The Smell of Shit

Tonight we have been inundated with the smell of shit.  I have smelled four different species of shit today.

Snake shit.

Cat shit.

Rat shit (EEWWWW)

and human shit.

You know what?

All shit smells bad.

Some shit smells worse than others.

Some have some extra spicy ingredient to make them truly horrifying.

Some have been around for a bit so the smell has dimmed but you know what?  Even old shit still smells bad, just less so.

Shit is shit.  That is the lesson of the day.

Followed quickly by the second lesson:  the sooner you clean it up, the less the smell will linger.

This pile of shit has been brought to you by:

The Abysmal Witch.

May your shits be easy, regular and smell no worse than any other shit.

~AW

Scalding Hot Chocolate and other pointless ramblings

I have a probably unhealthy adoration of boiling hot hot chocolate.  Boil the water, pour over Carnation hot chocolate, stir and DRINK.  Waiting is for pussies.

Maybe it’s because of my constant coldness.  Maybe it’s a love of intense sensations.  Maybe I’m a masochist on many levels.

I don’t know for sure, but I do know that I can’t get enough of it when it’s in that blindingly hot stage.

NOM.

And yes, that’s right.  I have absolutely nothing inspirational to say and while some would suggest that such a situation calls for silence, today I choose to blather in my pointlessness AND share it with you, rather than sit quietly, twiddling my thumbs, and contemplating the misty rain that is encouraging me to stay indoors.

I’m sitting here, thinking about what I want to do with my life and how most ‘fun’ options involved less income.

But then, I don’t want to give up my current lifestyle.  After all, what if I couldn’t afford hot chocolate anymore?  My vocal chords might be saved, but my soul would be lost without access to the glorious agony of too-hot-liquid coursing down my throat into my belly.

And isn’t belly a great word?  Our bellies are wonderful things.  They hold food and scalding hot beverages.  They carry babies (think the broad arena of our belly area, not the specific organs involved lol) for some people.  Others of us just look like we’re carrying babies (recently took a trip with great friends and I came back with a “vacation baby” because the food was just that good).  Our bellies can move and dance.  They remind us with gurgles and grumps to look after ourselves by eating.  They hold our nervousness for us.  They know true satisfaction.

Bellies are good.

Bellies like to be stroked.  Well, so does the rest of our bodies, but let us not get sidetracked from the wonder of the belly.  Even the word has such a full and lovely ring to it.  It leads our mouth right into a smile, how beautiful is that?

Sometimes my emotions take over my belly and it transforms from a happy little elf or other such creature into a demonizing monster intent on culinary destruction of a grand sort.  I really shouldn’t blame my belly for that, though.  It isn’t my belly’s fault that my emotional issues like to smother themselves under a pile of food.  Wafer thin mint?

But today is not about the negative places the belly gets dragged to (and I mean dragged because it’s not like it’s a simple happy sensation being overfull from emotionally driven eating), it’s about the glory of the belly.  Particularly when filled with scalding hot chocolate.

Hail the BELLY!

~Saturn

I’m Getting Handfasted?!?

Yes, that’s right, me.  41 year old me.  Getting hitched.  Joined.  Handfasted.  Married.

Not right this second! But in the next year (two if things go not the way we plan) it looks like.

Me.  Handfasted.  Whoda thunk.  And to a man I’ve known for four years but only started dating this January.  And yes, I’m going to tell you a story.

So no shit, there we were.  Me, my love, my coven and 65 other people, enjoying a weekend of frivolity.  (A private event/adult house-type-party where we cross into faeryland and play as pirates and faeries for the weekend.)  Friday night, we’re just on site, and the coven does a kick-ass ritual where we draw down the moon (me) and then the pirate king (my partner) steals the moon/me away and up to Aphrodite’s Temple.

My partner (BJ) and I had been asked to open and bless the temple this year (the Temple’s 19th year – we’ve been partying at this site for some time, under various labels and experiences, but always there is a temple to Her).

 

It’s a crappy picture, but the only one I can find of the temple, even going back several years.  Anyway, no shit, there we were, the moon and the pirate king, in a temple of Aphrodite, celebrating and sharing with each other, when my love turns to me and says “I want you to be my wife”.

We toasted with the raspberry pomegranate mead he had insisted that we take with us to bless the temple.  We celebrated.

We came back to our cabin and celebrated with our dear friends.  We found other dear friends and shared the news.  There was much sharing and celebrating and pirating and faerying.

I’m getting married.?!

Saturn

 

Squeaky Wheels and Super Sweeters

On my lunch break I have a couple of things I like to do to help me relax and rejuvenate.

I eat.

I really can’t stress enough how important that one is, but if you haven’t yet learned that food fuels the body and mind and therefore soul, well, you’ve got more to work on than I can probably help with.

I frequently go for a walk.

Ahhhh, fresh air.  Today I am skipping the walk so as to bring you a small rant.  That and my body needs a break from yesterday (pilates class and a trip down to, and UP from, Wreck Beach = 474 stairs of interesting nature).  But normally I like to get out for a half an hour of good walking.  Well, okay, largely because it’s summer and the days are good for that.  I’ve done a lot of visits to the Rose Garden as well.  Ah, July, when they are all in bloom and the smell wafts thither and fro, mmmmm.

I read Regretsy.

It soothes my snarky soul.

I read Not Always Right.

And thus begins my little rant. On Not Always Right people share work stories that highlight the remarkable…encounters they have with their clientele.  Okay, people are stupid.  And many of the stories highlight that people are stupid.  But it’s not the stupid that’s gotten to me.

No, what’s making me grit my teeth is the repetitive examples of people who lie or yell or often lie and yell at the employee to get their own way.  Such as lying that the employee got a hair in their sandwich (when it was their daughter’s hair) so as to get a refund & a free bagel.  They’ll lie about who served them, what they were served, the state something was in, etc, etc.  People are lying so that they can gain something for nothing.  People are yelling and screaming at employees to again get something for essentially nothing.  In some of the stories it is even acknowledged by the perpetrator that they’re doing it because that’s how you get something for free.

This froths my ire.

What happened to the land of personal integrity?  Of behaving as a decent human being?

When did it become so engrained into society that instead of curbing such behaviour we have somehow engendered its propagation.  I see many notices of being positive of being friendly and kind pushed around on facebook.  I think that these are lovely if not always realistic (because somedays you’re going to get mad and is it really wrong to get that way?)

As I type this the thought occurs to me that this push to always be nice is simply the other side of the coin of the push to always be an asshole in order to get ahead.  I’m not saying it’s wrong to be nice or right to be mean, not at all.  But what about the folks on Regretsy who talk a mean line but who are frequently very generous, supportive and kind?  What about the sweet people who can’t be bothered to actual help someone else?

The point is, we are neither always kind nor always cruel, not in our humanism.  We are both, a swirling mix of chocolate and vanilla into a marble cake (ohhhhh, cake) of positive and negative experiences and expressions.

And at the core of both of these is an inherent selfishness, isn’t there?  The squeaky wheel is out to get whatever they can by whatever means (typically negative) they can.  If I yell enough, someone will give me something to shut me up.  Many people I think learn this in childhood from their parents – if I scream loud enough, my mommy will give me that cookie even though she said no originally (so parents, keep to your ‘no’s!).  And no, I’m not blaming all parents, but there is a component there, don’t you think?

I don’t want to come down too hard on the other side, the always kind and gentle folk because let’s face it, they’re a hell of a lot nicer to be around.  But it doesn’t make their approach necessarily more healthy.  Be gentle, be kind, be forgiving.  There are times and places for these things, most of the time, many places.  But sometimes?  Sometimes we need to be tough, to protect, to fight, to put up our healthy boundaries and force others to respect them.  ((Mind you, if you take the gentle, kind, forgiving to a different spiritual level, then a slap on the face can be the gentle and kind approach to a situation, but that’s a whole different conversation.))

And what drives that behaviour?  A desire to be ‘good’?  To do good?  To be seen as good?  Sometimes I wonder if there is a hint of the selfish behind some people’s sudden and intense embrace of such concepts.  But that’s just some musing on my part.

The ranting is all about the Gimmees.  They make me think evil, nasty thoughts, and not the good kind.

Perhaps Not Always Right by its very nature siphons off examples of the worst of us and it isn’t an epidemic of self-centredness.  But still, but still…

Discombobulation…and closet re-orgs.

Do you ever feel that way?  Just discombobulated in everything.  Things not fitting together in quite the right way.

Oh, the majority of my pieces of things have been really great.  No, seriously, aside from when I want to kill him, having my partner move in with me has been a fabulous thing (if you had asked me last year if I would be living with someone the following year I would have snorted my kahlua and chocolate milk all over you); my job has changed which has brought challenges both interesting and painful; my coven has changed which has been unadulterated goodness.  Despite my partner being a foodie, I’ve kept my body in the shape that makes me happy.  There are two new (1 as of yesterday!) slithery bodies in the house (we now have a ball python, a desert king and a corn snake).  I’ve started dancing again in small doses.  I can feel the magic around me, swirling, pulling, daring.

So many different pieces, trying to get them to align in the best way possible, to find my way in my severely changing world order has been interesting.  And a challenge.  And while that is mostly under control, it has left me with a sense of not really knowing where from here.

I mean, sure, you’d think that I’d just settle in, that I would savour getting everything resolved and organized (we got the last of the boxes unpacked yesterday).

Apparently not quite.

Oh, I’m savouring.  Hell yeah!  But how will this all work going forward?  The most wonderful option would be if it would all just work out with no effort and no planning.

Ha!

That’s what the universe says to that.  Or I say to the universe.  Depends on the day.

Today I feel somewhat combobulated.  It makes a nice change but I don’t trust it.  It could easily just slip away into the dis and I get left once more floating in a sea of not-necessarily-articulated options and pulls.  Pulls being our interests, desires, wants and needs.

Hmmm, I wonder if this is what a closet or drawer feels like when you pull or dump everything out of it, sort through it all and then start working on getting it all back in, minus a few pieces, perhaps with space for a few (planned?) new items, and everything hopefully making more sense as you put it back into a probably re-configured space.  I think I’m at the contemplating parts going back in and where the best places are for things and what will get left out and what kind of space will be left over for the other important things that I’ve wanted to put into it but never had the room for.

It’s an interesting time.  I really want my “closet” re-org finished.  I’d like to move on to other things, thank you very much, Universe.  Just saying.

Deep and wild blessings to one, to all, and to you in particular.

~Saturn

~The Abysmal Witch

Quest 2012: February

In our last post, our intrepid villain was lying beneath a blanket of stars, watching swirling laser lights and feeling more than a little joyous from the experience.  What would happen next?  Would she find another live event in February?  Would it be similar to the laser show?  Would she try something completely different?  Stay tuned for the next installment of the Abysmal Witch’s Quest 2012!

February brought with it something completely different.  The cold winds were blowing, the world spinning, it was time to do something I had never done before.

I went to the opera.

That’s right.  Opera.  My very first time.  I went to UBC’s Student Opera because, well, I could afford it.    Quests have to be doable on multiple levels, you know!  Luckily for me, my friend Holly enjoys opera and so I did not need to go alone.  Phew!  In case you are wondering, we saw Rusalka which is a Czech opera that is a version of the Little Mermaid.  Very different from Disney, I hasten to add.  Stage was beautiful & simple but  I was much surprised by the big ass screen hovering over the top of the stage.

I came to love that screen.

It told me everything I didn’t understand from listening to the singing.  Thank gods for surtitles.

And yes, the singing was lovely.  I did not sit there and contemplate just how much longer until FREEDOM which I take to be a good sign.  I was ready to go by the end, though.  I thought the male lead was a bit of an ass, but then, the male lead of the Little Mermaid always seems to be a bit of an ass.  The nature of the role I tend to believe.

Ran into some pagan friends there and I had a lovely discussion about the OTO during intermission while Holly chatted with someone else we know.  It’s a small world, you know.

So the year started with a rock laser show and then we moved over to classical opera.  Where next? you ask?  Our intrepid questing villainess, what roads did she next travel?  What entertainment lures were thrown across her path that she found herself having to follow with cries of “Shiny!”?

You’ll have to wait for the next installment of Abysmal Questing 2012.

Quest 2012: January

This post starts with a story and like all good quest stories, I didn’t realize I was in a quest until I was in the midst of it.  I should clarify that this doesn’t make this a good story, just that in quests it is often the case that the hero doesn’t realize s/he’s in a quest until later on.  But then sometimes they do…and I could argue myself in circles so on with the questing!

How did this whole questing thing start?  Well, allow me to inform you…

You see, by the time March rolled around I realized that I had bought tickets for a variety of live events of various (and I mean various!) natures, one per month from January through May.  So, says I to myself, why not continue this trend?  Why not make 2012 my year of live events?  I could steep myself in a variety of different cultural experiences. And have a lot of fun doing it.  Last year was the year of staying in (not by choice) so this year is the year of getting out!  Throughout and about.*

I’ve got a plan now that will take me through to August.  September through December have no particular plans yet, but it’s still early for that so I’m not worried.  And one of those months I’ll hit a jazz club, so really it’s just three months of booking left to do.

So what started off this year, you ask?  What wonderful experience gave balance to the pain of January?  Well, something a little bit left of the standard and expected live events.

I, and about a dozen of my wacky friends, made our way down to the H. R. MacMillan Space Centre (i.e. planetarium) to watch the Pink Floyd Laser shows from Roundhouse Productions.  After 33 years, the planetarium did not renew their contract.  January was their final month of performances.  A tragic loss from my point of view because there was something fabulous and magical about the experiences they created.

Now you may be thinking that a laser show does not count as live entertainment.  Oh contraire, mes amis (pardon my poor spelling of french, it was never my best subject), there has always been a live component to the laser show, some crazy (appearing? lol) dude at a console playing with our minds.  Because, as he put it, “there is absolutely zero smoking within the planetarium…you should have done that while you were still in the parking lot”.  Yes, smoking, cookies, and other mind-altering foods made an appearance that night and enhanced the experience.

We watched The Wall followed by Dark Side of the Moon.  I understand that this show has sort of gone on the road.  If you get the chance, go see!  It really was just a great time.  Also fun hanging out with friends.  There was a lot of chatting and catching up and just spending time with good people.

And pretty lights and lots of swirling stars and leaning back in seriously reclined seats staring at the sky and multi-coloured laser lights doing funky dances.

There is something deep core satisfying about a great art experience, almost as if some stressed part of me was soothed by the event.  I wish I could go again but there I shall not dwell for that road leads to sadness.  Instead, I will start planning my tale to you of February which went a completely and utterly different way.

Until next time I shall simply leave you with these short questions:  What will our intrepid villaness get up to in February?  Will the different take her to a place that is scary to go?  Will the dog get the bone?

To passion!

~the abysmal witch

*Obscure Wiccan reference, special batty points to anyone who gets it. 

I’m alive!

Yes, it’s true and not just a vicious rumour spread by nazis.  I live, and breathe, and–oh, wait, that’s right, I declared “breathing is for pussies” a couple of months ago due to the insanity that my life had become.

It still is rather insane, but I’ve missed you and so here I am, sneaking in a quickie before my lunch hour runs out.

I know I owe some yule related posts (even though we’re heading to Beltaine, the lessons are always pertinent) but I have a new and fun quest going for 2012 that I want to share first. But not right now.  Right now, this is just a fast and rough post (up against a wall?  naughty!) to say where I’ve been.

Right where I always am, would be the simple answer, but under ever so much more stress and strain, both good and bad.

As I think I’ve mentioned, I got a promotion January 1st.  My work world went to rabid hell.  Hell because it went rabid, you see.  OMG the shit I still need to get done.  Just keep breathing–oh, right, that’s for pussies.  I don’t need to breathe.

Almost or about a month ago (I have no sense of time) out of almost the blue strangely, my coven expanded from two to five.  It’s been fucking fabulous, but that’s a lot of new relationships to build!

And in January I started seeing someone.  I will only say on this that it (and he) is unlike any relationship I’ve had before.  And that, naturally, has also taken a lot of time.

Perhaps things are starting to settle into a routine.  Or perhaps I’ve just been jonesing to connect.  Either way, I’m sincerely hoping you’ll be hearing much more from me again.  Starting now.  Because I say so, dammit!

Love out to all of you!

Saturn

~The Abysmal Witch (back from her unexpected hiatus)

Please disregard previous post!!!!!

Gah. One should not try and do things on an iPhone. My previous and now deleted post was intended for a private audience and I would be most grateful if all who are subscribed via email just delete. Please. 

Practicality, Physicality & Mysticality

I would like to preface this addition to my exploration of managing time & energy by saying that I have been working on this type of thing for a long time. Not this way, perhaps, and not nearly to the same effect, but that’s kinda my point.  For some people they pick this stuff up and never look back.  Me?  I need to revisit my lessons repeatedly before they get through the thickness of my skull.  That being said, on with the blog…

Periodically I like to (pretend to) get organized.  I list out all the things I want to do in day-to-day living and then I look at how they will possibly fit into the actual time available.

Then my shoulder hunches, my eyelid twitches and weird sounds echo from my mouth.  Because I end up with a combination of overwhelming and impossible.  Cue mental meltdown and failure of whole plan.

Being me, I started doing the same thing this New Year’s.  Did I mention I need repeated lessons on things?

But this time, this time I stopped.

I was already feeling anxious and twitchy just by trying to make the list.  It isn’t possible to live the life I want in the time I want.

Not in the way I was thinking about it anyway.

Time to simplify!  Ah, the joys of simplification.

So instead of squeezing things in and giving everything its time, I realized that my workday evenings generally go in three stages.  On any given day what happens in a particular stage is likely to be different, but the stages are the same.

Already my shoulder was coming out of its quasimoto state.

Stage one:  Practicality.

Upon achieving the blissful state of “thank gods I’m home”, or even in the semi-blissful state of “I’m headed home”, that is the time for me to do the practical things.  If I put them off until later, they will likely never get done (boy have I proven that more times than I care to think of or am capable of remembering!).

So I get home (or on the way home do errands) and cook, eat, tidy, clean, answer email, deal with whatever practical crap needs to get dealt with.  Only for an hour, hour and a half max.  And then it’s done!  Cue happy relaxation music.

Stage two:  Physicality

Ah, the joys of my life.  Physio is here to stay.  Every day is physio, either short or extended depending on what other physical things might happen that day (still in swimming lessons so on those days, much less physio and longer time in this stage).  But it’s a do what my body needs time and one of the highest importance things in my world given what happens if I don’t do it.

Eye twitch starts to disappear as I see how this can be easily and practically applied.

Stage three:  Mysticality

This is where things get more interesting (read difficult).  There are a lot of things I want to do, to accomplish, to experience.  I want to write, bead, blog, meditate, ritual, play, talk, etc etc.  How to schedule it all in?

Right, make it simple!

These are all things I love to do, and ultimately bring me to a place of spiritual/mystical enjoyment when I look into their depths.  They feed my spirit or soul or both.  And if I’m doing something that isn’t feeding that greater part of me, then it damned well doesn’t belong in this section.  No need to plan specifics, just plan the space and time to do what brings me bliss.

This I can do.

But wait, what about a break?  That’s a large part of my 2012 resolution and behavioural change is getting in and really using those breaks to my advantage.  Right, so between stage 2 and 3 I take a break. I go out on my balcony, breath fresh air (and sometimes other things), relax and let go.  Then I’m prepared to come back in and get into whatever it is that needs to be got into.

So far (yeah, only two days, but a good two days!) so good.  And it’s the enjoyment that makes it more likely to continue.

And now, I’m overdue for that break!  Buenos noches, amigos!

~Abysmal Witch