Reading the Tea Leaves

Friday night Mark fell asleep early and I decided that I would do a tarot reading outside under the half-moon. This was partially an excuse to take advantage of the clear night and light eight beeswax candles at the cardinal points and cross-quarter points of the brick circle. Because eight candles burning in a circle looks cool.

I gathered candles, matches, cards, a flashlight, a small folding table, a copper tray, and The Book of Art and headed outside.

There was a slight pause as I had the disappointing realization that one, if not several, outdoor concerts were filling the air with… music. (Last time it was *Earth, Wind, and Fire* performing at the Cuthbert Amphitheater, two miles away.) I decided the music was dim enough that the fountain would mask it and continued with my plan.

As I was setting things up, there was a sudden thump, and something medium-sized, white, with a wedge-shaped front crashed to the ground out of the old-wooden-fort-cum-grape-arbor. I think it was an opossum. “Whoa!” I said. “Hello.”

I clapped my hands a few times to let whatever it was know I was there.

It scampered along the edge of the candle light, along the west end of the yard, and toward the tool shed.

Summoned by my clapping (which typically means SQUIRREL!), Aoife raced out of the house and silently and vigorously patrolled the shadowy foliage in the area between the tool shed and the grapes.

I continued to light candles, and began a formal invocation of the ritual circle, and invitation to the Powers of the Four Watchtowers. Aoife continued to guard the perimeter—at one point she did add to the concert music floating through the air by whacking the tin sides of the shed with her tail (this is usually a sign that she’s scented wildlife cowering under the shed’s foundation).

I chose to do a general bellwether, five card spread. 1. Situation/environment: Death. Change and transformation. 2. Crossing Obstacle / side-quest: Four of Swords, reversed. Emerging from rest. This would be like a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis. 3. Temperance, reversed. Churning resources; spinning one’s wheels. 4. Strength. Animal drives and reason working together. 5. Knight of Swords. Air expressed as Air; mental agility; reminder to stay focused and sustain efforts. In this particular reading the three cards don’t represent a past-present-future progression so much as showing a way the Strength is a balance point between inward churning and outward charging.

I did a count: two swords; three major arcana. Two reversed cards; three upright cards. The interpretation of the five-card spread I did boiled down to: you’re moving forward by leaving old things behind; take a moment to ground; don’t confuse stability or balance and stagnation; don’t confuse the opposite of stagnation for undirected frenzy.

I wrote the cards down in the Book of Art, bade “hail and farewell” to the Four Quarters, dismissed the ritual circle, and brought all of the equipment inside. A little light reading before I fell asleep reminded me that Death, Temperance, and The Devil are connected with “The Dark Night of the Soul” and related paths to Tiphareth on the Tree of Life.

I suppose that this reading might have something to do with my job, my retirement, Mark’s much sooner upcoming retirement, and how long I’m going to have to continue to work until my pension benefits and social security benefits will provide sufficient retirement income (Don’t Lose The Day Jobbe just yet).

---

The next morning, Mark stopped on the threshold between the kitchen nook and the living room. “There’s something on the floor here.” He stepped back and forth. “What is this? Did you spill sugar or salt on the floor?”

“No,” I said.

He reached for the hand vacuum. “Huh, it’s kind of black. Were you doing Secret Pagan Rituals while I was asleep?”

“Well… actually—“

“Hah! You were Agitating the (Astral) Cooties, weren’t you?” He vacuumed the floor. For someone who claims to be a religious non-participant, Mark has an intricate theology of the Cycles and Habits of the Common Astral Cootie, which boils down to: “Leave The Cooties Alone.”

This is what I get for reading 1980’s Starhawk aura cleansing techniques to him.

“Not exactly,” I said. “I just did a tarot reading outside.”

He turned off the vacuum. “What did you do?”

“I just put eight candles on the brick circle and did a tarot reading.”

“Were you burning myrrh?”

“I thought about it, but I just lit beeswax candles.”

“And why did you light the candles?”

“Well, they’re cool. And they were on the circle, so they formed a barrier.”

“Ah ha! You raised energy and Summoned the Cooties, and you’re handsome and the Cooties wanted to get to you but they couldn’t.”

“It was just a ritual circle and tarot cards. Oh—something large, white, and wedge-shaped dropped out of the arbor. I think it was an opossum... Aoife came out and chased it and then was on silent patrol.”

“What?! There’s no such thing as albino opossums in Oregon!” He reached for his smartphone. “(AI’s love me.) What does seeing a white possum during ritual mean?” He then read out two answers, which boiled down to protective spirit animal or deceiving demons. “Ooh. The poor AI; one source is an Instagram feed, the other is a goofy Facebook page…. I’m going to go with the protective animal.”

“It was running away from the grapes.”

“Oh, these men. That just proves my point; it was running away from The Cooties that you stirred up.”

“Oh, you know, I wonder if the black stuff was the remains of a match; I brought in the folding table when I was through.”

“So you brought stuff into the house! And The Cooties followed you in!”

“I’d dismissed the circle after the tarot reading….”

“You put a barrier around yourself, but you didn’t put a barrier around the house, did you!?”

“Well, the ritual circle keeps—”

“It’s the old ‘Where Did You Send The Cooties?’ question all over again.”

I was not awake enough to point out that my raising a ritual circle for a candlelight backyard tarot reading was different from a ritual cleaning and banishment performed by one of Mark’s Pagan housemates back in the late 1990’s.

Mark claims his irritation with myrrh is proof of an affinity with The Astral Cooties. “I’m surprised I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t have any odd dreams…. Although, I did wake up at 1 AM with a headache.”

By this time I needed to get to the Y to clink weights, so the conversation ended. I suppose that I’m going to have to ritually sweep the floors in front of him and bid The Cooties a formal farewell and adieu.

But, by the time I got back from the Y, Mark decided that the black substance on the floor was not the result of Cooties but actually the remains of a teabag that ruptured when he was straghtening up the beverage supplies cart in our kitchen.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there, somewhere.

Indigo Lake and Pika

The other day Mark and I went to Indigo Lake, in the Willamette Forest on the slopes of the Cascade Mountains. It’s about an hour to the turn-off, and then another hour along a windy road to the trail head.

We saw what we thought was a hawk or other raptor flying ahead of us on the road, but after about a quarter of a mile of it flying above the road, when it alighted on a branch we saw that it was a raven. It was a sign, I’m sure.

We also had a deer moment on the road where we were reminded that deer always travel in pairs.

The weather was at turns sunny and overcast. This was fine with me because just as one would start to feel chilly from the wind or a little overheated from the uphill hike in the sun, the weather would change.

Mostly we walked through pine trees. On the steeper areas, the base of the tree trunks curved downhill; this is where the snow, melting downhill, has repeatedly bent the trees over successive Winters and Springs.

The trail to the lake ran along a stream; we were able to cross over without getting wet because the stream bed was dry. Further on, we did see sluggish water held back by rocky formations, and even further the stream widened into a marshy, open meadow.

Indigo Lake was not indigo when we visited it. It was green, to Mark’s disappointment. When we first encountered the lake, at its northern end, the wind blowing on it gave it a voice of a thousand lapping tongues. The only competing sound was the swelling rush of the wind through the pines, which sounded like something produced by Wendy Carlos in a mid-seventies recording studio. (“Psithurism” is the name of my next Mediaeval Synth Band). Overhead, clouds raced by Sawtooth Mountain.

We followed the lake’s shore to the mountain’s talus. I located a Chrysler-sized rock slab (one of many) for us to lounge upon and Mark broke out the blue cheese, almonds, walnuts, and crackers. I broke out the Ceylon OP.

And we listened. And waited. For pika.

They came. We heard their cheeping first.

One came close enough for me to be able to get a photo of Mark peering at it through a small monocular.

Mark was enchanted by its small, round, black ears and its whiskers. Unfortunately, there was no gift shop near, as the closest Ranger Station was about thirty miles away; so I could not purchase a plush pika for Mark to be a companion to the plush baby orca I purchased for him a couple weeks ago at Port Townsend.

I broke out some pens and pencils and sketched the rubble pile the pika was hiding behind.

Even though it was a secret, unspoken desire that I was silently talking myself out of, Mark had a psychic moment and forbade me from hiking through the talus to see if I could locate a surfboard-sized one to slide down the slope on.

Then it was time to head back home and Rescue the Dog from Ennui.

We managed to miss the rain while we were in the mountains, only encountering it on the drive back to Eugene.

Adventures in Dancing

Well, so much for regular blog posting over the summer. I am thinking that a combination of irregular writing practice, The Day Jobbe, doom-scrolling on Instagram, family duties, and a desire to have a blog post that is a polished, 2000 word essay has kept the posting down. So, yay, Autumnal goals!

My latest activity is Dragon Dancing. When I was researching dance poi, I stumbled across a Seattle-based influencer waving around a long, sinuous, LED-laden, zero-porosity, dragon banner in gyring arcs. And I thought, “Wow! That thing glows in the dark!” After a month of wishy-washy deliberations, I ordered one.

My dragon is blue, with white LEDs running along his fabric sides. He has a purple-highlighted Chinese dragon head, so he’s got glowing antlers, glowing white eyes, and he’s got a glowing red ball in his mouth. His rope leash clips into the ball. I whirl him around in circles and his fabric body traces spirals. I have to make sure to keep my back to any shifty wind or else the dragon’s body will sideswipe me, tangle around my feet, or the tail will whapp me in the face.

Holding the leash near the clip results in very tight circles, which have to be combined with a lunge or a full body turn so that the dragon takes a corkscrew path. Holding the leash at the handle end results in wide, slow arcs that can reach about fourteen feet in height; with the dragon’s body unfurled in this way it’s easier for it to act like a windsock. Adjusting the distance from the leash’s clip to my hand changes the period of the dragon’s swing, allowing for me to sync up with the beat of whatever music I’m listening to; I’ve made a Dragon Dancing playlist to help me keep track of session length.

It turns out that this is a dance and movement form that older people in China do. So, yay, I’ve landed on an age-appropriate behavior? There’s a lot of arm waving and lunging to get the dragon ribbon going, and my fitness tracker frequently thinks I’m swimming when I do it. I’ve decided that it’s good cardio, and I’ve been aiming for 45 minute sessions. Mark calls it “fast Ti-chi.”

I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to get hot pecs or bulging biceps Dragon Dancing, though, as I’m currently doing a lot of jumprope type motions with my shoulders, elbows, and wrists—however, I do notice that my posture is improving, that I feel more limber afterwards, and that the repetitive motion results in a toned look. And 45 minutes gets me sweaty, which is a plus because Mark appreciates it and “sweat is fat crying.”

After about a month, my repertoire consists of a figure-eight figure, a four leaf clover figure, circles of varying sizes, and a corkscrew. Continuously. For forty-five minutes. I recently saw a YouTube video where a performer whirled her dragon ribbon around her, overhead like a lasso, which I can do if the wind isn’t blowing too fiercely. I have a feeling I look like a western dance sequence from Xanadu. I suppose I need to pick up a few more moves; I think there’s one where you can make a large, Doctor-Strange-portal motion with the dragon-ribbon and then hop through it. I also need to curate my dance playlist to fine-tune it; when the right Dead Can Dance tune comes on it’s easier for me to put footwork and full-body motion into the routine, which helps to make the dancing feel less mechanical. And probably makes me look like a dance-flow hippie.

Yes; I sometimes dance with the Moon. Sometimes I dance with the sun and my shadow. But mostly right now I dance with the wind, because if I don’t I tend to get smacked by a dragon tail.

---

In other, Old Gay News: I was going to go dancing the other night, but wound up staying home because I couldn’t find my stupid ear-plugs. I spent about an hour and a half—all dressed up in in a club vest that Mark bought me, black pants, raven earrings, rings, and a glow-in-the-dark bracelet—armed with a mini-maglite to help me actually focus my perception, looking through desks, tables, shelves, medicine cabinets, drawers, bookshelves, counters, room dividers, mantels, car gloveboxes, travel bags, backpacks, jacket pockets, pants pockets, under beds, under shelves, and under baseboard heaters for the stupid black, round, pillbox shaped case that holds my hearing’s salvation. I found my library card, an actual pill box, numerous pens, a pencil sharpener, and an embarrassing quantity of dust and shed animal fur.

Mark was asleep.

It was quite vexing. I tried to put a “this is the Universe saving me from encountering a gunman on an e-bike near Agate and 18th” spin on it, but I was so put out by the failure to find them that I doom scrolled on Instagram and groused about gay community and “doing gay things.”

I am sure my earplugs will turn up as soon as I order replacements.

Dead Architects

This has been a kind of funny morning (7/11). I went to the Y for some cardio on the treadmill (with Lady Gaga and Madonna on my new-ish, noise-cancelling earbuds), came home to get ready for a writing session, and had a bout of the blahs. It’s times like this when I wonder if I don’t have seasonal depression, but rather depression-depression, and is this a function of getting older or is life in hippy Eugene just an extended, long-play version of the first part of the theme song to *Friends*: “when it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year.” Or maybe morning tea (with three lumps of White Death) is propping me up more than I realize.

Cue angsty Alanis Morissette music. Insert Capricorn-esque fretting about legacy here. Insert pondering dubious connections to various Eugene communities here. Insert musing about the proto-beach-ball behind my belly button as I reach for another square of chocolate here. Close out with Annie Lennox’s “Money Can’t Buy It.”

I checked out a random book at the library: “Architects of Oregon: a Biographical Dictionary of Architects Deceased - 19th and 20th Centuries.” I will confess that the typeface used for the directory headers was the real reason I wanted to look at it, but once I got the book home I discovered the B, the D, the R, and the S are the only letter designs that are interesting. The book lists Doyle, the architect who designed the original buildings of Reed College (and the Doyle Owl), and the guy who designed Shelton McMurphy House in Eugene, and The First Ever Licensed Woman Architect in Oregon.

This is a book about architects for architects, and not about architecture. One detail that struck me as I was reading was that the architects’ buildings’ descriptions rely on the reader being familiar with the buildings. Since I’m only familiar with the Reed and Eugene buildings, I couldn’t imagine what styles other buildings were using much beyond the generic “bungalow” or “arts and craft” or “inspired by Ruskin.”

Lots of folks were born in the 1800s–so lots of thumbnail photos of handlebar mustaches, sideburns, cravats and ties, formal jackets, and bowler hats. Their parents came from the Midwest States by Ox-Drawn Wagon or The Old Country and there’s quite of few of them who took a non-traditional path to architecture: either by defying their parents and running away to architecture college; or somehow scraping together enough wherewithal to get into an architecture program; or by starting as a teenaged construction worker, becoming a draftsman, and working up the architectural office ranks to fully ranked architect. Lots of folks practiced across both World Wars. And, as the sub-title says, they’re all dead.

It also has a bunch of short entries that end “Nothing else is known about him.” Which implies that somewhere in Oregon there are houses or buildings still standing which are designed by unknown architects; or, probably more likely, demolished or repurposed sites that are the only remaining echo of a century old designer. (Pause to be momentarily overwhelmed by the lyrics of Peter Gabriel’s *Mercy Street* (“…all of the buildings, […] were once just a dream in somebody’s head…”).) This, of course, gives me license to imagine forbidden, gay, or forbidden gay lovers. Or a secret, Free-Mason/Golden Dawn adjacent cabal of mystic architects who have faked their deaths. Or dueling architecture firms with Ninjas/Jedi/Sith/secret agents. Or proscribed architecture because There Are Some Houses Mankind Should Not Build.

I am pretty sure Insane Architecture of Madness and Portals are involved.

Musings on the Scrying Glass

June 10, 2026

The new Moon of June is creeping closer.

In an attempt to not be a tired, depressed, grumpy, and unproductive lump during new moons, for about the last year I have instead been meeting with some Wiccans of the Reclaiming Tradition to scry. The idea was that if the Moon was going to be in a phase that is supposed to be secret and regenerative, one might as well try to work with it and try to connect to the subtle influences for instruction or revelation. Those mystic crystal visions aren’t going to come on their own.

The tradition is that the Moon’s final crescent signifies the endings of processes, either of the previous twenty-eight days or of the year. The moment when the dark Moon is between the Sun and the Earth is a time when unconscious processes become secretly energized and rejuvenated (and not tired and grumpy at all). And the very first sliver of a new Moon is the time to set intentions for the month or for new beginnings. Extra interpretive points if you add in seasonal flavors: a new Moon at October’s end would indicate that the veils between the worlds are extra sheer. We typically cast a ritual circle and then meditate on a dark blue glass sphere before dismissing the circle.

I do find myself sometimes wishing we were dancing in a larger group instead of five or six of us sitting around a collapsible table draped with fabrics decorated with mystic symbols and set up with ritual tools and beeswax candles at the world’s four corners surrounding a blue glass sphere. I do find myself sometimes feeling like this is an exercise in applied pareidolia or daydream interpretation. And in more practical moments I notice that I’m not producing something like Jung’s Red Book (which, now that I think of it, counts as a kind of Book of Shadows), or applying ritual means to political, physical, or personal ends. At least I’m not peering into the future to try to divine winning Lotto numbers.

However, there are enough surprising or startling phenomena to justify the continued practice—like that one time I looked into the sphere and instantly saw a miniature scene of someone with a backpack standing on a corner sidewalk with a rotunda in the distance, next to a kind of bike rack on one side and glowing, illegible letters on the other, and above, a figure in a draped cowl looked down from a portal of lunar fire. It was like seeing a completely new tarot card (which was cool, and I still haven’t figured out what it meant). The monthly practice is improving ritual technique; the discovered formula—“be whirling earth / be wheeling stars / be billowing veils / between the worlds”—works well to invoke the protective ritual circle. And there is an attempt to commune with the natural and spiritual world, to celebrate the moment of the new Moon and Earth cycles, and to transform through subtle wits and senses.

What I’ve learned:

• It can be useful to use tarot cards as an auxiliary meditation focus when the only thing I see in the blue glass orb is my inverted silhouette or reflected candles.

• Having a specific question or situation in mind is helpful; if you aim at nothing, you hit nothing.

• Old Dion Fortune was onto something when she wrote about rising above illusion when mentally traveling to the Sphere of the Moon (social media, I’m looking at you).

• Sometimes you’re just going to feel tired and grumpy instead of rejuvenated and mystic.

June Dancing

We’re a week into June. The end of May and the end of a sexy full-moon-to-full-moon cycle since May first seems like it happened years ago. We’re about to launch into June proper, the month when everything happens: The Child’s Birthday, New Moon Meditation, Father’s Day, Graduation, Juneteenth, Solstice, and Pride. It’s kind of exhausting.

On the drive home from work the other day I caught a few minutes of a David Sedaris interview. I didn’t hear the whole thing, but what he said was something I learned in a memoir class many years ago: someone who you meet in real life is a person; someone who you write as text on a page is a character.

The other thing I took away is that if you’re a bitter, angry person when you are young, chances are good you’ll be a bitter, angry person when you’re old; and that the folks who are not bitter and angry are generous toward others.

On another, previous drive I listened to a pop-psychology book advertisement disguised as an author interview. The subject was “belonging” and the gist was that one could increase one’s happiness by actively increasing one’s sense of belonging… I think by hosting snack hours and book clubs. The interview didn’t explore strategies for when one is sidelined or ghosted, or at least hadn’t by the time I tuned the radio to the local classical station.

Tonight is a dance night. It’s occurring to me that due to the typical collision of events and familial obligations, tonight’s dance will most likely be this year’s sole Gay Pride Dance Night. Since Mark doesn’t care for dancing, this will be a night out with my hair (who will probably get a few date offers). I will have to take a disco nap.

I expect that there will be guys there snapping large, rainbow-hued fans emblazoned with words like “bitch,” “queen,” and “slay.” I will have to remind myself that I’m there to dance, and that I’m dancing in a Eugene bar with a Gothic Faerieworlds Festival vibe and not the New York City Eagle or even Perry’s on Pearl from a Eugene three decades ago (which, actually, means not having to go out dancing only to discover the venue is a drag show disguised as a dance). I will have to remind myself that it’s the Moon’s last quarter, and that the folks at the bar are less likely to be invoking a circle of blue flame, saluting cardinal directions, and drawing down the moon on the dance floor—especially not the go-go guys twerking on the stage area.

After pondering why I just don’t go to a more polished dance venue, I’ve concluded that I’m there to dance in enclave with other gay men and to take a moment to celebrate being an older, cis, white, gay, Neopagan man. How essentialist of me; and likely binary, too. At least I can dance without being judged.

After the dance, on the drive home, my hair and I will have to listen to Tom Cardy’s Transcendental Cha Cha Cha: “Slide to the left / witness perfection / slide to the right / nothing means anything. / (Or anything means nothing, I get them mixed up).”

Same Song, Second Verse?

Mark’s mother passed last Thanksgiving, so this is his first Mother’s Day without her. He has several sisters, and he wished them a Happy Mother’s Day, …Aaand he’s been spending the last few weeks preparing for his mother’s June memorial by writing up notes she left behind for the family.

I asked him how he was doing, and he said he was fine.

Probably the hardest thing for Mark is that his mom wanted everyone at the memorial to sing old songs from the 1960’s. I have offered to sing “Puff the Magic Dragon,” in his stead; this is mostly for him, but partially to spare other memorial participants from Mark’s terrible, sarcastic, and raunchy parodies of Puff.

*

This year, Mark prepared a Mother’s Day lunch of moussaka and a salad to take to my folks’ house. He helped me make the strawberry pie my mother requested.

The Child drove us up the Interstate. We survived.

*

Typically on Mother’s Day, Mom recites the following stories of how the process of birthing children went.

Right after I was born, my mother was very hungry. The hospital staff brought her a chicken dinner (in some versions of this story, it’s a steak), but no tableware. So she picked up the carcass with her bare hands and tore the meat off of the bones with her teeth (and probably no napkin).

When my sister was born, my mother wanted to watch the process (I believe there was a mirror involved somehow). She was expecting a long labor, but my sister was the second-born, and arrived much more quickly than I did.

“Wow, that was fast,” my mother said. “I guess I can take out my (thick, 1960’s style) contact lenses.”

“Uhh,” said the obstetrician in shock.

This year Mom said she didn’t remember those stories. We had to tell them to her.

*

Way back in 1975, I had a theatre kid friend (whom my parents had a high opinion of) who taught me a parody of a famous Shirley Temple song. As a sixth grader, I thought it was particularly funny and belted out the opening verse at home:

“On the good ship Geritol / It’s a fun trip to the hospital /
where old folks play / games like trying to remember their names.”

“Oh John!” my dad said, “That’s terrible.”

This was from the man who introduced me to Monty Python, so I don’t know for sure what admixture of being horrified, or amused, or being horrified that he was amused my dad was. But I never sang the song again where he could hear it.

Sometimes, in the early morning, when I catch a particularly weathered version of myself in the bathroom mirror, I will sing the end verse: “happy landings on a laxative bar.”

*

Meanwhile, back in the present, The Child was having a conversation with my dad and led in with a question about Dad’s Air Force days. I think he was hoping to hear the story of the drill sergeant who once bellowed at Dad, “Bryurredge; if you can’t march, then DON’T SING!”

The Child asked Dad if he served in Viet Nam.

“No,” Dad said. “But your dad served in Korea.”

Dad thought he was speaking, not to The Child, who is an undergraduate, but to my elder cousin, who is currently in his seventies. According to Mark, the conversation recalled a few more Korea details before skipping back into the present.

During all of this I was speaking with Mom, so I only caught a bit of their conversation. I couldn’t figure out why they were talking about M*A*S*H reruns.

*

After lunch, my sister and I had done some quick house up-keep tasks and were in a downstairs room looking at some framed pictures. As usual, the discussion turned to what to do with some of the family mathoms when my folks move out or are gone.

“Do you want that picture?” she asked, pointing to a water color of the wreck of the Peter Iredale.

“Sure,” I said. “I’m not quite sure where we’ll hang it, but I like the composition of the ship and the color’s good. And it’s something Grandma Agnes made.”

“I’d like that one,” she said, pointing to a painting of my mother’s mother’s parent’s homestead—a red barn and a yellow house set against fields and a pine forest done by a great-aunt or -uncle. The house in the painting had no electricity nor indoor plumbing. “You don’t want it, do you?”

“No,” I said. “It’s a place we can’t go back to, and I really didn’t know who painted this picture.“

The last time we visited that piece of 1890—with its five mile gravel drive and rain and oil lamps and wind and wood stove and foot pump reed organ and more rain and old Norwegian bibles and hymnals and musty patchwork quilts and a dark, leaky tool shed with a treadle grindstone and rusty tools and bats living in the unsound second floor of the barn and nobody but two elderly Norwegian bachelor great-uncles for miles and miles (except for that one year with the cows) and really no place to play—was 1978.

There used to be some spectacular giant bearded irises growing there. The violet, yellow, and periwinkle blooms had furry insides and a dusky scent. In the 1980’s some were transplanted and grew on the hillside below my folks’ house and blossomed annually before deer, moles, and icy winters thinned them to nothing.

Somewhere in the pine forest behind where the barn used to stand there’s a pioneer cemetery plot. I think my mother’s grandparents are buried there. You need a GPS to find it.

*

The Child drove us along the back-road highway home. We survived—although at one point in town some horrific driver swerved right out of an intersection and I was convinced I was going to have a broken sideview mirror in my lap.

*

Mother’s Day drew to an end, and I was reminded of a fantasy story where the characters visit caves: In one cave are statues of Zeus, Athena, Thor, Isis and other deities; in the cave after that are statues of gods with no names; in the cave beyond are the broken and worn remnants of statues of forgotten gods; the final cave is dark.

I was reminded of a science fiction story where the characters listen to a record of the Beatles song, “With a Little Help from My Friends,” and find each other in the heartbeat thud of the record player’s needle circling in the record’s final groove.

I was reminded of the Labyrinth Stone sitting in the Station of the North of our backyard’s circle of pavers: there’s a finger labyrinth replica of the Cretan Labyrinth on it.

When I run my index finger along the curving stone course, spiraling to the pattern’s center, it brings me to here and now.

It Could Lead to Dancing

Tra-la, it’s May. I’ve been preparing for May First—which is a calendrical cross-quarter day, a Friday, and also the Full Moon—by taking the day off and dropping hints to Mark that the weekend could be extra amorous. Western traditions for this time of year include driving cattle and kine between two bonfires for purification prior to driving them to the summer grazing lands; prancing around a Maypole, boys with red ribbons going clockwise and girls with white ribbons going widdershins; and outdoor sex in the woods. Add the Full Moon for extra magical energy; I wasn’t following the moon’s position astrologically, but it was a Scorpio Full Moon, so it would be secretive, regenerative, energy of a sexual nature.

A few days prior to May First, I posted a photo of a bundle of dried grape vines in a small copper cauldron to Instagram with the caption, “I will not light giant bonfires in my backyard on the Beltane Full Moon so that I can be ‘rescued’ by hot firemen.” I followed it up with the comment, “It could lead to dancing.”

One wrinkle in my domestic Pagan praxis is that Mark’s always described himself as a “religious non-participant.” Ahead of schedule, the oak, cottonwood, and willow trees filled the air with mucus-inducing pollen. And Mark’s never been a fan of flames larger than the ones on candles, indoors or out. So hot, throbbing, man-on-man sex between two bonfires in our backyard was definitely off the table. Probably to the relief of the neighbors. And the fire brigade.

Thursday night I watched a very close to full moon. The moon was lower and more southerly than I expected, and it skimmed over the tree tops east of our southern neighbor’s house. If I held my head in just the right position, I could frame the Rabbit of the Moon within an equilateral triangle of tree branches. I wanted to just look at the moon inscribed by branches and at the same time run over to a silver working bench and design a triangular bolo tie of silver with a jade disk displaying a rabbit. Since I don’t have a jewelry studio, I remained looking at the moon before heading inside to hide from pollen with Mark.

Fireman fantasies aside, one of the intentions for this seasonal station was to be more balanced with eros, agape, and amore, which means listening more closely to Mark. I may or may not have visualized cosmic erotic energy flowing through my second chakra during (ahem) certain parts of the night.

The plan for Friday was to hike up Spencer Butte and watch the sunrise. This was tricky because the parking lot for the park doesn’t officially open until 6 am and sunrise was 6:04, and also the low, overcast clouds enveloped the peak. So no rising sun in the east and no sinking moon in the west; only wildflowers, trillium, poison oak, cedar, iris, sword ferns with their sea-horse heads, and an ambiguous homo-social group of men (and their two small dogs) with sage (Mark thought it was marijuana) at the peak (I am uncertain if they were having a ritual of some sort or if we came across the aftermath of a group hug).

My favorite place to stand on Spencer’s Butte is a triangular slab of concrete where an observation station used to be. Mark noticed there were a lot of peanut and pistachio hulls littered everywhere, so I made an informal, impromptu ritual of gathering up the hulls while humming “Bring from the center of the sun…” under my breath. I may or may not have taken off my shirt at Mark’s request.

Back at home, Mark had to work, so I left the house and visited friends at the Cascades Raptor Center. Nike the Gyrfalcon had her back to me, which showed off the circular geometry of her feather pattern and wing arcs, so I took some photos to use as a design study. An elementary school group was also visiting, and I found myself explaining that one of the turkey vultures’ names, Lethe, was the name of the underworld river of forgetfulness from ancient Greek myth. As one does. The symbolism of teaching children about mythic forgetfulness in a bird sanctuary is left as an exercise for the reader.

Afterward, I had an early lunch at The Community Cup. I pulled out my Book of Art and wrote down some highlights of the day, and also did a kind practice-pull-no-specific-question of Tarot cards. I’m thinking the cards didn’t want to practice, because all five cards were reversed: the Ten of Cups, The Knight of Cups, the Seven of Swords, Strength, the Three of Pentacles. I suppose one interpretation is “pretending not to ask a question may hedge you from answers you don’t like, but it’s a bad way to practice discernment and divination.” I guess next time I’ll just pull cards from the top and review meanings flash-card style.

I got back home just before solar noon. By this time the clouds had lifted and most of the haze had burnt off, and the sun cast shadows through the branches of our backyard cherry tree.

There are four metal shepherds’ crooks staked around the circle of paver stones in our backyard. One, with wind chimes, is for the Moon’s South Ascending Node; another, opposite the circle, with a bird suet cage, is for the North Descending Node; a third, holding a sun-dangler-and-wind-chime, I moved to the southwest portion of the circle; and the fourth, with its crescent moon decoration, I moved to the northeast position. I put the Labyrinth Stone onto the north paver stone. I went to the south paver stone in the circle, placed the cauldron and grapevine bundle there, and tried to light a fire with the large magnifying lens.

After lots of white smoke, charcoaled burn marks on the vines, and some dark spots in my vision, I concluded the grapevines were too green to catch. I swapped out the grapevine for a beeswax candle and after a few moments had Cross-quarter Day Fire dancing on the wick. I pulled out two new candles and lit these; for an Instagram Moment I had three flames burning against the greeny grass. Eventually, I moved the newer candles into a glass lantern, but I kept the old candle in the cauldron in the station of the south, burning, burning all through the afternoon and into the early hours of moonlight.

Seated on blankets and pillows in the center of the circle, I harped a while, running through the regular store of Child Ballads and Filk, cobbled together Monteverdi, a mishmash of contemporary and improvised tunes, and tried to catch the wind in the harp strings, which is very cool when I’m able to manage it. The chimes tinkled and the fountain’s water babbled over its basalt column. I may or may not have woken up the three arbor vitae trees east of the circle.

Clouds rolled in. Mark and I laid down on the deck’s couch and spent the evening looking for the moon to rise (I swear!). The candle in the south twinkled in the grass, and the candles in the lamp melted down. Sometimes I thought I saw Arcturus, other times, maybe Spica; but all times there were clouds and no time was the moon visible. We rested. The south candle went out. The lamp candles went out. By city light reflected from clouds’ undersides, I gathered up the cauldron and lamp and harp and pillows and blankets, and shrouded the deck furniture with its covers.

Controlling the Vertical and the Horizontal

Whew. After days and days and days of unpacking, cleaning, and reshelving the books, the newly repainted North Bedroom is finally presentable. The shelving is not perfect, and I imagine that I will be making slight alterations in how the sections are working.

On one physical level, the only way to get (most) all of the books onto the main shelves was to switch from vertical shelving to horizontal stacking. I’m not sure how functional horizontal stacks will be for a semi-regularly referenced library. It works best when there are many books by a particular author or in a subject matter. It also means that the larger books, which may or may not be the books I’m more likely to consult, form the base of the stacks—consulting them will be like that magic trick where one pulls a tablecloth out from underneath a set of dishes. Hey Presto!

The fiction paperbacks have, alas, been double-shelved on some separate modular shelves. I am going to see if I can purchase some additional planks and brackets and increase the linear shelf space.

There’s no rest for the wicked, however. Now that the books (and the banker’s boxes they were stored in) have been put away, I have to move onto restoring the bedroom closets, which will involve finding brackets for the very long closet rod and installing them before I can transport the costume and prop department lurking in the North Bedroom and Main Hall closet into the new bedroom closet.

It also means figuring out where some other objects are going to live. There were a number of tchotchkes interspersed throughout the books and I’m resisting the urge to return them to the shelves. The chief of these is my Writers of the Future award from 2006, which inspires the joke about the person who goes to a costume party as a Gifted Child, and when asked “What are you supposed to be?”, replies, “Oh, I was supposed to be so many things.” Mark has already moved the trophy, which is a sharp prism of about seven pounds of acrylic, from one end of the modular fiction shelves to another end, where it will be less likely to kill me when The Big One hits and the trophy does a Sword of Damocles impression.

Unfortunately, I can’t make the closet in our new bedroom behave like a TARDIS, and there simply isn’t room for the Old Burridge Chest of Drawers and Portable Stonehenge and my clothes. And my Doctor Who Scarf. And the giant, wool, double-breasted Pegasus Ranger army greatcoat. And my necklaces, talismans, and amulets. And the crowns (plural). Or the file cabinet of critiqued manuscripts.

Or the banner with a full length Cicely Mary Barker Cornflower Fairy on it. I like it because it reminds me of my Anglophile Aunt Margot, and because I like cornflowers; and the over-the-top pose of the young male fairy with his hands to his cheeks and one leg bent up screams, “OMG! You want to go to the fancy dress ball with me?!” Whether it’s Too Much Old Lady or Too Much Twee I can’t say—but it’s so “Too Much” that it’s funny. I’m not sure why Mark hates it and calls it scary. Okay, we did hang it up behind the door of the bedroom just before The Child's temporary return between college academic terms in a decor move that Mark calls "weaponized;" so there may be a residual Grandma-Jumpscare element involved.

Mark also does not care for the large, sixty-year old, touristy temple rubbing of a bunch of bright blue Hindu women playing instruments. I’m sure my parents purchased it on their travels overseas when they were sophisticated almost-thirty-year-old Americans in 1962. It used to be a central image in the downtown house I lived in before I was seven—I thought the figures were pointy-eared extraterrestrial ?women? wearing space (or diving) helmets, with alien devices; avatars of celestial mystery casting a spell; or possibly space sea-monkeys having a party. What I took for either a lap-sized crystal ball or else some sort of space communication device in one woman’s lap in real life is actually a tambour, seen drum-head on. The air-tubes connecting their helmets to the geometric space suits that I saw as a kindergartener are actually chunky necklaces draped strategically over bare, spherical breasts. Perhaps it is Kama-Sutra-adjacent. I suppose I find it compelling and oddly comforting in a “the party’s still going” kind of way; Mark thinks it’s poorly executed.

Finally, there’s the small bronze unicorn bust on a pink marble plinth. I bought it when I first moved to Eugene to live with Mark. It’s fine art that doesn’t look like a bunch of scrap metal and gears glued together, nor does it look like a twee citizen of the Glass Menagerie. Nor is it Eugene Hemp Macrame with Driftwood and Beads. I’ve always thought it might be fun to make the piece a gnomon for a sundial board, but mostly it’s lived here and there in the house in the shelves or by the Portable Stonehenge or on the mantle or the dining room table. Apparently Mark doesn’t like it (and never has)… not because it’s nauseatingly cute, but, I think because a gay man owning a cast bronze unicorn bust is fence-sitting in the way a gay man owning a scaled-down replica of Michelangelo’s David or a reproduction of a sexy, Pre-Raphaelite Saint Sebastian isn’t. Also, being just the head and neck, the unicorn is slightly reminiscent of “The Godfather.” (“Nice bookshelves. Shame if something happened to them.”)

When I get a little overwhelmed, I go into the North Bedroom and look at the main, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves: vertical shelving tidily interspersed with horizontal stacks. Dusted. Clean. Accessible and not double-stacked. The hardback novels; the Arthuriana next to the Dion Fortune next to the Ronald Hutton; the gay history running into the gay spirituality; the divination section just beneath the poetry section; the astronomy section and the folklore section and the gardening and herbal section—and along the entire length of the main shelf is the art and the history and the art-history running from the Paleolithic to the Egyptian to the Greek, Roman, and Islamic; to the European Mediaeval and Renaissance; spanning to the Pre-Raphaelites, Escher, Mucha, and the Impressionists; ending with Barbie and Art Deco and New York Gargoyles.

I suppose the books spanning time and space are as close to the TARDIS as I’m going to get.

The Holy City of What ?

The latest idea I’ve been pursuing is an exploration of sacred place.

When I attended my cousin Anne’s memorial a few weeks ago, there was a reference to the Heavenly Jerusalem. The words “Heavenly Jerusalem” almost always conjures William Blake in my mind, and the vision the Heavenly Jerusalem revealed gives me a Close-Encounters-of-the-Third-Kind-esque image of a great mothership descending over Devil’s Tower. Beyond that, my understanding is that it’s a kind of holy city, or polis as an axis mundi.

The notion of a holy city struck me, both as a city dweller and a 21C contemporary Pagan.

I’m not sure exactly what happens in a holy city; my sense is that holy people go about the holy business of the city, living holy lives there as they do holy work and holy play in holy homes among the holy streets. Perhaps there’s a holy library, and holy parks, and a holy discotheque. And holy sewers, and holy infrastructure. I think the idea is to be in communion. With something. Since the Heavenly Jerusalem is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition with a transcendent deity, I’m not sure how it would map into an immanent deity spiritual structure. And then William Blake’s voice rings out, “…bring me my arrows of desire!”

In contrast to Heavenly Jerusalem is Babylon. I want to say that the Jerusalem / Babylon dichotomy is an indicator of the spirit / body dichotomy.

Thinking a little bit more, it seemed that there would be more types of city or polis and I added additional sites from history, myth, and legend. I started with Camelot, because it was a shining city on a hill, a beacon of civility, chivalry, lawfulness, and magic.

Then I realized I needed to add The Fabled Library of Alexandria (the extra cool one reimagined in Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos”, not the underfunded, dingy one that collapsed through lack of funding and papyrus rot); how could a bibliophile not include a shrine to learning illuminated by the light of reason? (Plus it’s in Egypt, and Ancient Egyptian things are cool!)

And if I was going to add The Cool Version of Alexandria’s Library, it was a pagan hop-skip-and-a-jump to Atlantis, even if it had been coopted by 19C, colonial, Western European occultists (hey, at least it’s the basis for Tolkien’s land of Númenor, so it can’t be all bad). If I had Atlantis, then I might counter-balance it with real places like Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor (oops, that’s Avalon, isn’t it…).

If I was going to have Stonehenge, then I needed Göbekli Tepe and the Chauvet Cave in France as examples of archeological spiritual places. When I started to add the Hanging Garden of Babylon, I realized I was running the risk of building a catalog of UNESCO world heritage sites. So I stopped.

Aside from being constructed sites, I’m still trying to find the common thread running through these sites: “wonder” is one; “sanctuary” may be another; not all are temples or sacred spaces, nor are they all cities. I think they are all places where an acme, whether in knowledge, governance, communion, art, or some other field was reached. I’m aware of the Wile E. Coyote sense of the word “acme” as I use it.

Moving out of the polis suggests Eden, the primal garden and the birthplace of names. This sets up another dichotomy, the urban / rural dichotomy, with Arcadia and the Elysian Fields at one end and archetypical poleis at the other. Of course, thinking of nouns and Eden reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “She Unnames Them,” which is an exploration of how names can separate one communion with other participatory creatures. So sacred space is somehow an intersection of logos, gnosis, and communion.

Sitting between Eden and the Heavenly Jerusalem is the portable Tabernacle, a negotiated meeting space between Yahweh and the Hebrew people. The Tabernacle is a tent shrine for deity to appear (epiphany!) instead of the top of a mountain, volcano, or burning bush; it’s a purified tent that can travel with pre-agrarian, nomadic herders, used to commune with deity. I think the concept of Tabernacle would be akin to the Pagan pre-ritual of casting a protective circle and inviting the four cardinal powers to participate in the creation of sacred space and sacred time. (Obligatory distraction as I try to spell “Yahweh” with a J and auto-correct suggests “Jawas” and suddenly I’m re-envisioning the Tabernacle as a Star Wars sandcrawler cruising along the sands of Tatooine… which, I think, would make R2-D2 a kind of Ark of the Covenant.)

Placing all of these different sites onto a map is where I currently am. I’m wanting to apply this map to 21C Contemporary Pagan praxis: if I’m an Information Technology worker who lives in a city, and not a farmer in an agrarian society, how much sense does an eight-fold Wheel of the Year make? Is there really such a thing as an “Urban Shaman,” or is that a category error? Looking at place, it feels like there’s the permanent / temporary axis, the urban / rural axis, the natural / constructed axis, a spiritual / physical axis, and a Good / Evil axis.

I’m still puzzling over all of the pieces. Whenever a bunch of dichotomies band together like this, my instinct is to step away from either/or and try both/and. Maybe the sacredness of place is not so much about specific places, but that spiritual place is more about one’s frame of mind. At the risk of being too reductive, maybe spiritual place is about the building of it, or the journey to it.

“…Bring me my Chariot of fire!”

…Wait, where’s the map?

Bedroom Swapping

The last few weeks our house has looked like a packrat’s nest as we swapped bedrooms. When we moved into the house decades ago, we put The Child into the bedroom that overlooked the back yard and ourselves into the bedroom overlooking the sidewalk and street. The bedroom swap prompted a thorough cleaning of The Child’s room and a repainting of ours. During all of this painting and cleaning, the beds, the desks, the chairs, the dressers, the rugs, the paintings, the bulletin boards, and the tapestries had to be schlepped into the garage or the living room. Including The Books. About thirteen banker’s boxes filled to bursting with books have blocked off the fireplace mantel, and about thirteen more have crouched in front of the front window during this whole operation.

Whether it’s through childhood exposure to expansive family libraries, or a past life at the Library of Atlantis, I have a large number of books. It’s not a problem at all—I have managed to refrain from procuring a wheeled library shelf ladder for the purpose of reenacting Belle’s opening song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It does, however, provide a friction point between Mark and myself, and sometimes I think it motivates Mark to outlive me for the sole purpose of disposing of all my books, books, books, books, books. Obviously, I will have to secure a fortune so that I can be interred in a mausoleum/library (pause to imagine writing workshops in “The Dead Writer’s Library”).

The Child’s old bedroom had been repainted when he left for college, so it was mostly a matter of dusting and scrubbing at the more curiously persistent blemishes to prepare it for the switch. Our bedroom still had the original paint job we did when we moved in.

Before we bought the house, the owners had painted the walls a color best described as sandstone meets khaki. I could never decide if it wanted to be dull yellow or olive drab—but what I could tell you was that it sucked all of the light out of the air; we toured the house on a rainy June day and it was like stepping into a dark, dismal, dingy cave.

I told Mark that we’d have to repaint because if the darkness was this bad on a rainy June day, I’d want to slit my wrists from February seasonal depression if we didn’t. We ended up choosing colors from a French Art Nouveau book of patterns that went with the oak floor: sunflower yellow for the walls, red-orange for the window trim, and a pine green for the door trim. Mark liked it for about a month, and then said that our house looked like, “The Honeybun Café.” I will admit that there were times when our home’s interior put me in mind of a high-end McDonald’s. Over the years, the living room, the kitchen, and the bathroom got repainted in much less saturated versions of yellow and green.

In our old bedroom—which we’re beginning to refer to as “The North Bedroom”—we replaced the pine green trim on the windows, doors, and bookshelves from twenty years ago with “aurora brown,” a chocolatey color, and the wall color with what looked like white when it first went on but turned out a light lemon color. (Afterward, when I compared the new yellow with an old patch, the old yellow looked dirty.) For some reason, the colors make the room look like an Edwardian room that Eliza Doolittle would practice her diction in. We’re thinking the Edwardian style will dictate some sort of motto in the corner above the windows: “memento mori” seems a little dark, but E.W. suggested “sic itur ad astra.” Now, of course, I want a sarcastic version of something like “live, laugh, love,” or maybe a PDQ Bach quote like, “Donna nobis pacem cum what mei”. Or maybe something about finding the grail in the Castle of Aaargh.

I really do want to get the books back onto the shelves. I used to have a string of white LEDs snaking along the front of the shelves, and I think I might re-affix them along the back of the shelves so that they provide a more indirect backlighting while avoiding a cantina aesthetic (they are currently strung over the living room window, which makes it look like we’re living in a department store diorama). After that, the trick for The North Bedroom will be to get a floor lamp, a writing desk that’s large enough to accommodate a workstation on it, and some more book shelves into the room without crowding it. I had a vague notion of moving a Stickley Chair from the over-furnished living room into The North Bedroom for a formal reading room feel, but it’s looking like both it and The Child’s bed won't fit. (I’ve always loved the Stickley Chair ever since I first encountered it in my Grandpa Burridge’s home; however, it really wants to be on a short dais, like the throne of Brian Rose’s father in the painting by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, which can be awkward.)

Our new bedroom (The South Bedroom?) has our bed and some minimal furniture in it: a small, medieval style chest for laundry, a narrow secretary desk for Mark to work from, and a glass mosaic night lamp. Mark is aiming for an Arts and Crafts/William Morris look for the room, so if we still have some money left after all of the painting, we’ll purchase a long, Morris-inspired tapestry to go along with a smaller one already hanging in the room. Mark has forbade me from placing glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling (although he is open to a projection of stars for the living room ceiling), and a (ironic) Cicely Mary Barker Cornflower Fairy tapestry has been excised from the room. The string of multi-color LEDs under the bed has, however, been approved and acts as a handy nightlight.

The final round in this game of House Tetris will be reorganizing the closets. We decided that we should each take one closet; Mark didn’t care which, and I’m thinking I’ll consolidate all of my clothes and costumes and props and files into the closet in our bedroom. Mark will combine his clothes and toiletries into the closet in The North Bedroom. This will free up a hallway linen closet.

I’m not entirely sure what will happen to the Old Burridge Chest of Drawers. It was sitting in a corner of our old bedroom. If I put it into a closet, it won’t exactly be the most efficient use of space. If I banish it to the garage, I’ll need to find a new place to put my personal altar and Portable Stonehenge. If I get rid of it entirely, it will make my ninety-year-old father sad (pause to wonder exactly why I still store a Scottish sporran and garb for a three-year-old me in the bottom drawer—I’m never going to fit into those clothes again).

Unfortunately, what is also falling out of all of this house reorganization is dedicated craft space and storage space for filing bills, correspondence, and old manuscripts. I suppose if we really wanted a room for crafting, writing, costuming, and archiving, we’d move or convert the garage into living space (considers old plans to extend the one-and-a-half-butt kitchen into the garage and give it a pantry).

I’m pretty sure Mark would chime in here, “or you could get rid of half of your books.”

Valentine's Day Flying Yoga

On what I think counts as a Valentine’s Day Date, Mark and I went to a Flying Yoga class. This is where one goes to a yoga studio at the local YMCA that has reinforced girders along the ceiling where one can use carabiners to hang silk ribbons or TRX suspension exercise equipment or, as in our case, little short hammocks with side stirrups for one’s hands or feet.

I went into the class expecting it to be more like silk flying than it actually was. While I do some yoga-inspired stretches—I’m a “yogi-by-marriage”—I’d much rather do something like tai-chi. It’s a safe bet to say that I’ve got some of the world’s tightest hamstrings and hips. It was probably a good thing that the instructor reminded us to breathe.

There was an erotic (and distracting) moment seeing Mark swinging in his hammock, and I had to think unsexy thoughts and remind myself that a Y studio wasn’t an appropriate space for a visual orgy of passionate, tantric yoga. We did a few showy power-lunge swings, but no fear that things got out of hand: I had a protein bar snack about ninety minutes before class, and I had sipped some tea about an hour before; this combined with some of the rotational swinging and extended periods upside-down was nauseating. In retrospect, I should have stopped all consumption two hours ahead of time.

Hanging was more comfortable once I unraveled my hammock from a rope into more of a stretchy band. Meanwhile, Mark was hanging upside-down, back arched, holding both feet behind his back. I think my best stretch was a hanging moment early on with my left ankle on my right hip. Mark’s best stretch was a “cheating crow stand” that the instructor was ecstatic about. I would try Flying Yoga again, on an emptier stomach and with the recognition that it’s still yoga, and not an intro to Cirque du Soleil Power Silk Moves.

Old Parents Being Old

Another year.

Foremost on my mind since Halloween has been the fall-out from a traffic accident my dad was in. His health was not exactly the best, and after crashing into a parked car at 25 miles-per-hour and being tossed around with air bags (at 90) he hasn’t completely bounced back. Even after a week in the hospital. Even after three and a half weeks spent in a post acute facility for physical therapy, occupational therapy, and voice therapy.

The oddest part of my father’s situation is the sense of premonition surrounding it. As someone who probably needs to dial back his personal “Sees Patterns in Things” setting, my own experiences the week before my dad’s traffic accident seemed to presage it. Now, of course, I’m poised to divine meaning from a Winter Solstice New Moon visit to the Emergency Room.

Of course there’s the typical family drama surrounding Old Parents Being Old, the usually unexamined archetypes of the Lion in Winter, and tarot cards such as the Nine of Swords (mental anxiety), the Ten of Cups (fairytale happiness), the Ten of Wands (burdens), and the Ten of Pentacles (legacy).

I have to keep admonishing myself that I won’t write current family events into stories and to instead record happenings, impressions, and rantings into my physical, non-virtual Book of Art instead of blogging them.

I know, I’ll blog about politics!

Knots Untied

The Halloween weekend brought three undoings with it.   

A few weeks ago, I bought some blue dichroic glass earrings.  They sit closer to my earlobe than my original green zircon studs, are less pokey than my silver star earrings, and less dangly than my crescent earrings.  And they flash between sapphire and cobalt.  

I have a tendency to fiddle with whatever earrings I'm wearing; Saturday night, I reached up and discovered that the blue glass sphere on my right earring had fallen off of the post.  (At first, I thought the glass had been partially pulled through my earlobe.) Presumably, it's somewhere in the house.  

Later, I was eating a power bar in preparation of going out dancing with Mark—it doesn't do to have a carb crash thirty minutes into the night. I regularly consume a power bar about an hour before working out to keep from fading out during exercise sets.  After three high-protein bites, the sticky mass of the power bar lifted a crown off of my lower back molar. Luckily, I didn't swallow the crown and my tooth wasn't causing any pain.  (Although at first I wasn't sure if my molar was topped with tooth decay or decades' old dental adhesive.  Thankfully, it was failed adhesive, and the dentist glued the crown back on Monday.) 

Mark and I went dancing anyway and got back home shortly after midnight and before the change to standard time.  

Sunday, I slept late, and had a lazy morning in the bath reading The Two Towers.  I wondered what the third thing to come undone would be.  Would it be something connected to my elderly parents?  Would a button pull away from a dress shirt?  Would it be another inconvenient loss?  Would one of my unicorn socks develop a hole?  Would it be a sudden momento mori punchline?  

I wouldn't discover until I found a parking citation (for nine times the cost of a daily permit) on my car Tuesday.  I typically order parking permits Sunday—it's apparently a universal law that university parking is complicated and a pain.  Somehow I missed reminders on various devices and failed to order a parking permit Sunday (and Monday) morning for Tuesday (and Wednesday).  

An earring, a crown, and a permit undone on Autumn's cross-quarter.  It sounds like a nursery rhyme or fairy tale.  Fingers crossed for a happily ever after ending.

Dancing like it's 1978

The other week I went dancing. It was mostly fun, but there was something off.

I got there before anyone else was really dancing, so I ordered a cola product before hitting the dance floor.

The DJ is always welcoming, and he actually remembered my name this time around—of which I am in awe as I can only remember his name because it’s lit up in neon pink at the DJ booth every time I go to one of his shows.

I danced and danced, and slowly the dance floor filled up.

The university students are back in town, so there was more of a twenty-something presence in the room. This was evidenced by the GenZ habit of five or six (mostly) guys circling up and dancing in a ring. I’m not sure if it was them or The Women Who Go Whoooo who spilled their drinks on the dance floor.

It wasn’t all circle dancing and floor lubrication; there were plenty of couples dancing together, too.

A sped-up version of “Pon De Replay” came on and I smiled because I had been thinking the day before how much fun it would be to dance to the words “shake it ’til the moon becomes the sun.”

I danced and danced. It was a few days before the full moon, so I did a little bit of dancing down the moon, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t a numinous moment.

Maybe it was the oddly disturbing, gay-men-in-prison movie clip playing at one point in between the much more fun clips from “Jeffry,” “Xanadu,” “Flash Gordon,” and the YMCA sequence from the Village People movie, “Can’t Stop the Music.”

I danced and danced, and fixed my gaze on the needles of green and purple light bouncing from the disco ball.

Maybe it was the dude who would suddenly move his upper back in exaggerated motions as if he were dancing like Doctor Strange at Woodstock while he walked past me to the restroom. Maybe it was flirtation; imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Maybe it was the photographer connected with the event, who kept on stepping in front of me to take pictures of the folks dancing next to me, or the folks dancing inside the cage prop, or people placing bills into a Go-Go Guy’s underwear.

Maybe I didn’t dress up in enough leopard print and should have found more faux fur than the leopard print scarf I wore as a sash.

At least I probably won’t have to explain to anyone why there’s pictures on the Internet of me dancing at a club filled with shirtless (and in some cases, pantsless) men.

I danced and danced. During a break I complemented a fine looking man’s amethyst-slice pendent.

Maybe it was the realization when looking into the venue’s mirrors that I was easily twice the age of many of the folks on the dance floor. And the most dressed.

I danced and danced and watched the hands and forearms of the Go-Go Guy with the LED poi, which moved with the intricacies of a spinning carnival ride.

Maybe it was the four guys dancing together in a clump, who seemed like friends, and who seemed relaxed with each other.

I danced and danced, and thought about how much fun it would be to dance with Mark if he liked to dance.

I danced and danced… and then I was having a sugar and caffeine crash.

So it was time to leave.

Before the night could descend any further into a middle school dance reenactment.