Mama said don't give up, it's a little complicated. All tied up, no more love and I'd hate to see you waiting. They say it's all been done but they haven't seen the best of me, So I got one more run and it's gonna be a sight to see. Had to have high, high hopes for a living. Shooting for the stars when I couldn't make a killing. Didn't have a dime but I always had a vision, Always had high, high hopes.

 Fact: Not only does the bond make me happy and it's cozy feels like home to feel the way the love flows both ways along it, like tides. But also, earlier today like mid-morning there was such a massive rush of love down it and a comforting reassurance along it like being hugged and told, "it's alright love, you didn't mess this up, it's not too late. I'm not going to give up, and you're not going to push me to the point either of us needs to fear that. You don't need to torture yourself over what ifs that aren't going to happen. It's okay it will be okay. You'll see. We'll both make better choices from here." And then I slept a normal amount (even if it was across late morning and the afternoon) AND while I had dreams, none of them were any form of that recurring nightmare. So whether you prefer to believe in the soul bond as the means of allaying my fears or that in writing it out I gave them form and faced my own subconscious -- still I slept without having that particular nightmare again. Which I'm intensely grateful for. 

Why does it feel like even though I don't think I actively did anything and nothing's obviously materially changed in my quotidian life, still everything seems like it tectonic shifted and things are now on a bright path toward reunion rather than a dark one toward separation/isolation? Like a deep spring of faith and hope was cleared out after a long time blocked. I can't make logical sense of that feeling, but it's intensely strong, for many weeks now, and nothing rattles it. Defies logic as much as my sense of feeling loved and reassured this afternoon not to give into my fears of what ifs that didn't happen because we made different choices.

(Also. I've been an idiot for the time I've spent thinking it's a good idea to play the martyr try to sacrifice or quiet the bond, for any reasons; they're all shit rationalizations for destructive behavior patterns and it's never done anything but cause us both to suffer for the absence of it any time I've tried -- especially shitty rationalizations for hurting us both if it's really not something he wants to be free of. And if he ever did want to be free of it, isn't that for him to say? For him to act on and do something about? What makes me think I have a right to assume it's what he wants and then "do it for him" without checking in with him to see if it's what he really wants?  If he really were to ever want to not have the bond pulling on him, then it's for him to do what he feels necessary about it. Not me claiming I'm acting for his sake without even asking him what he truly wants for himself.... So why have I let myself, when i feel trapped by the choices he or others have made in his name, think that it justifies  me behaving in that way "for his sake" rather than at least communicating what has me feeling trapped so I can't see any way other than to gracefully bow myself out remove me from his options? I don't have an answer for that. It's just something on my mind I'm considering right now. Something in me that I should figure out and understand so I can change it in me to be a better version of myself so that any potential future sabotaging of what could be between us isn't coming from me.) 

Okay, that was actually all I wanted to say right now. I'm going back to inputting invoices into the database and binge watching Pretty Little Liars while i drink tea and my dog sleeps on my feet at work. (I never watched PLL while it was running but I was always told it's really good. And it's now on HBOMax so I put it in my queue and it was my mood last time I was trying to decide what to watch next. I'm nearly to season 5 of it. I enjoy me a good mystery and it's well written, but sometimes the choices of the characters and the dramas of their own making just frustrate me and make me angry more than anything else. Haven't decided what I'll put on to watch after I finish it while I work -- guess it will depend on my mood whenever I get there.)

[Post Title: Lyrics to the Panic! At the Disco song High Hopes. I was so excited that Panic! At the Disco had new music coming out when it was announced in like 2018, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out was/is a major part of the soundtrack of my life. I have a not so secret love of pop punk and emo pop -- play almost any early 00s emo rock song and I'll light up.  (Panic! shows are musically either amazing or tepid going through the motions, no in betweens the times I've seen them -- but always a visual spectacle) I didn't feel like Pray for the Wicked disappointed me. And I still get so hype every time High Hopes comes on the radio!!!

So. I have a confession to make. About my not sleeping much recently. It's not just so many things are in Virgo stellium induced organizational madness. I mean that's some of it, but I've been riding that as opposed to it controlling me -- I always clean and organize when something's upsetting me. There's a balance inside me between my OCD and my ADHD, between my desire to keep things clean versus the executive dysfunction/lack of measurement of the passage of time without music playing. (I exist in a constant state of flow, but I'm really good at hyperfocus so when I knuckle down into hyper focus to get tasks done I don't stop til whatever it is is done so I don't get distracted. Means I did well in school and nobody notices that my time management skills are iffy at best. That said, I spent my formative years in ballet, so if there's music on, my entire experience is automatically divided by an inner metronome into eight counts based on the tempo of the music. Without music playing I have no concept of how quick/fast time is passing but with music playing every passing moment is counted from a 5, 6, 7, 8.) So despite my OCD desire to have things exactly where they belong and my dislike of icky grime, when I'm in a good inner place I can suppress it allow a lot of clutter and disorganizational chaos slide a bit. HOWEVER, if anything is bothering me or weighing on my conscience, I can't sublimate the OCD and i take out all the mental energy of the circles I'm going in organizing and scrubbing.

Which I've been doing. And I've been trying not to sleep this last week, I've been having nightmares. You see. Ever since hearing the song/watching the video for No One Will Miss Me and having my intuitive leap that the song and video felt to me like a lightning flash glimpse into what it was like for him while the bond was dormant. And maybe that's right and maybe it's wrong -- but it's how it struck me and it's the only lens through which I can see it right now. And see. It got me thinking. Or more accurately, it got me feeling. Or at least it got my subconscious fearing. Thus the nightmares.

Because. let's explore that hypothesis. say that it's his truth, that he remembers some of our past lives and has always been aware of the bond between us and felt its pull between us. And then let's hypothesize that the song is how he felt when the bond was made dormant and he couldn't reach me or hear from me via the bond no matter what he did -- and he didn't know the why or the how just knew that it was suddenly gone and there was emptiness where that was. Let's say that there's truth in that hypothesis. Let's for argument go a step further and hypothesize that it was that absence, and the fear of future absence, which made the light go out inside him while the bond was dormant and still keep flickering out inside him over these last 3 years that I've spent trying to make me accept letting him go as a result of his sister's defensiveness and choices/actions in the name of the entire band back in October 2018 set me on the fatalistic course that there is no place for me in his life this life and the best thing I can do is to set him free of any attachments from me. That makes it my absence, my fault, my failure to respond or let him reach me that his light has gone out no matter how briefly. It means it's on me, on my choices/actions.

And. I'm so happy and so grateful for whatever in him motivates his determination and stubbornness to keep going, keep trying, no matter how many times he fails and how inexplicable the failure. That that's in him. Because if he DID give up, it would devastate me. Especially if it were my fault. And that's been the nightmare I've had this last week -- that he didn't have the inner strength of Lao Tzu's advice to get up just one more time than you fall to try again and that I stole from him the light of hope that he MIGHT somehow succeed against all the odds. That he stopped trying, stopped getting up, that he just gave up and it was done, he was done and gave up on this lifetime saw no purpose in trying. And it was all my fault and I didn't realize. I didn't realize until it was past time, past an opportunity for me to reach him and get to him and change the story try again and get a better outcome than the recent failures. And I just start sobbing over it, that he won't get up because he can't get up to try again, can't do it ever again AND that it's my fault. That I was wrong headed stupid for too long and he gave up, gave up completely. And it was my fault he didn't have the hope to fuel that inner strength to get up and try again. At least once more. And I'm always heartbroken sobbing inconsolable over it and wake up crying.

And it's awful. And it's been a recurring nightmare. And it's just been easier for me not to sleep at all except in naps that don't reach into REM dreams or in exhausted collapse physically pushed too far by lack of sleep to have dreams I can remember. It' snot me avoiding shared dream space, it's me avoiding that recurring nightmare my subconscious can't shake now that the pieces for it are there inside my head..... Whether the pieces and my intuitive leap are correct doesn't matter -- it's that IF they're right, the consequences of me persisting in the idea that I can let him go for his own sake, his own happiness he seeks, is not only self-destructive of my own happiness and my own desires but it's actively harmful potentially soul-numbing deadly, to him for me to behave that way. I know that he can't be brought to that point of hopelessness  across lifetimes,  not in the fullness of knowledge that souls experience between lives and with the way the chains of his lifetimes and mine are interwoven.  But he can lose that hope within any given lifetime when he feels he's lost me and there's no chance he can ever reach me - I know because he has in past lives where he only remembered/believed in his one life and I died on him.... It's happened in past lives he's felt pushed beyond hope, not just the futility of improbability.  Thankfully not this life - but I know it's in him when pushed beyond the hope his stubbornness can somehow find a way. 

And I can't handle being guilty of knowingly making that if a reality. It was different when I didn't know, didn't even consider it was possible -- because your guilt is greater when you knowingly do wrong than accidentally do wrong. And once you know better, you do better -- it's the only principle by which any of us get out of the messes we make of our lives without driving ourselves made by our past mistakes.  Now though, now I have those hypotheses and possibilities and potential pieces of his side of the story in my head. And, if those hypotheses are true.... I can't live with my conscience if I'm knowingly guilty of doing that to him and G-d forbid I persisted in it until he gave up hope. I can't do that. I can't live with me if I knowingly do it.

And so now... now I'm just not certain what I should do from here moving forward. I'm not certain what his truth IS, but I know if there's truth in what my intuition reacted and insists is true then I know what I can't let me do/think. But not only do I not know for certain my intuition is right, I don't know what I do from here if I accept that me forcing myself to let him go not only takes him further and further from reaching the happiness he seeks but is actively harmful to his inner light in a way that can't be fixed if I persist beyond his stubbornness to try again and finding the hope/purpose to try again. 

And I don't know what to do from here. I still don't even know that it IS his truth and I certainly don't know what he wants for his life and his happiness. 

But I do know that right now, this last week since hearing the song for the first time, whenever I sleep the recurring nightmare of that guilt I feel IF that's his truth is haunting me with what happens if I persist in trying to cut ties let him go and shut him out. And I know I don't knowingly want to be guilty of my actions pushing him past the struggle even if it's been continuously futile in recent past until her reaches the point where he doesn't get up. And my conscience won't let me sleep without recurring nightmares while it fears I'm guilty of (or might be guilty) of continuing to do that to him until he breaks.

So I'm not sleeping. I'm cleaning and organizing and reorganizing and putting holes in the fucking walls and reading by candlelight with countless cups of tea until after however many days of sleeplessness I collapse in exhaustion and the hope the recurring nightmare won't find me. Because I don't have answers or certainty or any idea of where we go from here then.... but living with an overactive conscience with an overdeveloped sense of justice/right versus wrong is as much a curse as a blessing -- nobody can make me feel guilty about anything except myself but damn that bitch doesn't give up when I do the wrong thing.... not until I make it right. You're lucky you don't have to live inside of it-- you may choose to live with it because you choose to live with me, but you don't have to live inside my conscience. She's a real unrelenting bitch on ethics issues, y'know? Being named this life for the Hebrew,  "G-d is my (only) judge" certainly doesn't help.... My very name reminds me of my implacable ethics and conscience guiding my choices and life path. 

One of my closest friends from high school and college (she's actually how I met my current bff birthday twin Crissy because she met Crissy at St. Paul's Catholic Church on campus and Lily was scared that michelle and I were too weird for her but then I needed people for a 48 hour film contest and Crissy volunteered; then they were roommates sophomore year and when Lily was headed to study abroad Crissy straight out asked me and Michelle if we could stay friends hang out with her even without Lily around.) Lily's VERY devout Catholic reached out to me randomly via email over the last week in response to a facebook post I shared regarding  the Texas bill about all the different reasons/situations in which a woman's path may include abortion and why I support a woman's choice in those difficult situations. As mentioned, she's Catholic and very pro-life "life begins at conception" whereas my opinion is that as long as it can only live inside the host it's biologically no different than a parasite or cancerous cells feeding on its host and thus it is the decision of the host what they want to do about their (potentially very well loved) internal parasite. I've expressed this opinion to many female friends who found it hilarious and afterward referred to their own fetuses as "my parasite" while it was in utero. You should really expect that of me that I'll also refer to it that way if/when I ever am pregnant, lol. 

Even though Lily and I have different ethical positions, she and I have had very long fruitful discussions in the past (including one lengthy 4hr middle of the night car discussion about abortion) of coming to understand the other person's side and find common ground solutions to help change the statistics by offering physical real world help and options and support to mitigate those considerations for when a woman is facing that choice -- before, during, and after pregnancy.  We've also had very long fruitful discussions about free will versus determinism, reincarnation versus heaven/hell/purgatory, what an omnipotent/omniscient/eutheistic divinity would behave like, and other ideas that we are religiously/politically of vastly different opinions about. It's part of how our friendship works -- actually all my close friendships, especially long-term friends, involve lengthy deep question philosophical/religious/political discussions including exploring areas/reasons we disagree. I don't do well in the shallow ends of relationships or acquaintance level small talk. never have. Try it and I'm likely to run off distracted by a cool bit of light and shadow or a leaf or a fascinating bug/critter of some sort.  Lily and I have always found that if we start from a place respect we can always come to understanding and similar root ethics even if our final opinions/stances seem diametrically opposed incompatible.

It was really nice to hear from Lily -- she and I hadn't talked to ages (she and her husband actually moved to Milwaukee where Lily's sister and nephews/nieces live right before covid -- I found out when her husband, a chef, sold the food cart to go back to school in Milwaukee) which is on both of us, but she's one of those old friends that you think of and miss at the randomest times. So I was actually really happy when I saw tonight her email from Saturday. (I am once a week or so behind in my emails, lol. But I was going through to weed out obvious spam that isn't even something I want to window shop skim or algorithmically acknowledge I opened before I start in on reading more of them. Which is when I saw her email tonight. I contemplated leaving it to write at not midnight -- but I realized that with the best possible intentions I'd never respond if I did that and that she knows me well enough to know my wake versus sleep hours are allllllll over the place (I have no intentions of regulating it unless my life changes so that I need to for a job or for another person/persons in my life --obvs if I had a kid I couldn't just flip my days/nights or go to bed at 3 or 4am because I "need" to finish a book -- raising littles means taking day in day out responsibility for their welfare) thus me responding to an email at midnight or 1am isn't that weird for me, lol.)

We're into apple season now and I'm still avoiding the large Dane County Farmer's Market due to the crowding with no distancing or masks while children are present issue. (If you've never been to Dane County's Farmer Market, it's all around all 8 blocks of the state capital and if you're not out by 8am, you're basically walking in a Disney queue pace that's the entire width of the sidewalk for the entire 8 blocks. Which is why WHEN I choose to go, I choose to be there when they open at 6:30am, 7am at the latest so I can get my shopping done while actually walking freely and take the time to say hi to my farmer friends.)  So I suggested that since my solution to this problem is to be planning weekly/biweekly drives to Weston's Antique Apple Orchard homestand in Waukesha to cover my seasonal apple addictions, we should plan to meet up for heirloom apples. With or without Thomas (her husband) along. Which gives us specific dates/times to consider (Sat 3-6, Sun 12-4) and an activity/place that is right up our alley to explore and get over the breaking the ice awkwardness of reconnecting. And then after apple shopping, we can always either picnic or hike -- we're both outdoorsy loving woods/farm fresh produce fall people.

It's a good plan -- and as soon as i suggested it I got the contingent precog flash of meeting up with her there at the orchard and then as soon as I hit send I got a longer flash as an immutable precog. And that makes me really happy!! (And yeah, sometimes setting a path of wyrd/fate really is that quick and simple and straightforward as just choosing to respond and come up with the plan you want to see happen. It really can be that easy. You just have to make the choices to communicate/respond and know what you want and throw suggestions out until something sticks, lol.)

 While I was watering plants at work, as dusk settled in, I had a kettle of nighthawks decide to swoop over and around me and my work building while the young ones were learning to fly!!!  And not a small kettle, about 30-50 separate birds whenever I attempted to count them -- though with all of them swooping and circling it was hard to get an accurate count!!!   Think like a murmuration of starlings or sparrows, but now imagine the birds are medium sized large wing to body ratio nighthawks!  I've never seen so many all together!!!!

It started with a cowering mourning dove hiding under the overhang on the ledge right by the windows/side door (where the spigot is) wanting inside, which confused me. It didn't seem stunned like it had flown into the window, just uncertain and seeking safety from SOMETHING. But after it startled and flew off to find somewhere else to hide so I could open that door and allow my dog out (I trust her gentleness with our wild friends,  but she is still a dog after all with canine instincts to snap catch in mouth if it flies too near her) I got the hose out and watered the box and the 4 planters I can reach with that hose,  after I first harvested tomatoes/peppers in back and watering all the plants outside there. And then after I got the watering can to water the other two planters.  And suddenly, I saw this group of four birds flying towards us and I assumed they were the crows coming home to roost in the lightning blasted old oak tree.  But then they called and it was a nasally scree, not a kaw-kaw and then they got close enough I could see the tails and wing span. they started circling overhead in the golden hour light at the top of the oaks and then from the same direction more and more and more of them started showing up, all circling right overhead. All different sizes -- from the tiniest little 21 day old fledglings all the way up to the largest full grown males circling VERY high up above  to keep an eye out for other predators. (a good idea as we not only have murders of crows could pick off the littles but two pairs of red tailed hawks nearby and several barn owls and great-horned owls.  The flocks of turkeys, which ALSO have a lot of half grown fledglings this year, are less of a concern because they can fly from the ground to roost in trees but not long distance soaring to attack airborne nighthawks.)

It took me forever to assuredly identify them, because they have these funny little distinctive white tufts/patches on the underside of their wings which should make them recognizable but I've never seen a kettle of migratory nighthawks before. (They nest up in the northern states and Canada but then they long distance migrate to South America for the winter.) i kept thinking they looked like nighthawks but didn't know they ever flock in a kettle like vultures.  Even after I double checked online,  I spent a very long time watching them, especially the lowest littles to be certain and they could ONLY have been nighthawks. Just an entire kettle of nighthawks from many nests, with young fledglings of all sizes! I've seen nighthawks before, but never this close -- and I've certainly never seen so many of them flying in a kettle of all ages like this before!!!!!! (Nighthawks are a species of special concern in Wisconsin -- not endangered, but on their way to being endangered and so their breeding sites are monitored and they're protected though less stringently.) 

They're nightjars, not true hawks, despite their tails and wing shapes. They're closest related to whippoorwills (which we do have a lot of in Wisconsin -- though typically you hear them more often than see them.)  

Anyway, they eat up a LOT of mosquitos and moths and flying ants and other bugs. I often wondered why I don't have many mosquitos around work in the late summer/early fall no matter how late I garden or me leaving out open water dishes for birds, pollinators, and critters -- because other people will complain they're bad in a given year and I'll be confused because they're not near me. I mean, I know I have toads in the garden/behind the building and we have the nesting swallows, robins, and sparrows but there's still NEVER any mosquitos here and to my knowledge I don't have any bats nesting nearby which was the only other thing I could think of that keeps mosquitos so absent here.   And the answer is we have nighthawks that have taken to kettling here which is what keeps the mosquito counts so much lower that I never seem to need any sort of bug spray or lemongrass at my work garden or taking my dog out for a walk near work or home -- even with the large ponds and bodies of standing water.

Also, a kettle of nighthawks on the new moon sunset that starts Rosh Hashanah flying over, gyring around you, and swooping and diving near you from the golden hour through sunset into the gloaming and the first stars coming out for the new moon -- does it get any more magical than that?!?! 

*happy sigh* That was such a wyrd wondrous moment to unexpectedly be gifted and to be a part of to celebrate tonight's new moon and the start of a new year!!!!! 

P. S.  Yes I know the symbolic associations of nighthawks with the fairfolk.  Do you think I don't recognize my own? And even if I didn't,  delving into the symbolism of nighthawks would have brought that home.  But also.  Did I not tell you it was the most magical and wyrd new moon turn the page to a new year that I've ever experienced in this life? 

 Omg,  I think my neighbors must hate me....  I've been listening to the Brave soundtrack on loop and (re) hanging art since I made breakfast after taking the dog for a 2hr walk. Well, the Brave soundtrack I put on when I started prepping brekkie, but still so much hammering starting at like 9:45am.... They really probably hate me - though long weekend,  so maybe not home? 

But I'm *cross my fingers* almost done with the art rearranging in the living room/reading nook (aka a dining room,  but in my flat it's the reading room, lol) now that I'm certain those bookshelves are where they are going to stay and then I'm going to ignore my urge to re-arrange furniture in the living room (and then rearrange the art) because there are furniture pieces I haven't yet found (I need a nice rolling wood plant stand and since Dec 2019 I have a TV that I have never mounted or setup because I haven't found a TV stand or entertainment unit that I like enough for the price of it) that I will need first before I can get my living room how it is/should be in my head.  So if I move things now,  I'll just be bothered by the holes of furniture my precog has seen in here but I can't find new or secondhand yet - but damnit I will!   😂  

Instead,  I'm going to head to my bedroom and re-arrange and hang artwork in there. And maybe I will ACTUALLY get to going through clothes to get rid of like I'd meant to do today with today's "It's a Virgo sun and Virgo moon,  omfg I must clean and reorganize EVERYTHING!" energy.  (my sister has a Virgo stellium of her sun, Venus,  Mars and her Mercury is 0 degrees 1' Libra so if my maman is even 10mins off her birth time then she's a Virgo Mercury - and my sister communicates like a Virgo Mercury,  not a Libra Mercury like I am,  so I think my mum's memory is off on her birth times.... Anyway, when sun and moon are in Virgo along with other planets,  I know what it's like to be my sister.  Intense urge must tidy up,  purge, rearrange, declutter, and complete all the to do lists! Immediately! 😂 At least for me, it only lasts an intense couple of days.  My productive decluttering organizing Virgo moons the rest of the sun signs are nowhere near this intense....)

Okay.  Time to put music back on (it got super bagpipe-y when my mom called to ask if I wanted Silas to pickup any Churchill's tea on his way back from Ohio;  short answer is "Ooooh!  I just started my list of teas to replenish from Churchill's last week!" And then to put more holes in the walls 😂 

If or when I ever move,  I really hope somebody loves me enough to help me putty and/or paint up all my walls...  😳 There's um.  A lot of holes to patch up.....  

Also,  if I ever do get married,  you better like art.  Because I have a fucking lot of it.  And a stack of things I haven't yet framed..... Living with me,  or even visiting me, is rather like living in an art gallery library tea house.  Most of the art is animals,  fantasy, surrealist Chinese watercolor & calligraphy, dark macabre, impressionist, dance related, or some combination of those categories. None of it is super valuable,  most are prints not originals, but there's a lot.  But,  ehrm,  yeah.  I own a lot of artwork and a lot of books - it's probably be best if I marry someone who loves books and art in the genres I listed but has only bought themselves a handful of prints/pieces they love. 

Okay.  Back to putting holes in the walls and rearranging/reorganizing art. Should maybe consider a nap at some point before going into work to water plants - haven't slept at all since the moon moved into Virgo. Too much to organize and get done, too little time before the moon moves into Libra fir me to sleep! And anyway,  I need to finish this task of the artwork before I even consider a nap.... 

P. S. 1:11pm addendum:

Apparently,  my household spirits feel I have got enough done and the inter-dimensional nergles have moved my box of nails from where I set it into one of their inter-dimenesional wormholes.  I'll never see that box of nails again until it reappears in the exact same spot on some undisclosed future time.... This happens way more often around me than science can explain.  It's disconcerting, even when you always know to expect it.  Usually if I ask nicely but firmly insist why I need it right away,  I can get important disappeared things to reappear.  But not things like this where I don't actually NEED the nails this afternoon, I just want the nails this afternoon, lol. 

 *sigh* alright then.  I can take the hint. No more loud banging moving art around.  Thanks for at least letting me keep my hammer this time! 

 Thinking of which (not the dead Greek philosophers train of thought edition this time): 

Y'know how I have mentioned that when Eric reaches for me along the bond, I get a really heady like wine drunk inpouring through my third eye of intense love and energy and his raw emotions? Yeah,  he's been doing that a lot these recent days.  

I've missed it.  I've missed it a lot. 

It makes me so happy it's been happening once more.  Happy is too weak a word - but I don't have a word to convey the intensity of joy and "all is right in my world now" that I feel from it. 

This post is absolutely definitely entirely written because he's been doing it again.  And it's very snuggly. Or,  more accurately, it makes me want to curl right up into him and snuggle myself in the warmth and brightness of that love energy.  And just stay there as long as I possibly can.  

Can we do that? Not let anyone sabotage things again - not even ourselves. instead let's cleave unto that love and joy and rightness. Yes? 

That's what I want.  What I want most of anything. For now though, I intend to snuggle into that love pouring down the bond and send my own love light back down the bond to fill him up.  Which is a much better choice than anything else I've tried these last 2 years. 

 O,  what changed that has made me this hopeful instead of fatalistic? Where's all this coming from? 

Nothing's changed.  This is from always. I've always found his soul light dazzlingly beautiful and I'm always hoping we find each other and I'll always choose him if karmic lessons and his life path choices allow for him to be a possibility for me.  I've always been quite good at finding causes I deem worth fighting and dying for - it's rare for me to find a fight worth living for. But he's at the very top of my list of things worth living for. Always and always and always.  Across every lifetime.  

I thought these were all truths about me that were so obvious and well-known they didn't need to be said.  (Though sometimes the things we think don't need to be said are the things someone else most needs to hear.)  This is my constant state in every lifetime: desiring him in my life and me in his.  It's like trying to describe what healthy normal self feels like - you don't even really think about what basal healthy is except when it has been absent.  

Now me doing something self-martyring stupid because I believe it ethically right or me trying to rationalize letting him go instead of hanging onto him as tightly as possible - now that to me takes some explaining. That is not my normal, it's like falling away from healthy. Which is why I fixate on it bring it up every time those thoughts creep in. Because it's me acting so diametrically opposite to everything I personally desire.  And I can only rationalize it when I genuinely believe me letting him go to pursue other people/things he desires mores is the best thing for him and what he wants.  It all falls apart and I'll race back to him to make sure he's okay at the very first questioning doubts that maybe me leaving him is actually his nightmares and letting him go is everything he doesn't want for his life. 

Wait.  You knew it's always been in his power to stop me in my tracks from my own overthinking about leaving him and to bring me racing back to wherever he is, right?  All he has ever had to do was be honest with me about what he does and doesn't need for his happiness he seeks. Especially if what he actually wants for his happiness means I can be selfish and feel spoiled getting everything I want as well, lol. 

Okay now.  Back from morning walkies with my pup, time to get some laundry started then make coffee and brunch. (haven't decided yet if I'm going to lazy brunch a bowl of Love Crunch granola and organic whole milk or actually chop up some veggies to cook something.  93.7% certain I'm already hungry enough I don't have patience for me to cook something from scratch so I'll default to the Love Crunch.) Anyway.  Laundry and coffee and brunch time!  Ready?  Go! 

P. S.  I absolutely definitely went with the Love Crunch granola with chocolate pieces and freeze dried strawberries.  I was so hungry by the time I got to the coffee making that when the smell of grinding them wafted up to me,  I briefly contemplated gnawing on coffee beans whole. I refrained, but it was a close call.  I'll cook up something legit and hearty this evening for dinner. 

P. P. S.  In one of the many little libraries I frequent while walking my dog, I found this copy of The Essential Epicurus!  

And I think has things not in my other copy of selections from Epicurus!!! Which is really exciting to me!  And if nothing else, it's a different translator so the differences in translation may show me different subtleties and nuance! 

One of my favorite quotations of ever comes from Epicurus: "Do  not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for." It's been an absolute favorite of mine since I came across it in the 7th grade, lol.  Such a favorite that I had it in my AIM profile and my MySpace about me AND as my email signature for about a decade before email signatures that weren't business-y were decided annoying.  It's still at the top of my long list of favorite quotations in my facebook profile.  

P. P. P. S.  This is my other translation of Epicurus: 

And even looking at the contents I'm uncertain if this has new to me content: 

It all hinges on if "Vatican Sayings" are part of the fragments in the other edition. Ah well. I'll figure it out eventually, lol.  

For now, coffee and laundry and re-reading Jacob Riis How The Other Half Lives.  (the true life stories and photos remain horrific photo journalism documenting life in turn of the century NYC slums - but in re-reading it I'm pissed as hell all over again at his casual racism explaining/excusing why exploited immigrant groups have the behaviors/characteristics that are why they can't rise out of their victimhood in tenement housing slums.   Some of them, especially his chapter on Chinatown, are just so infuriating in the stereotyping... You should have heard the earful I gave the professor who assigned it..... Riis came up again recently and I hadn't read this text or looked at the photos in it since college.)

 Why is it that I can tell such stories (from my side) and claim that I have a stronger faith in his stubbornness when he knows what his heart is set on than my faith in sunrises and yet not claim that I am even a part of the answer of his choices and motivations?  

Because my faith is in his grim determination not to give up once he sets his heart on something is not at all the same thing as me having faith I am what his heart is set on.  I only make a claim about his tenacity and strength of will no matter the odds against him - I make no claims that I know the current desires of his heart.  I know much about the past state of his heart and its motivating desires - but past is not present, and people's hearts can change and sometimes people think they want something only to discover along the way that they want something else.  I don't claim his heart has changed anymore than I claim it's stayed steadfast.  I can only claim I don't know the current state of his heart or what it's set on or what motivates his desires - and the only way to get me to change from a claim of not knowing would be if he tells me himself and answers those questions and unknowns. I would trust whatever he told to be his truth at the time of telling,  and it's the only way to replace my willingness to consider all possibilities (even those I don't want to be true) by giving me the certainty of him telling me what he feels and knows. After all, he has nothing to gain by lying - I have nothing in this life that this society values.

 I have no wealth, no power, no fame, no property, no friends in high places, no followers, no driving desire to seek any of those.  I have a reward life of rest between battles and healing from past hurts where I asked that I live it surrounded by love of those who love me qua me and that anyone seeking me be able to find me - and that for as long as those two conditions are met and I'm not needed elsewhere I'd like to grow old in comfort and love this life. *shrugs* I could have had anything this life,  that's what I chose.  I have many people who love me just as I am this life (many who have found me from past lives) and I have strong gifts with an intense level of  magic around me - as an incarnating hand of ma'at who asked that ANYONE seeking her be able to find her, I damn well better be protected be able to defend myself and others.  Not every entity that has been seeking me does so for good reasons,  I've had to deal with my share of negative unincarnated spirit that intentionally tried to take me out so I'd be out of the fight til I was reborn and old enough for my gifts to be trained/practiced into a useful form again.  I surround myself with books and music and plants and animal friends and art and rocks and feathers and sticks and candles and tea. I live alone with my dog,  my cat, my plants, and my books.  I chose not to have a career to define my life but to have a job to make enough money to cover my expenses but have the flexibility of simple but meticulous tasks that I can schedule around any/everything else I choose to pursue.  I clean up and heal and move along spiritual messes that I discover in my wanderings to visit people I care about far away or for live music or just because a place calls to me. I accept old/abandoned free things as they are to give them new life, but it's very difficult for me to buy new things unless they're worth the price or exactly what I want - I've been needing a new wallet for 3.5 years and been making do with phone cases until finally finding one I think worth the cost of it.  I've had this phone since 2017 and it's only functioned when plugged into an outlet or external battery since start of 2020 - I'm only now accepting begrudgingly buying a new one.  And Samsung having an app for proof of vaccination to facilitate concert attendance and even some restaurants in other cities later this year/next year is what helped me make the decision instead of continuing to make do with what I have. 

 I have a rich life of wonder and curiosity and beauty and love and growing/healing things - but I have nothing that fits on society's checklists of success. I have nothing this life worth lying to try to possess.  If he wants me in a life like this one it's because his heart is set on me qua me and the sparkle and magic that surrounds me flows through me - not for anything this society values or deems success. So I would trust whatever he were to tell me his heart is set on and what desires motivate his choices with the same faith I have that his is a stubborn soul that never gives up accepts defeat.  I am intensely brightly shining full of soul light chi/prana energy for me to use at my discretion and my nature is a mix of calm and chaos and I always serve bringing truths to light, justice, healing,  and creating/finding the path to the best fate lines available. That's who I am.  He is a man who is stubborn refuses to fail at anything he sets his heart on and is drawn to innovations to improve on the state he found things and fearless of chasing the unknown beyond the horizon.  The only real fear he has is the source of his sadness and emoness when his brightness gets dimmed - and that is the fear of hurt or loss coming to those he cares about.  

*shrugs* As I've said,  I know his soul's energy and I find it the most beautiful and wondrous thing I've ever seen.  What I don't know is how that manifests in his current moment to determine what his heart is set on for THIS life of his. That's what I can't know without him telling me - all I can do is trust that once he knows he won't ever give up on it and the best way for him to find that knowledge is him being free to determine his own values/ethics and to make his own decisions/choices and trusted to know his own mind and heart. 

Does that make better sense of the conflicting information that I know I desire him but I desire his happiness more than him being mine,  and that I have faith in the stubbornness of his heart but don't make any claim to my place in it unless/until he lets me know?  There are reasons I question that I have a place in the happiness he seeks - but most of them are seeds of doubts sown from past choices that may require unlearning. But if he's free to choose anything he wants and he still chooses and wants me,  I will fight anyone who tries to get between us and not ever let him go again the rest of this life unless he tells me he's changed his mind and now wants a future apart from mine. 

I just need to know that's what he wants,  what he would choose, before I'm willing to put all my energy into fighting to keep him rather than diverting so much energy into trying to make myself let him go in case that's what he wants.  It is my uncertainty as to what his heart is set on this life,  what he wants for himself this life, that all too often goads me to try to let him go and rationalize it as his best interests.  Not because I don't want him - there's nothing I so selfishly desire as I desire him in my life and for our life path to be a shared one this time.  It's all born from me not knowing what he wants and would choose for himself and having to guess based on his past choices in this life and what societal expectations say most people in this milieu want. 

It's not my desires you're fighting against,  it's my uncertainty about your desires. Because I'm stupid enough and stoic enough to stubbornly do things directly contrary to my own selfish desires or physical needs if I believe I'm doing something good or to help someone I care about achieve their desires..... If you give me certainty as to what you truly want, you can stop me from those sort of destructive patterns that frustrate the both of us from having what we desire. Otherwise I'll do the best I can by my interpretation of the confusing mixed signals of your past and present choices, actions, and inactions.  You're more likely to succeed, and a lot less heartache along the way, if you just give me the certainty of telling me what you truly desire. Then I'm not fighting to keep options open to you in case they're what you want when you never were gong to consider or want those things nor would you knowingly have let me sacrifice what you actually set your heart on just to keep other options open.  

It's not that I don't want for it to be me woven through the center of his desires and everything his heart is set on - I just don't have an overbearing enough ego to assume it's me out of the infinite number of other options. I won't believe without any doubts that's the happiness he seeks this life unless he tells me so himself. It's the only way I know to be certain instead of assuming.

 I should make clear,  I don't know for a fact that to be the meaning, or even a meaningful layer, behind the music video or the song.  I just know those were my intuitive reactions....  

I've always had times where I would doubt  that this life would be a reunion life,  when I'd suffer stoicly the possibility that this was yet another life of karmic lessons separation. We've had a lot of lives of separations recently (though overall we've had far more lives of finding each other than lives of dying before finding each other, just not recently;  still he has buried and mourned me more times across lives than he has died while I yet lived... That burden has been his more often than mine.) There was a period in there,  of all those lives without our lives crossing paths,  when I thought it was because he no longer wanted to find me.   Because technically, my side of the promise made all those millennia of lifetimes ago was that I would always choose him in any of our lives that karma allowed us to cross paths and he still wanted me, would still choose me. And it didn't make sense to me, that there could be that many centuries of karmic lessons to work through - so I came to believe he must have decided he didn't want me and I needed to accept that.  I had a really wild hedonistic mad life of complete mayhem under the Sun King (Louis XIV) trying to make me believe that - and strangely enough he did find me at some point in that feral madcap bisexual opera singer life of mine while I was acting out my hurt over that imagined rejection.  Granted he was already married (technically so was I,  to two different men simultaneously) when our life paths crossed so it was nothing more than a long standing affair,  but it steadied me out that our paths crossed and he told me I was mistaken to think he had ever ceased wanting or looking for me.  And we did write letters that life no matter where either of us were, even when I decided to make up for my wildness by going into cloisters becoming a nun we still wrote each other letters. I died at 33 that life, he was the one paid for my burial. Like I've said, I've died young,  a lot, in the last 6 centuries or so - I have had 3 other lives, in 6 centuries of lives, that I lived longer than my current mid-30s. I didn't expect to live past 25 this life given my track record and so don't actually have a plan what to do with my adult life - this life keeps surprising my expectations.  

And last life, while one we did meet,  he was so very much impossibly older that it would never have worked.  (I had died two other lives in that lifetime of his - and we have a very very old promise between our souls that upon death we will seek out the other to bid adieu before returning for a rebirth,  so the other person knows to cease seeking.)  And accepting that was not only the tragedy of his very long life but it broke something in me last life.... I lost my wonder and delight in the world and saw no purpose in continuing to strive, the sparkle disappeared and every day was like flat old wine from the unfinished champagne left out overnight.  And I just wanted to numb away that bitterness and anger and sense of injustice at the right person wrong timing star crossed fate.  So in my last life I numbed that bitter anger sense of injustice in the last year or two of that lifetime with alcohol and sleeping pills - and when one night I saw that if I didn't choose differently then I'd die, I chose to welcome my old friend and start anew with a fresh body. So I died and my soul visited him before being reborn at three different points in that one life of his - and I won't pretend that could have been easy on him.  I rather expect he's been waiting all of this life of his with the fear sword of Damocles above him, waiting for the night my soul comes to tell him I once again died young,  without him finding me or getting to hold onto me tangibly in his life.  

So you see,  I've always known there was a possibility in the odds of us not crossing paths other than in dream space and internally via the bond.  And whenever that doubt weighed on me,  my eyes would go ancient and sad - even in the face of a toddler's body. But it was moments of sorrow that flickered through me before my soul would glow bright again - because I certainly wasn't dead yet nor had his soul visited me before being reborn, which meant we still had a lot of life in our current bodies to try to find each other.  So it wasn't ever a lengthy dimming of my soul light,  just flickers of doubt.  

My first shock, my first second guessing that he even desired or sought me in this life happened when he was dating the Scorpion chick AFTER our paths crossed and we had soul recognition.... That was a pretty massive earthquake to the foundations and pillars of my inner temple - because she had her hooks deep in him thought they were progressing toward him asking to marry her and he did love her enough to be happy enough with her - she'd been his wife in his last life after all and she'd considered him to be the love of her life their life before this one.  But because he and I actually physically met and had hugged after a show,  the bond between us strengthened which meant I started getting overlay flashes of exactly whatever he was experiencing whenever he had strong emotions.  And I do mean ANY strong emotions I'd experience all his body's sensations through his senses.  

I felt that voyeurism was unfair to her (I don't hold him guilty of being unfair though, he may not have realized it was even happening.) Granted I didn't know her or like her from what I'd seen in his overlays,  but she still deserved a right to privacy of intimate moments. so I decided I must accept his choice, but in the name of justice I tried to sever or weaken the bond on my own.  Which hurt me a lot and didn't do a damn thing to stop the overlays via the bond.  Once I accepted I couldn't do it, I resorted to old allies who I've always been welcome to visit in my spirit walking lucid dreams.  My soul came from among the seelie and it will return there after I choose to stop playing in the cycle of souls incarnations - and until then I am always welcomed back for visits and they watch over me in their own way,  as they can. So at the autumnal equinox in 2015, I went to see the Lugh/oak king/green man in the Seelie Court to ask him if he could make the overlays stop.  He told me there was a way he could put the bond completely asleep and dormant, while it slept it would be to Eric and to me as if it never existed. There would be no pull, no communication,  no overlays, no sharing of emotion or strength - there would be only the silence and absence where the other had always been.   

Back when I asked Lugh green man oak king to help me by making the overlays stop, he had three conditions for his assistance. His three conditions were: 1) he was not responsible for any consequences or damage to me or Eric from making the bond dormant asleep between us - those would be on my conscience since I requested it be done 2) I was to promise to him and the current queen,  for the duration of this life of mine, the right of rulership over my dream space and I would willingly attend all Seelie balls they invited me to attend and willingly ride with their court in my astral form any time they called me to join the court.  I sleep far more hours now than I used to, and while I do still lucid dream,  I cannot lucid dream my way out of Seelie Court any longer nor can I wake myself up from those dreams until dismissed or the revel ends 3) the bond would awaken again when I of my own free will, whether waking or sleeping, in any lifetime chose to trust Eric when he found his way to reach me again in spirit form and I chose to rest once more encircled in his love. AND that no one of the Seelie Court could ever again touch the bond or put it asleep in the future after that choice was made by me to reawaken it. 

So you see,  I may have learned some means for me to mute the bond block him out that drain vast amounts of energy from me and the Morrigan who is not of the Seelie could help me lock a door with conditions for his karmic work before it opens again. But the Seelie have no power over the bond between our souls now and they are now unable to ever lull it back to dormancy.... That was part of what Lugh green man oak king insisted I agree to before he would make the bond dormant at my request,  when I felt the need to stop rhe overlays of Eric's strong emotions as they were wronging a third party. 

While the bond was dormant, for me there was no connection to Eric and no desire for any such connection, and for him there was no response and nothing at all flickering in his soul when he reached for mine for I dunno how many months...  Autumnal equinox of 2015 until  summer solstice of 2016. Because it was at the equinox I asked in my dream space at Seelie Court for assistance to make the bond sleep and it was during the summer solstice fairy ride to the polar bears in Manitoba when the bears asked the fairfolk to help their species survive what is coming to destroy their way of life that Eric's soul was in polar bear spirit form among them and I saw the depths of his bewildered loss and chose to curl up into him trust him and sleep there.  So 9 months. And since I felt no desire for Eric on my side,  I never would have reawoken the bond had he not chosen to find me in spirit form as I rode with the Seelie court. It would likely still be dormant and I would be the very feral fée version of myself mostly  keeping to the wild spaces. 

I don't know how Eric felt about that bond going dormant or dealt with it after I agreed.  On my side, it didn't hurt, I didn't feel a phantom limb amputation, it was just like having a dead/fallen tree stump in a forest - you just move around it as it returns to the forest scenery. The bond was there, but dormant and lifeless - and I didn't miss it or him.  I was VERY fey during the time our bond was dormant,  I spent most of my time in wild places without other humans because it was where I felt happiest - woods and mountains and on open water. About the only times I even thought about the bond were the three times Odin asked me to let him cut it out remove it entirely if it was going to be dormant and useless.  But I don't trust Odin, never have, so all three times I told him no,  it wasn't mine to sacrifice and even if it was I wouldn't do it while in a state I couldn't know its worth. I still don't know WHY Odin asked me to let him have the bond - he didn't want anything from me by it,  even promised he'd never contact me again if I gave it to him.  I am certain Odin wanted me to sacrifice the bond for some sort of control over Eric - but I don't know what.  Odin has never been among my own pantheon of allies,  I have never served him or made oaths with him.  So I presume it was Eric of interest to Odin when he asked me to give him the dormant sleeping bond that meant nothing to me in those months.

As for Eric's life during those 9 months.  Externally nothing shifted - he still had every material thing and every connection to the family and friends in his life was intact and everything that the band as his creative collective and career meant to him.  He lost nothing of his tangible external reality when our soul bond was made dormant. That may have altered his internal space and shook his soul - but it touched nothing of his physical reality or anyone else in his life.  And he still had the Scorpion chick as his live in girlfriend with every expectation he'd ask her to marry him in those 9 months - all that he lost was my presence in his inner space or any sense of my ever having existed so easily for him to reach.  I was just gone, as if the bond had never existed and he couldn't reach me for even an acknowledgement I am, for all those months.  And I don't know how that experience affected him - he had no tangible losses or life changes across those months of 2015/2016 as a result of it. Just the absence of the bond to me in the inner life of his soul. If he was ever going to choose someone else without the complications of our bond pulling us toward each other, that was the time and she was the one. And at the time I asked for the green man oak king to make the overlays stop,  I fully expected Eric was going to choose the "easy" path of society page checklists married to the Scorpion woman for this life of his - when I agreed to the Lugh's terms I never expected that 3rd term to come into play this life.  I genuinely thought when I asked and was granted that the bond be made dormant that it would be lifetimes before he even thought to want to seek me out again, if he ever did.  I was giving the bond up to make the overlays stop in full faith knowing that the bond might never wake up again,  in any life, because the choices to reawaken it might never be made.  

And I genuinely don't know how that sudden absence of the soul bond in his inner life felt to Eric.  I don't know if it hit him hard at the start or crept up slowly on him.  I do know something made hom decide not to take the life path with the scorpion chick, and I know something set him off on the spirit quest to find me and reawaken the bond.  I know these things because he broke up with her and as a polar bear he found me while I rode with the Seelie to meet with the polar bears and I chose to trust him to protect and care for me and curled up in the nest between the polar bears forelimbs and chest and he tucked his chin over me and we both went to sleep that way in the spirit world dream space - and when I woke up the bond was vibrantly full of life reawakened once more. So I know those two choices he made.   But I don't know Eric's journey across those 9 months, the how or the when or the why of his choices or what was happening in his heart and soul across those months.  

But somehow, when I heard No One Will Miss Me it felt like a lightning flash peeking into what that period in 2015/16 was like for him.  And,  truth is, angry as I am right now thinking he'd feel that way and I just want to hug him to me til he believes how much I'd miss him - while the bond was dormant,  part of my enchantment was that I didn't miss him,  I didn't care that I didn't miss him, I didn't care that I should care but didn't,  and I didn't care what he did with his life since it didn't touch mine.  Back in the first half of 2016, he was absolutely correct in that assessment that he had no way to reach me,  I was lost to him,  and I didn't care what he chose for his life so long as the bond was dormant.  And whatever motivated him made him decide to do something, to fix it, to find me again on whatever spirit journey he had to take to reach me - that choice and motivation is the only reason the bond is no longer dormant and I care enough to be angry and scared of what could have happened to him in that state of his soul while our soul bond was dormant. That's his doing.  And while I think he did right and I'm so grateful he made the choices he did and refused to give up after the soul bond went dark hibernating indefinitely, I still don't know why he chose the way he did.  It most certainly was not the easy path of his options - and when he set out on it he didn't know for certain he could ever find me again or between is reawaken our soul bond.  And so I don't know why he chose as he did.  But I'm grateful for it, grateful that whatever motivates him to get up and keep trying to find what he seeks was how he set his course.  Grateful that he didn't give up even though he had no idea where he was going, how to find me, why the soul bond was suddenly gone from his inner space, or how to awaken it to have it back..... 

I don't know our future path,  there are choices still to be made and there's a lot I don't know or see of what choices will be made. My precog gifts allow that I can see the infinitude of paths that COULD be chosen, by him or me, but I don't currently see which one WILL be chosen.  Penny's still in the air on the choices that will determine which of the fate lines.  But have you ever been advised,  "when you're indecisive, flip a coin to decide. You don't need to listen to the coin's decision, but you do need to flip it.  because in that time it's in the air you'll suddenly realize which way you want it to land - you'll know while it's flipping what you truly want and what you're afraid might happen."  It works.  It always works.  Even when you thought you could accept both choices. 

So penny's still in the air - do you know which way you want it to land? Because I do.  I know how I want it to land and I know how I fear it will land and what I'll have to do to accept that feared side of the coin.  What I don't know are Eric's choices, present and future, that will determine which side the coin will land.... 

But.  I think he knows which side he wants it to land on.  I think he's pretty fucking certain and stubborn and has been for most of this year - and he's been making his choices accordingly to make his desires perfectly clear.  And he is far more powerful than he or anyone else realizes when he gets stubborn with his heart knowing what it wants.  He always has been. As long as he knows what he wants, I have more faith in his stubbornness than I have in the sun rising and setting. And I've always had the firmest of faiths in sunrises. 

 So.  I have a post I started in on during watching the sunrise.  But it was taking forever to tap on my phone.  And so I didn't finish telling the story in full about how we grew a sea of sadness so strong and cold and deep it feels like one could drown forever in it out of my occasional flickers of doubting this was a life w get reunion and instead wondering if this was yet another life of separation.  Which is a story to be told in full, but not right now.  

I had something else to write about though.  

I know I missed the live launch of No One Will Miss Me because it was scheduled at the same time I had theatre tickets. (the play started at 7:30pm.) But the live chat replay was available - most of the chat was just noise, but some of it was useful.  And I didn't read it til the 5th rewatch or so of the video.

Tye hardest thing about watching it was actually my dog's neurotic joy.  As soon as she saw his face appear out of the darkness, she started licking the phone screen excitedly and whining. Which rather continuously paused and unpaused the video.  😂 And then his singing started and her tail started thwacking and she started stamping her forelegs (still neurotically licking him) til he got up. Then she was enthusiastically t as il thwackingly yip cheering him on as he ran.  And then when he collapsed at the end, she whined in concern went back to licking him on the phone screen to get him up - and wouldn't STOP whining til I replayed it.  So that's my little bear luck dragon's reaction.  😂

I.  Well. Most importantly, the video is beautiful.  It reminded me so much of Morning Comes only instead of pushing through the collective messiness to get to playing in the end, it was the personal, individual, quest this time.  And there's no playfulness or promised grinning happiness in the end, just the grim promise that damn boy is stubborn af and as soon as he can find the energy to get himself up he's going to try a-fucking-gain because giving up isn't an option.  The link to Morning Comes got it all tangled up around my heart strings at the start.  Seeing that video was when my heart did somersaults screamed out,  "O is that finally you??  Really truly you?! Alive and my age and just exactly looking like the vision dreams?! I.  It's really you in this life and in a 10 trillion to 1 chance we found each other?! Do you remember me?"  Hearing Surrounded is what made me turning my questions into certainty, "It IS you!  And you do remember! And you've been looking for me too!" and my decision to pay attention and give them my full undivided attention and take whatever opportunities came my way to at least show up in person. But Morning Comes video was that first incandescence of delight and disbelief at finding something treasured and long sought but you were beginning to fear may only exist in your mind's eye not in your encountered reality. 

The first couple watches,  I was also listening to the song for the very first time.  Really listening to the lyrics.  Remember,  I listened to The Dark all the way through because I saw the facebook watch live in my newsfeed and then switched to youtube to finish it. Not by plan, but because he showed up in my feed so I had no choice but to see him and once I saw him,  my desire to watch him as long as I could and my piqued curiosity to make certain he was doing okay was a temptation that outweighed all my hurt and self-denial and rationalizations.... So I did listen to The Dark all the way through. But the only songs I've heard from The Light were mixed in that random "My Playlist" that was mostly all their songs. And I stopped watching/listening because as much as I loved being reminded things such as that My Whole Life Long exists, my heart shattered and I started ugly crying when I heard If I'd Known I Loved Her.  Just.  I was such a mess when I heard it.... Kicked in the gut sobbing into my pillows til I couldn't breathe curled in the fetal position til I fell asleep exhausted from crying.  I have a signed copy of The Light from my Kickstarter pledge, but I've never yet listened to it.  

So I've not ever heard No One Will Miss Me before laat night....  And honestly?  My very first instinctive reaction was to get angry, intensely angry, want to shout at him,  "You darling idiot! I miss you every fucking moment of every fucking day when you're not in my life.  So get your ass the fuck over here so I can hug you and refuse to let go until you fucking believe me." Cussing and all.  Don't you ever fucking scare me like that or deny my love like that - try it again and I'll make damn sure there's no room in you to doubt how much your existence MATTERS to me.  Was that the reaction the song was going for?  Probably not - seems like its goal was self-motivation to get up off the damn floor and chase down what you need to get back the inner soul spark that was lost.  But the reaction I had to it was anger at him for being an idiot and insisting either he get his ass to me or I'd have to come to him and hold him and kiss him as nd refuse to let go until I'd made him believe how desperately I'd miss him if he were gone gone. 

So that was my reaction to the song.  

Back to the video.  It was genuinely gorgeous.  And actually running barefoot on the wet sand along the ocean is my favorite way to run - it's the only way I can run more than a mile without fucking up my knees so they randomly lock up and/or give out for weeks afterward. Half mile on cement or treadmill fucks my knees up to that point.  But I can elliptical or track for up to a mile and soft grass if the soil isn't hard pack summer dessicated I c as n run about 3 miles before destroying my knees. But barefoot on the sand where the ocean laps?  I've run for like 7+ miles, daily,  without ever having any knee issues. So that made me smile that he was barefoot.  

And there was so much intensity of desire and speed in his running! I don't know that I've ever seen anyone that focused a determination and I dunno,  Fear of being too late somehow.  And then the way his face lit up with such intense hope and delight when he saw Akil and the promise of where on that coast he could find what he sought.   I won't lie,  I paused it to study that look on his face and to ask,  "What makes his soul light up like that?  What is he imagining he's found and is staring at to make him so bright?  And how the fuck do we get that for him so he can have it and keep it for as long as his soul lights up just at the thought of it?"

And then the end....  I hurt for him so much...  And I wanted to tell him that he could at least put his own message into all those bottles and seal them up to try to reach wherever they came from.  Only.  That wouldn't work,  would it?  It's not about his messages reaching someone else, it's about them reaching him.  He needs to receive something,  any damn thing, still there....  

And.  There's a personal knee jerk interpretation I had to the message of the video. And a different one to the song.  

First the video....  Is this an allegory for all of the recent centuries of past lives that we've been separated and he finally finds me either right before I die or when I keep our ancient promise and come to him as a ghost to tell him I died and to stop looking for me until I'm reborn? Because, that's how it felt to me.... Not the sprinting,but the part with Akil and the bottles.... Because,  like,  in his last life it was really long and I died three times in that one life of his....  2 empty bottles and 1 he found me but because he was too old to be the love of my life,  I didn't choose to live long after our lives crossed and so it came up another fucking empty bottle....  

The song made me ask: 

Did he write this after I'd had the bond made dormant put to sleep by the Seelie King so I'd stop getting overlays from his...moments of strong emotions....with his live in hot girlfriend, the scorpion chick, who thought he was going to marry her?  In those 9 months from autumnal equinox of 2015 when I asked and the summer solstice of 2016 when he found me in the form of his spirit animal self with such deep sorrow and need in his eyes that I chose to trust him and renew the bond and fall asleep nestled in and protected by my polar bear.  But.  This song.  Is it.  Did he write it about that period of time when the bond was asleep dormant as if he'd never had it and he couldn't reach me via the bond inside his soul,  it was just non-responsive and gone from him.  And no way to find me or reach me or hear from me without it.  Like I'd just disappeared from existence to him, and not even a ghostly goodbye to keep the old promise before I was reborn....  

I've often wondered  since summer of 2016 why he didn't pick the scorpion chick. I fully expected after I had the bond put to sleep he'd marry the Scorpion woman and they'd stay in Raleigh and adopt two golden retrievers and when they fought on Saturday nights,  they'd have makeup sex on Sunday before she dragged his ass to church so she could thank Jesus for the blessings of their marriage.  That was the path I expected he would choose before/during the time when the bond went dark at my request to stop me receiving from him the inappropriate to share explicit overlays. I still don't know WHY he didn't choose that "easy" and "expected" path once I'd gone silent and he'd lost the bond to me and was unable to reach me. I can't explain his choice or what spirit journey soul searching in his spirit animal form he had to take til he found me when the fée and polar bears held their spirit meeting between the snow and the aurora waiting for winter's ice to return. I don't know what happened inside his head/heart in those months to make the choice he did and to walk his path of soul searching to find me again while I waa riding in the Seelie Court. Green man oak king and his queen were not surprised by his choice or that he showed up within the year - but I was surprised once I woke up the next morning with the bond once more strong and alive and pulsing with raw energy and love.  I genuinely thought he'd decide to forget me and the magic in our connection and choose the hot girlfriend who made sense to everyone else and who would have brought him every successful checkmark that modern American southern Christian society tells you to desire.  That's what almost every other living man would choose and what practically every friend/acquaintance/colleague would have told him to do and advised him he was making the mistake of his life not choosing to marry her....  I don't understand why he made the choice he did or what soul searching vision dream quests it took for him to find me again in the hope that I would choose to trust him and the bond could be awakened and reclaimed.  I know Eric's decision didn't surprise The Goddess, the green man oak king, or his queen. But I still find it baffling. 

It's an unanswered question that only Eric could ever answer for me - if he chose to.

And.  I wonder if this song IS his answer to that question. That the loss of the bond as nd that soul connection destroyed something inside him and he felt he HAD to do whatever necessary to find me and restart that connection and its flow between our souls.  That's why he made the choice he,  because reawakening the bond to reignite his soul light and come back alive was more important to him than anyone or anything else - and he was going wherever he had to and do whatever he must in order to fill that echoing emptiness where the living bond between our souls belongs.   

Also.  I thought it cute the video was filmed in Dominican Republic, another DR like Delta Rae.  Or like me,  my first and middle initial.  Daniella Raechelle (though as a kid,  other kids couldn't say the chet of the Hebrew form of Rachel and once in 1st grade teased me about the "hairball hell" in my middle name.  So after that I introduced my middle name as "Rae,  short for Rachel." whenever asked....) So I thought the DR was cute,  even if it's a coincidence they're my first two initials as well as the band/character in their mom's story. 

Also though.  If you see him,  tell him to get his fucking ass over here asap so I can hug and kiss him and refuse to let him go until he understands and believes how deeply and intensely I miss him every time he's not with me, in person or at least with me in spirit via the soul bond. It's very important he realize this unalterable unchangi,ng truth about my heart. 

P. S.  This is literally right in the first three posts at the top of my newsfeed....   Directly after a set of picture memories from 6 years ago of me hiking at Snoqualmie Falls with one of my best friends out in Seattle.  (who I met at a culinary school farm to table course that my sparrow grandma won like 10 years ago as an all expenses paid from Organic Valley and gifted to me to go.)

Anyway. See what I mean about the algorithms?! "Ope!  Eric's in it.  Universe gave us strict orders to stop her from fucking this up this life.  She's NOT ALLOWED TO FORGET ABOUT HIM OR PRETEND HE DOESN'T EXIST.  We need to keep sharing it to her on her phone and desktop til she watches it and we make her feel her intensity of desire for him, damnit! Universe and Karma's orders!"

 So before the play tonight, while I was eavesdropping, I did my best to not get in a fight while still defending the honor of the Scots.  (I'm nae even Scottish by blood,  but I have many good friends who are (including more than one who can claim descent of The Bruce) and in honor of my love of whiskey,  my hair,  and my temper have claimed me as honorary Scottish.)

See.  What happened was.  Crissy had gone to preemptively use the bathroom before the 7:30 start of the one act no intermission play.  And rather than my purse book (a collection of E. T. A. Hoffman stories - a German Romantic/Gothic author of the late 18th/early 19th century  who specialized in early scifi/speculative fiction, horror, and "modern" folktale. I don't know his works well as I tend to specialize in French,  Greek,  British,  Irish,  Scottish,  Russian, American (esp native tribal and 18th/19th c. New England), Scandinavian, and Canadian literary traditions - but I have read some Hoffman before.  He's most famous for the tale that The Nutcracker ballet is based on. The one I'm currently reading Is The Sandman,  about a man who falls in obsessive love with a machinework robot and loses his sense of reality and eventually his mind.) Anyway,  we had like 5mins til curtain,  so I opted not to take out a book I wouldn't easily set aside so I was on my phone putzing around on social media and eavesdropping other people. 

The guy in front of me, to his friends: "So the title of this play actually comes from a poem.  By an English poet named Burns."

Me, cringing internally, : "Scottish.  Burns is nae English.  Burns is Scottish.... "

You see.  Not only is Burns the most famous poet to write in Scots dialect (most famous for Auld Lang Syne) with a national holiday called Burns Day AND the Scottish don't take kindly to being called English.  but also I'm very much always the Hermione to interrupt with a,  "well actually" when people say factually incorrect things while trying to impress other people..... Always been that way. Have definitely ended up hit on that way by jumping into other peoples conversations to correct them.  Especially about matters philosophical, historical,  literary, artistic,  and/or theological.... 

Also.  You need to imagine you turn around to receive this Hermione-esque correction coming from a very fey curly haired green eyed elf witch in a long black dress wearing a shiny labradorite necklace and an opal on onyx cameo necklace that looks/energetically feels like it should be in The Haunted Mansion at Disney 😂 

Only as it was indoors, thus masks required of all except the performers, more accurately it's a curly haired elf witch with massive anime style green eyes staring at you over her exploding TARDIS from the Doctor Who episode with Van Gogh face mask. 😂

Yeah.  It was more like that....  😂 (I actually really like wearing a mask aesthetically - makes my eyes look extra huge and I feel like a ninja!)

Also though,  tonight's one of those nights even I stop and do a double take when I walk by a mirror.  I don't generally consider myself particularly pretty this life. I think in large parr it's because I see me as "just me" and my desire to be loved honestly this life for me qua me just as I am extends to me not actively TRYING to be attractive.  Moat of the days you see me I probably haven't showered in several days (curly hair gets damaged if shampooed every day) and I don't have a skin care regimen or even much makeup - right now I don't even own any type of moisturizer (except sunscreen), foundations,  concealers,  bronzers,  highlighters, false eyelashes, makeup sponges, etc and wouldn't even know the first thing to do to contour my face.... I literally only own nail polish, metallic neutral eye shadows, fun eye liners, mascara, fun lipsticks/tinted chapsticks, and one blush for the winter when my pallor sometimes looks bluish-greyish undead. So because I don't bother trying to make myself look pretty,  I tend not to think of myself as one of the pretty girls.  I don't think of me as unattractive anymore than I think of me as intentionally attractive.  I just think of me as me, flaws and shininess and all depending on which facets you see in me.  

I will admit though,  there's a natural bubbly spring and mischievous fire in me that I've had all my life but which I will admit disappears when I force myself to give up on getting to share at least some of this life with Eric. Mikaela describes it as an overwhelming sea of sadness it feels like you could drown in.  And there's a certain deadness I get behind my eyes when I get so bad about thinking it best for him I make us accept separation this life so I try to block him out from reaching me via the bond or in dream space.  It's like the dullness of an unwatered plant, but it's a starving deadening of aliveness in the soul. You'd think that alone would warn me off behaving that way,  but it doesn't.  Not when I get it into my head that it's the kindest best thing I can do for him is to let him go and I'll stoic through my own suffering from him not reaching me somehow.... 

Well.  But.  Right now that's not my fatalist martyring stoic headspace.  I'm actually weirdly full of hope and light that somehow it will come out right if I keep setting my stars based on the idea of letting him choose what he wants/needs for himself INCLUDING keeping me as one of his available options and reachable by whatever means he has, waking or sleeping, in tangible reality or in the psychic spiritual, IF finding me and reaching me is what he chooses for himself. 

And.  For all I talk about how beautiful the light I see in him.... I do recognize there's a particular spark and boisterous effervescence in me whenever I believe in the possibility of us both stubbornly  choosing each other regardless anything or anyone else.  My soul lights up when I believe that dream is going to become real in defiance of all logic and common sense defeatism. Amd tonight,  part of my prettiness is that glowing sparkly inner fire of believing maybe we both want it this life so we'll somehow find a way.  

See? No matter how much seriousness or sass or sweetness I try for,  there's just too much hope and faith in his stubbornness if I'd just give him a fucking chance all bubbling up in my soul right now lighting me up with warmth and laughter and playfulness. I know it for what it is - most people have always seen it as an integral part of my character/identity. But I recognize it as my internal belief in happily ever afters and that somehow between his stubbornness and my steadfastness in wanting what I want no substitutes and the divine timing and karma of choices we make,  we'll find each other somehow no matter what and forge the path through to reunion on a shared path. It's recognizable when it's absent,  my inner light and warmth gets dimmed and deadened when I lose faith in that.... Which isn't right now at all,  as you can see above - but it was where my head was at earlier this year trying to make me be reasonable and "fair" to him in the life path he's built and chosen for himself. 

O.  And thinking of which!  While on the second half of our bottle of Vouvray, sitting in the sun by a prairie near some oak trees at the theatre in the woods with our pre-show picnic, after my very Homeric discussion with  a sweat bee about why my elbow was a bad place for him to sit on me to lick my salts,  Crissy checked the time on her phone and suddenly laughed, "Twitter decided to notify me about two new knitting patterns and also the Universe wants you to know Eric has a solo show in NYC next Thurs.  The Universe's message to you via serendipity and algorithms from Eric about his show has a picture of him - see?" (back story: Crissy practically never logs into her twitter account, ever, and she has it set not to do pop up notifications. However,  intermittently her phone will randomly buzz with Twitter notifications popping up and if she's with me one of them is always a notification of a tweet from Eric's personal account.  She insists those are for me, because the Universe won't let me try to pretend he doesn't exist so it will get his messages to me no matter how improbable the coincidences, as his tweets only show up in her notifications when I'm on my way over she's about to see me or while she's with me. AND no matter how many times she dismisses them,  the twitter app continuously notifies her with pop ups of his same tweet until she verbally reads it to me or shows me so his message actually reaches me and the Universe can stop using up synchronicities just to remind me he exists and should matter to me and it's important I know that,  lol.  It's actually even wyrder the way her Twitter notifications behave than my facebook algorithms constantly showing me all band posts featuring him and apparently now suggesting for me his personal solo music page in my news feed. Reappearing at different points and on multiple days/times til I acknowledge and let me feel what emotions it rises in me.  The algorithms refuse to let me try to push him away,  not see him,  or pretend away the recognition of the connection that constantly pulls between us.) 

I do not plan to take a hint from the Universe on this one.  Not because I wouldn't love seeing him and hearing his songs in person - that would make me ridiculously happy full of the giddies!  And not because I have other plans - after tomorrow,  I have nothing but Packers games in my calendar for 3 weeks.  But mostly because.... I don't currently have any friends,  family, or even acquaintances in NYC to visit and New York is a lonely place full of constant cacophony of everyone's inner shouting for an empath with no home base to center in.  I guess Chris is still in Brooklyn,  but I haven't talked to him in like 3 years and anyway he still wants to date me sees me as "one who got away" manic pixie girl in his life even though he's married now which is awkward.... So it's not that I wouldn't love to see his show or that I have any conflicting plans - NYC is just quite far away from Madison WI and it's a lonely noisy place for an empath to visit without friends to stay with. Also,  every time I visit New York,  I get horribly homesick for the sight of the stars.... Even just one planet twinkling through.... So I don't like to stay there very long - I get depressed after about 6 days anywhere with too much light pollution. When it's not cloud covered,  I need to at least see ursa major,  ursa minor, Orion,  and Sirius every 3-7 days....  I have to at least be able to see and greet the north star,  my bears,  my warrior,  and my dog on the regular or my heart gets heavy and homesick.  So it's not that I couldn't up and go (I don't even have to worry about getting my grandma sick by accidental delta variant as she has no scheduled appointments til the 28th) and I won't deny being at his show would make me incredibly happy and is intensely tempting. It's just that right now have nobody to go with or to visit to be waiting up for me there. I'll fly to visit London and Ireland and Scotland and France alone - but alone in NYC is energetically overwhelming and simultaneously lonely to an empath. 

*le sigh* I will make me accept I'm not going and for right now,  I'm going to put the kettle on for a cuppa chamomile lavender tea and a book before bedtime.  Bonne nuit!