it does not escape my attention that I brought up the unhealed past not just during shadow period but literally on the eve of Mercury going retrograde proper. Not gonna lie, it did make me laugh when I realized the timing it came up again. Like, serious as it is, the timing struck me as "written in the stars, of course" laughing at myself and behavior pattern I didn't recognize until after the fact.

But it's also worth bearing in mind that coming to peace with the reality "people have made and continue to make the choices they believed best and what happened in the past is past -- and there are always limits to what I or anyone else can do if other people won't even communicate or acknowledge you bringing it up" does NOT mean that there are not consequences that still ripple into and affect the present AND will continue to affect the future if left undealt with unacknowledged. An infection doesn't disappear just because you pretend it doesn't exist -- toxic things left to fester instead of cleansed WILL breed more toxins and sometimes they will spread the infection to the point requiring amputation or the risk of blood poisoning. You can't just pretend you didn't create something toxic and think it will produce anything else other than toxicity. There's a point at which only complete amputation can salvage anything if you don't acknowledge and try to heal the infection. 

And it's worth me saying quite clearly. I told you I was going to look into WHY I might believe that he wouldn't experience or miss the bond to me or have past life memories of his own. And I kept that and I am still considering that question. But all those reasons I have given are the rationalizations I told myself until I accepted them -- they're the WHY I might believe it but that's the wrong question. Because the RIGHT question to ask is, what is the root CAUSE of me listening to these rationalizations, why I would give them weight to accept this premise as true. And the answer is, the root cause was what happened in 2018 and me recognizing that his sister's choices meant that I was unwelcome and ostracized from central pillars of his identity and life -- that there is no place for me in his life and his happiness so long as that fact is true AND that i refuse to put him in the middle ask him to choose because I will choose for him to remove myself from his options before having him be caught in the middle of these stupid girl bullying games she created by choosing to ostracize. I will do whatever I need to do to rationalize me doing that, to do what I believe should cause him the least hurt and disruption in his life. It's a choice I made for him and rationalized for me to be able to see it through rather than have him be the pawn in someone else's game or caught in the middle of it. It was that realization of the consequences of what his sister did in her own name and in the band's name that is what CREATED in me a feeling it was right for me to try to make myself believe that he doesn't feel the bond or care about it and he doesn't remember any of our many shared past lives. And those seeds and everything they have grown into do not get pulled out like the weeds that they are so long as there's nothing I can do other than accept him being hurt in the middle of this mess OR I cut the points of contact between him and me because it means he can't be used that way in the stupid girl bullying ostracism games created in 2018. No matter how much he does to try to make me believe that actually the bond and his memories is not something he is willing to ever give up on, I will still have those seeds inside me that if he's going to be hurt either way because of this situation someone else created that he is caught in the middle of, then I'd rather have him hurting over my absence. because he survived my absence over how many centuries of lifetimes and then I won't be guilty of taking any part in making him a pawn hurt by my actions and active particiy and caught in the middle hurting him. I'd rather give him up than play the "who are you going to pick because you can't sit with us if you sit with her, you can't have both" bullying game that ostracism creates. I'll take myself out of the situation rather than have him played that way by anyone -- but especially someone he has EVERY reason and right to expect loves him and would only want the best for him and his greatest happiness rather than her defensiveness or ego. I will not play the wisdom of Solomon game where to determine the real mother the king says to cut the child in half give each woman claiming it her half of it --if you love someone you would never agree to a situation where they have to be torn in half to be shared -- you'd rather them alive and whole and healthy as possible even if you're no part of their life able to protect them. if you actually love them. Better to sacrifice let them go to be whole far from you than torn in lifeless halves so you can hold onto some portion of them and prove your claim they were yours....

And I will make that choice to release what I love rather than damage it every damn time someone creates a confrontation like this.

So as long as this boundary and ostracism block of me feeling unwanted and unwelcome and that they do not desire to exist to me, it means that given the importance and centrality of his sister and his band and his friend in his life as he has constructed it, I will always try to let him go and convince myself it's in his best interest to release him from any connection to me. And you should expect that from me in this situation.... Because I'm not here for a battle of egos or to show who has the girl bullying soft power in the situation to manipulate others to side with them, I'm here to do whatever will cause the least harm and hurt to those I care about -- which no longer includes his sister or band or friend because they don't want to exist to me but it sure as hell applies to him even if it means I leave the situation and go off on my own far from him being able to reach me. I will not be used that way -- I will leave rather than play any part in a situation that hurts him by having him caught in the middle told he can't have both in his life because you won't sit with me don't want to exist to me. And I will tell myself whatever I have to say in order to rationalize make me believe so that I will do what is ethically right in the name of Justice and love. 

So the root cause of me coming to believe ANY rationalization telling me that he might not feel the pull of the bond to me or remember our past lives so he can't be hurt by losing what he never knew to value IS the first cause and effect seeds planted in 2018 as a consequence of asking that his sister and his band not exist to me. And I can pull out the weeds of the rationalizations and I can try to believe his stubbornness as being a clear consistent statement from him of what he wants and that he DOES want the same thing and remembers and feels the pull -- but if you don't deal with healing and pulling out the root cause of this, there will come a day that I reach the point of believing he is hurt more by my presence continuing in his life given what is behind the boundary of not wishing to exist to me than he could ever be hurt by my absence from his life and his inner space. Especially if it's a time he seems happy because he thinks he's making headway to heal the distance grown between him and me OR he has distractions in his life of other people/projects/things that he/I think could bring him enough happiness he wouldn't notice or be upset by my sneaking away absence. Especially because at this point right now he only has past lives memories to know what he's missing, it's not like he's losing something he has HAD in his everyday life this lifetime -- only in dream space and the innermost self. But he doesn't know what it is to come closer than at the soul deep level, he won't be losing anything from his ACTUAL 3d everyday life in this lifetime. Because I won't say it doesn't hurt, but it would hurt a hell of a lot more to lose something you've had than to never have something you've only dreamed of yearned for known within your inmost self.....

I can move forward pretending as if that cause isn't still poisoning at the root everything he tries to do and build to find a way to fix this and bring us back together. But it will be a lie of omission to go on pretending it didn't happen and it isn't toxic and it isn't poisoning everything it touches. Because it is. No matter what he does, this is cause and effect rippling to poison the root and foundations of everything he tries to grow and build. I can't make anyone else face it or talk about it or want to heal it -- but I'm not going to tell you it isn't still poisoning everything it touches and destroying everything he tries to grow between him and me before it even has a chance to put down roots in the hopes to make a more permanent rapprochement... I can pretend with  you to keep the present seeming peace by treating it like it never happened doesn't continue to exist, but I will know it's poisoning everything at the root below the surface. And you should know that too not lie to yourself about it. 

 I'm going to finish up these old files I'm pulling and finish my tea I have and take the dog to head home soon.  And WHEN I get there, I'm going to make me go directly to bed get some sleep before i allow me to open Everlost and letting me read even "just one more chapter before bed" because we all KNOW how that ACTUALLY goes with a bookworm like me not falling asleep til after sunrise then and not having time for showering/coffee/food and getting my grandma to her very important afternoon appointment with the gerontologists. Which is NOT an April Fool's Day prank I want to play on myself, my grandma, or anyone else in my family.  And so the only way I know to keep that from happening is to not even allow myself to give into the temptation of opening the book until AFTER I have slept and taken care of the have tos in the morning and setting the alarms to make me set the book down and actually get out the door to leave, lol. .

 Okay. So my purse novel Memoirs of a Geisha is showing promise so far but I have still felt in a bit of a book rut since reading that really not great book that was supposed to be a novel about discovering the origins of tarot but turned out to really be a book about integrating the doppelganger-lover-other self. So then my next novel was another palette cleansing contemporary fiction where each of the parts wasn't backed but lacked any cohésion between the three parts and failed at the most basic level of "so what?" because the vignettes didn't create any sort of narrative arc or plot or make you CARE about the characters or provide closure to the storylines to find out what happened... 

BUT, this morning I started a novel that has me hooked and sings to me in its world building "so what?" to give a damn about it and the characters in it. The thing is, it's the first in a trilogy and I really don't have TIME right now to devour this trilogy the way I want. I'm going to allow me to keep reading until I'm tired of it or at a good stopping point or finish the first one before I take Waffles to work then go cat sit briefly before hunkering down to getting hours in, but really this was an inconvenient time for me to find a series I want to devour like this. 

It's the Skinjacker trilogy by Neal Shusterman. He's a YA writer but he writes YA layered waaaaaay beyond the philosophical and literary level of most teenagers... All of his novels seem to start from a philosophical ethics question then create a speculative fiction world to explore the question. The first of his I read was Arc of the Scythe series which is about a world where death has been conquered so a group of people take the career paths of having to be the reapers to keep population controls -- it had enough action and violence and questioning authority and why rules exist to engage teens to think about some things but also had layers and layers of philosophers and schools and ethics and socio-political responsibility questions that don't have answers just different facets to examine situationally. It was absolutely incredible and ever since I finished it I have been looking forward to when I feel it has been sitting inside me with enough other stories layered over it for long enough and for me to be in the right head/heart space to let myself re-read it. 

Anyway. The premise of the Skinjacker books is about kids who for whatever reason get stuck don't cross over to the light after they die and end up in the nebulous realm of Neverland meets Lord of the Flies uncrossed ghosts and the rules/reasons and society types they build and the ruts they fall into if they create routines of niche identities. Which is also a metaphor for how so many people "live" their lives without being truly alive. I'm just about halfway through the first book (the shortest) of the trilogy so don't yet have a comprehensive overview of his questions and world building and philosophical ethics questions he's exploring, but I'm really REALLY loving it so far and the world he has built and the questions it's already exploring. 

So I'm glad to be out of my reading rut, but also I'm kicking myself a bit letting me get into this series before the next couple overbooked days and the eclipse trip.... Because I know better and I know myself. And the chances are high of me choosing to devour the books until I collapse in exhaustion rather than get sane amounts of sleep for what I have planned. But now I'm here and I ain't going to set aside the series NOW.... I had to make myself set it aside to make coffee and veggies with eggs for breakfast and I'd be lying if I told you I didn't bring the novel with me into the kitchen to keep reading while the herby potatoes and carrots were cooking.... I'm now at a chapter break and the "filter it through my teeth or give up on the very viscous last half cup" dregs of the French press so I'm writing this through the coffee grounds and trying to decide if I can get away with making a cuppa tea and reading more or if I should consider getting dressed to face the day and come back to the book later. (Of course I won't get dressed come back to the book later right now, do you have any idea the cliffhanger the last chapter ended on?!?! Actually, I should see how close I am to a section break....those are usually good pause points within his books.)

So anyway.  I have a good book now that I'm super into and it's a 1300 pages or so series commitment not just a "best I have right now" fling then something else. But also, my timing starting this series is fucking complicated and I should have known better waited a week to start in on this.... 

Unrelated to any of that. But. After my last post reference. I think. It's worth me being honest. That. I think the complications and impossibility I see in squaring the circle of what was created in October 2018 is a major part of why my head tries so damn hard to makes excuses or rationalize me into believing that he probably doesn't feel the bond the same way I do and that he can be happy with some other woman he falls head over heels in lust with and then I can just cut myself out of his options and put the bond to sleep and he'll never notice. 

Because. Look. I can't unblock me and I got nowhere except ghosted by the band members/representatives and victim blamed by multiple diehard fans of theirs. And I also won't lie to myself about the centrality of his sister and his band and one of his oldest friends to his life and that they SHOULD be important and central to his life. And I won't lie to anyone about the cause-effect fact that due to actions the girls chose in 2018 (for themselves personally and in the name of the entire band) that they created the explicitly stated boundary by their actions of first Liz then Britt and then Delta Rae as a collective desiring not to exist to me. And I can't alter ANY of those facts and choices other people have made or the consequences of them. 

Best I can figure out to do with this set of truths is try to triage a path where he is hurt the least by the situation created by the actions of his sister and friend of over 20 years -- and the way that appears to me easiest to do that is to write me out of his options for his life story.  So for 5.5 years, this has been driven to a front of mind issue every time EVERY TIME that he brings up his love for his band or his sister or his friend or he shared something I couldn't see the content unavailable to me just have him showing up with unwatched stories (which is ultimately what made me unfollow him on insta and why I ignored his request in the most recent email to find him on socials to follow along the upcoming tour -- because I don't want to go back into the negative cycles or my frustrated anger of seeing him listed as having stories and then being continuously told "content unavailable" for those posts/stories he reshared from the band account or from one of the two girls even when watching other people's stories and he was showing up in the queue. He's right to love his band and his sister and his friend and be proud of them, but that doesn't change the shitty way I was treated in their names or the fact that sharing his love/pride in them opens old wounds in me that hurt and anger me towards him reopening them even though he didn't know or intend to. That cycle was wrong by everyone and my only way to break it was to unfollow him on insta sever that path of him reaching me so that his right actions for himself were not rubbing salt in my wounds that his sister and Liz created and have left to fester.)  

The simplest way my brain has been able to come up with for me to square the circle of what matters to him having ostracized me made me feel unwelcome and unwanted is for me to rationalize removing myself from his reach and his options. There is no problem if I remove myself from the equation by taking myself out of his options so he can't reach me.  And so I pull away start to make that hard choice to do it EVERY time there's anything at all that reminds me or echoes down the bond his love and pride of his band, his sister, and/or his friend who have all three clearly created and maintained for 5.5 YEARS the boundary that they do not wish to exist to me. 

As much as it hurts both my ego and my heart, it's easier to make myself believe that he doesn't feel the pull of the bond or have past lives memories like I do than to accept the complicated truth that there is no way that isn't made toxic by the choices his sister made in October 2018 (and that I can't find a way to heal from my side since nobody else has ever been willing to acknowledge it and just have ghosted the issue any time I have tried communicating about it) that allows for a path for him to have all the things he loves and needs for his happiness coexistant in his life. Because that complicated truth requires me accepting that due to his sisters past and ongoing choices in her own name and in the name of the band as a collective there's no way for me to exist or not exist in relationship to him and the most important things in his life where I don't become a source of pain to him. Which is the one thing I've never wanted to be, ever. 

And I know it's not a FAIR solution, but I don't know what else I can do while still respecting other people's free will choices and actions. And no it's not fair to him. And no it's not fair to me. Because neither he nor I CHOSE to create this situation and yet I still can't find a way from my side to heal it when I can't even have it acknowledged that it happened. So it's easier to encourage him to fall for someone else and let myself believe it's really what he wants so I can then remove myself from his reach and tell myself the rationalization that though it's hard hurts me deeply it's for his greatest happiness he chooses -- because at least if I can believe that, I'm not a cause of unnecessary unchosen pain in him. 

If I don't believe he feels the pull of the bond and remembers our past lives, then I see a way I can break the toxic consequences of the choices made in Oct 2018 by removing myself from the equation. And then he can love his sister and his band and his friend and be proud of them and it will never reach me to cause me hurt and I will be respecting the boundary for treating those who don't wish to exist to me as if they don't exist to me. And all it costs is the pain of separation removing myself and the hollows of grieving the empty silent spaces where the bond should be -- which is an easier price for me to consider when it's a matter of only me stoically going on with that weight because I don't believe he feels the absence and so can't be hurting from it. Of course it all falls apart as a solution when he stubbornly refuses to give up til he reaches me again and I realize how deeply that time of not reaching me having the bond silent missing from inside him DID hurt him.... But then, human nature being what it is, enough time passes and he gets interested in someone else or devotes himself to a project that involves the band or his sister and the toxic cycles start up all over again for how I can find the path that will cause him the least pain and the greatest amount of the love he needs for the happiness he seeks in his life. I can't unblock me and I won't lie about the past and it would be wrong to ever expect him to have anything but love/pride for the pillars of his life that created and have chosen this set of toxic consequences. The only part I have any agency over is my own choices and reactions -- it's the only thing I can do anything to try to alleviate the pressure and pain and toxic emotions created by having him caught in the middle of other people's actions/choices. Is it any wonder that I would rationalize until I believe that I can act on the one thing I have any agency over? Especially at times I genuinely believe that neither I or the bond are any part of the happiness he has chosen for his life? 

What else can I do in this situation? How can you expect me under these circumstances to do what I naturally desire to do which is to bring him and me ever closer together and to give him as much of my attention and affection as possible when the price of me doing that is the inevitable pain of being reminded of the gulf created by what doesn't want to exist to me but is so central to his own life and happiness? Pulling away from him causes pain but allowing any getting closer before having to pull away is even more painful.... If I'm to be forced by the choices of others to not be wanted or accepted into central facets of his life, to always have the distance of those choices between us, then giving in to the temptations of love and hope and believing he and I want the same thing just makes the pain of that enforced distance harder and more painful. False hope hurts far more than the cruellest truth... It's easier to believe I'm no part of what he wants in this situation than to believe we both want the same thing and are only kept separated hurting because of shitty defensive choices made 5.5 years ago by a third party too proud to admit she fucked up or to acknowledge what happened to try to heal it. 

And that's a part of why it's so easy for me to fall into the trap of believing he doesn't feel the pull of the bond or remember our shared past lives and won't miss me if I quietly distance myself remove me from his options -- especially if I do it while he has a distraction he's pursuing. I don't say that's right of me.... But it is a part of why I let me believe that about him. In a misguided attempt to square the circle so he isn't hurt, or is hurt the least I have agency to affect, by my existence or relationship or lack thereof to him, in the 3d and the 5d.

And. I won't tell you I won't do it again. Because if I ever once again get to believing it's in his best interests to cause him the least pain, I'll repeat the damn cycle and try to cut me out of his options remove myself as far as I can to make me unreachable even via the bond. All it takes is for me to believe that is the path to cause him the least pain and harm of the paths open to us for me to choose it. In this life, I don't currently believe enough in the strength of his love for me and what the bond might mean to him for me not to be willing to sacrifice it if I get to believing/rationalizing he'd be happier without any connections to me in his life given the complications I now make for him toward other things/people in his life where I have been made to feel unwanted and unwelcomed and asked to treat them as if they dont exist to me. I still believe that his life would be easier and he would be happy in the situations we've all been in since October 2018 by me removing myself from the equation and gently as I can disengaging myself and the bond between us from his options. I don't say that's his truth or any damn thing he wants, I just admit that within me there are parts of me that still believe it to be the solution to cause him the least pain and tension and harm and to give him the paths to the greatest happiness in his life that he chooses for himself... I might be dead wrong and cause him deep pain and sorrow trying to distance my soul from his and not let me see what little he shares to his socials, but as long as at any level I believe he'd be happier without the complications to his life of having/nurturing the bond to me, how can I promise I won't try again with the only agency I have in this situation to distance myself from him and reduce the bond to as quiet and dormant as possible? 

When you remove the agency to heal things from someone so they feel trapped in the cycles of toxicity, their animal instincts are left with only the agency of trying to gnaw off their own limb to get out from the trap as the only way they can see to improve the situation. This is just a version of that with me rationalizing trying to gnaw off my own limb as the only way I see to alter the situation get out of the trap that was created in October 2018. It's not that I want to do it, I just can't find anything I can do to make things better than to try that. Even if it means first rationalizing trying to make me believe the hurtful supposition that I might not matter to him and he might not feel or be aware of the bond pulling between our souls the way I am. I don't claim any of this is healthy, I'm just trying to explain how it has happened and why I can't promise that it won't happen again if I get to thinking removing me will cause him less pain than me staying given the way things are and have situationally been since Oct 2018.

I can try to be better and try to believe that he feels it all as intensely as I do and I need to respect it's OUR bond not just mine or his. I can try to stay in being the better versions of me that listen to the intuitive inner knowing. But I can't promise I can stay in that place without evidence I can hold onto. Especially in the face of a toxic mess of a trap where I feel no matter what I do I cause him hurt so the best I can do is figure out what's in my power to cause him the least hurt with him caught in the middle of the consequences created by the 2018 third party bullying games his sister and close friend chose to play with me in their own name and in the name of the entire band as a collective. I can only promise that IF I act, in any way, it will only come from a sincere belief at that time that my actions are toward the fatelines that will cause him the least harm and get him as much as possible of the happiness he seeks and chooses for himself. I may be completely wrong headed in that belief, but any actions on my part will be born from the sincerity of such a belief.

Anyway. This last half cup of coffee from the French press is now very cold AND full of grounds I'm trying to filter through my teeth...and it's really not a great experience at all.... So I'm going to be done with coffee now and go make another cuppa tea and hope I find a good pause point in this ya novel in a trilogy about ghost kids so I can go check in on Henry (a cat) while my friend is out of town and then get hours in at work until I'm too tired and have to go home to bed get some sleep before taking grandma to her appointment and my early morning very long Tuesday of having to be awake and focused.

 I really loved seeing Bailen on Friday night!!!! Their sibling harmonies are just soooo gorgeous and their songwriting gets stuck in my head a lot. Also, they do my absolute favorite cover of The Chain!!! (Side note: before you question that, yes Bailen DOES do my favorite cover of The Chain because my old favorite cover is now dead to me so can't even be considered as an option in the running for MY favorite, it has has been this way since it was made clear to me that I was unwanted and unwelcome as a fan to the band that had previously been my favorite cover of The Chain -- and then that was confirmed for me in August 2019 when they had gone independent but were still unable/unwilling to even acknowledge me bringing up that I had been blocked without warning or reason given following a comment I made to their instagram post that I loved the new song hands Dirty and was sad that the twang of country radio vocals before/after their sets was causing me physical pain due to my synesthesia so I was going to be unable to continue attending their shows. And there is nothing short of fixing what happened and making it right so that I no longer feel I am unwanted and unwelcome by the band as a collective that will change that -- nothing they can do musically to make me love their cover once more if they don't address what was done in the band's name in 2018. as far as I am concerned, the band and all their music is dead to me since the band as a collective allows decisions to stand that make it clear they wish not to exist to me -- therefore to respect the boundary created in the band's name as a collective there is nothing created by the collective in the past, present, or future is allowed to exist to me no matter what it is or how much I once loved it or could love it ... That's just how it is. And I strive to feel nothing regarding the band's non-existence and death to me other than to acknowledge the facts of what happened and the consequences of it and that there is nothing that will improve that without first removing the block created in the band's name. So no, your cover of The Chain isn't my favorite and I won't even call it a past favorite as I am doing my best to respect the boundary created in the band's name and not to allow the band or anything they create or do to exist to me. And that will be my stance for as long as the block and the boundary exists. Don't like it? Do something about removing the block/boundary and set things right. Otherwise, you will have to accept and deal with this reality same as I have had to accept and deal with the boundary of the band not wanting to exist to me and completely refusing to even acknowledge or respond to any attempt I made to try to communicate about this but like victim blaming comments when I tried to bring it up publicly when I was getting no responses to privately reaching out -- which is what ultimately made me turn from thinking something must have been misunderstood or a mistake made to me feeling unwelcome and unwanted as a fan. I don't ask you to like it, I don't claim I like it either, but either change it if you can or accept this as my truth in this situation if you don't have the power to make the changes that could heal it.)  Anyway, it was really great to see Bailen for my fifth time!!!! Even if the fire alarms all went off between the opener and the start of their set so everyone had to be evacuated then brought back in after it was all cleared. Which was an experience, but also it was a very polite orderly crowd and everyone just made friends with the people who had been around them and everyone went back to where they had been before the alarms went off and frankly, I've never seen anything like that in any crowd at any venue for any artist! It was wildly refreshing to see such a collective community watching out for each other returning to where everyone was before the fire alarms and evacuation.  Also I liked Bel who opened for them, though I didn't love that she worked with a pre-recorded track onstage... I prefer either just accepting it's you and your guitar/keyboard when you tour solo or you learn pedal looping techniques to layer sounds for the songs -- but either way a live show is about the music you make here and now in the moment of the connection in this performance. When I want something recorded, I'll listen to your recordings you made available but it's not why I came to see a live performance.  I'm not a fan of using pre-recorded track/samples in a live act, even if it's your own self pre-recorded. I'm just not. That was really my only complaint though, was that I would have preferred an in person completely performance for the live show, no matter how great the recorded layers might be....

I will definitely be prioritizing seeing Bailen again next time they're driveably close for me!!! I just love their harmonies and their songs and they're all so good instrumentally. 

Also. I did something interesting last night. When I checked in, the space didn't need me to renew either the gridding blessing protections or my newer boundaries not to allow malevolent attachments within places of energy exchange. It was all full up shiny bright didn't need anything from me. And YET, I was full of energetic power that I had to release SOMEHOW. So instead, after we came in from the fire alarm evacuation, I decided to try something else after what I had observed about this collective and the way it had functioned withing my blessed protected space and upon leaving it.. So what I did instead with all that spirit energy is I decided that since the rule is unincarnated spirits aligned with the light require that an incarnating being call on them to ASK for assistance before they can intervene, I decided to work with my allies as I had with the trap set my last time at ICHC by a VERY powerful VERY malevolent unincarnated entity that works through attachments (among other ways) that I decided that instead of defensive confrontation that could hurt innocents, I'd just called down and sic on the entity the four major archangels I know and with whom I work.  And so I said, "This is a collective fight, not my fight alone. So let's work with the allies bring this to a collective level choice and fight but set right any cheating to tilt the balances away from fairness." And so I used all the spiritual energy power channeling into/through me and I called on each of the four major archangels I have worked with across lifetimes and I gave each of them a simple ask to work their main domains on people as needed and to remove my own judgement. I asked Michale to protect those who needed protecting, Gabriel to teach those needing to learn, Raphael to heal those needing healing, and for Metatron to merkabah the fuck out of everyone who required it. Only, I didn't realize until after each of them replied affirmative and full of gratitude to be asked and I felt the energy released from me and capped off and the ripples of my request starting from what I had done, I did not put any sort of temporal constraints of space/time on that ask... It is literally just a standing request for intervention and blessing from the archangels for all of humanity across space and time rippling outward.  It's created the ripples of fateline shiftings, but the wake of that request I made has been this overwhelming sense of peace and that things are on the path toward better/brighter fatelines than they have been for the last, I dunno, 15 years or so?... That was unexpected, not gonna lie, and I couldn't figure out the extent of the ripples and the wake of what I had done until I realized I hadn't put any form of temporal boundaries so the blessing I had thought to ask for all in that space I essentially asked for all humanity across all space/time. I'd say whoops, but I honestly think the omission had better consequences than anything I could have intended.

Anyway, I'm in a bit of a lull and trying to get hours in this weekend toward next week because next week is going to disappear fast on me... Monday afternoon I take grandma to her gerontology appointment, Tuesday I'm volunteering polling from 6am til 1:30pm then going from there directly to pickup my grandma and take her to her 2:45pm podiatry appointment and THEN go vote in the primary at my own polling place. And if I can get all my hours in early enough in the week for it not to stress me out, I owuld LIKE to go see Fraser and Haas at Bur Oak Fri ngiht and/or ICHC on Sat (though the ICHC show is a $30-40 ticket, AND I should try to get hours in then rest on Saturday. Then next Sunday, March 7, Crissy adn I are driving down to St. Louis again to revisit all our favorite places AND as a close(ish) place we like to visit near the eclipse line to get up early on Monday and drive down to Cape Girardeau for the actual solar eclipse since we can't return to the winery where we saw the last one in 2017 that made the x across exactly the area we were in. Then at some point on Tuesday March 9 after we finish the remaining checklist of places we love want to visit while there is the drive back up from St. Louis.  And then nothing else in the way of getting my hours in until the weekend which is only a book sale in Milwaukee the following Sat and brunch/symphony the following Sunday. And then my life starts to slow down be less overbooked with May/June having next to nothing at all in them, tbh.

 You know that feeling when something new crosses your path and it seems so promising and you light up thinking it's going to be great and you're all just tingling excitement can't wait to dive right into it -- and then you do give it some portion of your life/energy/attention and it's just nothing at all what it seemed to promise it would be, what you set your hopes and staked your time on it being, and now you're just disappointment and all, "O hell no! Nope nope nope! This isn't any damn thing I wanted and not at all what I thought it would be!" but now you're in it so you see it through to the end because maybe it could be something of what you had hoped... and then you get to the end and you're just like, "well damn. What. A. Waste. Of. My. time." And then it makes you more cautious, less easily enthusiastic, more likely to think you might get burned at the distance between your hopes and the reality, and sometimes it makes you doubt your own judgement for a time. Experiencing disappointment of failed expectation/hope makes you jaded and fearful when you find something new that gets you excited.

I'm talking this time about a book I discovered in a little library and at least it was free so I didn't invest in the book itself coming into my life and it was a super quick read so it was just like a little fling not a 1,000+ pg commitment. But that set of FEELINGS through the arc of discovery, experiencing the reality that isn't what you'd hoped, and the disillusionment it creates is the same... And it got me thinking. About how it's a part of growing up that experience teaches you this cycle because inevitably, you WILL be disappointed and disillusioned by reality not measuring up to the expectations you projected onto it. (this can be true for books and albums and people and relationships and places and ideals and philosophies and religions and technology and just about anything you can imagine existing.)  And. I think. There's something to be said about learning to protect yourself from the cycle repeating, from learning discernment and learning to take things for what they are not what you EXPECT they could be based on your first impressions. I understand the reason people get tempted by it and it wears them down into the placidity of responsible adulthood's cynicism and lowered expectations. And sometimes people grow to fear what makes them excited enough to want what it seems to them to be and a percentage of people decide never to try to pursue it or claim it or know it because you can't be hurt disillusioned by the reality if you don't ever claim what you want, never find out the reality of its isness....But I think there's something wrongheaded there, a conclusion that isn't right and a lesson to be unlearned rather than letting it dominate your choices/actions.

Because I think there's something in that first reaction to new things the way a child reacts to a new experience -- it's something precious and to be cherished and protected and not to let it be destroyed in the soul crushing reality disillusioning us from our projected expectations. because the act of getting excited at discovering something new that seems like it will be wonderful to you IS a magickal enthusiastic way to view the world. It makes everything sparkle and shine brighter than the round of repeated habits. It's something people lose as they age, after every bump back down to earth of finding out it didn't live up to what you thought it might. I think the right way to navigate life and experiencing it is that you allow yourself to be excited by promises of good things and you allow yourself to be excited and to choose what draws you -- and then you discover what it IS and try not to project onto it what you EXPECT it to be. Because the disillusionment and hurt is the gap between what you project onto it and what it IS. But if you just, let yourself discover its isness and take it for that, then the disillusionment of feeling a broken promise doesn't happen. 

The way of feeling your own aliveness is to feel the excitement of stumbling across things that appeal to you and get you excited and draw you to them, and then the process of discovering its isness and finding out how you ACTUALLY feel about the reality of the esse that crossed your path. 

And in this case I'm talking about a book, and it's just not a particularly good book and doesn't hang together on its own plot or created universe/world. It's just not well crafted fiction. It just wasn't. But the EXPERIENCE of the discovering it in a little library and being excited to read it and then the reading of it itself and finishing it so quickly, all of that is to be sought. You don't just get excited, wanted to get to know the book and then decide you're never going to read it so it can never disappoint you. That's not the right lesson to learn from getting excited discovering something that turned out to just be not great.

And. I think. When you find anything that excites you with the seeming potential of it, it's wrong to be afraid of finding out what the reality IS so you can hang onto your excitement and hope and projection of what you HOPE it could be. Sure it will never disillusion you with its reality, but you'll also never get to discover what its nature IS and you'll miss out on some actually amazing things if you let the disappointment of a few bad experiences stop you from getting excited or opening the pages to a new book discovery that promises it COULD be delightful.

 Apply that metaphor as applicable. In all aspects of life and what you encounter in life. Allow yourself to feel the excitement and be drawn by the pull of discovery -- and then focus on discovering the reality of ISNESS without projecting your expectations/hopes onto it. And sometimes, sometimes you find treasures that sparkle with something REAL and that delights you more than you can put into words and you're just in awe of watching it in all its variations and forms. And that is breath takingly marvelous when that happens!  And then on the other hand, if it's not great, finishing it up, end it cleanly, and find what DOES excite you, what makes the world shine a bit brighter.

Me? I'm gonna go put the kettle on and cleanse my mental palette with a chapter or two of Braiding Sweetgrass and then find a new novel and try again.

P. S. No need to doubt or even question the nature of my hair tonight, curl beast is VERY curly after having just had a wash day on Tuesday morning and all the rain/humidity recently -- the volume of feral spirals is still barely contained by the barrette holding it half up out of my face today. 

So Friday night, in addition to Bailen's show at Majestic at 8pm, AJ has a book signing in Evansville from 5-7p and it's a fairly short drive will plan to go early and see her say hi. She's had a lot going on so I thought it would be nice to make sure that at least someone outside of family show up because author signings often don't have anyone and that can be soul crushing. Also, I learned today that my maman decided that when John Mellencamp tickets went on BOGO sale on Friday, to pick up tickets for her and me to go on Tuesday. So there's another concert for the month, lol. (But seriously, my May and June are so empty -- I can't remember the last time I've had such a stretch of nothing in the calendar. It's almost like my calendar is keeping space open just waiting for what's MEANT to enter into my life fill it up, if that makes sense.)  

Unrelated, but this week I just realized that my solar return (aka my birthday) this year is a solar eclipse AND Rosh Hashanah starts that sundown so it's like all sorts of extra bright blinking neon lights NEW YEAR NEW BEGINNINGS NEW STORIES START NOW going on right at my birthday this year, lol. Even I can't miss signs like that about the new beginnings at my birthday this year.

But what I wanted to say is..... I didn't bring any of the last couple posts up because of... I dunno, trying to assign blame or excuses or, I dunno?.... I brought it up because something in me is sprouting up saying, "It is time to heal this. It's time to stop repeating toxic cycles and storylines we tell ourselves. It's time to heal and find healthy ways to handle this bond existing. Without denying it or each other, or any sort of running away." I recognize that healing requires both people WANTING that and trying to work toward each other and listening and learning how not to repeat the past. And I can't try to force or coerce him to want that (though i can HOPE he's in an inner place to be feeling that same sort of way and wanting to do what needs to be done for rapprochement and reunion) but I can take ownership over what inside me has been wrong-headed and needs to change and be understood and healed. And sometimes that means asking oneself hard questions and digging down through the hard answers and sometimes versions of ourselves and our behavior patterns we don't particularly like. But also it means acknowledging and accepting the past for what it was and to let yourself feel it all deep down so you can release it. And it's in that spirit of desiring to heal and (re)learn how to nurture the bond and each other that I'm examining myself and the questions I've posed myself.

I don't expect change in the everyday to bring us together to happen soon (I'd be ecstatic if it did, but I'm not expecting it) because I'm not certain how to go about it happening -- but there's work to be done to heal and help nurture that when/if it DOES happen....

I promised I'd think on things and do the work when I had the time and it's opening up again for me to have the time. (and sometimes the best thinking is to let your subconscious chew on questions set it aside for a bit and see what you find when you come back.)

That was it for now, I'm not full of many words right now (okay, not many for me, lol) -- there's a lot of love pouring in through the bond and I've been pouring a lot of love back down it again. I went to Fireside (dinner theatre in Fort Atkinson, mostly musicals; it's what you expect it to be tbh; though the food was quite good tonight) with my parents and Crissy (who had never before been to Fireside) to see Fiddler on the Roof. The fiddler, a graduate of Julliard, was fantastic and the actor who played Tevye was quite incredible in the role connected deeply to it. (He's Jewish and worked with Michigan Shakespeare, so not surprising his deep connection to the role and how good he is as an actor.) The rest was... Well... pitchy/weak vocals and not the best acting and some terrible wigs/beards/costume choices and truly it was exactly what you would expect from a small town dinner theatre in the round, lol. But there's a place of love for that growing up a theatre kid and  genuinely both the fiddler and Tevye were surprising gems amid the tinsel of the rest of the show. We'll be back there in mid or late July for Matilda (which I loved the book dearly my whole life and I love the musical they made of it so I'm excited for seeing the musical for my third time, second for Crissy and first time my parents have seen the musical) so we'll see how that goes, lol.

~*~*~*~

Also here's this week's Astro Poets horoscopes again before I forget, still on the theme and I'm not gonna lie -- I read them and they made me go all soft "awwwww" at reading them because they're just a beautiful place of love and joy to be existing in.

"Week of 3/24 in Libra: Someone is greeting you. You are enjoying the weather and the light. And yet there are things to say. There is a flow of love. Let it flow with love."

 "Week of 3/24 in Pisces: Some delights now. There’s an enjoyment first. You must remember that is what you most want. So you find it out blissfully. So you find it out in time now."

 ~*~*~*~

So now a short (probably truly short, not just short for me, I swear) anecdote from last night to end this on a sweet note, yeah?

So, I was driving home from work and I flipped radio stations because ads and I land on the last half of Ed Sheeran's Bad Habits. Okay, probably not a message from G-d or the Universe or angels trying to thwack me upside the head for being such a stubborn idiot not seeing my own happiness when it's offered up right in front of me. Okay, right, so, my bad habits lead to you. Got it. 

So right AFTER Bad Habits ends, the intro comes on of Billy Joel introducing himself and I squee with delight, "O I love this song!" (Spoiler alert: I will declare at the opening bars of pretty much every Billy Joel song ever "O I love this song!" And I have a thousand ways I say it depending on what song and how much I love it and how hard I'm fighting myself not to say it out loud, but I will do it every time EVEN WHEN I made the damn playlist and have put any given beloved Billy Joel song on repeat and have said it every single other time the repeating song is played. I can't help it, I love what I love and when the emotions overwhelm me I just can't keep it all to myself. I even squee and say it out loud every time when I am alone, other than fur babies, and I'm not saying it to anyone, just acknowledging my feels about the song. This is how I am and the sort of thing you need to expect from me and my love when it gets too much for me to contain keep to myself.) 

So then of course I can't just go home, park the car, turn the radio off during ANY Billy Joel song (well, maybe Zanzibar, I really don't have anything nice to say about that one and he plays it at every dang show) but especially not the shiny new song Turn the Lights Back On. So I decide to drive in circles around the blocks nearby in the super fine sparkly diamond dust snow falling as I'm singing along to Billy Joel. And it was beautiful and so sparkly and I realized that the lyrics were perfect for titling what I was trying to say in the last two posts and I didn't use them. 

Anyway. So then, Billy Joel ends and goes to commercial on that radio station. So I station hop to my next saved station, and no shit but it's the Christina Perri song A Thousand Years. And like, I did NOT like the Twilight series, poster child for controlling abusive relationship "you have to give up everyone you love to be with me and I'm sorry if I lose control hurt you but I can't help it" then market that to tweens as what true love looks like -- euh, no thanks! Literally every girl I know who idolized Twilight ended up in seriously abusive relationships even after I pointed out to them why even high school me could see it was problematic.... That said, much as I dislike the franchise and what it taught vulnerable girls to look for in a relationship and  never read the books, I have to admit to loving the sappy love song by Christina Perri. I just do. I mean, c'mon. "I have loved you for a thousand years, I'll love you for a thousand more" - of course I love the song and it's message. 

Anyway, the progression of songs on the radio isn't lost on me. Like, who scripted that? Just, lyrically, who scripted those three songs in a row for my drive home last night?!?! 

And the whole point of this anecdote was just to say: I went to bed with the fucking strangest mashup duet circling in my head of Turn the Lights Back On and Thousand Years. Musically it doesn't seem like it would  work at all, but my brain bridged the parts and lyrically, yeah I hear what you're saying brain. Hard to miss there. But obvious, non?

P. S. Tonight on the drive home, radio played Killer Queen by Queen then went to ads so I station hopped to Mr. Brightside by The Killers. Don't find much of a message there, though some curious, almost ai-esque repetitions association going on there.

 O. I don't mean that as an accusation, I'm sorry if it sounded like one. Past is past, but present and future we can write however we damn well want it to be. Past is prologue, never fate -- we do not have to be the versions of ourselves we once were. We can always be the versions of ourselves we choose to be and that we strive to be. And that's a grace we must give to every soul same as we ask it for ourselves if we have behaved in ways in the past that we wouldn't now. "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better"~Maya Angelou

I'm not saying that I consciously expect him qua who he is in THIS life to make the same sort of choices as his past lives -- he is no more the same person in this life than I am the same person I have been in my past lives. There's a reason most people walk into most lives complete tabula rasa -- the growth and lessons that need to be learned generally can't be learned if you're always judging a soul by who they have been in the past without seeing their growth and healing and changes in the between times. As a general rule, people only remember their past lives if it was 1) their most recent life 2) a traumatic death or 3) the lessons they need to work on require healing karmic patterns that have formed ACROSS lifetimes. I would say that, at least on my end, this falls into the third type.  Other than my most recent lives, and mostly those are the deaths, MOST of the older lives I remember are all ones where our souls paths twined or crossed or nearly crossed but just missed interacting.

Which means that healing whatever we choose to be between our souls is part of what the lessons of this life are about. And clearly, me trying to let him go for what I believe to be his sake and what I think he wants is NOT the solution to what lies between our souls. No matter what rationalization or reasons I have for trying that, it's never worked out well for either of us and the intensity of his reaction to me trying that is part of what has brought me to the point of questioning the assumption I didn't realize I had been holding onto unexamined. Which means there needs to be rapprochement and healing of the damage that has happened.

But, it's quite possible that in trying not to CONSCIOUSLY pre-judge him by his past lives choices (including the really good ones between us) I have created a situation where I don't give enough credit to all the good which has been and still is and all the more that could be and instead leave in dark spaces of the subconscious conditions where the doubts/fears of "is this going to happen again" have created self-sabotaging actions that I didn't recognize as such. Dark things grow in the dark, you have to shine the light to look at them and face them if you want to heal and believe in being better moving forward.

I think that it's important, for both our sakes to feel and understand how/why the bond is what it is and how we got here BUT I think it's equally important to acknowledge who we both are NOW is not the same as who we HAVE BEEN and we should be focusing on forgiving/healing the past so that we can learn the ways who we are now pull toward each other and could fit together. (especially given that overlays and that inner pull isn't right to do trying to have relationships to third parties, but trying to diminish the pull of the bond creates worse problems between us. And neither of us deserve to spend our lives alone wishing for something we think we can't have (or is it more accurate to say think we don't deserve? why does that feel more right?) or unhappy making the best of what we think we can get whilw always measuring everyone/everything else against what it isn't.

Also. And this is in no way his fault or mine. But some of the things I've done in my soul's purpose being in the incarnation, I don't know if I would have made those same choices to do them if I hadn't spent those intervening lives thinking that the reason he didn't find me was because he no longer wanted to find me.... (as opposed to him spending far too many lives believing he didn't deserve to find/have me.) I mean, my stoic fatalist martyr streak would never have gotten so overgrown out of hand if I hadn't spent those intervening lives genuinely believing that he wasn't crossing my path because he no longer wanted me. And I'm not claiming I was RIGHT in believing that, I just claim I DID believe it... And I very well may have chosen differently in those lives if I'd held in my heart any hope he wanted me instead of making me face the idea he didn't anymore and that was why his soul stopped finding mine -- because you generally wont find what you don't seek because you no longer want it..... It was, apparently, a very VERY wrong headed idea, but that doesn't untangle centuries of me believing the wrong headed idea and the choices I made while firmly believing it, y'know?

So, I think I mentioned I've been reading Braiding Sweetgrass. (which I very much have been loving and reading slowly to savor every section, every sentence, ever word and not finish it too soon; it's not so much good science or a philosophical exhortation for HOW to be better aligned with the Earth's needs and all the beings on it as it is a series of very magical memoirs of someone who straddles the divide trying to balance both worlds of science based field ecologist and growing up Pottawatomie trying to relearn the lost wisdom and knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of North America. It's beautifully written and I can relate very deeply to it and to the desire she's trying to articulate about the need to bring modern humankind back into a model of stewardship seeing all of Creation here on Earth Mother as ones own family rather than commodification of the natural resources models.) So today, while reading it and drinking my coffee waiting to move the laundry along, I read this passage:

"The bear is known for protecting the people and as the keeper of medicine knowledge." (p. 257) 

Now, this is a passing sentence in reference to someone she met who is a member of the Mohawk's Bear Clan. But, I read it and my internal reaction was an immediate affirmation, "Yes of course. That's why I named him Great White Bear of the North when he came all the way across the great Eastern Sea." And the moment I had that reaction, it completely stopped me in my tracks my internal affirmation at reading it written that clearly and succinctly about the way that the members of the Iroquois nations viewed bear as a totem medicine in a completely different context. Because... Reading it like that, it flashed me back to a past life memory... Of one of our lives a long while back now. When the Vikings first came over here to interact with the native tribes. When he literally crossed oceans left behind the known world of his time guided solely by the pull of the bond to find me where I'd gone when I gave up on the colonialist Roman Paullene Christianity. And I was reminded and remembered the first time I named him what is closest translated to Great White Bear from the North -- I remembered not just memories from that life which I've recalled before but I remembered that I was the one who gave him that name and why I gave it to him in that life. Because he was but also his nature is protecting his people and the keeper of medicine knowledge -- no matter how far he has to go to track it down. 

And. While I can't say WHEN he would have been remembering his past lives, if they've just always been there in him the way I've always remembered mine this life, him calling himself bear and self identifying with the polar bear to the extent that it's the form he shows up as his truest soul self in shared dream space.... That only happens by a conscious choice remembering and wanting another life in that energy and shared life path lessons. 

And I'm an idiot for not recognizing that before this. 

Because I remembered that life and I remembered how he got that name in that life but I never really considered the profound STATEMENT he was making to me specifically in THIS lifetime by grafting it onto his identity of who he is and chooses to be so deep that it's how his soul shows up in spirit dream forms.

I don't know how I chalked that up as a coincidence, not a very decisive bold statement conscious choice from the truest parts of his soul. I DID say that I have blind spots in what i see/know for all my gifts and all, but damn.... That's a rather fucking big blind spot Dani! And one I should have seen if I hadn't been running the unexamined premise that he most likely doesn't remember/feel the bond the way I do or doesn't actually want it this life the way I do....

And as to why I've been running that unexamined premise.... I said I'd think about it and I have been. And I can't promise to arrive at the CORRECT answer or any answer I LIKE, I certainly don't have the hubris to claim "if I just think about it, I will inevitably and always arrive at the right answer" and I sincerely hope I NEVER have that sort of hubris in me.... Seriously though.... But I can promise to always do my best to be as intellectually honest as I'm capable of being in examining it with the best information/tools at my disposal. Which doesn't mean I can't end up at completely bullshit wrong conclusions, especially if I have bad unexamined premises in the mix of information I'm working with, but it means I'll do my best and keep doing my best to arrive at what kernels of truth I can find regarding any questions I say I'm going to examine.

I think that part of me doubting and questioning whether the bond runs both ways and if he remembers is just because.... So few people have strong gifts or remember their past lives (let alone the past lives of other people they're connected to) that it just felt... statistically improbable... to believe we both would in the same life in such an anti-spiritually connected era. It's easier to chalk it up to coincidence than to believe we defy the odds in BOTH remembering our past selves and feeling the pull between us this same lifetime.  I mean, I know I tend to shake loose past lives and catalyze lessons still to be learned/remembered in people who encounter me, but I've never felt like I did that for him -- he already knew and remembered. He didn't need me to shake his psyche to remember, he just did on his own because it was already shaping what he was seeking what he was seeking for himself and how he set about finding it BEFORE our paths physically crossed.... 

I think the other reason I can find in me for doubting/questioning if he knows and remembers and feels it too lies in other past lives between us that need to be healed where he either DIDN'T remember or didn't choose me and there's still a "once burned twice shy" fear in me that he might hurt me by doing that again this life. I don't consciously THINK that's true about this life, but self preservation based fear of pain is irrational, as long as it's anywhere inside me there's a risk of me pulling away or self-sabotaging because I don't want to be hurt that way again. And I can try to be aware of it, but I can't promise I can pull it out so it doesn't well up from the subconscious react before my consciousness and desires can catch up recognize it and rein it in.... I'll try to work on it from within, but, the truth is that the best way to heal fears (even old fears) is by proving they're unfounded and wrong. And I won't say it's EASY to keep trying be consistent from the place of love when someone self sabotages pulls away, because it hurts to feel rejected in any form, but that's also the best advice I have for how to help me from outside my subconscious, y'know?

I did TELL you I was going to chew on considering that question exploring why I continue to doubt he remembers or feels the intensity of the bond as well. Just because I haven't been writing about the torturous ins and outs of my contemplating it trying to find the answer doesn't mean I haven't been working at the question inside myself. I can't promise I'm not missing something crucial or that should be really obvious except to me somehow, but I'm doing my best from within my own self and what I have at my disposal to unravel the unexamined assumptions in me that I have seen are shit stupid for me to have and that I really need to examine the where and how and why of them being there.

And I'm not saying I'm DONE thinking on this set of questions about why I'm so quick to assume/accept thie line of thinking -- this is just what I have so far examining it these recent couple days.

There was another passage that resonated with me not about my internal questions/soul journey but about this moment of humanity as a whole and the nexus point(s) we are at collectively -- and that was the passage about the myth of the twins playing for the world in a game of peach pit and how it took all Creation crying out together for a chance to live to make it land white side up.

It reminded me too much of the bet made in shifting the rules for all of humanity's youngest souls to decide the fate of humankind as a vehicle for incarnations.

 IT'S SNOWING IT'S SNOWING IT'S SNOWING!!!!!! IT'S!!!!! SNOWING!!!!!!

That means before the accumulation starts, I'm about to head home to lay a fire in the hearth and pour some Highland Park Spirit of the Bear scotch and have a lovely night of cozy hygge with books and music and my fur babies, lol. I came into work to water the melodramatic plants who can't wait til Saturday for their next drinks AND because my best friend made lemon bars for me and my parents and Sarah and Mikaela and Karissa and texted me to ask if I was going to be at work for lemon bars and cocktails. So gifts of dessert and needing to take care of my plants seemed like a good reason to head in even though I'm already over 45 hours of work in for the week. (I didn't even punch in to take care of my plants tbh.)  The snow wasn't supposed to start til like midnight according to the forecast, but instead it started around 9ish. It's supposed to be anywhere from 5-8" of snow through tomorrow afternoon and depending on the forecast here, in Milwaukee, and Racine (including the temp drop after the snow to form black ice) AND when the snow ends AND how well the roads are cleared, even with new tires on my car Crissy and I may decide not to go to McAuliffe's Pub to see DAIMH. (The tickets were only $15 each, we've never seen them before and they will be at several Irish fests this August.)  We will know tomorrow based on this snow storm (which has its heaviest line of snow all along 94 which is what we need to drive to get to Racine which is in the mixed precipitation/black ice belt whereas here is just snow, lots of snow, lol) if I'm dropping Waffles off with my parents and heading out for the show. On verra.

I also learned that it is 100% my fault that Gadan and Enda have teamed up into an Italian Irish banjo super group for Irishfest season, lol. I thought it might be because I had gushed to Enda about seeing Gadan and how much they instrumentally remind me of what We Banjo 3 was doing  could fill the gap of people missing his former band when he asked me how I was doing during a brief series of catch up emails. AND Lorenzo recently posted thanking "the girl who encouraged me to email one of my musical heroes" about how it happened reminding that it was me telling him to reach out to Enda for advice on banjo technique or to collaborate or how to book more fests community because Enda genuinely loves teaching and helping spread the playing of his beloved instrument -- Enda would be very kind about any email (even with Lorenzo shy anxious about Italian being the natal language and so making linguistic gaffes) and the worst he might say is that he's overbooked himself can't do it now but wants to come back to it later when he has some time. So in a weird way, I guess I yente-ed the setup for this collaboration of one of my favorite musicians/humans with a young group of Italian musicians struggling to figure out how to find themselves a place in the Irish music scene. I genuinely didn't remember til they reminded me, lol. 

Also, since I need to head home now but this has been shorter than usual, my friend AJ asked me on facebook for a list of dark poetry for her. (AJ is an intovert dark witch medium (her gifts opened up after a near death motorcycle accident that killed both her dad and unborn son)) and a self published author of sexually explicit dark fantasy novels and she's married to a drummer in a metal band. Anyway, she had a brain limpoma that turned out to be cancer and was removed a couple years ago but at her most recent scan the brain cancer had returned) So here's my list of poetry reccs of Dark English poetry for her (other than what she had said she just bought: Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems of Mary Shelly, and a gorgeous new copy of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry) :

"Oooh! I definitely understand the intermittent poetry phase of reading!! I adore poetry, own a LOT of it. Some of the best dark poets I can think of are in French and I don't have good translations to recommend since I read them in the original without English but I can give you names if you want dark French poets as well. Also I hope you wanted long because this is me and brevity isn't my strongest asset as a writer. Better known for general enthusiasm, lol. Also, I can't talk any books, but especially this list of suggestions without waxing poetic.  So welcome to Dani's reading list for Dark English Poetry 101, we will skip the ones on the syllabus you already picked up which would otherwise HAVE to be on this list. If desired, I can easily come up with more, but here are some of the first that I think of and TONS of poems and pages for you to explore and also that I think you specifically might enjoy if you don't know them:

Classics:

~Christina Rossetti! Definitely check out her poetry if you don't know it!! She is bona fide Gothic-Romantic from the Pre-Raphaelite movement of art and poetry and arguably the most important female poet of 20th century England, some would argue of the 20th century full stop. She is best known for the wyrdness of The Goblin Market, which you can probably find online if you want a sample, but her complete works is literally a 1,000+ pg tome as thick as Emily Dickinson! She did go through a bit of a Jesurific phase, which is definitely not my favorite, but outside of those poems I think you would love her poetry!

~Dante Gabriel Rossetti ; this is Christina Rossetti's brother and was probably more famous in his time for his colorful (think Byronic) life and he is also Gothic-Romantic Pre-Raphaelite writer of dark themed poetry ; many of his poems are story character poems and focus on the Medieval (especially his ideas of Medieval Italy) and there's a lot of darkness in his imagery and taboo (for his time) subject matter but he is also ridiculously great and dark Gothic.

~Lord Byron ; I mean, love him or hate him for his lifestyle, not including him in a list of Gothic dark poets is all sorts of messed up given he created and defined the dark brooding fascinatingly seductive but will probably love you then leave you broken hearted Byronic hero. It's literally named for him. And we both know you ain't afraid of a few explicit passages in a work. I think the Rossetti siblings are better poets and you're more likely to have read some Byron before, but he belongs on the list of classics.

~Oscar Wilde ; he's better known for his plays and effervescent lifestyle and the consequences of being openly gay in that era, but his fairy tales and poems are beautiful and dark and heart breaking and worth finding. His most well known poem is probably Ballad of Reading Gaol:

"And all men kill the thing they love,

By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!"

~Sylvia Plath ; I'm going to admit I haven't yet read through my copy of her Collected Poems because I found it used a couple years ago and it's one I'm saving for the right mood/time, but the samples I've read opening to random pages are gorgeous and after all she sparked this question and is well known for creating light out of the darkness in her.

Contemporary to support living authors (not certain these are the darkness you want but they are more modern shadow and light of everyday living):

~Iain S. Thomas ; a South-African poet, I first found his works while I Wrote This For You was a random blog site before publishing and he has been fairly open talking about the places grappling with his depression has had in his life and art

~Lang Leav ; Australian poet of Singaporean descent, I can't really explain it but something in her poems and their hints at past life memory karmic ties just sing to me of the joy through the sorrows of being a soul in a human meat suit

~Courtney Peppernell, she is a relatively newer discovery for me and she's ridiculously prolific so I only own a few of her books and I will admit that it was the gilded on black cover art of Watering the Soul that first caught my eye but it was the mix of strength with empathy in the craziness of modern life that made me buy it. I only own I Hope You Stay, The Road Between, and Watering the Soul but I really enjoyed them and need to pick up more of her works!

~Najwa Zebian book called Sparks of Phoenix ; This one was a little library find so I'm not sure how easy this one is to buy, the book says it's from Andrews McMeel Publishing if that helps, but this is a solid book of poetry for when life throws you a sucker punch and you rise up screaming defiance. It just feels like something you would relate to for yourself or your characters. Trigger warning that some of the poems seem to have been written picking up the pieces of shattered self following at least one instance of sa.

Honorable mentions extra credit:

~Seamus Heaney ; Irish poet, some of the darkness in it deals with poverty and the troubles, but just excellent absolute class poems and a surprising amount of Celtic paganism woven through some of them. Also, if you haven't read his translation of the Old English classic Beowulf you should!! It is the easiest reading true to the original rhyme schemes but flowing the beautiful imagery. You will probably still sympathize with Grendel and his mom, because it's you and you love your misunderstood monsters, but imho Seamus Heaney's translation is tied with with J. R. R. Tolkien's for best translations of Beowulf and Heaney's is probably better but it's Tolkien....

~Tim Burton, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories ; Burton isn't the greatest poet of all time per se, his focus is a rhythmic way to tell his story not the emotive art of the language. But if you love his weirdness then all of his poems have that unexpected twist of dark fairy tale Burton-ness loving the monstrous that he is so well known for creating. It's an enjoyable little book and the illustrations are FANTASTIC if you love the Burton aesthetic!

~Edna St. Vincent Millay ; I said I was sticking to English language poets and yet.... I have yet to find a translation that sings for me and my German is not good enough to fully appreciate the original but there are some real gems in her work

~Rainer Maria Rilke ; also not a poet in English so same general warning as Edna St. Vincent Millay, I have yet to find translations that I adore but poems and parts of poems are transcendent

~ T. S. Eliot ; if you haven't read The Wasteland, you absolutely need to! It's a bit fractured post WWI and worth reading by itself and reading annotated to understand all his allusions, but it's a classic for a reason and the imagery is exquisite. I reread it every Spring because invariably something reminds me of the opening lines:

"April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain." "

And then I also suggested in our back and forth:

"most of Coleridge isn't necessarily dark themed, but if you've never read Kubla Khan, you should. Especially if you love Poe's poetry. Even if you've read it before, it's a good short one for re-reads because it's a beautiful tour de force of gorgeous atmospheric fantasy imagery! Supposedly, he wrote the poem based on an opium dream that got interrupted by someone knocking on his door"

So there you go! There's some insight into my favorite dark themed poets and a small reading list if you want to understand me better through poems I love, lol. Also, it's a damn good reading list syllabus if you LIKE dark gothic light through the shadows poetry.

And I don't know exactly WHEN, but if you want a heads up on my eclectic reading habits, T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland is the only poem I re-read every Spring since I first read it when I was like 16 or 17. I don't know WHEN in April I will be re-reading it, especially with such a lovely snowfall tonight, but somewhere in the next month or so, I will be re-reading The Wasteland. Every April I read it though, it's become a personal tradition with me tbh.

Okay. Time to head home. because..... IT'S SNOWING!!!!! IT'S SNOWING!!!! IT'S SNOWING!!!! AND IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND I HAVE SUCH SNOW GIDDIES!!!!!!!

No, but I really DO have such snow giddies, lol. You should have seen me when I took the dog out to go pee (even though she hadn't asked) and was just back of work with no coat or hat or scarf, just my jeans and sweater, spinning around grinning and dancing face up into the snow and the full moon bright enough to hazy see through the thin but snow laden clouds to the east!  SUCH gorgeous fat fluffy soft flakes of snow!!!! No wind or ice in the early part of this snowstorm at all!!! And the dog was running around happily sniffing everything and trying to catch MASSIVE snow clumps as they fell and I was just absolute cheesing ear to ear grin and joy dancing with the fresh falling snow!!!

I'M SO FULL OF SNOW GIDDY SPARKLES TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!! BOURBON PEACH SOURS AND LEMON BARS AND COFFEE AND SNOW GIDDIES!!!!!! (I should probably eat some real food instead of trying to live on sugar and caffeine and joy like some sort of chaotic hummingbird sylph, lol.) also. I make no promises that this chaotic hummingbird sylph won't take her lowrider long dog dachshund-beagle-Jack Russel terrier mutt on a midnight or early morning snow frolic in the silence and joy of it all. I make no promises on that front, after all, dogs need walks and my heart needs snow giddies.  But maybe enough common sense will prevail for me to await after sunrise for walkies and snow frolics rather than choosing the sacred silences of the wee hours.

P. S. Midnight addendum: 

Gah!!!!! It's such a gorgeous winter wonderland outside!!!! (Yes it's Spring officially, but also it's Wisconsin and so everything is the softest sparkle fluff outside!!!!) So much beauty!!!! Such shiny happy snow giddies in my heart!!!! Luckily, at least one being in this house is sensible and the dog ran to her kennel put herself to bed patiently awaiting her bedtime treat and kisses before I closed her kennel door on her to nest for the night. Which means no taking her on middle of the night snow frolics, if I go out for snow frolics it will just be me and the snowflakes dancing, lol. And, after the dog put herself to bed, I put on pyjamas because why not be more comfortable in my cozy if I can, right?

 I'm no longer at any level angry or frustrated with my gran as I was. You have to accept and love people for their nature, even when sometimes you're dealing with versions of them that are harder to love given their behavior patterns. It was just that.... Intellectually and from soul compassion, I KNEW it was her fear over her vision and mental faculties diminishing and her loss of agency and power in the world that was causing her to try to assert agency everywhere she could even if it was petty stubbornness while lashing out the fear, even to those trying to help her. And some of it is anxiety as well as fear to be out in the world and out navigating places/schedules so different form her quotidian -- she is so diminished from the powerful independent woman she once was and while it's been an erosion over time, there's times it seems like it hits her the difference of the anxiety of being so dependent upon others versus the independent strength she used to navigate the world. And I KNOW that, and it's part of how I let it go once the situation moves on, once she was better not kvetching over everything because we had finished the appointment and I had grandma back to her own building which she feels like she can navigate from her own unit to the dining room and back again and have control/knowledge over timing and who she encounters when and where. And while she doesn't apologize, once she was back home within her realm of control/agency (as much as she has it) she came as close as she does in her ways of showing kindness and gratitude. 

But, that said, no matter how much you UNDERSTAND the reasons someone is behaving that way, it's still hard to keep your calm and your cheerfulness when you keep getting yelled at for trying to be helpful and then getting yelled at for not doing the thing you were just trying to do.... I mean, I'm a Libra sun Pisces rising Capricorn moon, so I'm heavily skewed toward empathy and wanting everyone to be as happy/harmonious as possible while being fairly logical and karmic rather than emotional reactionary, but even I can still be hurt by the way I'm treated EVEN AS I can understand how/why the other person is behaving in those ways. I mean, nobody LIKES being yelled at when trying to be helpful as possible and then getting yelled at for not doing what you JUST got yelled at for trying to do to circumvent the current frustration..... Okay, well, I shouldn't say nobody -- I'm sure there are subs whose kink that might be to be dominated that way, though weird if they want it from their grandma but there are some people with strange kinks in this world....and who am I to judge? But also, that ain't me. (My kink is being treated as an equal, actually. I find it really fucking hot. I hate being told what to do and I hate having to teach others tell them what to do -- but being treated as an equal and wanting the same thing is definitely a turn on for me. Libra sun Pisces rising, I like balance and compassion. Intentional acts of cruelty and bullying for the ego trip is probably my biggest turn off in a person as well as my shortest fuse in my temper when I'm confronted with it.) I just digressed to a very strange non sequitor... Back on the original track. My POINT was: I do NOT like being yelled at for trying to be helpful then being yelled at for not doing the thing i was just trying to do for you. And continuously treating me that way does get me hurt and angry and upset even if I have to strive not to show it, especially with someone like my grandma who is dependent on my assistance to get her to her appointments.

But also.... I can remember who my grandma was and love her and admire and have gratitude for who she has been and I can feel her fear and anxiety over what her world has diminished into and I feel strongly that it is important to care give the elders who gave love and cares for you when you were small and needed it... I don't see abandoning an elder when they are in need of the strength of those who are younger as something a good person engages in. To be there for the dimming days of anyone or anything you have loved is the last acts of love you can ever get to give the embodiment of another soul. Whether it's an elder or whether it's a pet or whether it's someone younger who has received a diagnosis that tells them the duration of their finite time remaining.... The last acts of love you can give are to be cherished because you KNOW they are finite diminishing, you can SEE the sands draining out and how close you are to the hourglass emptying until its next turn into another life. (They are to be cherished to honor the love that has been shared, even when the moments themselves are intermixed with hurt or sorrow or infuriating or frustrating.)

At least that's how I see it. And it's why I go into it knowing that some days I'm not going to get the nicest version of her but still I have no problems at all with stepping up to rearrange my schedule to help my grandma be the primary one who takes her to her appointments (even though none of her other grandkids help out and I'm often helping her more than some of her kids.) And, today, for one of the first times, she kept intermittently referring to me as one of her kids not her granddaughter but at other times she would remember exactly who I am.... just as a sign of how her dementia is worsening. She hasn't started calling me Gracie like my great-grandma did the last several times I saw her... Grandma and her sister and their brother have all told me independently over the years since I became an adult that the rhythm of my voice and especially my laugh sounds exactly the same as great-great-aunt Grace did when they were kids and that she was GGB's favorite sister so it was a compliment. (I never met my great-great-aunt Grace as far as I can remember or anyone else can remember when I asked, she was a whiskey drinking jazz singer and a modern dancer and by the time I was born she lived in either New Mexico or Arizona because she said the dry air was kinder on her lungs. She died when I was a young kid of lung cancer/emphysema from decades of chain smoking. It's kind of weird though to be told by multiple people that my voice and especially my laugh sound like a relative I never met, but at least she was a well beloved spark of joy in this world!)  But I shouldn't be surprised that my gran gets confused as to who is a kid vs grandkid, she is in her late 80s already.

I probably oughtn't to have complained, but sometimes even I just need to vent to release the hurt/frustration and level out see the balance and understand again. I process emotions in words to see the form of the crystallized word palaces I'm building so it's not all just big oceanic waves ever changing form. And that's how I often use this, to put emotions and thoughts and experiences into word forms so I can see them, y'know? 

I was serious about the line of questioning at the end of the last post though. I know it got truncated by my gran coming back to the waiting room with the help of one of the techs. 

I don't pretend to have the answers to those questions -- this is the first I've ASKED myself why I consider the hypothesis that he doesn't feel the pull of the bond or wouldn't care about it or me. And why questions are often some of the hardest to answer. (It's probably the reason I ask them so often.) But I think it's important for my own inner health of head/heart that I try to answer that. Beyond the potential of it affecting future growth if we ever move things from the 5d to the 3d real world, I just think it's important I understand what inside me (whether generally or specific to him) makes me consider such assumptions as if they could be true when I have no evidence (other than lack of anything moving forward) of their truth value and quite a bit of experiential evidence that it is false (such as how he reacts to any weakening or pulling away in the bond.) 

And gods fucking damnit, but I ought to know better than to stand in my own damn way or block my own shot!!! Like, if he truly doesn't want me never did, well fine then that stings but is what it is and I'll move on with my life -- but blocking what I WANT by assuming what I don't want to be truth is a fucking asinine getting in my own way blocking me from what I want. So for fuck's sake, I won't let me do that and don't you dare let me do that either if you catch me doing it!!! We deserve better from me....

Trying to answer this questioning (about why I would believe that the bond might only pull one way or that he might be unaware of it) doesn't SOLVE the problem that's been agitating stirring up my inner storms though -- the question of not seeing any changes or reasons to believe things are moving toward reality in the 3d everyday and feeling like I'm wasting my finite time in this incarnation by waiting on what's not yet happened and shown no signs of imminence that it ever will.  But that isn't something I can think my way out of -- it's something that I will have to make choices around based on what I'm seeing in the real world choices he and I make and create.... And, I think there is something that could be hurtful and accidentally cruel in me telling someone "I don't believe you feel/experience this intense connection between us" especially when it's someone who time and again has shared how deeply they feel the things they feel/experience and keeps having strange synchronicities that point toward him remembering past lives if not the pull to me this life..... And I guess until my own damn hair got upset that I would use the example of questioning its very nature, I hadn't even considered that there was something hurtful in denying or even questioning if he feels the bond as well or cares about it.... And I have never wanted to hurt him. Which isn't the same as saying I've never hurt him, only that I've never WANTED to and it's only after the fact I realize something I say/do/choose had the power to cause him pain even if it wasn't my intention.

And. Also. Just because something hasn't happened YET doesn't mean he hasn't been working damn hard in his own way and his own timing to manifest it happening. Even with all my gifts, I don't know everything and I don't see everything. And sometimes when you're too close invested to care too much, you can't see the shifts that others can see. I'm not currently at a crossroads of choosing between someone else or continuing to wait for him, I'm just wondering if I should be trying to set my course find my way to such a crossroads. I'm still very much in the mindset and heartspace that if he showed up at my door or randomly crossed my path, I'd drop everything else choose him and try to find a way to heal and build a future path together with him. There ain't any questioning or trying to make me be a realist about what is IN my 3d life vs what is only 5d inner life that can shake that truth about how I'd react to having him right in front of me again. And since I know that about myself, I reckon you deserve to know it too of you're going to have to endure the torturous twists in all my questioning and overthinking.

*yawns* I'm tired now and I've got way more hours in than I needed to at work for this week. I'm going to finish up this cuppa tea and tidy up my desk before heading home.

P.S. Thinking of which! I forgot to mention.... My negative line of thinking from the questioning that I was getting stuck in.... It stopped when in my sleep I broke my baltic amber necklace I'd been wearing instead of my Claddagh ring or copper wire wrapped  mother of pearl... As in, I sat up in bed to put my glasses on and suddenly there was a round thing on the bed laying on the sheet between me and the side table. And at first I had no idea what it was, thought maybe it was the eye of my Kali polar bear from St. Louis Zoo or something... Only when I picked it up did I recognize it as an oval of amber and realized that it had literally detached itself broken off from the silver setting of the necklace.... And then after that, it was like my head broke out of the clouds and I started reminding myself that while it's important to question, it's wrong to treat a line of questioning AS IF it is true without having EVIDENCE that it might, y'know, actually have evidence it's true. And I'm not claiming any form of causation between my necklace or it breaking and me breaking out of those ways of overthinking in circles, I'm just noticing the correlation and thinking it curious, y'know?

 Grandma is extra feisty today.... But her vision has gotten much worse recently and this is her optometry appointment so I'm not surprised. *sigh* it's just not much fun getting kvetched at over things that aren't my fault (or hers) like the wind or navigating across the bumpy thresholds of doors or her glasses fogging up or navigating through doorways/elevators without me leading because I have to hold it open for her or being too far ahead or too close (though I'm the same distance ahead I always am) for her to follow so she can't see my feet or having to sit and wait til they call us..... It's never fun to be someone's whipping boy, even when you love them and you can intellectually understand that it's a measure of exerting what control she can in her waning years even if all the  control she has is to complain voice her displeasure things are difficult. 

She's just in a mood. And even when she recognizes that she wasn't her best self in how she treated others, my Scorpio grandma never apologizes to anyone. She thanks gives gratitude, but she never apologizes..... Today is simply one of those test of patience to let the harsh roll off my back and to continue to respond with kindness and compassion recognizing it's her fear of her failing vision that's reacting, not her love. Some days be like that, and at least this waiting room is a great mix of 50s jaxzy crooners (like Sinatra) and Motown. Much better than the dentist office for her Mon appointment which was playing gods awful bro country.... My temper was more frayed by the music than Gran's kvetching on Monday, lol. For another round of waiting rooms, this music is much preferable!! Much easier to keep my temper in check at getting yelled at for things that aren't my fault and I can't do anything about.... Oy gevalt. This too shall pass. Wish I had coffee with me, but UW health is a masks required for everyone so I didn't even bring it in from the car.

(This is the main reason why I'm the one in the family who takes her to her appointments.... Patience is not the strongest virtue for most of my dad's side of the family, lol. Also I can set my own hours and catch up on them whenever possible, which helps, but it's mostly that I have the patience to stay kind through the kvetching and read through the waiting. Which is more than her son's can say, and her daughter is better than the brothers but she has limits to her patience. My mum can stay nice but starts seething hut underneath it takes it personal, she's also a Scorpio, and then plays the "she's not my mom" card. It's best for everyone to have me be the one taking her to appointments.) 

Querulous. That's the adjective I want for how gran is today..... Querulous and combative..... 

Anyway. I didn't mean to kvetch about Grandma's kvetching, I should be grateful for the blessing she's still in my life at all at her age. 😆 

The reason I started this in my phone instead of reading the next chapter of Braiding Sweetgrass (which I've been very much loving as my purse book!) I think ut's probably worth me examining WHY I consider it within the realm of consideration that maybe the pull of the bond runs one way or that the love/yearning is something I feel and he doesn't. Because from a physics perspective, tensions are the felt equally on both ends that pull toward each other. And, it IS true that he has a very strong stubborn reaction of refusal and on trying to get back the bond to its accustomed every time there's been any separation or pulling away or putting the bond to sleep or anything that DIMINISHES the intensity of being able to reach each other. 

And that would make the case pretty damn clear that the pull of the bond is something he can feel an knows he wants in his life and in his soul. Whether he knows it's me or in what capacity in his life he wants it, still it's pretty dang clear that he gets upset/hurt over anything that diminishes the bond and he will do everything in his power, move heaven and earth, to get it back again and hold onto it. 

Which is pretty damn clear that the bond is NOT just one way or that he could be completely oblivious or indifferent to it. So why then do I sometimes get to doubting it runs both way? (Why do I doubt that my hair is curly not just wavy?)

And I don't know. I don't know if it's just trying to make all the data, including the distance and lack of communication and choosing others not each other, into a pattern that makes sense of it all. It could be some form of self sabotaging, but I have no idea what instigates it if that's the case.... It's not like there's any rapprochement that triggers a flight reaction, if anything it's the LACK of any progress toward rapprochement makes me doubt that it's going to happen or is even anything he is desiring for himself. 

But from a purely objective stand point, it does seem like I'm doing wrong by him to think that he might not feel the bond too.... He may not understand it (and who says I do?) or know who I am -- but he definitely reacts negatively to changes in it that pull away contact and reacts positively returning love for love when I send him random pulses of love down the bond. 

So I should really consider what makes me even ask the question, "what if the bond only runs one way and it's all in my head?" If that's coming from fear, facing fear, self-sabotage to keep me from reaching for what I want, genuine evidence to support that line of questioning.... I should try to figure WHY I sometimes get to thinking that way. Because I don't know why I even entertain the idea.

And I should. Because I can't claim my motive is truth seeking if I don't even know how in hell there's any grounds for thinking it could be true ... And it's damn hard to disprove a theory that isn't evidence based truth seeking. You can't disprove unicorns, you can only say you've never seen evidence for them. Similarly, I can't disprove the idea that the bond only runs one way but I do have evidence that he reacts to it's strength or when it's weakened/threatened....

Ack! I have to interrupt this mid musing. Grandma's visual field test is done and she's back now to the waiting room to wait for her appointment itself.