For the record, I'm a very firm believer in free will and healing as a process and the importance of learning lessons across lifetimes and second chances, whether you choose the easier paths or the harder paths. I devoutly believe in the idea we can all choose to be better versions of ourselves than we have been in the past.  Which means I am an absolute sucker for a redemption arc and will be the first one cheering ANYONE on if or when they choose to heal and make good from their past. 

Please do not take my statement that things are harder now and I personally have no desire to try any further with Delta Rae or Britt and all I have inside me is a very polite but no affection state for her as being a lives long sentence or final unchanging carved in stone state of being.... That's a statement about where I'm at presently in my own emotional state as regards the boundaries she created by her October 2018 choices.  It's a statement of the current conditions of my own emotions and my lack of trust and my firm decision to respect another's boundary to the exact letter of their choices. But it doesn't mean it's irreparable or that broken trust can't be rebuilt and earned anew -- it's hard but sometimes it's stronger for that once you know you can count on what's built on better foundations.  It does mean that I will be painfully comme il faut in respecting those boundaries as long as those boundaries exist -- but it doesn't mean there aren't paths of healing and paths past the distance and brokenness and distrust.  I can't shift the boundaries, they're not my boundaries -- but it doesn't mean nobody can, and it doesn't mean the breach can't be healed. I'd be lying if I said it would be easy to fix and rebuild -- but it's certainly not impossible.  It's only impossible so long as those who can do something to shift the boundaries expect a miracle without doing so or if you're expecting me to cross the line of someone else's ethical boundaries they imposed. But it's not impossible. There are paths to healing things, they may not be easy unless you make choices that make them easier, but there are plenty of them. Technically, there are an infinite number of those paths of healing and reconciliation as there are an infinite number of choices both big and small that could be made.

I don't believe in redemption arcs built on being saved by an external force without personal choice and personal growth and personal accountability for the past - but healing and reconciliation grown from free will choices to learn and change and be better than you were before are something I believe in with my entire heart and soul. You just have to make that choice and stick with it. Nobody else can make that choice for you - but also nobody can take it away from you except you and your choices.

Don't despair, don't think things are forever insolubly fucked up -- just do better when you learn more to try to guide you to a path that gets you where you want to go. I can't promise it will be easy and I can't promise it won't be humbling and I can't promise it won't hurt your ego to walk such paths -- I can only promise you that they exist if you choose them and stick by a philosophy of trying to do better once you know better.  There's always a redemptive arc and a path toward healing -- you just have to be willing to see it and choose it even if it's harder now than it needed to be. But there's always such a path if you'll just choose it and try to make it manifest.

It's Mental Health Awareness Day and I just wanted to clarify that.  Because I realized I may not have been clear about my stance on healing and redemption paths while I was writing out about me trying to stoically come to grips with reality as I see it and my own emotions of where things are and how we got here....  I don't control the fatelines, I can just read them like memories of could bes that haven't happened yet. Nor do I have any power over anyone's free will except my own. I hold free will sacrosanct, I always have and I always will. Only the past is a fait accompli -- the present is the crucible of determining which fate lines are truncated and disappear from the futures that could be. And you always have agency in that act of trimming away fate lines, you always have an opportunity to choose differently. In every breath and every moment that you are alive. You can always make free will choices to change the course of fate lines if you don't like where they lead or the version of you that you become on one you're on -- you just have to realize and make choices that change the future.

And I promise you, as staunchly as I am an unwavering ally of Truth and Karmic Justice and I won't bend in what needs healing or shut up about the poisons of leaving it unhealed, I'm an absolute sucker for an individual choice mediated redemptive arc. I may not have high expectations you'll make such a choice, but IF you make genuine choices to learn and heal and be better than you were, I will ALWAYS be in your corner pulling for the best of possible fate lines from wherever we are currently when you start making those choices. Always and always and always.  

After all, Justice could never be just without a path of atonement after we have done wrong, now could it? You can't have predeterminism and free will both -- you have to choose which team you believe in. And you can't square the circle of justice without paths of atonement and redemption arcs. We all fuck up from life to life and within every life -- always give grace for forgiveness where genuine growth has occurred as you hope to be given it when your actions merit eating crow and asking forgiveness.  It's in your hands, in your choices of free will which paths are chosen -- you can choose the fatalistic "things are too fixed to change them" path or the hopeful "now that I know better, I will do better" path.  They both always exist, side by side, it's just sometimes harder than others the choices that need to be made to get back on a brighter path of healing and redemption. But it's always there if you just have the courage to choose it no matter how difficult it looks. 

Also some advice from a very ancient soul: in my thousands of lives long experience, paths of hope and healing and redemption arcs always look the most difficult right before you decide to take them -- they always look the most impassable before you make the inner choice that you're going to take that path no matter how difficult it is. The ego makes you think that it cannot be humbled to do what is right, it's easier to keep on the path you're wandering -- but once you get past that difficulty right at the start, paths of hope and redemption and healing are often the easiest feeling paths in any life.  They're hardest before they're chosen, they look the most impassable cliffs the further you go down paths that take you away from healing... Once you choose that you're going to do the right thing and heal, no matter how hard that is, the way gets far easier and you find it's not impossible or impassable at all. 

My second piece of advice as a very ancient soul: You cannot run away from a lesson by the ending of your life. You'll be forced to come back and face the same damn lesson, only it will be harder, and tested on it all over again if you try to evade the lesson in this life and put it off on another life. Learn your dang soul lessons so you can ace the tests because the biggest lesson of all that encompasses all of the difficult path lessons is to learn how to acknowledge, 'That was horrific and awful and I never want to have to go through it again." The sooner you face it and learn it, the sooner you can move on to better brighter happier fate lines and lives. Ending this one early just starts the level over again and you lose all the good that  you had in the life you called quits on. I am unafraid of death as it's inevitable to all lives -- there are good deaths and bad deaths, necessary deaths and unnecessary deaths. And ultimately, your aim should be a good death at a necessary time and seek it neither sooner nor later than that. I am reckless with this life because I know I will have more but I do not seek my old friend death because I know the cost of it in any/every life. I'd certainly never seek death as a way to escape a hard lesson I need to learn. 

Choose to face the hard lessons, choose to be better than you have been, choose the path of hope and reconciliation and redemption and healing.  No matter how hard it looks before you step on that path, still always choose it. Your worst regrets and hardest to live with yourself lessons are always on the other paths that aren't a path of accountability and hope and redemption.  Always choose the path of being better than you let yourself be when you fell away from your best self and on making right the things you got wrong in the past.  That's the single best advice I can give any soul, in this or any life.

P.S. Happy Saturn direct and 10/10 portal. Lord of karma's moving forward, use it to your advantage now.

 O yeah! I meant to add! After that post, I drove home but my new plant stand came in today so I had to run back downstairs for it. (In the box deconstructed. Bulky but not heavy, claims it's 17lbs in packaging, 15lbs by itself - but with a good balance point didn't feel like it with the weight distribution in a flat pack. Will open it later to see if I have everything I need to put it together or if I'll want to borrow an electric screwdriver or drill from work for any wonky holes that need redrilling. Not tonight though.) Anyway, after I brought the box up the two flights of steps from the garage, my dog ran out the door into the hallway pawing at the fire door whining. Which is unusual for her so I knew she had to go badly. So I grabbed her leash/harness and an extra bag to take her outside.

She did have to poop quite desperately even though she wouldn't before leaving work - I'm glad she didn't have an oops in the car or my flat! But what was delightful about that impromptu outing (not even a walk around the circle, just directly to the curb and back inside after - it was too dark a night for her) was how gorgeous the cloud patterns against the dark dark sky and the brightness of the stars with the waxing crescent setting before sunset right now. AND to make it even better I got to see a Draconid flame across the sky!!!!! It's been so rainy/cloudy/foggy here I was bummed I might miss them entirely -- the Draconids are my birthday week meteor shower and the Orionids are my Samhain time meteor shower. And this one was so beautiful!!! It was peachy-pinks and purples! 

That made me happy to have a shooting star to wish on in the short window of time the clouds allowed me to see my ancient friends and I happened to be outside looking up! It was delightful surprise in the short break before my pup dragged me back inside. 

And then I roasted the buttercup squash (will likely freeze some as it's a lot and I have 2 delicatas and an acorn right now and am receiving another buttercup, another acorn, and more delicatas on Tuesday from the CSA, lol.). Then cooked up the eggplant (I don't particularly love eggplants, but they're pretty and I hate wasting food.... I find the trick with them is cook them with enough olive oil, citrus (if no fresh citrus on hand you can cheat with citrus infused olive oil - also my go to with fish if I'm out of lemons/limes), umami seasoning, and quite a bit of paprika - and then cook it til crispy not mashy. That's my favorite way so far to cook eggplant - and even if I'm putting it in other things, I pre cook it that way as the flavor profile is better and works with pretty much anything you'd put eggplant in.) And then I cooked up some fried rice with spicy lemon peppers, garlic, carrot, (frozen) broccoli, green onion, eggplant, and some of the squash (once it was done cooking.) I had brown rice gifted to me from my dad's General Tso's from Chin's lunch today and I decided to use that up tonight rather than make the curry I had planned. Also, I was thinking curry before I discovered I had an eggplant to cook up and I'm currently out of green curry simmer sauce (green curry works best with eggplant imho, followed by yellow curry) and I don't think panang curry sauce would work well with eggplant and I bought a panang curry sauce from Target I'm curious to try as a quick panang craving solution.  Maybe I'll make the curry Monday night instead....  Hmm.... I have a red bell pepper and pepper filling to roast up on Sunday and black beans to use up in breakfast quesadillas over the next couple days and the second serving of fried rice to eat. 

AND tomorrow I only have brunch to take care of I'm planning to go to the orchard early as possible with Crissy before figuring out dinner then meeting up with Denis for the Aoife O'Donovan concert at Stoughton Opera House. (She's not opera, she's Celtic folk Americana singer-songwriter with no twanging at all on her vocals. The color of her voice is gorgeous and unexpected turquoise waters in the higher end of her alto range down into rich cerulean royal blues in her mid range and beautiful rich violet purples in her lowest tones - but her vocals are all pure notes not in the least twangy bending the note out of true. I'm With Her has twangy vocals/harmonies because of Sarah Jarosz, but Aoife O'Donovan solo is not at all twangy. Stoughton Opera House specializes in vocalists and instrumentalists who love old theater acoustics and a lot of intricate layered instrumentation. Penny and Sparrow off mic for their entire show in that old haunted opera house (nice ghosts tho) gave me chills. Seats are rather uncomfortable being old wooden chairs and a lot of older folk are members so you do not stand and dance there because of the palpable condemnation - but you can hear every little noise. Grand pianos sound magical and vocalists, especially with gorgeous harmonies, have the most ethereal quality in that fleur de lis gilded opera hall from the 1800s! I've always felt it would be an incredible place to setup for recording with that beautiful resonance, but I don't know that they have ever considered renting it out for that. All that said, concerts there it's important you understand it's a listening hall not a dance hall, or you'll feel the wrath of the living and the dead if you stand (or stay standing even if those onstage invited you to stand.)

Anyway. I'll cook up curry Monday or maybe Wednesday at the latest. That's a solid plan! 

P. S. I tried to take the dog on her walk this morning without wearing my gift from the crows (it was still on the shoelace) and they started swooping us to herd us back inside.  And then a shadow I didn't recognize came toward us and the crows were so agitated I went back inside and I retied the shoelace tighter so that it wouldn't slide off my wrist as a bracelet and then when I went outside the crows happily greeted us and let us leave, flying along tree to tree chattering at me. Apparently, the crows have very strong feelings that I keep it on me whenever I leave home right now...and that was wyrd enough I intend to listen to them!  For now I've put the pendant on an old tarnished silver chain I already had.  

Not quite certain why the white balance is so wonky (that being a white wall behind me) my guess is the amount of yellow against the blue in the design. but I'm tired don't feel like messing with it atm. I'mma just leave me sallow af in these. It's the pendant that matters, not what minimal vanity I have this life, lol. Maybe I'll change it in the morning. But maybe I'll forget won't care enough to bother with it. And in case you wanted to see the full design on the band tee du jour:

Ideally, I want this pendant on a black ribbon or cord to wear it as a loose choker sit in the hollow between my collarbones, but I don't have any clasps for cord right now and I think the pendant weighs too much not to lose it if I just slip knot the cord/ribbon to make it adjustable for taking on and off. 

*yawns* I'mma crunch and munch all of these roasted squash seeds and finish my glass of wine and drink tea while I read Gods of Jade and Shadow until I finish it or my eyes won't focus properly and I keep rereading the same paragraphs/lines but the words stop making sense together, whichever comes first, and then I'll head to bed. 

Bonne nuit mes chers amis inconnus. Sweet dreams and shooting star wishes be with you. 

So I've been taking pics of the leaves I collect when I lay them out to dry but today's leaves my dog kept stealing the show. 

Eventually I got a shot without the dog to go with the others.

Also. I had every intention of (re)organizing my coat closet, specifically my shoes and scarves, but the dog and cat have been taking turns laying directly in front of it all flipping day..... okay then. Fine. I'll do it tomorrow then. I'm not going to move stuff around and potentially knock stuff over this late at night on my downstairs neighbors.

I did just finish bundling the tricolor sage, rosemary and lemon verbena bundles for me and my friends Alana and Maddie. (It's actually rather perfect timing as it's been done by a Libra sun and Libbra Mercury at the Libra New moon, finished at the Aries Full moon, to be gifted to a Libra moon and an Aries sun.)  Because of that, my fingers smell strongly of sage oils and it's definitely noticeable while eating an apple just now. Which, surprisingly, was remarkably pleasant! I like to include rosemary and lemon verbena for protection and purification as well as cleansing -- I'm a firm believe that after you cleanse a space, you protect it so that the negative/vampiric energies cannot easily re-enter. I have better tools of raw energy work personally for cleansing/healing/blessing/warding a person or space than smoke cleansing -- but I like the smell of certain herbs when burned same as I like the smell of incense so I don't mind rituals with tricolor sage, rosemary, lavender, bay leaves, thyme, calendula, roses, fragrant woods, etc.  And when I saw how much sage I had this harvest (I harvest herbs for drying/bundling at the new moon, bundle 2-3 days later, they're ready for use after the next full moon -- it's an easy way for me to remember timing for drying herbs.  It's also the proper way to do it, but I started it intuitively as a kid as "the way it's done" rather than as a ritualistic thing. I'm an intuitive elemental magick worker -- I do things by raw force of will manipulating energies and natural intuition rather than ritual or scholarly learning. But whenever I look into anything or discuss my intuitive habits with other styles of witches/priests/priestesses, they're always astonished how right my choices were even though I didn't plan them to be right. I rarely use ritual though my intuition tends to align with the old ways of my past selves that have become ritualized beliefs that are followed but not understood by many people.)

I don't have issues with smoke cleansing itself, but I have INCREDIBLY strong feelings against using white sage or palo santo for it because both plants have bad consumerism driven harvesting practices that have placed the plants onto the endangered list due to concerns about the rate of their declining numbers or involve clear cutting sections of specific rain forests to harvest young palo santo trees rather than ones that died naturally and aged in the forest the appropriate decade to get the wood/oils at the right stage  And the over harvesting of both species is 100% due to white colonial cultural appropriation for "smudging" which isn't even the proper phrase unless you're having it done by an authentic tribal shaman...If you're not a tribal member trained and accepted into a tribe's shamanic practices following the ritual of the 4 elements/directions, you're not smudging, you're smoke cleansing. Don't call it smudging unless you're following a shamanic tribal ritual as a member of an actual Native American tribe. It's like you don't take communion, even at a Catholic wedding mass, if you're not Catholic in a state of Grace according to that religion's beliefs. You respect the beliefs of others, even when they are not your own.  

When it comes to white "spiritual" people using white sage and palo santo for cleansing (as opposed to protection/centering the self) my feelings are strong enough that I get angry enough I don't let me touch electronics or do anything energy sensitive after seeing anything to do with those particular plants being used ritually by white people who claim to be yogis or spiritually in tune. I just get so angry at the habitat destruction and species over harvesting that their choices/actions are enabling....  If you ACTUALLY know a damn thing about shamanic energy work and plants, you know that you can cleanse/protect with pure intention without the smoke ritual or if you are a person who needs ritual there are PLENTY of other plants/herbs you can use rather than endangered species or plants harvested with environmentally harmful practices.  Any sage works the same as white sage for cooking or smoke cleansing -- and you don't need to fucking over harvest a culturally sacred plant to extinction. that is the antithesis of the tribal shamanic way where you make sure you leave more of each plant than you take from it so the plant will continue to be there for future shamans not just yourself. I get so fucking infuriated at the cultural appropriation of white sage and palo santo for smudging and "auric cleansing" work -- you can't fucking cleanse your aura or energies by taking part in the genocide of an entire species, fffs.  How fucking white supremacist colonialist Roman Empire cultural appropriation mindset do you have to be to think that there can be anything redemptive or healing in using something you've harvested to extinction and done your best to wipe off the face of the planet?! You can never get to a good end by rationalizing a path of evil means..... I firmly believe that. There are no spiritual shortcuts - the karma of your every choice and every action will catch up with you....

Like I said, I have intensely strong feelings about the use of white sage and palo santo. By anyone for any reason unless you are a member of a tribe with shamanic ritualized usage of these particular species. For everyone else -- find another fucking plant with similar purification/cleansing properties ffs. There are PLENTY of them in the world's cornucopia of natural bounties.... You probably have some in your spice drawer tbh.

And anyway, anyone who knows any damn thing about magic the very BEST practice for bundling is to grow the herbs yourself, pouring your love and intention into the plant for the entire growing season so that every cell of the plant is KNOWN to be imbued with literal light an love and care throughout its life.  Then you make sure you are in the right inner space at the new moon and harvest with the desired intention and bundle with the proper focus of energies and intention.  But the more of yourself and the good of your intentions you can put into any/everything you do, the stronger the power and energy in it. If you grow your own sage plants (I like the tricolor as it's the most beautiful, imo, but any sage plants you like or will grow where you live is good) and you know that they have always been cared for and loved and filled with your delight in them and care of them, they will have so much more positive energy infused in them than if someone focused on profits and money making rips out wild white sage plants that have fought for their very existence and are now nearly extinct due to over harvesting for profit.... if you have the time/energy to grow with intent, your spell work will have better energy in it and I swear to all the gods you can taste it in your food same as slow cooking to get the flavors right doing every part of it with intention while filled with positive emotions makes the best tasting food.  Plants and animals raised with love and respect then harvested with gentleness and gratitude will always make for the best quality of anything you intend to do with them. 

That said, my tricolor sage-rosemary-lemon verbena bundles tied with variegated blue thread, made from plants that I grew myself all summer long, harvested at the Libra new moon, to be fully ready and gifted at the Aries new moon, are full of wonderful positive protective energy and smell really fucking amazing!!! Alana and Maddie are super excited I offered and asked if they wanted me to make them some.  I just like to go in and smell them right now, lol.

On that note, I'm going to go roast a buttercup squash and a CSA eggplant gifted to me and make a fried rice because I haven't eaten anything except apples since brunch after taking the dog on a walk in the fog.

 My crows gave me a New Moon-Birthday-Pluto Going Direct gift today. A really really nice gift.

I feel like there's a helluva lot of meaning and symbolism in having a crow whose life you saved gift you a silver opal hummingbird with a lightning bolt on it and a 5 petal flower (I think maybe a plumeria?) that has 6 diamonds/cubic zirconiums. I'm going to look up the symbolism of hummingbirds, plumeria, crows, opals to consider this in more depth. It was not a meaningless event, there is so much symbolism in it compared to most crow gifts....

I think they added the purse clip because they don't understand how clasps work, they've just seen that necklaces and bracelets have them. So they just put a found purse clip "clasp" pm the shoe string so I could wear it?.... That's the best crow logic I can come up with for it. 

It happened while I was carrying the brush bucket around from the back to the front garden. Today I had to take care of the lily stems now that all the lilies are done blooming and to pull out weeds/dead leaves (I leave most of them for animal/bug habitat over the wintertime but I have literally thousands of crocus, tulip, and daffodil bulbs to plant once the weather cools a bit more, so I need to clear the areas where the Spring bulbs will go and then I'll mulch over after I finish with the bulbs to protect the bed extra for winter) and pull out the milkweed now that the monarch butterflies are all migrating southward. (I collected the pods that hadn't split yet so the seeds could be planted or scattered to grow milkweed for the butterflies -- even if you throw all the fluff out the window along highways, milkweed seed bombs can be a life line for the monarch butterflies.  They require milkweed at all stages of their life and they cannot survive without milkweed plans, so it's incredibly important if you want to save the species.  I had a bumper harvest of milkweed pods this year!!) So I was carrying the brush bucket around to work in the flower bed and I suddenly heard from above me the special caw pattern that my crows use when they recognize me. I looked up into the oak tree and grinned when i saw it was Jon Snow himself and said, "Aww there you are my dear friend! How are you on this lovely afternoon?" he responded with a series of choughs and wing flips then tossed this opal hummingbird pendant and clip on a tied shoe string at my feet. I picked it up in astonishment and looked up at it as it was excitedly hopping on the branch switching between the pattern of caws that is their name for me and the pattern of caws that I call "crow laughter" that they do when particularly happy/amused/pleased with themselves and said, "Why thank you my dearling! Wherever did you find this beauty? I love it! Did you put it on the shoe string or did you find it that way?" Of course, being a crow, Jon Snow didn't answer my questions -- he just kept hopping on the branch laughing and saying my name in crow until he flew off to go do whatever crows do during the golden hour on a sunny October afternoon.

I have at least two murders of crows who have adopted me, or perhaps they're one murder with a very extensive family and range. One of the groups lives near my work and the other lives near my home and all around most of the routes that Audrey and I typically walk.) The crows near home and near my work have a very specific caw pattern when they recognize us and it is the same in both groups of crows which is why I think they may be an extensively ranged single murder with multiple nests -- and it's not one I've ever heard from other crows or I hear when I travel outside of where Jon Snow's family brood lives which is near me. I do know that Jon Snow comes and goes between both places to visit me and crows typically don't go outside of the areas where their murder live. Jon Snow is the crow that I rescued after he fell out of his nest into a crowd at a Concerts on the Square concert back when they still allowed dogs and he imprinted on me as safety and comfort before he was taken to the wildlife rehab center near Milwaukee.  And after he was released, he came back to downtown Madison until he found me one time and was super excited and then followed me home and setup his home near my home and then a part of his first generation of kids moved to join the murder in the old oak trees near work (which I have known since my family bought and moved into this building when I was 12 or so.)  That's the short version of the story of how I met Jon Snow, my baby crow, and how I became entangled with local crow friends and became allies with the raven deities. it all started with a baby crow falling out of a tree near me, other people being terrified, and me throwing my dog's leash to my cousin and telling her to hold Audrey while I calmly ran over barefoot and just picked up the crow and calmed him and let him snuggle with me. I was grateful that one of the photographers working the event was also a volunteer at the wildlife rehab center so she could call the director to wait and was willing to take him (in a box) once we detached him from me. because I acted to save the crow and calm him down before realizing, "o fuck -- this baby is bonded to me now and that tree he fell from is over 100ft tall and I can't gt him up there. And I can't abandon him with thousands of people here and overnight predators might get him if I can't get him back into his tree. And my cousin's fiancé drove us here in his car and how am I supposed to hold onto this baby crow AND be in the back seat with my dog and keep all of this calm while inside his car?! And then when I get home, what do I do with this baby crow?!" So i was grateful that she saw it happen, came to get me out of the crowd, and was able to call her boss and find a box to get the crow in and take him to the nature rehab center to look him over.  We kept in contact to get updates about him until he was released (and then he flew all the way back from outside Milwaukee area to re-find me.)   And my cousin and her fiancé collected my shoes and my purse and my dog and met me at Colectivo which is where I asked them to meet me after I finished taking care of the crow baby. 

Anyway, these are all the pictures I have of Jon Snow from when I rescued him all those years ago:

So those are my local crows and how I got involved with them, because they are descended from or in the same murder that accepted Jon Snow who I rescued before he could fly. I don't feed my crows other than digging out pesky bugs and worms from my garden and putting them in a pile nearby for any of the birds that live near me, but I do put water out all summer for the birds, pollinators, and critters. And I talk to my crows and they keep an eye on me.  They get VERY irate and heckle us home if I try to take the dog on a walk and the crows want me to seek shelter because the weather is turning nasty..... And the raven deities did not start watching over me or ally with me or assist me this life until i saved Jon Snow when he was a wee little baby.  There was mutual respect but we kept our distance, the raven deities and me, because of how tightly connected to and protected by The Goddess my soul has always been. It was after I instinctively rescued a baby crow that fell out of a tree into a crowd of humans and dogs that the raven deities started being protective toward me and my allies in my self-appointed wandering work of cleansing the energy of places and moving along stuck/unincarnated spirit that turns malevolent/vampiric.  But it happened because of Jon Snow and my immediate reaction of love and protection for an unknown baby crow who fell from his nest.

My crows do know where I live -- Jon Snow himself was very excited he found my balcony and then figured out my chimney and leaves me gifts.  In the past, all the gifts from my crows have been feathers (sometimes plucked right out and dropped at my feet if they're molting) or twigs and pine cones or once a super shiny penny. But never before has it been anything but gifts of their own feathers or from nature or that one really shiny penny.

 This is very different. Wait, let me use my new macro camera for the first time!

Isn't it gorgeous?! It's so sweet of the crows! This is the first really nice complex gift they have given me.  It's gorgeous and I love it -- but I have no idea where my crows got it from. It feels old and powerful and protective, but I have no idea the story of it before Jon Snow brought it to me around 4pm today. I also don't know exactly why it's strung on a black shoelace. With a purse clip.  I have a theory about it, but I don't know for certain. I do know that crows are smart, but can they tie a knot at the end of a string smart? But if the crows didn't do it, why would a person have put a pendant like this and an old purse clip on a shoe lace tied to a non-wearable length and the shoe lace itself be weather worn and sun damaged and chewed on the end plastic? I have to believe the crows strung them onto this shoelace for me and figured out how to knot it so I can wear it. (It's like my other shinies -- which lately have been an opal and different labradorite pendants.)  I consider it a birthday gift from my crows, it's only 4 days after my birthday and this is the first I'd been out to water my vegetables (it's been rainy) and to the garden to take care of my plants since my birthday.

I am grateful to the crows for it and I will wear it in gratitude unless some persons sees it on me and claims it is theirs. Because I fully appreciate the thoughtfulness of the crows wanting to gift it to me, but I don't know where or how the crows acquired this gift for me so if the original owner comes to claim the pendant, I'd return it.

So. While we were at dinner on Friday (we being my grandma, my aunt, and myself) we were talking about past life memories and precogs. Mostly my aunt was talking about hers, though I would drop in some of mine as well where expected or desired -- because I prefer to listen than to speak when I'm collecting new to me information. I don't need to show off my wyrd gifts or boast of them -- I actually prefer to downplay them because i don't like either the worship or the fear responses that most people have when they find out about me... Also. If you can't see the strength of the light that shines through my soul, then it's not for me to illuminate the darkness of your closed third eye.

But my aunt was talking about when she met my now uncle (he's very conservative and older and a radiologist) and how she had to decide how much of her spiritual self to share with him, how much of his past lives to read and how much of hers to tell to him.  Most of her precogs, like her astral travel, only happens while she sleeps -- she doesn't have the waking flashes of precog like I gt and my da gets and my Grandpa Ted used to get. (I know my Grandpa Ted got them, I know that's the side the genetic predisposition of it comes from, because of stories he told me when I was young helping me balance my gifts with objective reality and because I've heard about times of it manifesting on the farm when my da and his siblings were kids.)  But I found it interesting that when I said to her, "that was one of the conditions I chose for this reward life -- that I always be surrounded by love for me qua me just as I am in this life" her response was, 'O no no no. I could never let him know and see all that about me. he's science brained you know."  And I realized that, like many others, she sees spirituality and science as at odds with each other.  Because she herself doesn't have a scientific mind.

But I've never seen them as opposed.  And that's because of how I personally see the scientific method. So a lot of diagnosticians (whether in tech or in medicine) create a hypothesis and then try to collect the data to support their already created hypothesis - but that's actively bad science. And agnostics/atheists ALWAYS fall into the diagnostician trap.  Because they say evidence is objective, never subjective, and thus the subjective is never scientific and should always be thrown out. But they have forgotten that ALL evidence is observation and ALL observations are only observed, measured, and recorded from a particular subjective perspective. You can get better and better instrumentation, more and more precise measurements, and ever more encompassing perspectives -- but ultimately there is always a subjective aspect to what you choose to observe, the angle(s) you choose to observe from, and the parameters you place on what all you're measuring.  The data may be objective and as precise as possible, but the construction of how you observe it will always be subjective. And this is true of everything, always -- not just the Heisenberg uncertainty principle regarding electrons position/momentum where you can only measure one of the two with precision because the act of measurement alters the other. With everything -- your subjective choices of how you construct your observations/experiments determines what "objective" data set you get. 

And even more important to good science, you can't just throw out data because it doesn't fit your preconceived theories -- outlier data proves a faulty observational setup OR a faulty hypothesis.  And so I see all "outliers" that i experience/observe as real data points that require I reevaluate the prevailing hypothesis as well as seeking flaws in how the data may have been collected.  I approach things from the true scientific method as opposed to a diagnostician looking for a diagnosis. When I experience/observe data that doesn't fit the prevailing theory, then I test the data I'm observing and if I keep getting the same data then I need to reevaluate the generally accepted hypothesis/theory. It's for this reason that I don't see spirituality and science as inimical or opposed.

True scientific method is observing something going "huh, that's curious" then trying to come up with your best hypothesis to explain it and then designing experiments to try to prove your hypothesis AND experiments designed to try to break your hypothesis.  Any hypothesis that you can't break with new observations/data is one you can trust to contain truth.

So I can't reject manifestations of spiritual gifts that repeat the same observations and data over time -- I have to re-evaluate the prevailing scientific theories regarding matter/energy and space/time. So I don't see spirituality as incompatible with science -- I see them as complimentary for finding the deeper more whole objective truths instead of the blindered truths limited by the subjective assumptions of the scientific minds that came before. If you have observable data, then you don't get to just disregard it and throw it away because it doesn't fit past/current theories. You look at the new data and try to construct new hypotheses that allow for the accumulated data and the new/outlier data. And then you test the new hypotheses and try to be as objective as possible for gathering as large a data set and systematizing it in a useful way as you can conceive.

My spiritual gifts are part of my subjective consistent observable data set and I can't just discard and ignore them -- and it's the scientific method inculcated in me that insists so strenuously that I not ignore the data but instead integrate it into the best proved objective scientific knowledge available. That's how I see it. Scientific method doesn't let me discard truths just because I don't like them or other people deny them or they shatter the commonly accepted theories/assumptions that prevailed before the new truth data was observed. 

It's also why I never stop asking questions, to try to find new ways of looking at things to gather new data. Or to try to gather data to find the truth hidden in whatever has me puzzled and focused on trying to understand it. Asking questions and waiting for the answers to them is simply a part of how I gather data to affirm/break hypotheses and to find answers/truths previously unknown to me or the person also involved in whatever I'm questioning. I question everything until I can make it make sense to me and fit the known observable data sets and the truths I have up to that point.

So you see, as deeply spiritual and as wyrd as my gifts, there's a fundamental logic based scientific method approach to the way I think and respond to everything I observe with any of my senses or any new information presented to me. I'd always rather a difficult truth or an unpalatable truth than a pretty lie or a defensive hiding of the truth. I'd rather face a truth and integrate it into my observable field of data then find myself creating good logic on false premises that I didn't know to be false. With me, it doesn't matter my subjective emotional response to a truth as much as "how does this fit with the situation as I have observed it and the other data I have? How do I find a consistent theory to test that will encompass all the provided data?" 

Your best way of dealing with me is always going to be honesty. Bare faced, no spin no hiding no defensiveness honesty of the truths you possess. I'll winnow them out anyway -- but if you give me honesty, I'll be able to trust you in the future to be a source of truth light rather than a source of deceitful poisons. I will be able to have faith in the truths you've given me so far and in whatever new observations/truths you bring to me in the future.  The only way to majorly fuck up with me is to choose the paths of lies, deceits, hiding truths because in doing so you are getting in the way of better understanding and better theories and you're fuckng up my data sets. 

You're always best with honesty with me. I'll admire you more for giving me truth, even if it's hard won painful makes you look less good to most others truth than you'd get admiration for a lie that most people would be dazzled by.  I don't want to be impressed, I want to understand all the intricacies and simplicity of how all that is true fits together and to get as close to a whole sighted objective view as possible from within my own subjective experience. And I can only do that with raw data I can trust isn't doctored and observations I can trust to be honest. Whether you help me by giving me the truths you have in a spirit of honesty as things are or whether you hinder me by trying to give me lies in a spirit of defensiveness for the answer you want me to believe, I'll still be constantly collecting as much data and as many observations from as many perspectives/senses/measurement metrics as i can come up with to try to get as complete a picture as I can. So you're always better off with me giving me honesty and truth. Always. Especially if you want to build anything real with me that would require trust. I can't trust you if I can't believe that the data you're giving me are true and honest. It's simply not in my nature with my analytical scientific method derived ways of viewing what I experience/observe....

Be honest with me, even if it's hard to admit/speak out loud or it's a truth you think will cause me pain, and you will earn far greater admiration from me than anything else you could ever choose to do or be. I have a greater respect for honesty and truth than I have for anything else you could try to do/be to earn my admiration. Not yet giving me truths you have until you're ready to share them is valid free will exercise and an an entirely different thing than being dishonest or untruthful. Avoid dishonesty and untruths with me if you want to succeed. that's the best advice I can give you with me, in this or any life. 

The harder the truth is to speak/hear/face, the more it scares you to be honest about it, the more you should trust that honesty and truth are your best allies when dealing with me once you choose to share whatever it is. Always.

 In case you've missed me the last day or so, this is literally all you missed in my life: me sleeping pretty much all yesterday due to a migraine until I was finally able to sit up without crackling auras or everything going black in pre-syncope, reading by lit candles while drinking tea and eating apples across the wee hours, taking the dog on a long walk to both Tiedeman Pond and Stricker Pond once the sun was up, then starting some laundry and making breakfast while listening to Hamilton after we got home. Also this is what to expect if you ever let me have your number to text you:

Back to my last cuppa coffee and reading so I can put this coffee cup in the dishwasher and run it.  Then switching to tea and either reading or more chores tidying up things driving my OCD mildly crazy between loads of towels/cleaning rags/rugs. Will depend on my mood. Same with what I'll put on after I finish the second half of Hamilton. (My money right now is In The Heights of Les Miserables....)

O, these are today's leaves collected on our morning walk: 

These are my beauties from our Saturday/Sunday walks (and all the feathers I found on Sunday, lol): 

I don't actually do any art projects with the leaves that call to me on my wanders with my pup. Every year I think I should, but I never do. Instead, I always burn them in the hearth on a fire I lay for Samhain or the fire for the first snowfall. Depends on the October weather when I decide to lay my "farewell to fall" fire. 

P. S. I may or may not have put on my Hamilton tee from the tour and it may or may not have gotten in my head every time I walked past a mirror or window or shiny surfaces. Or even just glance downward because boobs. 

I promise the full lyric is on the tee. Even if you can't see the rest under the purring cat on my lap, lol. Perhaps I'll try again after he moves. Though that might not be until I'm forced to make him move so I can fold towels and move laundry along - he's fast asleep hugging my waist and purring atm. 

P. P. S. 12:21 addendum: 

Taking pictures of shirts on boobs like mine is always tricky. 🤣. then again, it always makes me laugh whenever I try. Who needs to see my face anyway?

But really. My phenotype is fucking ridiculous this life.... Even in a unisex crew neck tee. 

 I think. The thing that's actually hardest right now is that everything on the bond is so strong and so clear and so intensely real while experiencing it -- but none of it is real in the actual day to day life world. which leaves all the room for questions and over-thinking and trying to plan for "what ifs" that might never have been true, just playing out mental exercises in worst case scenarios. There's no reality against which to measure the what ifs. There's nothing objective or verifiable to tell you that you need to stop and breathe and it's not real -- it's only subjective experiences and subjective over-thinking. There's nothing real in the right now to ground you.  It's as certain and as much in my head at this point for me to say "I'm what he wants and is in the process of choosing for himself" as for me to say "he's looking for someone else among his many options and I need to let go so he can have happiness in his choice."  You see, they're very different possibilities, but they're each as equally "real" right now as far as any sort of evidence I have to work without outside my own subjective experience and my own subjective brain....  And those two possibilities hold equal probability because they hold equal amounts of tangible real world evidence that I know of -- yet they pull me in opposite directions, they change my choices because what I choose if he's an option is him but what I choose if he removes himself from my options is that he be as happy as he can be.

And I could be a lot more stable a foundation for him and his choices if I just could answer that question, if I just knew which side of the coin his choices are. I know it has to be one or the other, I just don't know which it is... And I have no way to know that. And it makes me vacillate unstable in my intentions depending on which of the two seems more likely based on the logic and rationalizations available to me in the moment.  And the divide over which seems more true to me falls quite evenly on if I'm listening to my heart (in which case it's that he desires me and would choose me if I will choose him) or if I'm listening to my head (in which case it's that he doesn't want me/feels he can do better/it's too much work and he will choose someone else) at any given moment. And, my heart is unwaveringly certain but my head is insidious with the logic that my heart believes what it wants to be true not necessarily clear-sightedly seeing what IS true. 

And I hate that I can't just figure it out, have certainty and be able to act with fixed purpose instead of this back and forth push-me-pull-me that I'm still stuck in.... It kills me whenever I flip back to heart-based believing and realize, "O mon bon dieu. I've hurt him again.....How could I fucking have let me hurt him again?!" But the logic of the head based rationale is insidious and implacable whenever it's dominant. And it's so evenly balanced in the real world evidence I have that there is nothing solid to tip the scales definitively in either direction.... and so it just goes up and down between the two opposing possibilities by whether my heart or my head is dominant at influencing my beliefs. So it just tips back and forth, swinging wildly between the two possibilities, because I have nothing to stop me questioning which one is the truth -- I have nothing to plunk down in one of the scales to make it clearly weighed down with "The Truth" in capital letters so I can stop weighing the pros and cons and possibilities to try to figure out which contains The Truth. And I just keep weighing and re-weighing both sides to try to find the balance point. And I don't have what i need to be able to know which one holds The Truth and which set of possibilities I can chuck in the trash or the nearest bonfire... So I just keep weighing the options trying to figure it out because I have no other way to try to find it at this point on my own.

My emotions are as much a rollercoaster as my stability for his choices depending on whether I listen to my head or my heart on this knife's edge balance trying to figure out The Truth of his heart's desires and his choices.... And I dunno any way to find The Truth just from within my own head and heart with nothing tangible to put in the balance....But I have no way to get that and his heart is his to share or expose in his own time and way -- not for me to demand because I'm over-analyzing weighing both possibilities making me feel at sea, uncertain, insecure. I have nothing solid, nothing I can touch as verifiable piece of The Truth. Which is probably why waking up with that inner sense that he should be there tangible and then the harsh reality of him not being there next to me cause me such heartache this morning.

And I don't know how much back and forth my heart can take before I just get impatient and decide any amount of pain which is definitive is better than remaining in the state of not knowing.

But. y'know. Hey at least the Pack won the game today!!! Stupid mistakes by both teams nearly lost it if not for ref calls... But a win is a win is a win.

Cheers to that, non?

 Ufgh. I woke myself up this morning by rolling over and in my half asleep state feeling the keenest disappointment that the empty half of my bed didn't have Eric in it for me to wrap my arms around... Just such a deep soul level sorrow at it. Which, is more than a little ridiculous of me given I've never yet woken up in this life to him being there. But still it hit me so intensely this morning..... 

I don't want him to be with someone else, I don't want him to want someone else. I'd accept it if that was his choice and I wouldn't blame him because I understand all the reasons things are harder now than they were even 4 years ago so I get it if it's not worth the battles to him and I'd wish him all the happiness he seeks with his choices - but I don't want it. I want him to desire and choose me. And I want to wake up to him being right there next to me for me to snuggle into his chest and wrap my arms around him and feel his arms around me. I want the solidity and the smell and the touch of him in real life, I want to wake up to that. And I still never have this life..... 

*sigh* None of my wanting will change this morning though. So I'm gonna get up, make a cuppa tea, and watch the predawn into sunrise and chat with my crow friends on my balcony.

 And I don't mean by any of that that I wouldn't choose Eric any and every opportunity he gives me by him choosing me. Quite literally, if he showed up on my doorstep without warning, my first reaction would be to throw my arms around him and hug him as tightly and fiercely as possible -- asking him, "What are you doing here?" would be my second reaction after the visceral desire/need/instinct to hug him. 

I just don't hold expectations that he would choose me. He has plenty of objectively hotter and "better" options by modern society standards and they won't be complicated by his sister's actions and choices in the name of the band. Even with the pull of the bond, why would I ever assume that given his many options he would pick me? My ego isn't that big. My hubris isn't about ego or overvaluing my worth, my hubris is about being unbending on issues of justice/truth/honor. 

And. Even if he did choose me, I would choose him but any and everything related to Delta Rae would be non-existent to me and I would do everything in my power to avoid all reminders and discussions of it that don't involve righting the wrong that has been done in their name, as it would only cause me pain to be reminded of what it was and should be and might have been if not for the poisoning injected into everything it touches. I would greet him with a hug and ask him what he's doing here - but the moment he brought up by word or inference anything to do with Delta Rae, I would shut down entirely and my face would go neutral polite blank and all my warmth/affection would retreat back into me as I went awkward and silent and ran away at the very first opportunity to avoid the contagion of the poisons spreading from everything to do with the band to him personally... And that will hold true for as long as the band is poisoned by what they have allowed to be done in their name on their official Instagram.

So yes, I would choose him if he wants me. Always and always and always will I choose him if he is among my options. But in this life, at this point, it won't be an easy path from here and what has happened to achieve anything healthy. And I'll not lie to myself or him or anyone else about that. 

But of course I'd choose him if I could. In a heartbeat. With no hesitation. And damn the consequences. That is one of the few threads of this mess that should never be doubted or over thought. I will always choose him, if he would have me. 

My desire for him and the fact I will always choose him if I could is unwavering across all these centuries and millennia of lives. It's never been a lack of yearning on my part that kept us apart, and it's never been my choices that kept us separated after finding each other. Not in any life. 

 Thinking of which:  My anger (even just my irritation) is still a terrifying thing let alone when i get truly enraged. Whether it's a hot burning temper snap or a cold burning implacable injustice related loss of temper, the raw power of the energy I'm attempting to contain is palpable even to those who are generally not energetically sensitives. It's one of the reasons that Mikaela decided when she was a small child that I'm a Lady Polar Bear as far as she's concerned because of how terrifying my rage and protectiveness can be. It's also why I work so hard at controlling my temper -- not just because in an age of electronics someone with powerful chi who gets angry can fuck everything up so anything running on electricity or a computer board stops running within my sphere of barely controlled energy. 

I will still let everything I fought for burn to the ground rather than give an inch of ground on a matter of dishonor or injustice toward me or anyone/anything that matters to me. You will never win a battle of wills against me on a point of honor or justice or ethics -- I will remove myself from the situation and let every damn thing created be destroyed and even allow my own death before I will give in to someone else pushing an agenda of dishonor, injustice and/or the unethical paths. That is still my nature. Do not let the brightness and the mischief and the joy I have had in something or my focus on creation/healing/protecting fool you about that into thinking me weak or pliable when it comes to such issues of honor, justice, and/or ethics. I will still remove myself and stand aloof rather than take part in or condone acts of dishonor, injustice, and the unethical. 

After all, is that not PRECISELY how I reacted to Britt's choices and any/everything to do with Delta Rae ever since she chose to create a system of exclusion and bullying via ostracism on the band's official Instagram account which undermined turned hypocritical everything they ever claimed to stand for as a band regarding inclusion? If you truly understood my nature, you should have realized from the MOMENT that that happened that my reaction would be to want nothing to do with the band or anyone involved in supporting the collective that allows such a system to be created and maintained in its name.... It has been my nature to remove myself from anything to do with an individual acting in dishonor and injustice in the name of a collective for over 4,500 years of history. Did you REALLY expect it to be different this life? I'll let it all be destroyed without me intervening if you don't correct the dishonor and injustice and eat crow for your past actions. If you don't believe that about me, leave it as is and see what i will allow to be destroyed by my holding aloof having nothing to do with it until the injustice and dishonor is rectified. 

You may rise or fall by your own merits -- there's no reason you can't succeed if I refuse my support, admiration, energy, and attention. You only get me on terms of mutual respect and equality -- if you can't choose that, then you're telling me you don't need me and I will have nothing to do with your collective works or any of the individuals involved in it.  I will have no part in supporting a collective that allows itself to be polluted by any individual's greed/pride creating a system of injustice and maintained by egoic defensiveness and a subservient collective to that defensiveness rather than to serving justice. And I will allow you to destroy anything you choose while I take no part until the injustice is acknowledged, ended, and the pollution cleansed from the collective. You can do it entirely without me if you will allow systemic injustice to take root and poison everything from the inside.

Please don't let it be the death of you this life -- because I won't step in to have anything to do with a polluted collective that endorses two tiered systems of justice/inclusion. If it is your death from being torn in two by this divide and my unwillingness to bridge it without it being acknowledged and cleansed, you go in your own name, your own armor, your own image -- not mine. But I will not take a step back towards anything having to do with the band (I still can't even bring myself to listen to the songs that I have loved so dearly as every vocal of Britt's, on lead or harmonies, saps out all joy in the music itself and reminds me of the choices of bullying and injustice made in the entire band's name that the entire band has allowed to stand for nearly three years now, two years since they had an opportunity to make it right and lay the blame on "former management decisions" which they did not take) or have any damn thing to do with it while it is polluted by pride and greed's defensiveness over creating systemic dishonor and injustice. 

Have I not made that as clear this life as I have in every past life that some third party's defensive choices have tried to ensnare me into collective acts of dishonor and injustice? Why would you expect anything different from me in response this life when it's an issue of ethics?

Please do not expect of me to behave in any way untrue to my inmost nature. I cannot knowingly support or take part in that which is a stain of dishonor and an act of pollution by a system of injustice created in a collective's name and perpetuated rather than abolished. Do not expect me to make any exceptions. Not even to save Eric from the pain of being caught in the middle of my stubborn refusal manifested as aloofness and those whose prideful defensiveness won't let them admit the injustice they have done and the system of inequity they have created and perpetuated in the name of an entire collective.

I will work to heal the hurts and guilt and ghosts of the past and to forgive myself for the wrongs I've done as I have long since forgiven him the wrongs he has done -- but do not expect of me that I will bend whatsoever in my standoffish aloofness over an issue of dishonor and injustice.  I have learned not to allow another to wear my own mask, my own image, and to be killed for it -- I have not yet learned how to allow an injustice to be perpetuated with my taking part in it or seeming to support it. I will never shut up about it, I will never knowingly take part in it, and you will not receive any affection from me or my return to supporting the collective effort without acknowledging the wrong done and cleansing the pollution it created. Do not expect that of me,. Not now, not ever.

 Fyi, I started this post at like 10ish this morning, and then time slinkied too fast and I had too much going on and so I finished it when I came in to water my plants after a happy surprise birthday eve Thai food dinner with my grandma and Aunt Linda. (happy surprise as in I precogged me having Thai food with peanut sauce/panang but assumed I'd be cooking up some veggies and the organic panang curry sauce from target to try it when I got home -- it was my grandma who decided late this morning that Aunt Linda, grandma and i ought to go out for Thai food after grandma's appointment today.)  Curiously, when my aunt asked what i was doing for my birthday, I told her I didn't really have any actual plans and she thought that was sad and I told her that I don't see it as that special a thing -- that I don't like being an "ought to" or getting things as an "ought to" -- I like best getting things as random surprises when someone says, "this is exactly perfect for Dani and she needs to have it in her life" and that i find that far more meaningful than obligatory holiday ought tos. So then she said she was going to send out into the Universe energy for a happy surprise for me for my birthday. (my aunt is a Taurus sun with a Cancer rising and a Sag moon -- she likes to be celebrated on her birthday in the way she chooses and for it to be on her terms and all about her. Also her love language is cooking or sharing food, preparing and eating together a delicious meal, as a nourishment and affirmation of life and the pleasures of it.)  I told her that was perfect energy to wish for me, that a happy surprise unfold for me for my birthday! 

I'll be heading home just as soon as I finish watering the green babies to introvert recharge with candles and tea and music and books and apples and cuddly fur babies and maybe even some overnight rain/storms.  But, I still have quite a lot of plants to water and turn for their phototropism to balance out and to trim off dead/dying foliage. But my dog has a bone to chew, I have hot tea to drink/make and I've got Billy Joel songs on randomize to keep us company as I wander back and forth near it to fill up on water before wandering in my set orbit to take care of all the plants. Sales widdershins from front counter --> hallway --> vestibule --> service --> admin. I'm still only barely into the sales floor green babies, lol.

~*~*~*~

This morning on our walk was particularly beautiful as it was golden hour and the locust trees (one of the first to turn colors, a brilliant gold, and then one of the first to drop leaves) were scattering pieces of gold all over the air from the gentlest breezes. It was absolutely magical!!!  We're not yet at peak color change but it's getting close, should be in the next week or so, some maples have changed colors along their north facing sides but most haven't changed yet.  It was a gorgeous walk but I definitely realized after we were outside that I should have grabbed a sweater or sweatshirt because I'd dressed for the high of 88 and sunny this afternoon rather than the 57 and long shadows of 7:30am in early October. O well, it's good for me to toughen up again get used to being chilled with goosebumps. 

My Pit Liquor deodorants came in and I love the smell of most of them - the whiskey cedar and whiskey black pepper (part of the best selling trio) are a bit intense for me and more masculine, as I expected but I was curious, and they'd both smell really amazing on a guy! Especially the whiskey cedar! (I mean, seriously it would smell really fucking amazing on a guy!! Male musk pheromones and whiskey and cedar?! Ummm yes please, I volunteer as tribute to snuggle up into that smell!!!)

My favorite of the ones I got are the seasonal pumpkin spice, the whiskey lavender, and the pineapple whiskey. With the coconut rum lime as a close fourth. I'll likely buy the large refill of pumpkin spice while still available and order the just released today new seasonal of apple cranberry orchard that I expect I'll love. But I'll start with whatever their smallest size is. Just in case. 

Made myself a delicious potato and kale hash for breakfast after we got home from the walk. Currently finishing my coffee and reading some of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (my current purse book, I haven't yet started a new at home book since reading Song of Achilles the other day) because I honestly don't know much about him other than his assassination and that the alternative high school for at risk kids in Madison is named Shabazz for him. So when I found it at a used bookstore, I decided to pick it up and learn about him. I'm currently about a third of the way through, where he goes from being a zoot suit lindy-hopping cat in Boston to a true Harlem hustler. It's really fascinating so far, and it's hard to see how his path as written takes him from Christian small town outside Lansing poverty trying to be integrationist through zoot suit swing jazz music scene to Muslim Black separationist. I know he became a Muslim in jail, but it's still a wild story so far how he became Malcolm X.... 

Over in my book nook cozy golden chair today. Definitely having an, "omg boobage" very cleavage-y day today, lol. Not even a pushup bra, just a racerback over a regular bra. (Well, my regular bras. I've taken to buying my bras from The Bra Lab with interchangeable cups, back straps, and shoulder straps. They're all convertible, but even better I can get them to fit my small ribcage and large cup size. And I haven't switched out the 1" wide black lace straps. The worst thing with them is that the back strap tears out quicker than anything else so I replace back straps more often than cups or shoulder straps, which is what recently happened to my last flesh colored back strap. But that doesn't surprise me - it's where the most weight/pressure is while wearing a bra and while taking it on/off.)

And in case you were wondering why I'm reading inside on such a beautiful day instead of on the balcony with the dog, it's because during breakfast and still after I'd cleaned up the dishes, my cat was sleeping on the coir doormat he claimed in the Spring when I traded it for the bright robin in cherry blossoms one for Spring/Summer and that I had put in front of the balcony door for him.  Yeah, I'm never getting that back to put in the hallway outside my flat..... It's his now and he sleeps on it for at least a part of every morning.

Probably need to finish up here and go get ready soon. My grandma has a 2pm PT appointment and I don't know if she wants to do lunch first.... After her appointment, my plan is to transplant all 3 fig trees into larger pots at work while the weather is so nice. Intermittently rainy and autumnal cool this weekend - so uncertain if I'll go anywhere on my actual birthday. May just stay cozy at home. Sunday is the next Packers game, mid-afternoon, and I need to do the end of month deposit for September this weekend at some point.  And then all my thousands of Spring bulbs came in yesterday, so next week I'll work on winterizing the garden bed and once the nights are cool enough getting bulbs in once the weather cools a bit and putting mulch down after the bulbs are planted. 

That's pretty much my plans for the upcoming week: cozy at home, long fall walks with the dog, gardening and filing at work, visiting the orchard, then the Aoife O'Donovan concert at Stoughton Opera House on the 8th.  

~*~*~*~

And that bit was what I wrote earlier today, lol. Now finishing up the plants then home.  

P.S. Tonight, just now, I found a feather in my cleavage. No idea how it got there or how long it's been there... 

 

It's normal for feathers to randomly appear around me wherever I wander (indoors and outdoors) and even randomly appear on me physically for no reason -- often randomly tucked into my hair or woven into my shirts. the spiritual symbolism is that your angels and spirit guides are watching over your protecting you and you're on the right path.  That said, this is genuinely the first time I've had a feather materialize inside my cleavage. I doubt it's been there THAT long because I noticed it because it was suddenly something scratching me there and when I looked down I saw I had a feather tucked in my boobs... Anyway, you get used to it if you're around me a lot -- that I'm always find an inordinate amount of feathers and that they randomly materialize around me or tucked into my hair/clothes. Stuck in my boobs is a new one, but hey, even spirit guides must have a sense of humor when cleavage is THAT cartoonishly ridiculous, lol.

P.P.S. Yesterday morning I posted about a book and very long ago past lives that are still triggering for me. (I also get triggered that after Marat's death, there was la grande terreur instead of murdering him cleansing away and ending the bloodshed of false accusations against innocents.  Actual mental breakdown, thoughts devolving into rapid French when I barely knew more than a year's worth of french this life even though I sleep spoke in French as a small child, and I have no memory of the rest of the day after I learned that in my 8th grade history lesson on the French Revolution. Look up Charlotte Corday.... Incidentally, also look up Adam Lux after you look up Charlotte Corday. Sometimes, he's just as bad as me at trying to continue living after the other has died....His was an unnecessary death, but a good death -- and one he chose.) And then I set it to private as I didn't know if that pair of past lives was mine to share.... But then, curiously, past lives came up tonight at dinner. (My aunt, like my father and me, remembers her past lives and reads some past lives on people) and my Aunt Linda said something interesting in response to my grandma complaining she has no memories of her own past lives and me saying that it's not always a kindness to remember your past deaths and the loss of loved ones. My aunt said, "I always think that past life memories are important and rise to the surface if they deal with traumas and healing a person is going through in the present, in this life."  And it made me realize that, other than my traumatic deaths and random memories shaken loose when other people find me form past lives who have sought me in this one (the first clause I asked for this reward life) pretty much all of my past life memories that come to me unbidden and hit me so strongly deal around lives of unfinished karma and broken-heartedness of separation and guilt between Eric and me. Sometimes fleeting memories of lives of reunion and joy together -- but this life the past life memories that rise up in me unbidden all center around his soul and that connection and all the unhealed bad endings and missed connections of past lives of separation. 

And that phrasing of hers and my realization about the trauma my own past life memories are all centered around unlocked inside me some thoughts that maybe what the PURPOSE of this life is, for both of us, is a chance to put to rest the old ghosts of the lives that our paths crossing ended in tragedies and separation and just missing each other barely and guilt over when either of us was entangled in the death circumstances of the other in past lives. To put the unhealed old ghosts to rest and to focus on the healing and joy in reunion and consciously both making and reaffirming that choice for this life. (unless of course he decides to run from the wyrdness and intensity of the connection and to choose to try to find a sort of happiness with other women with the bond still always tugging at him. Which he could choose. And I wouldn't blame him for it -- it's hard to be in the middle of discord within your family of two people you love who are not getting along with each other. So I would not blame him for that choice if that's his choice. The point is that in my eyes it's HIS choice, not mine, not hers, not anyone else's. it's his choice for it is he who must live his life path.  

But even if he does choose to date other women and try to ignore the bond and all our past lives and the pull like gravity in a binary tar system between hims souls and mine, still I will try to heal up my own unhealed ghosts and scars and guilts and traumas around this bond. To make it healthy and a source of goodness and joy and mutual strength again as it was intended to be. Because even if the fruits of that work don't show up in this life because of his choices, still it will pave a way toward future lives of reunions rather than separations and old wound being brought back to be lanced open so true healing can happen rather than scarring and festering negative emotions that were buried rather than processed. I can't make him choose me this life and I can't make him choose facing what needs healing between us in this connection -- but  I can work on my side of what needs healing to bring this bond back into the alignment of what it was always intended to be -- a source of strength and power and goodness for both of us that can't be achieved separated. So that's what I will choose, that's where I will put my energy and my effort --into healing what I can dig up inside me and trusting him to find me and to work on what needs to be worked on together when he's ready and chooses that in his free will. Until then I'll just work on what is within my own sphere of influence to work on.

And so in the spirit of that, I'll set that  last post back to published instead of draft. In the spirit of honesty and recognition that maybe this life is about reconnection and recognition and reunion and healing so old ghosts of old guilts can be laid to rest and the good and the joy can rise again into new lives. Starting with this one.