An Alright Day After All

Current listening: Crickets

Ari meowing as he stalks the yard

'Funny Cat' (the raccoon) chewing on something

Today was indeed an alright day. It started out a bit rough though. I went ahead and asked for an appointment with a new  therapist in town after I woke up and had that old, familiar empty feeling right in the middle of my chest. I call it "The Void" because that is exactly what it can feel like - a vast, Lovecraftian crack in the center of myself, stretching into eternity and frightening in its very emptiness.  A little while later, another familiar monthly  :::ahem::: friend showed up and explained why some things seemed amped up lately by about a factor of 10. Yay. 

Today was also the deadline to enter the show at the Tomato Art Fest and I let it go. I did enter last year, after a four year absence, but that was more because I had promised the former owner. It's no fault of the show or the Fest, but I am still so burned out on it. Maybe I'll be ready to enter again somewhere down the road. 

Granted, I don't have to fight and jump through hoops anymore just to get my work there. Thank the gods! No more crazy narcissistic reasoning ("You can't make a living with art...of course they want you back. They want to make money") or fear that I might miss a delivery deadline - and waste an entire hour long trip to town - because someone else insisted their fun was more important. I certainly don't miss the dismissive "Oh. You didn't sell anything" on bad days and the hours long rages, with attendant threats to call the police for some stupid, made up thing - when I did sell. The better my sales, the worse the rages. The feeling of eternally being caught up in an emotional and mental tornado and not being able to think clearly was maddening. 

Oddly, late this afternoon, as I waved at the deadline as it passed me by, I started working on a few additions of the sporadic series I started years ago called An Ode to Wazowski. I have two about half finished at the moment, an illusionist and a clown. We'll see what else comes of it. The ones I did last year - a Gandalf type wizard, a ceremonial magician and a hip witch - were the first ones to ever not sell. I'm pretty sure my burnt out energy were all over them and no one wanted that. 

I've been thinking of a different way of promoting my work, which tells me that I must be finally getting that former bullshit out of my system. I signed up for MailChimp a couple of years ago, but I never did anything with it. I had thought of doing something about less well known folklore, starlore, mythology and who knows what else. What I want now is do that in a newsletter promoting my art - make it more engaging than just saying, "Hey. There's this. Please buy it." 

Okay, I'm tired - enough rambling. Goodnight y'all.  

 

Amergin and the Dead South

Current Listening: Achilles, The Dead South

Up next: Waiting For the Night, Ghost

Shin-En, Ningen Isu

I didn't realize it had been over a week since I last posted here. Damn. I didn't realize I was caught in that downward spiral for that long. I don't know if it's the quarantine or just 2020, but these spirals are getting more frequent. So much so, I've put in a few inquiries to some local therapists. I do not want to go down the depression road again. It was awful the first time. Knowing it could be sneaking up on me again is much worse.

Okay, so a change of topic. I love this particular song by the Dead South. It reminds me of The Song of Amergin. He says "I am sea breeze/I am the ocean wave/I am the surf's thunder/I am the stag of the seven tines/I am the cliff hawk/ I am the sunlit dewdrop..."

The Dead South's version is a more modern: "I am a man/I am the wind/I am all your deepest sins/I am the sun, I am the moon/I am all your sweetest tunes..."

The link above says that the Song has "been described as an invocation or a mystical poem" and it is. But is that all it is? 

It is more of a becoming. There are many paths with traditions of claiming for yourself certain things, whether they be animals, elements or gods. To say "I Am..." is to take on the power of the thing. 

Am I saying the Dead South are shamans, magicians or some such? No, I'm not. But, they don't have to be. The writers claimed and accepted the best and worse of themselves in the song and that had to be very cathartic on some level. 

Playing with a story

I know it sounds cliché, but surely it was five o'clock somewhere. The office had been quiet all day and that was bad. Bad for business - no business, no paying the rent and no office. On the other hand, there wasn't anyone around to care if I took a bit of a nip of Jack. Or three.

Who knows though, someone or something could still walk through that door. I wasn't picky. I'll take a case, whether human or monster. Hell, most of the time, I preferred the monsters. 

Granted, it took a long while to get the respect, well, maybe not respect, per se, of the monsters, but I got a reputation. I got the job done and I treated my clients with respect. Apparently, that was a novel concept coming from a human. Well, you know how most monsters come out in the stories. 

One reason that it took so long to get that reputation is that I didn't read as they expected me to, so I confused them. You know how you can look at someone and instinctively know whether they're on the level? Yeah, they couldn't quite figure me out. I guess that's a rare thing for a human. 

Ah, screw it, I thought as I got my jacket and fedora (can you be a legit P.I. without a fedora?) I'm calling it a day. I hoped there's be more action at the corner bar. 

Bleh

I really need to stop looking at posts on the local town groups on Facebook. There's nothing but stupid conspiracy theories (i.e., masks can't keep the Coronavirus out, but they mysteriously hold on to CO2 like no tomorrow. Also, those same masks are grooming everyone for dreadful things like burkas, microchips or Bill Gates) or hysteria over Satanists wanting to bring the USA into a New World Order.

I don't like my response to these things. I go in and say, "Seriously?" and it's on. No one ever really reads the comments for any kind of discourse anyway. They only want to denigrate everyone who doesn't agree. Bleh. That's it. I need to leave for my own damn sanity.

No, it wasn't my first day on the internet, but those local groups make me feel like that anyway. 

Stories

Oops. I almost let the day go by without doing an entry. 

Stories have been on my mind lately. Not only the kinds authors write, but stories we tell ourselves too. 

Isn't that what we do? We tell ourselves "This is what I am. This is what I do. I'm okay with that" and most don't bother to look any farther. They are happy with their story. 

Then there's those of us who sometimes feel like one of the characters in that Pirandello play, Six Characters In Search of an Author. We aren't happy with the way the story is going. We feel, like those characters in the play, unfinished and go looking. Some of us go looking for the author. Some go looking for a new story. Some just go looking to see what they can find. 

What's the story you're telling yourself? Are you happy with it? 

I can say there are places where I definitely am not happy with the story. I do feel like a Pirandello character - unfinished, but wanting to round myself out (character wise, anyway. Physically is a different story.) 

Now, I suppose comes more questions. Am I willing to go looking for a change of story? Am I willing to be more of an author, instead of just letting the story go as it will? 

Long time, no see, dear blog.

Wow. It has been a long time since I've paid attention to this blog. There's been several times over the years that I thought about restarting it, but it never got beyond that. 

Now, in this time of COVID, riots and general upheaval, I find myself wanting to start blogging again for the same reason I started my little bitty, hand programmed (in early HTML, no less) one on Geocities all those years ago in the ancient times. 

I needed an outlet then, one that my ordinary journal didn't quite give me. I needed an outlet that boosted my confidence; something that said I matter. 

That's where I am now, with some very similar feelings. I know I'm not the only one having a tough year, but I was doing okay for a while. Everyone I know has been ill, broken bones, had multiple heart attacks and other issues. One family member has even died, but I handled it.

Then 2020 came for me and even the cat. I could barely walk with a knee injury and for most of last month, I didn't. I hobbled. Then my cat was attacked and had to have surgery. That's when I lost it and I didn't have enough spoons to go around. 

So here I am. Life continued on; people needed me to be there for them and me? I've seriously thought about counseling or therapy again, because I felt that I didn't have anyone I could lean on. 

I decided to come back here and do this instead. I am Pagan and supposedly, I have tools of my own to deal with these things. May as well remember who and what I am and use those tools. 

Because I matter. 

Privilege

I know you are as tired of the whole Kim Davis thing as I am but it looks like it isn't going to go away anytime soon.  I only have one more thing to say about it that no one really seems to be mentioning. 

This whole thing isn't only about equality.  Not really.  It's about privilege. 

Before this situation came up, there was a lot of chatter from people who denied there is any privilege to be had. Funny enough, they are the very ones who get the most from this privilege.  These people are straight, white and usually fundamentalist. 

Don't get me wrong.  I don't care what religion a person practices or even if they practice.  The problem is when asshats like Kim Davis starts defying law and common sense by forcing her views on the public at large, then she and Mike Huckabee start yelling 'We're being oppressed!!  Christianity is under attack!!" because Davis is rightfully jailed for not following a judge's orders. 

If you want to argue what privilege has to do with this, ask yourself this: what would have happened if it wasn't Davis pushing her beliefs on everyone?  What if it were a black woman?  A black man?  What if the person refusing to give out licenses were of a faith other than Christianity?  That person would have been in jail by the end of the week, if not sooner and they'd still be there.  They would also be out of a job faster than you can say "nut" and the same people claiming oppression would be saying good riddance.
  
So yes, despite of her grandstanding and attempts to prolong her 15 minutes, Davis has received the benefits of privilege.  First of all, there is the fact that she was allowed to do all that grandstanding and prolonging.  She was - and is - allowed to stay in the office long after lawsuits were filed and as far as I know, no actions to impeach her have even been entertained.  The Governor has refused to step in.  She was given multiple chances to act differently.  She was even given the soft shoe treatment when she was let out of jail: you can go back to work but don't interfere. 

We can see how this is going to go.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

As for their argument, there is no oppression of believers, nor is Christianity under attack.  It isn't going anywhere either.  The problem stems from the fact that times have changed.  This isn't the 1950s anymore, nor is this a Christian country.

Despite what people like Kim Davis say, there is no template for what an American should be, other than that pesky edict to follow the laws of the land.  White, black, red, brown.  Gay, straight, pan- or asexual.  Christian, Pagan, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist.  It doesn't matter.  This country is more of a melting pot than ever and we're all Americans.  Our very diversity should be one of our greatest assets, not a reason to act like asshats. 

Dear Self:

It's been one heck of a ride these last two months, hasn't it?  It's also brought up a few issues, hasn't it?  You haven't been feeling the most confident about your art, have you?  That fear of the Art Police has been rather entrenched as well, hasn't it? 

Here's some advice:  Shut up. 

Let's look at this.  Since July, you have started how many paintings?  Two carnival poster paintings; one orange slice ferris wheel, several tomatoes on the vine with tentacles, two with fruit and dinosaurs, one medium sized one where the tomatoes are getting revenge on a cutworm, a series of four smaller ones of them getting revenge on other insects, one of a kitsune, one 'inner self  portrait,' and another series of four of various critters wearing top hats, bowlers and bow ties.  Of these, three are still in progress; two were painted over and the rest went to the gallery. 

Of the gallery paintings, two have sold; three have come home, two stayed in the gallery and four were delivered today.  That's seventeen paintings in two months and eleven of them ended up in the gallery.  That sounds like a good record to me. 

So...shut up.  Paint.  If the Art Police show up, just pretend that It's 106 miles to Chicago, you've  got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and you're wearing sunglasses.