Mreow. This is probably not long, more proof of life than anything else.  Yes, I'm still alive. Just not been writing here.

Irish fest season starts this weekend and I have tickets for a midweek show of the Broadway tour of Great Gatsby. I finished SVD dates last week but the partisan primary election official date is the Tues (for which I am scheduled to work 6a-close) after La Crosse/Minneapolis Irishfests, right before my sister's family flies into the area on Weds night and are in town during Milwaukee irishfest. So I have 

Madison is right now at the heart of a police shooting of a black-Hispanic man (the third in that area of the city since 2012) and the city is being supportive of the protests and vigils and closing down the street and not getting cops involved in the demonstrators shutting down roads and keeping people out of businesses -- but the cost as i see it is 1) you're not furthering their ends or have anything they're asking for other than expressing outrage and power over anyone who isn't outwardly stating they're with you giving way 2) they're losing their allies and harming those they wish to serve (particularly BIPOC and LGBTQ+ who make up a large percentage of the service industry) because they are going to cause all the line cooks and staff at the restaurants/bars they are blockading people entering to be out of work because managers can't have staff coming in if they have no customers and if those jobs are lost, restaurants/bars are barely hanging on rn and those staff won't be able to get into another job quickly or easily 3) right now is NOT the time to have a left leaning city seeming like the local government isn't in control in a way that will draw national attention to provide test case "proof" of reasons to institute national guard or martial law in a progressive sanctuary city literally 2 weeks before a state wide primary election as test case for what certain people would want to institute in Nov.  That third potential consequence RIGHT NOW is very real and very close to happening, every day that passes and the actions continue and actually shut down more and more of the city the closer I can feel that reality coming into focus among the fatelines. 

It was also very interesting being at the Concerts on the Square event that was interrupted by the protestors marching to the capitol the day that the shooting occurred and the difference between how it was being there for the event that was interrupted versus the media portrayal.  The shooting happened at 1:30 that afternoon, while most people were at work, and the police statement happened at 5 after the point everyone was already downtown -- and it's not an event where many people are on their phones, you're more likely to see someone with a physical book than on their phone. Most people are having a picnic, talking to the people they are with or reading a book waiting for friends/family to arrive, before the chamber orchestra live concert. So most people who were there had no idea. Then when they marches in, you couldn't hear them on their megaphones to understand what was happening until the conductor handed over the microphone to one of the march members who is actually a community organizer who explained what had happened and then asked for 2mins moment of silence which everyone there was ready to take part in and her moment of silence was interrupted by protestors getting in the face of the people attending the event. Then they were upset that people were leaving as it became clear the event was being handed over to the protestors -- but you had families with young children and elderly people from Capitol Lakes retirement center caught in the middle of it AND everyone who was there was burdened with all their picnic reality gear/bags, they had been drinking (the event has an open intoxicant permit on the capitol lawn tl 10p BUT if the event gets cancelled, so does that permit) and many still had open wine bottles and other glass objects with them AND they had kitchen knives for slicing cheese and meats and veggies and such -- none of which are a problem at a picnic but none of which belong at a political protest event. So literally everyone who had been drinking, who had open glass beverages, who had knives, or who had small children/elderly with them and who had their picnic blankets/baskets were trying to get out of there immediately EVEN IF they planned to come back once they no longer had open alcohol  or knives or carrying bulky items with glass and breakables involved. And at the same time, the vendors and food carts were all being ordered to pack up and get out of there since the event had ended to make sure that the propane and knives and potential dangerous items were being removed before any potential escalation. I didn't disagree with the way it was handled and ceding the space for the rawness of that evening, but I also understood the necessity of getting the people and items (including the dangerous to have if arrests happen as well as the instruments including the rented for outdoor use grand piano, the sound system, etc) out of there because certain things don't belong at any protest/demonstration for everyone's safety. So it was very interesting to see the difference between the chaos of the reasons for people not to stay if they could even understand what was going on and the way the media portrayed it that the people who couldn't clearly hear what was being said weren't responding in solidarity and that the bulk of people who were set out for a picnic (including having glass bottles, alcohol, and knives on them) were taking their families and leaving.  And I'm not saying that anything about what happened that day was right or shouldn't have been protested or the event canceled and the space ceded -- I'm just saying that the way media covered those who were there for the weekly concert picnic and didn't stay for the protest was very different than the experience on the ground of being there as the events unfolded, especially given the number of picnickers who had been drinking wine/beer for several hours, had open bottles of wine on them, and had knives and glassware and all their picnicking items with them as well as kids and elderly. (And the kids actually had a hard time with it, especially those who were older than kindergarten age and were terrified it was going to turn into a shooting and having fight or flight "need to get out of the crowd get somewhere safe" reactions including some of them hyperventilating freaking out worrying the baby people were coming for them as they were hearing the constant angry protestors talking about someone being shot and then not hearing anything else due to the faulty megaphones being used.)

 Anyway, that's a local thing that is ongoing but it's reaching international press like The Independent and not just people who pay attention to BLM and civil rights related events/demonstrations, and there have been a lot of big/expensive local events cancelled (most of them music or community coming together related) and the area of the street where it happened just shut down for ongoing vigil and other large groups of protestors shutting down roads and not letting people into restaurants/bars in other areas of downtown that may lead to businesses shuttering and national attention to send in federal level attempts to get the city "back under control" right during a state wide election. 

 Also. My cousin who said back when we were both in our 20s that she didn't want to live through the burning world watch everything fall apart and who has spent the last year and a half battling with stage 3 triple negative breast cancer that has never fully gone into remission got bad news recently and while she's still fighting it is unclear for how long as it continues to seem a losing battle. Also also. my grandmother feels frail and her soul light guttering like Audrey Pupburn over her last six months and I'm not convinced she will make it to her next appointments I am supposed to take her to later in the autumn. On verra. But my death sight doesn't currently see either of them making it another year. I could be wrong so I'm keeping what I see for their paths to myself, and I would very much like to be, but both their soul lights are burning low and sputtering out and with both I've been experiencing "last times we do this together" sparks of knowing all year long...

Um, beyond that, we are now past the World Cup and as far as I can connect to my future self with my preocgs and have entered what I've called "the burning times" since my prophetic nightmares about what was coming back when I was in university before there was made a stepping stone path through it. Right now, we are only entering into the burning times and you won't like ANY of the immutable precogs I've seen of what's happening and what's coming. It's the time when the whole world is on fire (literally) and the politicians/techbros are burning the knowledge of ages and the average person may or may not survive the tumult of what is coming in that time.... I'm making plans with people and have tickets, but I can't see any of my own small time loop immutable precogs right now -- not even what I will wear or eat or seeing me at an event/plan (though many of these events I planned to be at keep getting randomly cancelled or moved due to unexpected circumstances.) I can see potential fatelines, but I can only weigh their likelihood, none of them are contingent precogs where anything I say or do could shift them. And the only things I can see are the continuing/upcoming tragedies. Now I'm not sure if this is because of the chaos in the fatelines (personal and global) so only the really big things are reaching me through the chaos of them OR if it's a personal subconscious block because I have a really hard time bearing my gifts when the earth is burning and the tree and animals are all screaming and dying in drought and fires and the floods... Like, I always have to shut down my gifts during drought times or when I am too near wildfires because otherwise the pain of the trees and wild animals are so overwhelming I can't function. So I can't speak to which of those are the reason I can't reach my future self or if maybe I'm nearing the end of my life in this body due to something I've not yet foreseen but which approaches. I've worried my own life might be getting cut short before when it is my gifts being shut down due to the overload of drought/wildfire related pain/deaths and the hurting of the planet level. So i can't say which it is -- only that right now, I can't connect to my own future self for my small little quotidian precogs even as simple as glimpsing myself at a meal I enjoy or somewhere with people/animals I care abut doing things I enjoy. Even when I have plans for these things and the plans happen, I can't SEE them ahead of time like I normally do. Right now I'm only receiving the big awful immutable precogs that affect larger global concerns (but it does include the small little reliefs about what doesn't burn even amidst all that does and all the screaming trees and terror filled wild animal deaths) and involve lots of tragedy for many people are all I can precog as true precogs not sifting through potential fatelines before they happen and that's looking as close as later the same day and for as far forward as I can reach. 

 

Anyway. All of these are heavy things (locally, globally, and in what weighs heavy upon my soul with my gifts as so much of the world is burning/suffering/dying and yet more is still to burn before we reach the other side of what I've referred to since the prophetic dreams back in university as "the time of burnings that is coming and we cannot escape entirely") and the only sliver of hope I have to offer myself or anyone else is that the time of the burnings and all that is lost through it will clear the space for whatever new is to grow for humanity and communities and individuals and the world as a whole. 

I don't know how long the time of burnings lasts, not only do I process passage of time wyrdly as my general state of isness but visions and precogs are snapshots/vignettes of moments pulled out of the flow of time that can only be for into timelines by context or other time markers within them. I know there is still more to happen in the time of burnings that I have seen and I know we have already entered into it. And I know I cannot (yet) peek into beyond it -- but that may be because of the sheer volume and weight of the pain and the suffering and the dying and the trees/plants/animals screaming in their terror is too overwhelmingly loud for my gifts so I have closed my gifts down quiet as I can mute them (as much as I can) and turned inward as much as possible to keep going step by step through it. But I cannot tell you how long the time of burnings will last, only that we are now well and truly entered into it and that there is more I have seen that is not yet unfolded into the present.

But right now, it's hard and it hurts, and I can't see ahead anything but the most brutal/tragic of the things yet to come so I'm keeping all my Cassandra-ing to myself inside me and doing my best to bear that weight alone since it is hard enough as others have to live it without knowing it's coming and they can do nothing to alter it.... And there is worse to come, even now with so much of the world literally on fire this is not yet even the worst I've seen unfolding during the time of the burnings.... It is a heavy time to carry such gifts as I have that are meant to be used to heal and to help avoid the worst of the fatelines but for now can only help you bear witness to the horrors and the hurting as it all burns around you.... It just is. 

Which is why I said I couldn't face what I knew was coming while lying to myself about could bes that somehow never are. It's why I had to face the truth of the current isness and the past choices made and let go completely and without any bitterness or desire things were different ahead of entering the burning times following the end of the World Cup which was as far ahead as I could see my little personal precogs and beyond which I only felt the pain and the suffering and saw what was going to be lost and all the destruction still to come til those who survive it reach the other side of the time of the burnings..... I don't have room on my shoulders or strength to keep carrying empty hopes and promises of dreams that never became reality with me with the weight of everything I'm carrying of what is and still will be through this time of the fires and the floods. You wouldn't either if you'd seen the dreams and precogs I've been carrying inside me for so long that I've only given small warnings to those closest to me because it's too much and they need to hold on to some hope and create plans they can try to make real until things change so they make new plans -- or they won't reach the other side of all this that's here and all that is still to come.

 

Ugh. This is too dark a place to end this. I need to head home though. Happy Aquarius full moon -- focus on the humanitarian good aspects of Aquarius you want to see manifesting into the world. And. you can't stop the burnings or take from me the precogs that are mine to carry. So celebrate the full moon which is tomorrow (now it's past midnight) away from being exact and focus on the good and bright things you have in your life right now through this Leo season and that you can hug to you while you have it even through this time of burnings. 

April/May/June Book List

 

Books Read: 

~Neal Shusterman, Scythe (435 pgs) [I decided to reread the Arc of a Scythe trilogy because 1) it's really really good!! 2) it's been a while since I read it and 3) most importantly, I had picked up a collection of short stories set in this universe but they're more complex and across different eras so I wanted to reread the trilogy and then read the short stories. I figured Aries season was the right season for it]

~Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead (504 pgs)

~T. S. Eliot, Selected Poems (127 pgs) [This included my annual reading of The Wasteland in April because April is the cruelest month. Some of them were quite good that I'd never read before but knew lines from, but the later poems got VERY Jesurific, which I didn't expect of Eliot but I guess I don't know much of his later life.] 

~Neal Shusterman, The Toll (625 pgs)

~Neal Shusterman, Gleanings (423 pgs)

~Sappho (translated by Aaron Pochigian), Stung With Love: Poems and Fragments (148 pgs)

~Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta (92 pgs)

~Diane Stanley, Bella at Midnight (278 pgs)

~Eugen Vodolazkin, Laurus (365 pgs)

~Molly O'Neill, Greenteeth (308 pgs) [This was absolutely fantastic! One of my favorite standalones I've read in a long while!]

~Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (493 pgs)

~Christopher Marlowe, Edward the Second (100 pgs)

~Atia Abawi, A Land of Permanent Goodbyes (285 pgs)

~Howard Muggamin, The Jewish Americans (125 pgs)

~John Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (451 pgs)

~Richard Adams, Watership Down (478 pgs)

~Pascal, Pensées et Opuscules (105 pgs)

~Richard Adams, Tales from Watership Down (335 pgs)

~Michel de Montaigne, Essais extraits livre premier (129 pgs)

~Deborah Harkness, The Blackbird Oracle (444 pgs) [I picked this up in paperback but hadn't read it yet. I will typically re-read a series before reading the new one in it. But I saw her post on socials that you could read this one along the actual dates of the story real time read along across the summer if you started it end of May and that sounded fun and since she's writing I think at least two more in the world/series I figure I can reread this one after the trilogy and Time's Convert whenever I get around to reading them. And anyway, I feel like it wasn't THAT long ago that I read the other 4...So I thought I would give it a try see how I felt about doing a real time read along of it from late May through mid Aug while reading lots of other books throughout, lol. Yeah. I did fine with the first chapters but then when I was supposed to wait a week I got too impatient and decided to just read it all rather than having other stories and worlds interspersing it across 3.5 months. I always had a hard time with assigned readings at school waiting on the schedule for novels (except like in university when I had like 600-1200 pgs to read every week between all my courses on top of labs, lectures, essays, etc) and even then I would often just finish a good novel in one go and then focus on the other readings.]

~George Sand, Contes d'une Grand-mère (508 pgs) 

~Christopher Marlowe, The Massacre at Paris (50 pgs) [this is the last play in my 601 pg Penguin copy of The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe -- but I listed the others as I was reading them. This one is also significantly shorter than the others because the only copy of it seems to be edited/abridged missing key parts though some of the missing lines exist in shorter documents in personal collections. It's too bad really as I enjoyed what there was of it and the Duc de Guise had some fantastic evil villain monologues]

~Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (332 pgs)

~Michel de Montaigne, Essais extraits livre second (127 pgs)

~Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu, The Eldest Curses 1: The Red Scroll of Magic (349 pgs) [I read this one a while ago and then didn't read it as part of my reread marathon last year because I have the second one but the third one the trilogy is not released. Only then she mentioned in her email newsletter that she was waiting to publish it until after the entirety of her NEXT trilogy she is currently writing is done as it involves things in those books. And this trilogy weaves through the other main series at different points in it, but from the perspective of Magnus and Alec once they're together -- making it a perfect choice for Pride month. And I don't want these sitting in my unread waiting for followup books stacks for literal years waiting on the other newest trilogy. And since I read all the rest just last year, I figured my brain remained immersed enough in the world/characters/storylines to finish these and put them away until the next reread which will be after the entire next trilogy and the last in this trilogy are released in paperbacks.]

~Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu, The Eldest Curses 2: The Lost Book of the White (368 pgs) 

~Ruth Benedict, Morality is Relative (essay in the Louis P. Pojman book Philosophy: The Quest for Truth Sixth Edition -- I have been and still am reading this essays intermittently between other fiction and nonfiction books, generally taking a pause between each section to read some other nonfiction titles. I will include the entire book in the list whenever I happen to finish it, but I am listing the essays individually for context of my own reading/thinking habits of the time.)

~The Gnostic Bible (860 pgs) [I made my great-great-aunt a promise as a child that while I couldn't promise her to become a Catholic, since I am at best classified as a pantheist omnist universalist pagan, I would continue to read scriptures on the regular and consider it; I did not say WHICH scriptures though she made an assumption about that. So I keep in the kitchen scriptures from various eras and religions and even cults that I read while waiting for the timer on my tea to steep. Often I do pliés, relevés, and/or tendues while I'm standing there reading and waiting for hot water to work its magic on steeping tea, lol. So I do light chores tidying up while waiting for the kettle to boil then after I set the timer while waiting for the tea to steep I read scriptures from some world religion, modern or ancient or heretical, while doing ballet barre exercises. I read this one over a long while of short reads while waiting on tea to steep, so it wasn't all read in this interim, this is just when I finished it]

~James Rachels, Morality Is Not Relative (essay in the Louis P. Pojman book Philosophy: The Quest for Truth Sixth Edition -- I have been and still am reading this essays intermittently between other fiction and nonfiction books, generally taking a pause between each section to read some other nonfiction titles. I will include the entire book in the list whenever I happen to finish it, but I am listing the essays individually for context of my own reading/thinking habits of the time.)

~Jenny Moss, Shadow (377 pgs)

~Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent (418 pgs)

~Sarah Lyddon Morrison, The Modern Witch's Spellbook (246 pgs) [this was published in 1971. Not very modern now. In fact, INCREDIBLY dated. Not very useful either. I don't think I'm going to keep it.]

~V. E. Schwab, The Near Witch (355 pgs) [this was fantastic! I really enjoyed it even if it did have some flaws she would have polished out with the help of an editor. It's the first book since Greenteeth that I had to binge read devour all in one late night/early morning, only pausing to make more te when my cuppa was empty and to make me use the bathroom while I was up to put the kettle on -- but also I was reading it while walking and while waiting on the kettle and the tea to steep instead of doing my normal "this is your productive/exercise race against the time it take for the water to boil" how I typically hack my ADHD while making tea/coffee. If you enjoy any of these tropes/genres: Gothic spooky wind and rain swept moors, witchy magic is real, Pied Piper retellings, strong defiant female characters, mob rule "us vs them" mentality is always blindly cruel while the liminal outsiders not accepted by the clique always see truly from the heart, and fantasy-love story-mystery all rolled into one...then you too will love reading this one.] 

~Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club (415 pgs) [this has been recommended so many times and it is on so many lists and banned so many places and so I decided that since it was Pride month and National Immigrant's Month and last month was Chinese American Heritage Month it made sense to read it now. I'd had it for a while, but I hadn't bought the companion novel to go with it so decided I'd wait until I found it in paperback. Anyway. I found this novel incredibly...banal... It was at least a quick read. But it reminded me of like a queer version of Sweet Valley High and Lurlene McDaniels books that some of the girls in middle school all read and when I tried I just found insipid with almost no plot to them. It was fine, and I could see where it would be deeply meaningful for people who had similar journeys of self discovery leading to coming out of the closet. But, I mean, I grew up with lesbian aunts in a very open minded eclectic progressive family that never viewed sexuality as anything more than a personal preference of likes/dislikes like some people liking beer and some people not liking it, so it was very hard for me to relate to why any of the feelings should be shameful or furtive or an act of discovery -- much the same as I felt about the stupid romance drama novels of soap operas for teens and tweens when I tried to read them. The feelings of love and attraction I understand, but not the furtive rebellious aspects of it. Lust and love and who you like is all personal tastes and rejection stings no matter who it's from or the reasons, but mostly I just found the start of this novel banal and insipid and didn't see what the fuss was about, either for or against it, and it was very hard for me not to DNF it. Once you get through the first section the novel improves as you get into the history of the era and the individual vs society stigma of being LGBTQ+ at that time, it just takes a solid 80-100pgs to get there. I can see where if you didn't grow up hearing these sorts of stories within your own family (my Aunt Katha and Aunt Geeta actually met out in San Francisco back in the late 70s or early 80s) this would be a transformative eye opening book as to what the repression and taboo and stigma and coded lifestyle was really like for most of the 20th century. I think it's a good documentation of what it would have been like living then for those who don't know the history when LGBTQ+ was less accepted and I can see where it would be healing/cathartic for teens who are closeted in more conservative families/communities. Once you're past the first 80-100pgs or so, it does become a beautiful book of a love story in a specific time and place within American history. You just have to get past the early teen soap opera sweet valley high intro to Lily's world. This was a purse book and I will read the companion book set much later pretty much contemporary -- but also as a purse book so it might take me a bit longer than my at home books to finish it.]

~Rebecca Thorne, Can't Spell Treason Without Tea (339 pgs) [this was a very adorable Sapphic cozy fantasy (first in a quartet) that I decided would be a good way to go or closing out pride month with the sun in Cancer. It's not particularly spicy, but it is full of puns and love stories and it's about a queen's guard running off with the greatest mage in the entire known world so they can open a bookshop and teashop together in the middle of nowhere. It is cozy and enjoyable and full of wit and community and love matches of all types spicing through the adventures. It's very sun in Cancer end of Pride month perfection and I look forward to drinking lots of cups of tea with my fur babies cuddled up nearby as I read the remaining three books in the quartet.]

 

Books Acquired:

~Joe Abercrombie, The Devils

~Michelle Collins Anderson, The Moonshine Women

~Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

~Leigh Bardugo, Hell Bent

~Peter S. Beagle, The Way Home

~Jebediah Berry, The Naming Song

~Anne Birrell (trans.), New Songs From a Jade Terrace: An Anthology of Early Chinese Love Poetry

~Holly Black, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories

~Pierre Boulle, The Planet of the Apes

~Anna Bright, The Hedge Witch of Fox Hall

~C. J. Burright, Druid Cursed

~Debbie Cassidy, Wicked Onyx

~Ova Ceren, The Book of Heartbreak

~Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

~Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

~Zoraida Córdova, The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

~Julie Carrick Dalton, The Last Beekeeper

~Oliver Darkshire, Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil

~Charles Dickens (abridged by Mary Louise Aswell), The Dickens Digest: Contains David Copperfield, Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Martin Chuzzlewit [I do own all 4 of these books unabridged. My mum picked this up for $2 while out west visiting familyand it's published in 1943 so going with older books]

~Grace Draven, Dragon Unleashed

~A. Rae Dunlap, The Resurrectionist

~Egyptology

~Jaymin Eve, Spellcaster

~Laurie Forest, The Black Witch 

~Jeffrey Gantz (translator), Early Irish Myths and Sagas

~Joanne M. Harris, The Gospel of Loki

~Taylor Hartley, Song of the Hell Witch

~Natalie Haynes, Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth

~Horace, The Complete Works of Horace Translated By Many Hands (very cool old edition published in Great Britain in 1923)

~J. K. Huysmans, Against Nature

~Isabel Ibañez, Together We Burn 

~James Islington, The Shadow of What Was Lost

~M. R. James, Collected Ghost Stories

~Liu Jung-en (translator), Six Yüan Plays

~Yume Kitasei, The Stardust Grail

~Gabriela Romero La Cruz, The River and the Star

~Kim LaDow & Katie Ryan Donohue (illus), Henry and the Mermaid at the Vilas Zoo

~Mariely Lares, Sun of Blood and Ruin

~Judy I. Lin, A Magic Steeped in Poison

~Judy I. Lin, A Venom Dark and Sweet

~Malinda Lo, A Scatter of Light

~H. M. Long, Entwined

~Hannah Lynn, The Women of Artemis

~Robert MacFarlane & Jackie Morris, The Lost Spells

~J. D. McClatchy (editor), On Wings of Song: Poems About Birds

~Jean Menzies (editor), Fairies, Elves and Sprites Myths and Legends

~Jean Menzies (editor), Mermaids, Sirens and Selfies Myths and Legends

~Rieka Moonsong, Owl Magick

~Lucy Moore, Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France

~Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Bewitching 

~Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

~Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes

~Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular

~Haruki Murakami, Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of The World

~Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

~Sosuke Natsukawa, The Cat Who Saved the Library

~Paul Negri (editor), English Victoria. Poetry 

~Claire North, Slow Gods

~Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

~Lauren Owen, The Quick

~Heather Pringle, The NorthWomen

~Ava Reid, The Wolf and the Woodsman

~Madeline Roux, House of Furies

~Caitlin Rozakis, Dreadful

~Katherine Rundell, Impossible Creatures

~O. O. Sangoyomi, Masquerade

~V. E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

~Michael Scott, The Secrets of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel 4: The Necromancer [I have been looking for this one for AGES so I could finish reading the series which I started back when the first one came out didn't come back to. And I always found all the other volumes or found this one in the wrong edition so it wouldn't match the rest I already owned. And ordering online, even used, was high likelihood of getting the wrong edition. I am so happy to have this one FINALLY!!!! I am missing two novellas that can be bought together as lost tales though that are much harder to find but I want before I read these.]

~Sydney Shields, An Arcane Study of Stars

~Sydney Shields, The Honey Witch

~Tore Skeie, The Wolf Age

~Mark Small & Jack Shoulder, Museum Bums 

~Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

~Susan Stokes-Chapman, The Shadow Key

~Greer Stothers, Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs To Dir

~Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Hyena and the Hawk

~Adrian Tchaikovsky, Days of Shattered Faith

~Cari Thomas, Shadowstitch

~Stuart Turton, The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 3: 11 & 12: Explorer 1 & Explorer 2 [this is my grandma's multi series series she wrote and I went to reread them but found I was missing this one. I will do a reread later this year, I was thinking to read along with Mo. My mum got her the first book as she is the right age for how these are written and she's so social I though she might enjoy reading together more than just her experiencing the story]

~Azadeh Westergaard & Júlia Sardà (illustrator), A Life Electric: The Story of Nikola Tesla

~Maithree Wijesekara, The Prince Without Sorrow

~Maithree Wijesekara, The Witch Without Memory

~Benjamin Zephaniah & Melissa Castrillón (illustrator), Leave the Trees Please

 

So somehow, with my last post, I went in to edit a typo I noticed in another area of it and the entire paragraph disappeared about all my socials serving up so much Ilia Malinin content as well as othe rfigure skaters and especially Stars on ice related content. (I did not get to go see it. I couldn't go to the Chicago show as it was the same night as The Howleys show in Milwaukee I already had tickets to go see and then the Minneapolis show was on Mother's Day proper and my mum was back and forthing about to go or not given the number of hours in the car versus length of show/price point and I left it up to her because Mother's Day. And since I watch figure skating with her throughout the season, it felt wrong to give her the peace out on her day to go see it by myself.) And because I had saved the changes, not realizing i somehow did that on my phone, I couldn't even copy/paste put it back after saving the edit, lol.

Curiously, right when it happened, I was going through an emotional overhtinking roller coaster ptsd type moment about Ilia Malinin's socials. Because, the next morning after I'd posted here and made a comment on a video on the supposedly official fb page (actually marked as his official and had thousands of followers on it so I just assumed it legit) disappeared for me. And I spiraled badly took it deeply personal thinking that like what Britt and Liz had done, someone had somehow taken offense at a statement I had thought honest innocuous and decided to block me and how could it have happened again and about that comment of all things and really I thought him so much  more chill mature than that not the type to play mean girls bullying head games. And I spiraled hard, took it deeply personal, went through a gamut of emotions of it -- and it was literally all just me reliving everything from when that happened with Britt surrounding the Delta Rae instagram account so many years ago. And I was like, 'Nope can't do that again. Should just cut ties and run and don't know what I will do next season or how I'll be able to watch him again and I had loved everything I observed about him and how he skates and his aesthetics as a performer/athlete. And luckily I had to take my gran to an eye appointment that day so I had to shelve my feelings, not do anything impulsive and give me time to think instead of overreact based on what had happened before to me with online bullying via ostracism. So I waited and I found a page with nothing much on it at alll that kept coming up that felt more like his somehow and I started thinking about the discrepencies between his insta which is definitely him and what the content the account had been sharing and questioning what I had previously assumed was pr or someone else handling fb for him but not having the accounts linked to automatically post his insta posts/stories to his fb account. So I was overthinking and feeling intense rsd over it but didn't let me reactionary do anything stupid made me wait a bit til calmer. And then I found other people asking where his fb went and then I found a reddit thread about his socials specifically the problems of the false account that kept zombie coming back claiming to be his account and a link to his X post about having to create an official x account and an actual fb page to stop the fakes and the x post went directly to that page with almost nothing on it so I decided to follow it. And then the very next morning he posted a story on his insta about having brought back his only official facebook page and the link on his profile and it went directly to that page. And I just laughed, in relief but also at myself for how much I spun out with the rsd took it personal due to the memory/past bullying from Britt/Liz on the Delta Rae socials and how I over-reacted thinking it was about me having done something wrong that I couldn't udnerstand how it was wrong what i did but ending up being blocked for it -- and this time it had absolutely NOTHING to do with me or any comments I made, just serendipitous timing I had made a comment on what was a fake account he finally got taken down from a social media platform he doesn't choose to use but also didn't want people thinking an account was him when it isn't him or even his team. Guess as much as I feel like I've healed and let it go from all that mess the girls made of what should have been easy and lost the band several longtime dedicated loyal fans over it (me and all my friends/family I introduced to their music and who loved them through me because of me and my enthusiasm sharing their music) but there's still a sore spot reactionary defensive thing in me on the subject of potentially being blocked after making a comment with no communication and no way to understand what I even had done wrong only that I'm not welcome to play with them anymore or sit at their lunch table because mean girls rules of ostracism. 

I hadn't realized there was something so rsd (rejection sensitive dysphoria) defensive and easily hurt and reactionary in me to anything that appeared to be repeating that pattern even if it was actually nothing at all like that or any similar thing. And I didn't need to follow him on fb if he's not there, I just wanted to boost his numbers because it does matter for metrics and was enjoying getting the videos of his performances and from posts he was tagged in or stories shared on insta -- I'm perfectly happy to have his insta and his youtube to follow (whenever he decides what he wants to start posting to his youtube.)  

And the funniest thing about it was that...i am enough years older than him that when I first saw him on the seniors competition circuit, my thought was awestruck wonder, "O, THIS KID IS INCREDIBLE!!" But also, that's how I saw him still, as a kid. Which eh was at that time being a teenager. But in my head I still always thought of him as a wonder kid even as the years have passed for both of us. Weirdly, what happened at the Olympics and how mature his handling of a situation that most people get to live out privately and he had to do in the most public way possible... It was seeing how he handled that situation and grew from it was when I saw his maturity and so I mentally switched to thinking of him as an amazing young man with a beautiful soul defying gravity and being real about coping with the emotional load of the pressure of expectations of perfection (both internal and external) as opposed to thinking of him as the boy who did mind blowing impossible things in competitions.  But it was directly following the Olympics and how he handled it that my internal perspective on him shifted from seeing him as a boy to recognizing him as a man as a direct reaction to the maturity he displayed in handling the worst nightmare scenarios he could have envisaged for himself. It was a decisive change inside me that happened recognizing the passage of years and the maturity in the man he has become and is becoming not just seeing the boy wonder kid he was as the quadgod of the niche figure skating world.

And it was a very definite switch inside me how I saw him and thought of him, which was probably why the seeming immaturity blindsided me so hard when I thought it a repeat of the bullying via ostracism behaviors of Britt/Liz my fault of an honest thing I had said. And it was such a relief to realize that I had completely misunderstood the situation not seen the bigger picture, and none of it had anything to do with me or anything I had said/doneor him being immature or anything like I'd been thinking when the rsd defensiveness hijacked my emotions.

Anyway. Everything I'd said in that paragraph that disappeared is still true and I can't remember all the things I wrote in that other paragraph, but my socials are SOOOO full of Ilia content and other skaters I follow content and Stars on Ice related content. It's a little weird because as much as I adore figure skating and have since I was a little girl, it's a sport spectator fan type of love and so I don't generally think about figure skaters at all between World Championships and grand Prix. Which is probably rather unfair, but also expected, of me not to think about the sport or the athletes at all during some of the grind of their career as they figure out their next season performances and start learning them practicing and designing costumes and doing all the creative process portion and the hard drill work of getting any choregraphy into the damn muscle memory. (Dancer (ballet, lyrical, Irish, belly dance, and dabbled in Luigi style jazz, ballroom, and modern -- but only was good at waltzes and the latin style dances of those I dabbled in; my style didn't suit jazz or modern well) and competitive sabre fencer and martial arts -- I fully understand the importance of drilling until your muscles know what to do and you could do it in your sleep. There are songs that are like sleeper codes kick me into choreographies I couldn't consciously have told you the steps at this point and I once nearly broke a man's arm at a High Kings concert when the martial arts muscle memory kicked in. But in all fairness, that was AFTER he intentionally reached out hit me in the back of the head after telling his pouty girlfriend who wanted to swing dance in the middle of crowded standing room pit area that he would make people move for her and he had no idea the girl he chose to intentionally hit in the head had Tae Kwon Doe related muscle memory dormant in her so she quickly pivot stepped under his arm into an outside lunge grabbed that extended arm in an elbow lock nearly snapped his arm like a chicken wing between her arms told him never to touch her again or I'd break something more than just his arm and if they wanted to swing dance THEY needed to go to the empty area behind everyone crowded together, preferably on the other side of the stage from me. I have never seen a man look that much like a bug eyed, feet trying to run but can't move cartoon character in my life -- and they slunk off immediately to go dance in the part of the floor that was empty of other people, plenty of space to swing dance if that's what you want to do without making yourself a nuisance to anyone else.  I didn't see them again the rest of the night. They had been obnoxious all night, him loudly singing off key and them both knocking into people to try to make them move so they could swing dance in the middle of the crowd but intentionally flicking his arm out to smack me in the head because his girlfriend was pouting people wouldn't make space for them was my last straw. It was actually hilarious. Especially since I know the guys in the band (Celtic music circles are small, everyone knows everyone at least by sight if not by name if you've been in the scene for years) and they absolutely LOST it from the stage started laughing staring at me and my friend who missed the whole thing because I was a bit to the side/behind her twirled to me and said, "WHAT did you DO?!" and I nonchalantly shrugged not sure what to say just as the High Kings dedicated to me a song saying, "You should never hit a lady, for any reason. Ever. Just never hit a lady. But especially not when she has glints of red in her hair andthe gleam of green in her eyes of a proper Irish temper. This one's for you Dani and all the other women here with an Irish temper." and then they played Star of the County Down.  Anyway, my point was, I fully understand the importance and the perils of drilling anything into muscle memory that you want to become automatic when it's needed.) So i understand the importance and mental difficulties of the "off season" between Worlds and Grand Prix (and also the regionals to work up the chain place for the larger competitions etc) working up new programs -- I just don't generally think about the sport or the athletes I adore within it during that gap of time. This much of them being top of mind and in my feeds is unusual but I am enjoying it.

I've been really enjoying the Stars on Ice videos from random audience members on my socials though because, as I said, I didn't go see the show in person so it meant I could at least see the choreography if not have the in person experience of it. I am NOT enjoying the amount of ai clickbait fake stories (most of them about who Ilia is dating (which is his business unless he makes it anyone else's business, which first and foremost should be about whoever he decided to date) mostly about female skaters they link him to and random health/injury/retirement rumors) about the skaters. I'm not super keen on the ai and the clickbait. But the live videos have been fantastic! And the content the skaters themselves have been sharing themselves I have loved getting to see very much!

 Anyway. I'm way over hours on work for this week now. Whoops. Not much going on -- lots of playing in the dirt and planting flowers and watering everything every evening. Also lots of reading. My parents go to their Montana cabin and to visit my sister's family at the weekend so I'll be dog sitting and trying to live two places at once with a the house I grew up in and my condo and two dogs and a cat and the cat can't be at the house I grew up in and their dog can't come to my place and she chases/hunts cats sooo yeah. So mostly just animals and plants and reading and working and some Farmer's Marketing on Saturdays until we get to FIFA World Cup season. Crissy came back from DI Globals this week so no longer checking in on her cat and back to having my bestie around for plans even if it's just meeting to go to Farmer's Market together.

That's it. And I'm so embarassed at how much my rsd defensiveness spun me out in all the feels over misunderstanding what I couldn't (yet) see the big picture of. But I'm grateful I had misunderstood and it wasn't repeating that mess at all and I hadn't done anything wrong other than thinking an official page to be a legit official page and him having fixed that. But I think I'm aslo grateful it happened like that because I had no idea how much it would hurt to think that was happening again to be cyber bullied via ostracism for something i said that was somehow wrong/upsetting but for the life of me I couldn't understand how/why it was and nobody would communicate about it and I lost a band that i really loved over it all and can't even appreciate any of their art or songs or anything they create and how much it hurt to think that was happening again over another artist (in a completely different performance art form, sport not music but still.)  Like, the hurting and the reactionary instinct overthinking didn't feel great, but this time it was literally all in my head not real or any part of what happened this time and it actually made me see how sore and easily bruised I am over that repeating. Not that I felt anything about when it happened before, but how deeply I felt about the pattern repeating it happening again me getting blocked over an honest seeming to me innocuous comment on a post. I hadn't realized I need to heal the risk of that pattern repeating and how it affects me if/when it does from anyone else whose art I enjoy and who I have admired from what I can see of them as a human and who they show themselves to be. Also though, I'm so happy that i was so completely delulu kept all that over reacting inside my own heart and soul and mind while I misunderstood and the relief I felt when I realized that nothing of the sort was happening and it had all been in my heart as real and deep as those feels about what I thought was going on had felt.

I should head home and go to bed, it got late on me because ADHD time blindness and I'm tired now and really don't need to still be here since I'm way over on hours for the week and I finished the things I HAD to do tonight, lol.

But yeah, if you are imagining me, imagine me always surrounded by flowers I'm tending and accompanied by both dogs or just my own dog/cat depending on if I'm at my parents house/work/my own home and reading a lot of books and drinking lots of tea and cooking lots of delicious meals from my weekly Farmer's Market early morning Saturday forays -- just filling my time with hermitty things that make me happy until we get to World Cup soccer season to doinate my life for a while before alllll the shows start up again in July (APT theatre tickets and Concerts on the Square picnics with the chamber orchestra on the capitol lawn every Weds) and then Aug is Irish fest season and my sister coming to visit during that as well -- and then summer fades into autumn as it always does and all my plants have to be harvested or brought inside or allowed to die as apple season begins and spooky season peek over the horizon at me!  I am very much a creature of the seasons, though some of my seasons are personal joys seasons not necessarily calendar seasons.

P.S. Here's a picture of Griffin using my shoes I forgot to put away as his pillow looking extra angelic making sure we can't leave him.

 

 

Those shoes get put away as he typically will vent his feelings about me leaving on my shoes by a) theft to go hide the shoes b) violence (especially against sandals or any shoes he wants to take out the inserts/insides of them c) violence followed by theft of whatever he stole from the shoes.  Thus why any lightweight shoes that aren't boots get put back in their cubbies and all sandals but especially teva style rubbery foam go in the cubbies in the coat closet when not on my feet because he's definitely destroyed some of my Teva sandals I had left out after wearing them.

 Also, here are some pictures of how cute my two wee jealous beasties 

 O!!! And Waffles and I saw a muskrat right next to us on the boardwalk at Tiedemann Pond on our morning walk. He just suddenly surfaced amongst the cattails not even 3ft from us! So cute!!

Not sure if you can find him in the picture amongst the cattails and mud and pond -- but I promise he's there and he was so adorable and we had a great conversation about territorial red wing blackbirds dive bombing us.!! I should crop that down to see him better lol.

 I haven't written here in a while and I don't know when I will next. Life has been good, just pretty much normal life things. I've read some good books, bought lots of books, been to the Farmers Market almost every Sat since it came back outside on the Square, saw a handful of good shows and caught up with friends at the concerts, almost ready to do some planting in the garden (already have some plants waiting, but need the nights to be above 45 first for the tomatoes. Hopefully Fri or Sat.) 

Im looking into a span of time coming up starting tomorrow where I won't have much in the calendar but I can't really go anywhere due to promises to watch animals and/or housesit while Crissy is out of town for DI and then my parents are out west for a bit. So I will be getting hours in at work and reading and spending time with plants in the garden and spending time with lonely animals and hermitting quite a bit -- but no concerts or shows or travel or anything. Then World Cup starts and all my plans are scheduled to revolve around me watching matches for a while there. (I have one show, the Broadway tour of Water for Elephants, that is during the group stage matches but not anyone I NEED to watch. And anyway, alllll the nights of the run here were during group stage matches, so we chose the night I'd be least upset if I can't watch.) July I start to have more shows between APT tickets and Concerts on the Square, but also the matches are out of the group stage and so not conflicting with the show times. And then Aug will be Irish season (technically Iowa is July 30-Aug 1 or something like that) and my sister's family is visiting right during/after Milwaukee Irishfest. 

O and over the weekend we nailed down the jello booked my flight to Seattle area for the holidays again -- so I need to be thinking about gifts for all five of my sisters family again. 

Really why I sat down to write is because one of the Spring cleaning tasks I've been doing is organizing chronologically and getting rid of duplicates through my doom piles of tickets accumulated over the years. Right now I just finished 2014 earlier this morning before taking a break to get some laundry going as my morning tasks while drinking tea and reading. And I realized going through these years I just finished.... I spent a lot of years and a lot of shows going to Delta Rae shows and I realized today that even if I were gifted/won tickets and travel expenses were covered, I have absolutely zero desire to see them and wouldn't go with the way things are and the place of acceptance I came to over the last year or so. And if I saw Liz or Britt randomly on the street or in an unexpected situation, I wouldn't wave or recognize them, I'd just treat them as strangers who have no place in my life nor me in theirs and let them disappear back into the sea of humanity labelled "no part of my life." I feel like there should be something bittersweet in recognizing you couldn't get me to go to their band show now if it cost me nothing, you probably couldn't even pay me to go with the way things stand and the choices made in the past never cleaned up or acknowledged... But what I feel isn't bittersweet even, it's just an empty nothing. It's the space where you just don't care because "this is no part of my life nor am I any part of this" is all there is surrounding it now. 

In 2018, the girls asked that they and the band not exist to me. And I have done my damnedest to accept that despite my own desires and mostly succeeded outside of my denial phase in 2019 hoping it had all been a label induced mistake that could/would be fixed and the last time I went to go see them to be sure there were no hooks in the from a dark entity (now gone and dealt with no longer here in this plane of existence and time/space region) that had been hunting/tracking me from Minneapolis to a show of theirs at Luther College in Iowa. And now, now I have no desire to ever see or hear from them again have fully accepted the divergent paths of the girls and the band not existing to me. To the extent that seeing the old tickets from the past shows didn't even make me nostalgia twinge or wish things were different -- it just made me realize that even if it cost me nothing or someone paid me to go I have no desire to ever attend another Delta Rae show given the way things are and the choices the girls made on socials toward me. I just feel a blankness and a nothing about it and a desire not to let that sort of negative spin the girls created back into my life in any fashion. 

I also realized that I haven't thought or dreamt about Eric or my polar bear in months now. Not since early/mid March when I reached my inner deep acceptance of the truth, "there's no place I am welcome in the pillars his life are built around due to the choices his sister and Liz made back in 2018 and the ongoing choices not to acknowledge or heal what that did. And that means there is no future, for how could there be when I cannot be welcomed into important aspects of his life?" He's just... Not even on my radar or a desire in me and I don't even miss him or feel the absence of him since I finally accepted that truth. 

All there is inside me where that mess was for so long is just indifference of "this is no part of my life this lifetime" and a swift focus reframe back to everyone and everything that IS choosing me choosing to be in my life and curiosity about the happy surprise on my future horizon I can feel getting ever closer that just isn't here yet but will be.

I'm sorry if that's not what you wanted me to share. But it's my truth. In this case, my silence has just been, "I'm good, living my life, not bothering my pretty little head or over sensitive heart about anyone or anything chooses not to be in my life " 

Ope! There's the dryer chime! Time for me to go check if the dryer lies (the dryer always lies) needs a wrinkle release run or if it's telling me the truth time to move it along and go fold clean clothes. 

P. S. This week's astro poets horoscopes were super late and random and none of them in dialogue at all. Definitely not seeing any reason to keep sharing them.

 Saturday was indie bookstore day and we visited nine books and I bought books in the multiple at each store and spent way too much money. And also, I'm not even the least but sorry won't pretend I am.... At this point, I have no children and I live by myself with my fur babies -- I only affect myself by buying so many books going over budget I can't afford anything but basic variations on rice and beans with veggies for a while. 

Luckily, I have very little in my calendar between now and World Cup starting in mid-June (and none of those after Mother's Day except taking grandma to her optometry appointment) other than having to stay in town to pet sit while other people are out of town so I can hermit and be good and read to my heart's content around getting in work hours (including garden and platers setup work) and making sure to spend time with Crissy's cat Henry and then later dog sitting with Sophie while my parents are out of town. 

Also. If you don't have plans for a dedicated library for me, you don't have intentions to have me in your life -- the books stay or I won't. Non-negotiable.

Ack! There goes the dryer. Time to see if the blanket is actually dry on my "i am overdue to strip the bed and wash all the bedding" Monday and then move along the next part of the bedding from the wash. Griffin has decided he actually loves the days I wash the bedding because it guarantees him I will be home all day AND he can snuggle into each layer after I put it on while it's clean and cozy and warm. 

P. S. Ok, but also... I really REALLY did overdo it this year and spend way too much money on books especially given the perils of the *gestures broadly at everything in the world right now* 

This weekend was Art in Bloom again and it was good, but not as great as it has been sometimes in the past. Some of it was it felt people-y crowded and a lot of the people were very unaware and rude but also I felt they repeated pieces and the arrangements weren't as great as some of the times in the past those arrangements were chosen. It was still great fun and a fantastic day!! And the Gertrude Abercrombie special exhibit currently at Milwaukee Art Museum was pretty cool. She was definitely very into the witchy spiritual and it was definitely in her works and the pop up shop was very cool. Think Dali meets Tim Burton meets tarot type symbolism meets witchy black cats and moons and forked trees everywhere and you will understand her style. I would not look at her works and think 1930s-50s at all!!

 I don't have much else to write here still, my inner world is pretty quiet and sunny tbh. It's not overthinking or stormy, it's pretty calm and sunny and still feels like something bright unexpected is just over the horizon waiting for me where I can't see it because happy surprises are a blind spot on my precogs. And that's happening right alongside the dark heaviness of the world writ large and what all is (still) being dragged into the light to be faced and dealt with.

I think I'm going to stop sharing the Astro Poets horoscopes here, because the dance between Libra and Pisces in them seems to have disappeared. Which was happening  a bit most of this year, but seems to have been very strong end of March early April. In fact, I'd say it seems more like a dialogue between Libra and Sagittarius (my Mars sign so it's one I do check, I tend to check all my inner planets/rising) let me show you the Sag ones for the same month and you can compare them to the Libra ones below. I'm not going to go see how far back the twining started, just the same ones that I have for Libra and Pisces in this one

 "Week of 3/29 in Sagittarius: It was found. It was hurt but not by this. Bright pink. And lilac. Find love again.

 "Week of 4/5 in Sagittarius: Nothing as it seems. And that’s the best part. Something you might know. Let alone to be there. Love and all of its particulars."

"Week of 4/12 in Sagittarius: What words remain. Luck and love. It goes like green. With friends again. With love that remains."

"Week of 4/19 in Sagittarius: When it matters it is not there. And is that not without cause. A pretty night. Some purple streamers. You opened it up and there is the pink." 

Maybe it means nothing at all and maybe I'm seeing patterns where there aren't patterns and never were. I just find it interesting that Libra still seems to be in dialogue and dance with another sign, but it's no longer with my rising sign but with my Mars sign. (There aren't any Sag suns directly in my life right now so it's not that there's any obvious romance connection building there. I mean, I know Sag suns and get along well with them, probably because I have a Sag stellium in my chart as well as a Scorpio stellium, there's just none that I would say are close enough or have that attraction spark that I would expect it to be about that. Actually, almost every Sag sun I know even as acquaintances live far from me or are traveling right now, lol.) 

 

Astro Poets horoscopes:

 "Week of 3/29 in Libra: You have enjoyed this part. It can keep going. Eternal blue. Lots of leaves. Nothing is forgotten."

"Week of 3/29 in Pisces: Every heart was fed. The walls were there. Did you decorate with time? You can. You can do it now."

"Week of 4/5 in Libra: Some sweet wishes. They begin all in love. A holy time. With friends. With an opening that sings."

"Week of 4/5 in Pisces: There’s no time. And yet it must be. That it goes. It is there. The time passes like nothing." 

 "Week of 4/12 in Libra: It couldn’t be. It resisted a song. Two friends. Two twins. Let that be you."

"Week of 4/12 in Pisces: It found a kind of opening. Into the night with stars. Looking forth. Look forward. See existence." 

 "Week of 4/19 in Libra: The pink sunset where you can kiss. A dream of it all. Repeating numbers. Nothing like dread. These are happy days."

"Week of 4/19 in Pisces: There are ways inside. With the best kind of beauty. Something that is glittering blue. You make it make sense. You dance inside with it." 

 On the scale from 1 to "I was working as election official from 5:45a til 10:45p on the clockand after 17 hours straight poll working and being asked once more to consider becoming chief inspector I'm really fucking exhausted want to crawl into bed but also so fucking hungry because haven't eaten a proper meal since 4:30am and didn't even get to eat my second peanut butter sandwich or carrot cake cupcake but thankfully my mum loves me thought of me and had a chicken burrito from Laredo's ordered at her lunch for me to reheat to eat either when I got there or to take home so I have food for when I get home if I don't just collapse...." 

I'm so fucking exhausted and hungry right now..... But we found the error we were chasing that kept us there will 10:45 instead of being done by 9:30 as hoped. 

Also though, if I didn't know if wake up in just a few hours even more ravenous, I'm so tempted to just drive home collapse into bed after picking my dog up and chatting for a bit with my mama.... Lord I'm tired.......been awake and out of bed since 3am and actively poll working meticulous bookkeeping and putting on the smile humaning allllllll day for 17 fucking hours straight. Blarg. 

That's it. 

I've nothing else more cogent or deep or important to say.  Not til I'm on the other side of eating some real food and then sleeping for...as long as the animals hold me hostage, lol. 

So exhausted. So hungry. 17. Hours. Straight. And not even my longest election official shift.....  Can I just curl up and sleeps yet? But no, food first. 

Actually. No. Change of plans. My body wants to be done in the vertical more than it wants food... Like it desperately wonders "why are we still in the vertical tho?!" So food in the fridge, pyjamas, contacts out, collapse into bed..and I will eat whenever I wake up too ravenous to rest and sleep any longer, lol.

P. S. Also, only slept like 3-4 hours, punctuated by Griffin jumping up on me for snuggles then leaving for middle of the night cat chaos antics before my 3am "you still need to pack food and drinks and get ready and eat something and drink coffee before you can go drop the dog off and be at the polling place by 6am" wake up alarm. 

Ufgh. Horizontal. Horizontal life and sleeeeeeeeeps it is. Then good whenever the vertical next seems like a good idea, lol

January/February/March Book List

I forgot to post this end of January then again end of February. Whoops! Guess I'll be doing these quarterly this year. Unless I remember to do it or decide to do it on a more frequent timeline. On verra.

 

 Books Read: 

~James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers (447 pgs) [this took me a while to read, though once there was snow on the ground I started making better headway. (It opens as set on Christmas Eve) It's not as overtly racist as the others since it is a critique of the civilizing evil of pioneer American colonialist expansionism and the laying down of rules destroying the wild natural goodness that had been. It's just very sententious and florid and it took 170 pgs to tell through one day in which nothing much happened, he just sets up the pieces for the plot and shows you why these seemingly "good" folk are mostly all hypocrites and cruel and rather foolish people. The plot of those 170 pgs could be told in one normal length chapter by most authors, two chapters by most novelists of the 18th or 19th century -- maybe three if it was Henry James.... The pacing also suffered from being too fast with too much happening in the last 100pgs or so to give the story a plot. I only have one more novel left after this to have read through all the Leatherstocking Tales though! Which is far more exciting than the books themselves, lol. I do wish I had the last one in the same edition to match the other though..... If you ever find the édition of The Prairie it would make me far more happy to have it to match the others than the actual reading of the text ever could.]

~Hannah Whitten, For the Wolf (465 pgs) [I enjoyed this very much for what it was. A dark fantasy Beauty and the Beast retelling with some strongly animist magic layering through it. And what it was was exactly what I needed at that time. It was definitely a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with the "the monsters are the heroes and the sacred are the villains" vibe but I liked where it was going with the return to wilding versus corruptions in the old religious/political hierarchies.]

~Hannah Whitten, For the Throne (483 pgs) [I didn't like this as much as the first book. I liked having the story completed because the first one ended in the middle of a new crisis and I liked the light-dark mirroring needing each other but the plot had a lot of holes. The mirroring was a cool concept, though it didn't feel to always be realized to the best of its potential. And I felt that the heart of the story, especially the love story in it, was trying to be mirrored shadows even our inner demons deserve to be loved to heal what others call monster in us but instead it read as trauma bonding Stockholm syndrome and calling it love. It didn't feel authentic and it felt like excusing/defining trauma bonding as love which I didn't like very well even with the tired sop of, "we need to go find ourselves before we can be together" because there was still no character arc growth other than, "you told me your story and it mirrors my own insecurities so I can see me in you calling that shadow work and we are going through desperately difficult death defying activities together where we rely on each other to survive it calling that trust building."   Which I just didn't like as well trying to force a love story happy ending for all the main characters. Not everyone needs or merits a redemption arc -- redemption arcs are things you earn with your choices not just as a plot point in the unfolding story....]

~Jack London, The Call of the Wild & White Fang (307 pgs) [this is a copy with both novels unabridged; I'm not actually sure why I decided to read these other than they are classics I never read unabridged. But like, I'm the girl who cries at any movie an animal dies or is injured... You can do anything you want to actors, my suspension of disbelief knows it's not real it's only acting. But even hunt at an animal being hurt or dying and I'm bawling... Old Yeller? Sobbed my heart out. Where the Red Fern Grows? Cried for hours. Homeward Bound? Started sobbing, "But. But. A dog wouldn't do that! They wouldn't just leave him..." until he comes over the hill then I was sobbing and laughing and my parents were trying to calm me. Marley and Me? Cried for a solid hour. So animals being hurt or dying even in fiction breaks my own heart every time.  So this was a choice I made, but also they were difficult reads for me emotionally even though reading level wise and thematically they shouldn't have been so difficult or taken as long as they did.  A lot of dogs die in both of the books... A lot of good dogs.] 

~Nilo Cruz, Anna in the Tropics (62 pgs) [script of a play that APT performed last summer. It was fantastic, but it made me want to reread Anna Karenina because it's been a while since I last reread it. And I have the Pevear translation still unread that I picked up. Pevear is the translator that professor Dolinin always said captured the Russian into English best back in my Dostoevsky class in university. Dolinin was a third generation Russian literature professor, his grandfather taught Tolstoy and Dostoevsky under the czar, his father taught it under Soviet rule until it was banned, and when they emigrated to the US when he was a kid he grew up to teach Russian literature in translation specializing in Tolstoï and Dostoevsky. Heavy reading list, but that Dostoevsky class is one of my favorites from college. And Prof Dolinin always swore by any Pevear translation being the most superior for reading Russian classics in English.]

~Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life (314 pgs) [I enjoyed this very much, but it didn't feel like anything éclatant -- it was just more of a pat on the head affirmation, "yes you're doing this embodied living correctly, good job never losing your sense of wonder and awe in the beauty of the world."]

~Andre Norton, Flight in Yiktor (251 pgs) [I had read some of these loosely connected series not consecutive from my dad's sci-fi/fantasy collection growing up. But I had never read Forerunner or Forerunner Foray so I wanted to read the other loosely set in this universe for some world building context. Mostly I read and reread her Witch World series as the one my dad told me I would love and should read handed me the books from his collection for me to read.]

~Andre Norton, Dare To Go A-Hunting (248 pgs)

~Susan Fair, American Witches (303 pgs) [this is the one my cat insisted I read. It was fascinating but very quick reading sensationalist history telling ]

~Andre Norton, Storm Over Warlock (201 pgs)

~Andre Norton, Ordeal in Otherwhere (191 pgs)

~Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures (349 pgs)

~Andre Norton, Forerunner ( pgs)

~ Andre Norton, Forerunner Foray ( pgs)

 ~Jean Menzies (ed.), Dragons, Wyverns, and Serpents (206 pgs) [this was a purse book specifically for working and and elections. Small and innocuous and full of myths/folktales.]

~Patrick Barlow, The 39 Steps (105 pgs) [script of a play that APT performed last fall]

~Lauren Oliver, Delirium Stories: Hana, Annabel, Raven & Alex (178 pgs) [I decided not to reread the Delirium trilogy since the YA plot and character were simple enough the short stories could take me right back to it ]

~Michael Grant, Cleopatra (301 pgs) [this was the other book Griffin pulled off the shelf for me to read after I finished the Witchcraft in America book. I actually read it while reading the Plutarch's Lives of Alexander and Caesar... Still slowly making my way through Volume 2 of the Dryden translation of those biographies, lol ]

~Frank Herbert, The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (700 pgs) [I read these in between other books. Some of them were phenomenal, some were weird, some deserved more space and room to breathe than short story format.]

~Rudolf Erich Raspe (German author) & Théophile Gautier (translator), Aventures du baron de Münchausen (155 pgs) [the first I ever heard of these classic German folk tales surrounding the historic figure and the ridiculous stories/lies he would tell of his adventures that were popularized in the 18th century was watching parts of the 1988 film version of it back in high school art class. It's very surreal and inane as a film and part of that is because he's a folktale hero and he's sort of flung between one improbable story to the next with no continuity. Some of the folk tales have other older counterparts I've read, but I've never encountered a copy of the stories collected together until finding this French text at a used bookstore. I haven't looked that hard to be fair, but it's rather funny that I should be reading these German magazine stories (first published as a novel form in English) for the first time in a French translation, although they were popular across Europe. These are a collection of some of the retold stories with the famous Doré caricature illustrations, but it's in no way a complete collection. At some point, I should acquire a more complete set translated from the German into English (since reading german is not currently in my repertoire) but this is a good entryway into reading them then going back to rewatch the film at some point.]

~Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (295 pgs) [I had read selections of this in school but never all of it. And I made a promise to my 11th grade AP English teacher Ms. Vale to read it in full at some point. I wanted something beautiful and nature filled and real as a distraction from the state of the human created mess of things.]

Books Acquired: 

~Frederick Atkinson, Sceadugenga

~James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain

~W. R. J. Barron & S. C. Weinberg (editors and translators), Lazamon's Arthur : The Arthurian Section of Lazamon's Brut

~Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze

~John Brought (translator), Poems From the Sanskrit

~A. S. Byatt, Babel Tower

~Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

~Lucy Cavendish, (illustrated by Jasmine Becket-Griffith), Magical Fairytales: An Enchanted Collection of Retold Tales

~Zu-Yan Chen (editor), Inspirational Chinese Voices Classical Poetry

~C. J. Cherryh, Foreigner

~Martha Cooley, The Archivist

~Zoraida Cordova, Incendiary

~Robert W. Corrigan, Masterpieces of the Modern German Theatre

~Charles deLint, Into the Green

~David & Leigh Eddings, The Dreamers 4: The Younger Gods [this was the last one I needed for the series! I also bought book 2 in paperback as I had it in hardcover for some reason but all the rest I had found in paperback]

~Shauna J. Edwards & Alyson Rich Man, The Thread Collectors

~Flametree (ed.), Scottish Folk & Fairy Tales

~Kate Forsyth, The Witches of Eileanan 2: The Pool of Two Moors (I already had the first book of this series and wanted to read it before discovering it's first in a quartet. After finding the second and third at Half Price Books East, I now only need to find the third so I can binge read the series at some point!)

~Kate Forsyth, The Witches of Eileanan 4: The Forbidden Land

~Hester Fox, A Lullaby for Witches

~Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII

~Adalyn Grace, Belladonna

~Ember Grant, Mythology For A Magical Life

~Philippa Gregory, The Boleyn Inheritance

~Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

~Philippa Gregory & David Baldwin & Michael Jones, The Women of the Cousins' War

~Lev Grossman, The Magicians [I had previously acquired book 1 in hardcover for free from a little library, but want the series to match on the shelf; so when I found all of the trilogy used in good condition paperback, I decided to pick them up and the hard cover can find a new home]

~Lev Grossman, The Magician King

~Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

~Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

~Donna Barba Higuera, The Last Cuentista

~Russell Hoban, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

~A. E. Housman, The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman

~Kristoffer Hughes, Cerridwen: Celtic Goddess of Inspiration

~Mindy Hung, The Glowing Life of Leeann Wu

~Jake Jackson & Imogen Corrigan (editors), Joan of Arc

~Emily Lloyd-Jones, The Bone Houses

~Charlie Lovett, The Paradox Club

~James Macpherson, The Poems of Ossian

~G. F. Main (ed), A Book of Scotland

~Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

~Anne McCaffrey & Todd McCaffrey, Dragon's Kin

~Anne McCaffrey & Todd McCaffrey, Dragon's Fire

~Prosper Mérimée, La Vénus d'Ille

~Barbara Meillejohn-Free, Scottish Witchcraft

~Sir Thomas More, Francis Bacon, & Henry Neville, Three Early Modern Utopias: Utopia, New Atlantis, and The Isle of Pines (quite excited for this find -- I already own and have read Sir Thomas More's Utopia, but I'd never found copies of the other two before!)

~Garth Nix, Terciel & Elinor

~Rev. Lora O'Brien, The Morrigan: Ireland's Goddess

~Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father (surprisingly, I never did get around to buying this so I was quite delighted to find it in a free Little Library in my neighborhood)

~Jacqueline Onassis (ed) & Boris Zvortkin (illus), The Firebird and Other Russian Fairy Tales

~Edith Pargeter, A Bloody Field By Shrewsbury

~Barbara Léonie Picard, French Legends, Tales and Fairy Stories

~Alwyn Rees & Brindley Rees, Celtic Heritage

~Frances Sakoian & Louis S. Acker, The Astrologers Handbook (no clue if I will like or agree with this one, it seems to focus a lot on where things are "in detriment" which is an outdated concept I've never agreed with. But the book was free in a little library and I decided it was worth grabbing because it can always go back to one if I disagree or don't find it useful.)

~Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausée

~Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

~Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances 

~Jo Walker, A Witch's Guide to Wildcraft

~Alison Weird, Mistress of the Monarchy

~Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas

~Paul O. Zelinsky, Rumplestiltskin

 O, it's not that I'm giving up on the bond or trying to silence it back to dormancy or push it away or anything like that -- I still want it, but I hold no expectations or hope or lying to myself that it will become manifest real in this lifetime no matter how deep my wanting.  It's not even that I expect anything to happen with Martin -- he's not the sort of guy who lacks for options or shies away from taking them when offered and Sept is a long ways away still. It's just that even with that knowledge, so far his presence has only ever brought sunshine into my life even when he's actively man whoring with a hot needy girl on his arm throwing herself at him for his attention because he is physically a constant thirst trap, lol. Like, I'm not going to lie to myself about who he is or how he has been -- there's just a mutual attraction there and whenever he's around or nearby, everything is a bit sunshine brighter. I know when I know him from in his past lives and I know why that mutual attraction is there even when he has another girl fawning on him hanging off him. And I know there's no reason for me to expect him not to be with anyone else back home in Glasgow or while touring next. Just acknowledging it's there and palpable and just because it's never yet been acted in doesn't mean we never will.

It's more of.... Just a complete acceptance of the choices made that got us to where we are and the acknowledgement that as things stand based on the choices past and actions/inactions, there is no place for me in Eric's life and I am neither welcomed nor wanted by some of the most important people/groups to him due to those people's choices of bullying via ostracism and there have been no actions and no path toward changing that. And that just... It is what it is. And I need to accept that isness and make my own choices in a place of complete acceptance that those are their free will choices and for myself I must look elsewhere for what brings joy and love and brightness in my life -- to focus on those who choose me, choose to be in my life and my lived experience. 

It's not a giving up or lessening of love or desire. Just an acceptance of how it is in this time/place (and has been for so very long now since the events that set this trajectory of ripples into motion) and the choices that got us to where we are. It's a setting aside of the wanting as something I can't have in my lived life at this time with the way things are and the free will choices that got us to this isness of this moment in time.  A looking elsewhere into those who choose me, choose to be in my life, and not holding out for those who don't choose me and consistently tell me they don't want me I'm not welcome at their table. 

And a feeling of deep down to the cellular level acceptance of that truth of this isness in this moment and this trajectory of choices and events that got us to here. And in that complete acceptance about the truth of his life path choices, there was a recalibrating and refocusing of my own heart to invest it into those who choose me choose to show up be a part of my life as it is lived this lifetime. 

And that hasn't shifted. Doesn't much matter if I feel him reaching for me down the bond or all I feel is the empty spaces of other choices that could have been made, through it all is the acceptance of the isness of the choices/events that got us to this crossroads and the truth of its isness. 

And that has nothing to do with any choices Martin does or doesn't make back home in Glasgow or away on tour between now and Sept.  It's not even about him other than acknowledging the long standing mutual attraction and the past life karmic ties that promise healing good growth this life if we choose it and how it just feels like sunshine whenever we are together sharing moments of space/time. What this recent eclipse season brought me is just an inner place of accepting the isness of things and setting aside anything else I want it to be in the name of accepting it for what it is. 

It's not the way it has to be, it's just the way it is because of the choices others have made and the ripples of those choices. It's a deep acceptance of the isness and a personal choice to focus my attention and love elsewhere where it is wanted and welcomed because what else is a girl to do?

Different choices could make a different isness, like a pool shark completely change the trajectories of all the billiard balls still on the table. But it ain't my turn to take a shot and even if it was, I can't hit any of the balls without scratching to change things make me wanted/welcome by the people whose past/ongoing choices ostracized me created the reality where I'm not welcome in his life. It ain't my turn and I don't have any angle to change this isness by making different choices. And I have accepted that. Accepted the truth of it so deeply I can feel the acceptance of the truth of isness for this juncture in this life as it is lived, feel that acceptance of isness within every cell of my being.

It's not judgement of others choices that got us to this isness, it's just acceptance of them and their consequences and the realities they created. If you want me around, choose me to have me in your life. If you won't make that choice, why should you expect any of my attention, energy, or love? 

And I don't think it should be a particularly unexpected or weird take. The weirdest part about it is probably how long it took me to let go of stubborn hope and expectations of somehow getting a different outcome despite the evidence of the choices made when they were made and the ripples of them that created this isness.

It's not a change of heart, it's an acceptance of isness and the free will choices others made that got us to this isness. Things can be changed with intention and a shared will/desire to change things -- but that won't happen without honesty with oneself about how things are now and the clarity to truth speak about the events and choices that got us here.

You can find or create a path from where you are through anything, the important question is always "does this path lead me to anywhere I want to get to? Or do I need to make other choices to forge another path to get where I want to be?" And that's a personal question, not one I can answer for you. 

Astro Poets Horoscopes: 

"Week of 3/22 in Libra: You have found friendship. That is reason enough to sing. So let it be so. This special name. Where love can be the best of it." 

"Week of 3/22 in Pisces: Yellow and green. They leave themselves. So it is pink. Nothing is forgiven with words. It is language."

Somewhen in the recent while around the solar eclipse and Chinese New Year, I felt something inside me close chapter and release around the bond and Eric and all the mess the girls made of what should have been easy. Just this sense of finality and closure accepting, "I'm not welcome here, and that is what it is. Those weren't my choices or my boundaries, but that doesn't make them any less real. I'm not one to try to force my way in where I'm not wanted -- since every lifetime is finite it's time for me to let go forget the could have beens and to focus my energy and love and joy into the people and places I am welcomed and wanted. Those who chose me, especially those who continuously consistently choose me." And no emotions about it really, no anger or sorrow or regret or anything other than just the tranquility of complete acceptance at every level. Just acceptance of the isness and truth of where we are and how we got here and how I should be investing of my heart and energy during this time in the isness of things. 

And it hasn't really shifted at all since then, just a continuation of the inner peace of acceptance. I guess the only other shift I can think of was at the lunar eclipse on 3/3 the inner excitement for happy surprises approaching me, wondering what the Universe will bring to cross my path to fill in the void created by that acceptance. That's the closest I get to the precogging happy surprises, to feel the joy and brightness of them rising over the horizon of the future but no clear sighted glimpses not even a fuzzy knowing who/what it's about or where it's coming from. I asked to have put the block on me and my precog gifts when it comes to happy surprises, that's how the block works.

Look. I told you. What was coming is worse. And I'm going to tell you again: what IS coming, it's worse still.  

Be glad you don't have the precogs. Be glad you don't carry the weight of what will be you cannot change. The events already in motion because the one pebble of a choice was removed that sets the whole mountainside down an avalanche, the one choice that cracked the levy to flood everything built downstream that believed it was safe now the dam was built.  The future fatelines are like that. Every choice can be that little pebble, that little crack and most people never know what ones are the pebble and what ones are just handfuls of gravel or sand passing through your fingers. Most people don't get the flash of the sight of the now inevitable avalanche and flood that can't be stopped or stalled or slowed down or redirected now that one damn pebble, that one deep crack has been chosen. 

And some people have second sight gifts. And some of those gifts include precogs. And some of us hate having had to play Cassandra our whole fucking life, lifetime upon lifetime, because no matter the opportunities we CAN make a choice to shift if we act immediately there's still so many exponentially more that we can't do a damn thing to change course or fight fate and we can't change things and we can't convince anyone to listen to us and even if we could convince them it wouldn't be enough to change the course that past choice already made (or sometimes the future choice that rippled backward -- but that's something different but related and I don't want to get into it right now.) You can't not know the flashes of the things you see. Not when it's among your second sight gifts you were born into this body having.

So yeah. It gets worse. Globally. It gets worse. it gets a lot fucking worse before it gets better. It just does. 

You're probably smart enough seen the evidence unfolding now to see the patterns and the rhyming of history.  And you're not wrong. But it's not all of it. And it ain't at all the same as seeing it. You didn't have to carry the sight you saw in your minds eyes of the murders then waiting til the day everyone else catches up to what you already saw, already knew. The promises you made to the old gods and angels who protect you that you won't cross the great river again until they say it's safe for you to be there, no matter how mad what you've seen has made you, because if you don't make that promise they told you directly they will do what they have to do to keep you on the board, keep you alive, to save you from your own impulsivity when you get angry.

 You haven't seen what was coming until it got here. And you haven't seen what's still to come, the bad that's even down the best possible fatelines where every choice in the fight gets made and every battle that can be won is won....

I'm sorry if I can't sit in the moment. And that I can't sit in the hope and the daydream of could bes that are never chosen to be made real. I don't have the energy or emotional capacity for that. I don't have the capacity to lie to myself when the starkness of the precogs I must carry need to be integrated. And I haven't since the precogs got so dark and so frequent and the worlds burning got closer than they've felt since the time in university when that fork was nearly chosen.

What I have the strength for and where I am putting my energy is into who and what IS in my life and choosing to be in my life and the moments of joy that can be snatched like fireflies from the darkness closing in and the sparks we can make against the flint and the brimstone of it all. 

If you're not in my life, not choosing me not choosing to invite me in want me at the table, I don't have it in me to lie to myself pretend any longer that maybe you someday will wake up and see things clearly/honestly and decide actually I am what you want/need in your life. Fuck that. There ain't time for that no more. You had those chances, you had that time and you didn't choose it. Not one damn moment of all the years and all the time you've had and I can't give you more time because the events in motion don't allow for it. If you don't choose me to be in your life as you choose to live it right now, in the present which is the only time you ever have promised to you to live within, I release you and won't think on you and won't let you in or save you a space where I am or within my heart. You're out of time for that sort of grace and forgiveness your actions/inactions/choices didn't earn. Whatever you choose, that's what you get and not a damn thing more. Ain't time for that. And you don't want to know what I've seen that makes me say that, the things I carry inside me once the act of somebody's freewill choices move the pebble that had been holding back the flood and soon everyone will see and know and it won't be just me carrying it but damnit that doesn't make it any easier for us just because now everybody knows what until then only those with the precog second sight gifts like mine had seen.

 It's not easy to carry the gift of prophecy, the gift of curses, the gift of precogs, the gift of death sight, the gift of knowing every fucking "last times we will ever do this together" -- everybody who has ever shared that damn tumblr post meme about wishing there was a light lit up above someone to warn you of all your lasts... NO. YOU. FUCKING. DON'T. WANT. THAT. You might think you do, to add meaning into the moment, but ask anybody who has to live that way and you don't want it. You don't want to be mourning your losses and deaths while you're still living in the present moment of having the gift of who and what you have loved -- it doesn't make it more meaningful or magical to know and if you have even a shred of empathy you then carry that knowledge alone because you don't want to ruin the brightness of what they get to experience by telling them before they find out in the fulness of time. It's a weight of grieving ahead that you carry alone. Always.

Getting to see Skerryvore and get Martin hugs in February/March was a happy surprise from the Universe in the midst of it all.  (I don't precog the happy surprises -- as a child I asked to have my gift blinded for sports and happy surprises because life has more joy when you get to live the delights/emotions of it without ruining the happy surprises.) The next time they've got dates stateside is not a surprise to me -- Dan (Martin's brother) gave Keito the dates made sure she could ask off and she came right over to share and texted them to me because she knows my policy is, "Whoever gets me their dates first gets dibs on me holding it against other plans" so I have dates in September and dates in January carved out set aside for Skerryvore getting dibs on claiming those dates (if they can get their visas renewed and get here from Scotland as they plan) -- they got me dates before I could buy my summer/autumn APT tickets, before symphony season ordered (so we will not be adding on the Joshua Bell opening show add-on because they got me their dates first.) Working with Keito on trying to get some of the guys to do a portion of Bolero for me during their Fri Fox Cities Irishfest set after I  mentioned it's the piece in the programme I'm saddest to miss. I don't know how it happens, but I will get to see my favorite Scottish lads again still this life -- the best and brightest part for me of seeing Martin and all the rest of the guys in February/March was discovering that it wasn't a last time, there was no death sight dimming of "this will never happen again" for me when I saw them.  Not for any of the guys and not for any of my friends within the Celtic music community who are like chosen family -- none of them yet have the mark of the "last times" that can't be hidden from my death sight. And that is a bright light spark of hope to hold to as a promise -- I've been wrong before seen the last time death sight mark and someone has made active choices to say, "Fuck that path. Death ain't having me yet. And I'm not letting this connection fade out" and defy the fates by choosing consciously that is not how it will be even after I've seen it. It's rare, but it happens. Always by a strong force of will on the part of the person I saw the "last times" dimming and dimming more and more with them.  But I've never had a last time where I DIDN'T get the death sight "last times" dimming the time ahead -- not even freak accidents. I always know and the fact I didn't see it, didn't see it on any of them not even the very last night I was seeing them all before they flew back to Scotland after celebrating Martin's birthday here stateside and getting back so Dan could have his birthday a few days later with his family. And even more than getting the dates from Dan via Keito as a promise, it was what I didn't see, not getting the death sight "last time we will evers" dimming even on that last night before the guys were flying back that was the brightest shining beam of hope to me that I needed and didn't know I needed. 

 Anyway. I set this private for a long while because...  because what i saw coming was not a future where you want any ai scraper to know you've got the gift of precog or for your words to convince anyone that maybe, just maybe, such gifts could be real. And maybe just maybe they could be used, could be useful... I'm not a trained seal, I never will be. Ain't in my nature. And the things I see are mine to carry and mine to share only if i damn well choose to and only to those I trust who I think can help me carry it not be broken by the knowing and only if/when I believe me telling will somehow help and make things a bit brighter and easier. My prcogs ain't for sale, they ain't never been. not in any life. And you cannot force them from me unless I free will choose to share them. But there are those in this world who don't need to be tempted by the thought they could somehow force those truths from me. And we have been going through a time where I didn't want my truths and stories written here available to data miners and ai scrapers... And such a feeling will happen again, and sooner than you think. This is a brief reprieve and lull when it's safe for me to have it here for n'improte qui the truth that worse was coming. And worse is still coming. 

 But anyway. Winter Storm Elsa is barreling down toward me with a blizzard warning -- but I have St. Patrick's Day brunch plans with my parents and best friend tomorrow. And then holed up at home with my pets and my books and music as the lashing rain and freezing rain and ice and snow at the rate of over an inch an hour and not knowing until the morning if the roads will be clear enough for if I will have to courier SVD drive downtown in the mess over to the east side. And then later that day buying my share of the APT tickets. And after all the plans around St. Patrick's Day celebrating through Tues and then SVD (Special Voting Deputy) assignments across the week. And the rest of the month my calendar is quite empty for me to fill I don't yet know how. And I will keep carrying and seeing what my gifts show me and waiting for the world to catch up, waiting for the collective psyche to catch up so we can fight and build from that point something better closer to what the majority of us actually fucking want rather than all the events in motion I've seen we have to endure and remember the lessons repeating in them.  And I will keep focusing my time and my energy and my love and my dreams into those who choose me and choose to actually be IN my life, those who keep coming back to sharing time with me creating memory sparks together as a want to, not an ought to or forced to. You're not likely to cross my path again or find a window into my thoughts/feeling/soul  as this has been unless you choose m, choose me for you life as you live it. There isn't time for promising anything else right now. And it gets so much worse before it starts to get better.... If you're following along at the passing of the fleeting present moments, you've not even yet come to the worst parts of it all....

 Anyway, here's your catchup of astro poets horoscopes if you've been missing them. Maybe should have waited til tomorrow to post this set this all back from being private to authors to instead being public but unlisted. Maybe I'll put the most recent one for the upcoming week at the end of these as an edit if I think of it. Or maybe not. Qui sait?

Astro Poets Horoscope:

"Week of 2/15 in Libra: The feathers are soon. That doesn’t mean either. It means soon you will walk into the room. What will you say? Only you know that."

"Week of 2/15 in Pisces: Some light remains. And an orange single thread. Does it connect? Nothing does. Everything remains." 

"Week of 2/22 in Libra: It wasn’t what you expected. But it was better. And when you could wait, you did. Let it be in birds. Let it be in butterflies."

"Week of 2/22 in Pisces: Fruit and things. Enjoy the sweetness. It all circles back. It all blesses in silence. This is not the end." 

"Week of 3/1 in Libra: Some sun. Some love. Some green. Take it. Do it."

"Week of 3/1 in Pisces: Some treats. Could you have it. You talk with substance. To the gold. To the piece of gold in the breeze."

"Week of 3/8 in Libra: You moved a mountain. And then some. Sweet love. The sweetest cake. Eat it now."

"Week of 3/8 in Pisces: You don’t have to make an argument. It will be there as it is. Following from one to the other. Standing up in line. Saying it as it was in the beginning." 

"Week of 3/15 in Libra: A true green. Made its way into your future. Let loose an envelope. The bats endured. The meaning shifted." 

"Week of 3/15 in Pisces: Lyrical propulsion. And knowing an opening. Something residing within the mind. And it can be. And it must be."