that particular word in that sentence seems to be the most important word of all to have understood in order to understand the overall meaning of the sentence, in my opinion.
Part of me wants to believe that it was mind and not like, simply because, whomever it may be that the boy was referring to, it hurts my ego to think that “(his) Father” is bothered by my talking to him!
*sigh*
What a strange few days it has been.
Looking over things of the past few days, I’ve definitely come to wonder if Someone is trying to get my attention — again.
As I just wrote in my last entry, a few moments ago, I’ve been kinda lackidasical in the devotional department for the last few weeks, so I wanted to make note of these few things here:
It started the other night — on possibly Thursday or Friday night. It peaked about the time of a short but heavy rainstorm that we had around 8PM.
The storm had been brewing up most of the day, but around 6 PM, the wind had picked up and the sky started to rain with big, slow-falling raindrops which slowly drench everything that they hit.
And even though I hadn’t been doing any outdoor devotions as of late, I was standing outside, around 7:30, thinking about doing some –despite the slow rain — when I became distracted by a strange noise. It was definitely the sound of a bird squawking, but nothing like the typical ones that I often hear. So I looked up, scanning the one tree that we have growing in our yard, and then I peered out over the fence, and into the neighbor’s yard.
And what do I see but a flurry of white wings — and I notice that there is a large white cockatiel perched on the back gutter that edges alongside my neighbor’s roof. Its crest-feathers were fully extended, brightly yellow in the gloom, and it was squawking louder and louder as the wind and rain further picked up. Several dogs in nearby yards began barking, which I think further upset the cockatiel. It flew over my head and into my yard, to perch on our back-gutters, continuing to squawk all the while. My husband, V, must’ve heard it, because he came out to see what was up. When he saw the cockatiel, he went back in the house, and returned with some crackers. (I think, V — who has had birds before – agreed that the cockatiel seemed anxious and panicky.) With the crackers, I think that he had hopes of luring it into our patio — to get it out of the rain and calmed down — until we could think of what to do to get it back to its owners, after the rain had stopped.
I was worried for it, as I watched it nervously pace and flutter along the peak of our roof, squawking loudly.
But then, it began eyeing us, and moving closer and closer to the open slider to our patio…
Unfortunately, one of our three cats, Oliver, came over the fence just then, to come inside, and startled it — enough for it to immediately fly off further away and unto the roof of the neighbors directly across the street from us.
I haven’t seen it since, and I do wonder if it made it through the storm, or if it ever got back to its owners.
I hope so.
~~~
And then, this morning, I woke up to have another surprising interaction with a bird. V insists that it was a raven; I think it was perhaps a young crow, or a starling.
Anyway, it was around noon, and V had been working in his office, located on the far side of the house, from the patio. I was in the bedroom, which adjoins the patio.
Even though it is unusual for me to having slept so late, I had just woken up.
Suddenly I heard a squawking commotion on the patio. I hear the front slider being opened, and the sound of V talking gently, as if he’s trying to coax something.
I immediately assumed that the cockatiel had found its way back to our patio somehow, and I felt relieved.
So I walked out into the patio to see, not the cockatiel, but a medium sized black bird, panic-stricken and bonking its head against one of the windows in the far left corner of the patio, even though it was less than six inches away from a window to its right that was wide open.
Poor thing.
Of course, our dog had begun to go nuts, and our three cats suddenly wanted a piece of the action, but V had closed all of them off from the patio, as he was gently trying to lure the bird towards that nearest open window.
Despite V really trying to be so gentle and careful about it, the bird seemed to notice none of it, and began to screech and flutter helplessly against that same closed window.
I was worried that it was really going to hurt itself in its panic.
So I brought V a towel, and he scooped it up in the towel, and the bird settled down enough for V to gently carry it and release it outside.
Right after it flew away, V turned to me, amazed that once he put the towel around it, the bird actually sat quietly in his hand for a few moments.
“Look, the raven came to say ‘hello’ to you,” he grinned at me, excitedly.
I don’t know why he thought that the bird had come to see me.
But I have to admit, it seems unusual to have had not one, but two personal interactions with birds this week.
~~~
And the mysterious fifth guest…
Earlier this month, my oldest son graduated from high school. (He also finished his first year of college, as he took part in a college-affiliated program, as well.) As you can imagine, V and I are pretty proud of him, so we wanted to celebrate by taking him out to dinner.
But since my son also works full time now, it has taken these few weeks before we could coordinate schedules to make that happen.
Three days ago, V made reservations for tonight, for the four of us at our local Ruth Chris’ Steakhouse.
We called to confirm this afternoon, a reservation for four.
But when we got there, they set us up for a table for five, and seemed surprised when we told them they’d only be four of us.
The hostess even double-checked, and claimed that she’d actually written down a reservation for five.
And the waiter – the same great waiter whom we had as our waiter the last time when V and I were there 3 months ago – even asked where our fifth person was.
Nope, there’s only 4 of us in this family.
But we did spend a few moments wondering who our fifth guest was supposed to be.
bloodteethandflame 