Vote with your feet and walk in the gap.

The monsoons are heavy and thick with water loaded air, so much so, you can smell it. It makes for a long moment when you have to go out into it no matter how short or long the jaunt. All of this is happening as I am bringing water elemental teachings to my students. It's funny how when you teach, there are new things learned, understood, and clarified. It's sort of like an unending period of training that brings about new questions and thoughts of your own as you try to anticipate what your students will ask. There is always something that surprises you. Goes to show how differently people think about similar circles. Which is why I am always surprised when other people expect you to think and do as they would in any given situation with a smug " well I would have done that. . . it's only logical." Well, no, it's not unless you share perspective and exact experience.

This is why there is such a schism in the craft, even within a single tradition, not to mention everything else in life. Currently the largest schism I am witnessing is between the genders. There is one side saying that their way is better than the other and they should hold power. Well, I disagree and this is why. Any time there is one agency holding any sort of power a perspective is negated because it does not fit into that agency's paradigm of how things should be done, usually to the disadvantage and victimization of all perceived minorities or opposing factions. We see this happen all the time and tend to ignore it: men vs. women, Christianity vs. anything else, cats vs. dogs, heterosexual vs. homosexual, GMO's vs. organic foods. . . the list can continue for quite a ways here so I'll just commit a sin and assume you get it.

The problem we are encountering is is not a schism between what is being polarized, but the negated perspectives that cause the polarization in the first place. Remember the phrase: walk a mile in someones shoes before you judge them?" Maybe instead of judging them we should be observing their experience and absorbing its effects. I know that sometimes the problem comes about because an experience is not properly communicated through either humiliation or deception. Which is why it is important for us to not judge when someone does communicate something such as Marion Bradley Zimmerman's daughter did, or Jada who has recently been attacked and then again through social media, or when someone in power such as Paul Ryan says something to the effect of rape being a method of conception in regards to his pro life views. I suppose it's a step up from someone such as Todd Akins who clearly is mistaken when he was heard stating that a woman who is raped cannot become pregnant because the body shuts down. What these two examples illustrate are the difference between someone who holds an ideal of life and the other is either severely uneducated or worse deliberately spreading lies. While it's an abomination to say the things both of those gentlemen did, it exposes their mind set and it should be heard so we can decide how we are going to use our power in this situation. However, in order to determine this we need to be able to listen to the perspectives.

 Are we going to like everything we hear? Absolutely not, but we do not have to agree with it and can make different choices. When you shut a faction down, choices are removed leaving other factions disenfranchised and trapped in whatever situation they are in usually resulting in a volatile situation. Each side is so busy vying for power and control that they not only refuse to acknowledge the other as human beings they stop acting as human beings. We see this most eloquently in the public conversation being had about how the unborn are people, corporations are people, but women and their reproduction organs must be legislated into an oblivion as though we are not people. They become so obsessed with their goals, fears and agendas that the means justify the ends and they justify anything they did while minimizing or even denying harm done driving each faction into deeper raving, foaming at the mouth, madnesses until no one can see straight. They become sociopaths or they may have started out as psychopaths. Either way, the real goal of these fighting factions is obtaining power and not just any power. . . the worst kind: power over.

You will hear all sorts of reasons why Patriarchy should rule and why Matriarchy should rule, some of them may be deceptively seductive and sound logical. However, the true course of power should be managed in a balanced manner that heals schisms which means that not one agency should rule everything: not Matriarchy, not Patriarchy, not Oligarchy or Theocracy. We should shudder when any one agency vies for power in the manner we are seeing happen today in all arenas. We should deny them that power in any way we can. The best solution: vote with your feet. The Grand Canyon may have a huge gap between the sides, but the places between those gaps are beautiful and worthy of exploring. Ok, you might need goat feet. . . but first go inside and see if what you believe are really your beliefs.

Mushroom Dreams

I feel like I should have mushrooms growing on me. After all mushrooms, eat away the dying decayed parts left after the life of a thing has left. My far away eyes have seen them while I dream. Great, glowing crowns and caps feeding on the rot of my long decayed marriage. I hope when they are done with their necrotic feast that life is revealed beneath. A glowing one. One that is absent of abuse and silent fear. I still can't see a vision of that life. I am still muddling through daily things: Get up, check the email for job apps hoping for a response to one, drink coffee, shower. . . banish the shadow in my mind's eye. He gets a little farther away, that shadow, but he's like a stubborn poltergeist clinging to this side of the realms determined to terrify the living. I still have thoughts of 'I can't believe I loved him, how stupid of me.' I try to remind myself that loving someone is a gift to be able to give and that trust is a blessing to give as well; the fact he betrayed those things is on him, not me. It doesn't always work on the PTSD monster and that one is a wicked, ugly beast, more so than the shadow.

I feel like I should weigh in on the Santa Barbara massacre of women. I have had to be careful with that subject, it hits close to home. My ex was talking about getting a gun before all of this blew up and I wonder now about what could have happened, what still could happen if he actually has one unbeknownst to me. (Since he has everything he wants, including an order for me to be a piggy bank, he won't do anything most likely. Can't kill the piggy bank you know. ) It is breath stealing for me to see out in the open such misogynistic views and self entitlement to something that is a sacred gift from one person to another. Demands for it, in fact, like the female gender owes every male what he wants right now with no expectation of having to give anything in return. It enrages me actually. I have never expected in all of my adult life that a man would simply give me a sexual encounter simply because I wanted it and thought I deserved it, not even from my husband. To have a whole class of males who think women should drop everything they are doing right now and surrender their bodies to them because they want it would reduce us to nothing more than chattel. A thing. Property. Haven't women come farther in the mind's eye of men than simply something to use and discard when we no longer fit their lives? What does this mean for my daughter? What happens to her when she says no and some male decides that her 'no' is irrelevant? Her father has already weighed in on what he thinks about that by how he has treated her mother, so of course, I have fears about that. Will he blame her should something horrible happen? Most likely. The dark ages for women, it seems, never left. it was only glossed over with pretty paint and dainty chains placed on us so we wouldn't notice the underlying leer much less vocalize the fear of the silent threat of death when we say NO.

There are men out there like Joss Whedon, who makes a point to write characters of strong women who will kick your ass if you look at them wrong, but does he know how hard it is for a woman who has had everything about her femininity betrayed and ground into the earth to rise and try to be Zoe, or Buffy, or River??? Does he realize how wicked and undermining PTSD is? Does he realize that for sufferers of PTSD just making it through a PTSD day without jumping off a bridge is a good one? Then there is Wil Wheaton, who may know a bit of the PTSD thing as he has bouts of depression. He champions us as well by speaking out about rape culture and stands up for geek girls everywhere. Then, of course, there is Sir Patrick Stewart who does things like stand out in the open with signs and openly advocates the halt of violence against women. I can't imagine how that small child inside of him still feels about what his father did to his mother and him.

They are just three of many men who come immediately to mind who do not view us as toys to be used and tossed and I am grateful to them. I tell myself on PTSD days that these are shining examples of masculinity in the public eye cheering women on, but the one I have in front of me the most these days is my own father who is learning how to handle the PTSD ( it's as difficult to watch as it is to endure, I am learning.) Some days, the only thing he can do is toss chocolate at me from a safe distance and tell me he loves me. I am grateful for that too, he has not ducked his head and run for the hills. He reminds me that society isn't all ill, but most of it is in need of serious change. The one change he continually advocates: leave. He's right. It's always the only answer to correct a society gone awry: leave. Jump on the next space ship and head for that colony. Would someone please build that space ship and colony dammit??? I'll work on the gardens and herbal medicine team. . . witches are useful you know;).

These women in Santa Barbara did nothing more than breathe and they were killed for it. One of them may have said no once on the insistence that Elliot get a personality that looked something human like. Women can insist all they want to be treated as something sacred as a human, but until more men scorn those other men immediately around them who treat women like a target, this issue cannot heal. This is not just a women's issue. It a men's issue. Men, it's time to really use that 'man card' for the reason it was given to you. No one can take it away from you, but you sure as hexes surrender it every time you let your buddies mow over a woman who may as well be your daughter, mother, wife, girlfriend, sister, lover, niece, grandma, best friend.

One day I'll get my Zoe, River, Buffy back, but for now, the mushrooms are working on eating away the rotten parts. Who knows, maybe some of the fun ones will grow.