After Omelas

My parents and I spent the afternoon remembering how sweet and fierce and smart she was, how Mom had the whole neighborhood convinced she was half wolf (and I confirmed to one toddler that she was a werewolf). No matter how many times she threatened to eat my friends, lovers and whatever small orphaned animal my mother found (the baby bird who fell into our backyard; two different lost dogs; the six-fingered cat that never stopped yowling; the stray cat mother & kittens we spayed/neutered and kept in the garage), I am going to miss that dog.

I get it. People & places to be. It is okay, right? It's alright she's not here anymore?

"It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from."
-- C.S. Lewis

And beautiful boy wrote: Really, all that I've done with my mind is be open, not be afraid, and take in what I think is beautiful. Sometimes, I can make some of my own open, unafraid beauty.



So I'm in a tender mood now, and I would love to hear more from you.

Quote me something beautiful. A song lyric, a paragraph from a novel, a line from a poem, a bumper sticker, a... ick... well, maybe-- a Hallmark card. Anything that is moving you, parting the callouses we carry for a moment or two, something that makes you feel gentle and brave.

Here, I'll start.

(How I know I've reached the optimal state of beauty suffusion: when the bells + violin + acoustic guitar in Smashing Pumpkins' "Disarm" nearly brings tears to my eye. Big fat manly tears because sensitivity to and acceptance of beauty is essential.)

(savor each word or this does not work)
"Domaines Astruc Pinot Noir is produced in the Limoux area in the Languedoc. Bright and lovely light garnet-red colour. Very elegant with a quintessence of red fruits, blackcurrant, cherry, and spicy aromas with a hint of vanilla. It's a medium/full bodied wine, with good tannins which testify its capability to age. It develops very delicate aromas and a long lasting finish."

Bad thirst today, so I sprang for Domaines Astruc 2005 Pinot Noir. This wine belongs in a room with red velvet curtains, gem-like pomegranate seeds, small porcelain pitchers of whole milk, scattered gold coins, off-white satin sheets with a few stray grape stains.

Bad impulse: trying to channel or tame the abstract in all my pursuits: wine, writing, and now perfumery. Because an experience must be worthwhile if it at first defies definition and far better captured with impressions of kindred experiences. Oh yeah, if I compose a few perfume oils for Yule gifts, would anyone like to test-drive them to make sure they're vaguely pleasant first? (alternate nightmare scenario: here, desired life partner! I think you ought to smell like patchouli and bubble gum....)

Badly imploding from life-pressure. It happened again today: I took a bathroom break at work and on the walk back I froze at the hall window, staring at the sunlit world out there. It was physically impossible to take another step toward the office. Too much beauty on the other side of the glass, too much hysterical panic rising at the thought of doing what I have been doing for the past two years. When did writing emails to customers become apocalyptic? Apparently, sometime after lunch this morning-- must have been the overdone home fries, some terrible grape jelly, too much ketchup.

Bad habits (ETA: if compulsive): I kissed a new boy on Saturday night, a beautiful pale writer in a silk yellow bowtie, one of the few other males in a lesbian-packed bar in Brooklyn. His cheek was shockingly more stubbly than mine. We both drank bourbon: mine Jack, his Jameson.

Bad news: I may be very poor very shortly. Hanging on by the roots of my cuticles. Surrender is not yet in sight but damn if it isn't tempting.

In the distant future, I still hope to attain the restraint necessary to be a Buddhist. It's odd seeing how enmeshed I've become in being flesh & blood, so much so that I couldn't stop wanting now even if I tried.

My coworkers use the odd language of pickup artists, i.e. 'my wing helped me open a set with a 9, so I scored some kino points and decided to go for an insta-date', 'I mentioned the business for easy DHV and followed up with a quick neg.' When we talk about relationships, flirting and the like, the act of translation is almost visible, as if a pause follows every sentence so our personal UN translators can catch up.

So when Bossman (heh) asks what I actually wanted when I picked up the tall blonde guy at the Oscar Wilde night on Saturday (or 'got a numbers close'), I had trouble translating what he meant. What did I want? Well, I don't know-- I was in Brooklyn, and rain was glowing in the streetlights, and I remembered David Schickler writing how The City can seem to tip its hand to people in love. My fiancé was being lovably analytical (hehe), and my girlfriend had just dyed her hair copper and wore a silky kimono red as blood, and Shaggy was as charming and dapper as such a soiree demands of its best. The other attendees wore bright silk corsets, ruffled linen shirts, yellow boa constrictors draped around pale necks, red lipstick in funereal black veils.

Imagine, in that uproar of finery and reconstructed grace, meeting a stranger's eyes a few times, another second longer each time. It's natural: he says he's here for the week; I ask if his social needs are met during this time; he says if I know of anything fun or spectacular, I should let him know; I ask how can I manage that; he says, oh, well, I suppose you'll need my email address or PHONE NUMBER. We've both done this before and likely we'll both do it again, and it will always be a delight... though his pectorals are uncommonly fine. (Bad Chip!)

I can hardly describe how happy I am now with the people I love, who love me, and poly or not one can't go on chasing new tail forever. If nothing else, the stress levels producing such high energy slack off. For now, though, how enjoyable this is in itself, free of any other aim-- this bottomless desiring and desiring and desiring....

Trying to tie up work on monstrous Issue #4 before heading to Panthea tomorrow, but some updates important enough to warrant the time spent blogging them:

--I wrote for the Huffington Post on the value of paper vs. electronic books.

--The same groups who backed Proposition 8 have returned to their wacky homophobic antics in Maine. See Vote No on 1 for ways to fight back.

--Similar to the above, but closer to home: a bill that would grant gays the ability to marry in the state of New Jersey will go before the state legislature in November. If we lose this now, transversecity may be too old and creaky to enjoy our honeymoon before I can marry him properly-- that is, in a manner not deemed by the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission to be "a failed experiment" (read the PDF report here).

Seriously, folks-- don't make me have to push Mr. Mach in a wheelchair down the aisle / forest floor / hotel hallway. If you have a few spare dollars, think about donating: postage costs are spiraling like mad as we postcard the heck out of legislators on the fence. If you have a few spare hours, head down to one of Garden State Equality's offices in Montclair, Asbury Park, or Collingswood to volunteer. (They're a generally young crowd, energized, and hilarious-- you will never have this much fun working again.) They could always use more data entry / postcarding / logistical help, if looking for donations or spreading the word on the street is too high-energy / schmoozy for your tastes.

And at the very least, we'll have bragging rights to lord over our New York neighbors for the next few years.

Dear straight men at the gay bar: no really, what are you doing? Free drinks are always appreciated, but that doesn't get you off the hook. Seriously, there are two women at this bar and they're married / unionized to each other. Wtf, mate?

It was a cinematic weekend. While I was putting together the shipments of Issue 3, a manual labor, brain-free task, I put on A Streetcar Named Desire, What the BLEEP Do We Know, and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Housemate & Housemate's Girlfriend watched I <3 Huckabees while I put the finishing touches on Thorn's website update.

Need to write that piece rattling in my head for BA's devotional anthology. It is funny how strangely alien the act of writing seems now. Haven't sat down with myself to finish the abandoned thoughts of the day for some time, leaving the half-drawn conclusions and tentative questions to disappear. How eerily empty my head feels now when I'm sitting alone, without even a book or a task to keep my mind company. How oddly life-denying it feels to stop being a blur of motion and pause.

Onwards!

Jeff Mach says: go to Midsummer Magick Faire the next three weekends in Connecticut. It is an openly Pagan Renaissance Faire that is rather smashing, entertaining, entrancing, and all around pleasantly diverting.

http://www.midsummermagickfaire.com/

I DARE you to check it out.

And so....

Issue 3 goes to the printers this morning!

That sleep thing, it will be mine.

Thanks, beautiful peeps who responded to the navel-gazing Post o' Doom. You keep me up.

Coherence aside-- I note a funny problem in my physiology. Lately I've had chronic tension headaches, possibly from the near-comical lack of sleep and the usual poor dieting / stress management from working two jobs (that both sound like careers on paper, heh). The ache in my skull gets worse throughout the day, so I pop a Fioricet to drive it off.

Cue the ebbing of the pain, a mild wave of euphoria... and the tranquilizing effects of barbituates. When trying to meet deadlines, the pain is more useful-- at least it keeps me awake.

I'm going to zonk out for a few hours, wake up at 5 AM, and get the last of the July issue's editing done. Feel like a narcoleptic cyborg in my eternal emotionless (too tired) pursuit of efficiency lately, and could not be more grimly satisfied. We're going to press for the third time and then I will have the most triumphant nap in mankind's history.



Today's non sequitur-- sequiter-- seh kwi tuhr-- Changeling: The Lost is a superb role-playing game. Am understanding at last why, even when the Irish myth-histories say my great great etc. grandfather was cursed by a fae woman & lost seven sons to the war she incited, we ache when we dream of Arcadia.

Three jack and cokes in at the burlesque bar and I start telling everyone who falls into conversation with me about Thorn and the new gods. Athena was the goddess of Athens, I slur. Same thing: New York is developing a goddess. They smile at this. Carnival images parade by with pasties and jazz music: Medusa, space aliens, snake charmers, muscular men who tapdance on their hands. A Brit hits on Kate and then asks if our parents know their children are incestuous. Hasty retreat to the back corner, where a huge Jamaican with Leave It To Beaver teeth sees through everyone after ten minutes, naming insecurities, facts of life, personality foundations. We've already stayed an hour after final call when we're politely asked to leave and the Spanish (barkeep? busboy?) offers us umbrellas he'd never get back, but I'm standing in my t-shirt in the rain and I can't feel it.

A refugee from Detroit lifts the metal shutters of one of the last independently owned radical feminist / LGBT bookstores in New York. A lot of work went into this room, he says, looking over the unlit bookshelves (Kate Bornstein, Alison Bechdel, and I don't recognize anyone else), and it's not much bigger than my 1100 sq foot apartment. He hands me a cup of organic fair trade coffee to sober up.

See that green light? That's the subway. We stumble toward it, Gatsby's green light in darkness. The sky softens to a drowsy blue, 6 AM through streets filled with puddles and twentysomethings who never went to sleep, the next shift already rising for a day that didn't really begin, won't really end, one seamless cycle of streetlights and sunlight. Somewhere, a Woman is smiling...

One more rite of passage completed as a Pagan publisher: I was formally & personally informed of my invitation to be "deployed to serve your eternal sentence in hell right this moment, as you read this." V. efficient form of damnation, I suppose, if one can do it while working at the computer.

"This Documentation of God's Divine Will is for your personal information and for the edification of all followers of the Satanic "practices" of Paganism, Wicca, including but not limited to all followers of the varying degrees of psychotic delusion known as witchcraft, black "magic", sorcery, Alistair Crowley and so forth (and any other weird perversions of God's reality that you may have bought into) this is your final warning:
The Great Day of Revelation the Sacred Text warned you about is here. One of your Satanic materials distributors [Pagan author interviewed by Thorn] has just been deployed to HELL by ME. You, as well, are now being deployed to serve your eternal sentence in hell right this moment, as you read this. The Powers of all the Divine Mystic Maters are unified as the One Living God Force to deliver you directly and without delay to your master, Satan. You will see the particular manifestation of Satan known as [aforesaid Pagan author] humiliated before all of the world in ever form of
public media available to mankind. As you observe this horror, know that it is, indeed, a demonstration of exactly what is beginning to happen to you. Right NOW. Behold the Might Hand of God's Divine Justice."

On behalf of Thurisaz Media, thank you for your personal treatment & deployment, Kelly.

Deep breath & affirmations time:

My job is not a prison sentence.
My job is not a prison sentence.
My job is not a prison sentence.
My job is not a prison sentence.
My job is not a prison sentence.
My job is not a prison sentence.
My job is not a prison sentence.
My job is not a prison sentence.
My job is not a prison sentence.

Know those times when you want to run down the street in the rain wearing only a hardhat, head-bashing every window you pass? Yeah.

This is a hymn for the gods from my Zydrate-saturated boozed-up postmodern soul.

Plastic gods with headlight eyes and spines of glass shards, with altars of Toyotas with shot batteries and crumbling axles-- attend me, kindly. Hello, you have reached the hotline of that little literary heap of humanity who calls himself Chip. Your call is important to us. We value your divine opinion. Please hold as we connect your call.

(meep meep)

Hello there. Hello, beloveds, from the bottom of my coffee-filtered cigarette butt heart. I've been thinking about you. I've been wanting you the way I've been wanting all my lovers, lately: as another way of saying Hello, darling, make me feel alive. Mutual human abuse, drawing meaning from each other's existence, bodies & acknowledgment like leeches. Hello, beloved Lady of the crossroads, and hello to the shadowy others: Asphaltia, and the rumbling god of the railroads, and the chrome-veined god of the Grid without whom no lightbulb would light and no computer would compute and no microwave would.... wave in a microscopic manner.

Hello, divinity. Hello, nous. Here is all I have to offer: I have precious little self these days. I edit a Pagan magazine because these days I feel like an electron 'round a nucleus: best defined by the blur I leave with my motion, otherwise mostly weightless, best defined by the actions I take and the effects of my presence. I love to love; like a black hole, I can see I exist because something inexplicably orbits around a nothing in space. I love to edit and the opportunity to carve anything that is "not elephant," to make passionate voices clear and eloquent voices heartfelt. I love watching Repo! and drinking bright blue alcoholic concoctions: vodka + tequila + (orange-flavored blue-colored liquid, edible anti-freeze)

Ah, beloved gods, this is all I am and all I have: fractured hymns and a few scattered offerings. I eat rice & grated cheese every day to save money. I wrote to my insurance company in January to cancel my policy & save money, even though they canceled it already for non-payment, because it might reflect better on the Record. I'm technically the Director of Customer Service and I don't have many shits left to give about that job. Broke, young, unable to show enthusiasm for much, what do I have to offer you, beloveds?

I love you, you crazy counterintuitive beings, wholly improbable thought-forms. I love that I believe in you. I love that I wear a necklace of the One Ring around my neck with Jeff's collar because I think I belong to you as much as I belong to him, and I have a journey to take in your names. Someone wrote in our magazine feedback: "I think you are on a wonderful and much-needed quest," and I took it cleanly, without catch on the bone, to the heart. I love that you can make me feel and move and do things when I am most at home watching, recording, commenting-on, keeping to myself.

Therefore, gods beloved, irrational concepts, dear friends: I will believe in you if you will continue to make me feel. Decent pact? A good compromise, Calvin & Hobbes says, leaves everyone angry. I will sing you praises from every fraction of what I have been. Every me that was will sing to you: Oh high queen of heaven, dread queen of the dead, Black She-Dog, she who works her will from afar, Shining One. Lead me, guide to me, sing to me in SJ Tucker and violin solos and unseen animal footfalls in night suburbs. Let me hear your voice when the train is about to rumble within sight and the fat mouse at Warren Street Station emerges from his nest within the platform garbage can. May there be Olympus blinked out of brake lights on the turnpike in Morse code, godly sacrifices echoed at food banks and Red Crosses, godly love whispered from the heartbeat of traffic lights, rhythmic, unflinching.

Honor to the gods eternal, who will survive such poor & desperate worship as mine. May I see you, and may you be beloved.

The March 09 issue is barreling along like a steam engine. Let it never be said that I do not love deadlines. They offer beautiful escapes from the terribly confining limits of my sane mind. Why speak in a low, mild-mannered voice when you can cackle and make wild caffeinated gestures?

Past new moon was enlightening. For the first time in years, have resurrected serious thoughts of writing a book 'in the near future.' My partners are breathtaking. I continue to have no time; please forgive me. I have a job that's still paying bills. Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

The January 09 online edition of Thorn is now online. Go check it out!

In this edition:

Cherry Hill Seminary to Grant Master's Degrees
by Sarah Wilson

Cherry Hill Seminary, the first educational institution in the United States dedicated to graduate-level study programs for Pagan clergy, has officially received degree-granting authority from the state of South Carolina. Starting in mid-to-late 2009, Pagan clergy can earn Master's degrees that will help hone and refine their skills in all aspects of ministry. Read this article

There's Something About Marie
by Natalie Zaman

Our fearless writer journeys to a New Orleans still showing the wrath of Katrina in pursuit of the mysterious Voodoo Queen. Who was this woman who effortlessly united Vodou practice with Christianity, and what can we learn from her today? Read this article

Walking the Broken Path
by Jimmy Two Hats

What others regard as supernatural superstition is real magick to Pagans--whether it's the spells of Wicca or the black and white of occult magic, witchcraft and mysticism that are part of our heritage. Real magic should be part of what we do, but are we doing it right? Read this article

In Thorn-itself news, we invite your best wit & wisdom in the form of a letter to the editor, sent to thornreactions@gmail.com; we're also offering a $150 gift certificate to King of Swords, a fantastic & varied online store full of various goodies, for the best candid photo of your magazine copy. We put a lot of work into those magazines and want to see you two painting the town red. You don't need to be in the picture-- a photo of your copy of the mag in a movie theater set, next to a bag of popcorn, would be plenty.

And lastly, we have this kooky new idea kicking about how to help Pagans connect to & help charities they care about. Navigate to our new Causes page to find out more-- especially if you're a Pagan merchant!

For anyone who has spent the last week bemoaning the passage of Proposition 8:

http://jointheimpact.com

This Saturday, November 15th, is a national day of protest against Proposition 8 and the other attacks on the rights of gay couples that passed this Election Day. As Keith Olbermann said, "This isn't about yelling and this isn't about politics-- this is about the human heart." Check out his six-minute special comment on MSNBC here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnHyy8gkNEE

Check the link above for scheduled protests in various cities throughout the fifty states. If you were looking for a chance to make your voice heard, and make it count, this is it.

--we did!

It is a new day, friends and neighbors. Memories of the last eight years are flowers on the grave of the old world, the world of Big Brother and WMDs and Axis of Evil. To the future: hello from the last days of the Reign of Error-- and as the Samhain season rises & falls, hello to the changing tide, the new year.

For my president, from a part of me that had loved this country: welcome.

Because everyone needs some of that ol' time religion:

http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/10/the_golden_calfs_all_growed_up