Happy insomnia and other random madnesses. . . you have been warned.

The brain needs time to recognize, grasp, and wrap around everything the eyes and other senses perceive. If the brain does not expect it, most likely it will be ignored as static information and cast it to the circular file in the back of the mind for more pertinent information, like the bus barreling around the corner at wicked, scary speeds through pot holes. If this is true, and I have had experiences and evidence that this is so, the why the fuck must we endure the insanity of the onslaughts of emotion before we understand what exactly it is we are feeling?? Why must everything be muddled like stirred up lake water? It's a train wreck waiting to happen really. It's amazing out brains just don't explode and ooze out of the holes in our heads. It doesn't matter what the emotion is, powerful ones always start the same with that tingle in the back of your jaw. It races around to the back of your head, chills the stomach,  and depending on circumstances, raises your hackles or buckles your knees. If your brain refuses to engage and deal, you may do both and have a moment of lights out.

So, what is it about the crashing of potent emotions that erases the memory banks temporarily of its understanding of what is being cooked up in their special brew in the dark spaces of our endocrine systems?? What triggers the endocrine system to fire off the appropriate emotional response cocktail if we ourselves have no conscious reference to the information our brain is trying to puzzle us through. Is it the unconscious mind acknowledging something it figured out before it surfaced to the forefront? It is a response to physical stimuli? Is it a psychic connection that we share will all things that live? Or is it something deeper and far more mysterious that happens when we are overtaken with that first intense wave?

Is it possible, that as we are in that first moment of emotional throws, we are not producing the chemicals as a response to emotional stimuli, but as a response to the spirit world part of ourselves. The part of ourselves that is connected and communicates directly with the Divine; the child within us that knows has poured her brew into our vessel and we are we responding to something that takes our brain a moment to understand?? Is it possible that these things we call emotions are deliberately triggered responses from our spirit selves being funneled down into the thick denseness of our being, finally, triggering a chemical response to cause the physical body to react in a specific manner in accordance to how our soul wishes to express itself. And after all this action is said and way past done, the mind goes to work to figure out whether to release a tear from the right side first as a sign of joy, the left as a sign of pain, or both would be a sign that you stepped on one of those accursed legos!

I asked these questions in light of the attacks by, what John Calhoun would have referred to as, probers. Probers in the experiments that Dr. Calhoun were conducting were the equivalents of our sexual predators, terrorists, the criminally violent, etc. What is different in these people? Do they start with a broken empathy chip or are their chips quickly degraded by the violence they witness? Would it be sort of like in Firefly with the Reavers? Anyone who survived an attack from these probers became just like them from sheer madness in the story. How close is that to the truth?

Is it possible that if you do not attend to the wounds of the soul, the spirit retreats and becomes more difficult to hear until the only thing left to hear are the raging imprecations of anger ringing in the skull? Mother Theresa was heard to have said that she suffered the silence of God. She was definitely not a prober. So, that can't be entirely right.

Maybe, it has more to do with which wolf you are feeding: the angry one or the loving one.

I can't ( and none else can) fix the prober issue or even the individual probers. That is something only one's self can do for one's self. If you are very lucky, you have people around you who diffuse your hot buttons quickly. I don't know which can first as far as the emotional tidal wave thing. It's sort of like the chicken and the egg thing. Divine trigger, chemical trigger . . . it's not really gonna matter when the chips are down. What will matter when the chips are down and skittering across the floor, is which wolf I have been feeding. Only I can prevent myself from becoming an enclosure time bomb and I may have a hand in keeping a few of those around me on this side of the prober tracks.

Ok, I am a big fat liar. I do have a best friend who will commit best-friendicide if I go over the tracks to the enclosure time bomb side.

It's in the contract, I promise.

This has been your late night random madness moment. Happy insomnia and good morning, good night and GOOD LORDS!!! WHY??! WHY is it this late . . . er ... early. . . er what ever.

See you in Odd!

Enclosure Lessons: buying time 101

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a bit know what it is I am about to say:



Enclosure.


Yes, I said it. Enclosure has happened again. We knew it would. We are disenheartened that its frequency has shot through the gods' damned roof. I still have no real clue as to the why's and how's. I have avoided any graphic stuff like the plague. I am sure that over the next few days we will be inundated with factoids and finger pointing. Ugh. I am sure that you do not need me to point out once more hey look at the enclosure time bomb beware beware be. . . eh blah blah blah. I always talk about buying time. Buying time???? Yes time. There is not just one way to do that; there is a whole series of little things that can be done on an every day mundane level to help defuse and keep at bay the enclosure time bomb.

Part of the key here is NOT I totally had to edit this error I so missed to become an enclosure time bomb yourself. The one thing that keeps the insanity at bay with this phenomenon is simply understanding what it is you are looking at: a symptom of something much larger than a band aide can hold or heal. When people are no longer able to vote with their feet and become trapped, guess what??? They behave aggressively and bizarrely. I don't think any of us are surprised by that. What most of us don't remember off hand is that there is a solution to this. It's the same one employed by the people who came here to the New World. Well, it's not new anymore. Seems one of those gentlemen seriously overestimated his understanding of math. The other part of that key is to understand that you have the power to contribute to the solution in a positive manner regardless of your walking path.

With out any further ado I would like to present our first positive Enclosure lesson:


There are three people I would like to thank for today's Enclosure buying time lessons, I have found a whole new level of respect for you all:

1) Mr Rogers:

2) Patton Oswalt:

From his FB account:

"...So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

you can read the whole thing at the link. 



3) The good people of the planet.

Keep calm and keep on!

Thank you.

Oddling poppet moment. . .

She whispered as she was having her hair put on. It was something I may have missed earlier if I did not know to listen. They all do it. They murmur, squeak, and intone. In Elphaba's case, she heaped imprecations upon the clouds and bigots. It was raining when I made her. This one sweetly murmurs in hushed mommy tones, encouraging her babies to scoot out into the sun to be seen in the light.

Each poppet I make brings a completely different experience to me. One thing that I find to be most fascinating is the difference between working on a poppet of my own thought designs versus working on a custom poppet for another person. While I am working on my own thought designs I choose freely and sometimes wildly from available resources to fit my mood and desire. The obvious part of working on a custom doll is that it's not my desire/need that needs filling in this case. The part that that grabbed me was the fact that I could use my trance training in a meaningful and effective manner.

This is not without some side effects I guess. You see every coin has two sides. The other side is that I pick up strays. They wander in unexpectedly, roam around the house, then leave me with my brow quirked up into my hairline in WTF???? position. Good thing it usually occurs when I can put things down and go do something else.  Or maybe it is the fact that I have put things down and have gone off to sweep the floor, is the reason these things happen. I am already pretty focused on that one person as I am making the poppet. Maybe this is just one more reason to make one poppet at a time.

Listening to my poppets come around to life, has taught me more about my about my craft than any book could have. Don't get me wrong, books are an excellent place to start and excellent to keep around as reference, but they are certainly not the end all, be all of magic in any way, shape, or form. Each part of the process gives me more experience as I practice. Each experience moves me further down the rabbit hole as I expand my lexicon of material familiarity. New ideas no longer worry me, they are just ideas and can be shifted. Granted there is always the strange occurrences on this path, but that's a very large part of the fun. Ok, sometimes later. After we survive ourselves.

There are two Witchy proverbs I like that apply to this Oddling Poppet Moment:

A library of books does not equal one good teacher.

Practice is better than a teacher.

Her royal weeds of the alley ways

I found myself going through some old books on the Arts and herbology the last few days as I am working on a poppet.  Sow Weeds danced on the brain and I had a field of large queens in back just begging to be harvested. I loosened the earth and thought about the darkening moon and the moving wheel. The roots mostly gave me no issue coming free as they were promised a place of honor. I cropped them, soaked them and they sit on Hecate's Altar in a star shaped basket drying under Her watchful eye. All but one that is.

Soak the root in Hecate's liquid fire of vision. Living bone, dead bone, powdered bone and ashen bone, tincture, elixir! Come now enspirited one! Fire of illumination enliven this earthen flesh from the plot!

I have done this before. At least the living bone/ dead bone thing. I knew exactly what was being asked.  I also knew what the liquid fire was, I just didn't know that spirit had its own name for it. Soaking the root thing was not exactly new, it was something I attributed to a different sort of spirit work: alrauns. I went back into a piece of reference and found what was being spoken of : it was a nod to Viridarium work as written by Mr. Schulke. The roots are different, the concept the same. I felt a new dimension being added to the working I was currently obsessing over. All the piece I had gather fell into place and others immediately fell away because it was no longer compatible. 

This whole spark of madness, I guess you could call it, was initiated literally by a sow weed guarded gate on the outside bounds of suburban kosherness. . . the alley. Yes, I was walking around in the alley this morning and I liked it.

The weeds I am after, like Lady's Mantle, Plantain, and Sow Weed grow there like royalty and without regard for urban lawn manners. The alley ways here are literally their throne rooms. It also the haunt of the feral clan of kitties that patrol my borders. Every once in a while a dead bird will appear in my yard and to avoid having my dog torment the poor carcass, I place it in the grasses just outside my back fence where I know the kitties will find it. The bird is given funerary rites and an offering and then laid to rest in sweet alyssum. The feral kitties always appreciate an easy meal and the bird's spirit is honored through the completion of the life cycle. 

The alley ways are becoming a strange sort of magic place for me. I actually have my dog to thank for that. On occasion, she takes herself for an unauthorized walk through the neighborhood. It's actually quite annoying. She suddenly develops this I can't hear you so I'm not gonna obey you mentality. Sit becomes a run command and she absolutely, positively must see you see her defying you from a good few paces away just to taunt you. I've learned she gets tired fast and it's only gonna get worse when the heat comes on so I'll have the upper hand. It was in the alley ways  chasing my dog, that I noticed that the weeds were exceptionally healthy and large. I was actually on the look out for glass, screw, nails and other sharp pokies that could be bad on dog pads. I was pleasantly surprised to see only a little of that. 

I will be continuing my poking around in the alley in the daylight until I get to know the alley better. Night time work may reveal a whole different world that might share the daytime properties. . . however it is more likely that a new magic may emerge as the sun leaves its face. Better to walk it with one aspect firmly in hand and maybe something kerplunkish in the other. Trolls you know.