On the one hand, it's easier in many ways that my parents are out of town right now so I'm house sitting with both dogs splitting my time mostly by myself where I go home with Waffles to spend time with Spock after I drop off Sophie at work, then go into work at 5ish (when they close) for Sophie handoff and to see coworkers briefly, then I work into the wee hours with the dogs for company before going to my parents house with the dogs until after 9 the next morning when I go to drop off Sophie at work so I can go home spend time with my cat again. (Except on Tuesday for grandma's dentist appointment and on Friday taking Waffles to the vet.) It's easier because my parents are such hawks that they spent Saturday as I took them to the airport that they were saying how MSNBC was too sympathetic victim blaming Israel for the attack on them so they had switched my grandma from her normal MSNBC watching to CNN. (Which if you have been watching MSNBC at all, and I have watched it, they have been bending over backward to make sure they don't victim blame Israel in any of their analysis.) And I can only take so much of their level of hawkishness when they get defensive about any perceived critique of Israeli treatment of the refugees in Palestine.... Right now I'd be avoiding them if they were in town. 

But, also, it's hard to carry the "it could have been me" weight on my own. I'd very much like a hug to be held right now told I'm safe and loved and I'm here not there.  I would just very much like that. It's time like this that I am most discontented about being single because it would just be nice to be held in love. Dog snuggles and cat cuddles are great and all, but it's not the same. It just isn't. And I'd very much like to be held right now, preferably by Eric if he weren't in rebound healing mode after a karmic relationship turned out, well, the way all karmics do once the lesson one or the other was meant to learn has been taught. And I mean, I don't even think I believe anymore that he wants me in his life this life given he apparently can't even tell the difference between a karmic and the bond between us.... Still, the desire to be held in love by him, especially right now, is there all the same no matter what my head reminds me of known past/present choices of his. 

Ah well. I'll work with what I have for now and be grateful it isn't less.... Looking forward to lots of rainy autumnal gloom the next several days, if my schedule wasn't so messed up with the spending time with Sophie while my parents are out of town, I'd take a long while at home with a fire in the hearth and listening to piano music through it. (Piano music when it's raining or snowing has always been one of my favorite favorites.) Definitely going to spend some time with the fur babies with the windows open listening to the rain falling and George Winston! Then Saturday morning my parents get back from Vegas for their work convention so I'll be back .ore to my normal routines and home more for my first fireplace fire of this autumn.

 I said that my parents are hawks on the subject of Israel have been my entire life, and that is their truth. It's not mine. 

My opinion is significantly more nuanced. There are innocents caught in the middle in both places but some of how the Zionist settlers behave, especially during conservative militaristic regimes supporting them such as Netanyahu's governments, involves legitimately KKK level tactics of fear and intimidation and keeping the "other" in their place as second class citizens and I cannot abide when the bullied turns around and bullies others. Desperate people will do desperate things and everyone is complicit in keeping Gaza's 2 million citizens desperate -- but particularly the other Islamic nations and most of all Egypt.  Yes Hamas is the most to blame, but also everyone who sees Gaza as an apartheid living under siege needs to blame Egypt as fully as they blame Israel because Gaza has two borders (three if you count the Mediterranean Sea) and Egypt chooses not to want them in Egypt where they would radicalize within the Egyptian population and to limit what assistance they will provide.  The Muslim nations created and foment a situation to breed Islamists then point them towards Israel saying, "This is your enemy who keeps you this way." And the "proof" of who the "enemy" is that every citizen of Gaza knows someone who has died at the hands of Israel defending itself, every person who lives there has seen the funerary parades of those who died from the bombs or in the rubble, every person has experienced the daily harassment of being treated as presumed guilty til after the search is over because the guilty are hidden within the midst of the innocents. And also, over half the population of Gaza are children, under 18, because the life expectancy is low and because birth control is not allowed by Hamas who run the area claiming that the use of birth control is an attempt to exterminate their people. And children are irrational, they act out on emotions, a child in a temper will tell the most loving most consistent parent they hate them at some point when they don't get their will -- and that is a well-balanced child not one who has grown up experiencing continuous repeated extreme trauma of growing up in a war zone where beloved family members have been killed by "our enemy." And in that cocktail, hate breeds with resentment into something far more soul killing that will self justify any cruelty and barbarity to make the "enemy" feel the pain that you and everyone you know have suffered. 

I said I couldn't relate to wrap my head around living with so much hate that you could kill a stranger simply for the labels of how they were born rather than anything they as an individual ever did -- but that doesn't mean I can't intellectually see how these conditions breed the sort of hearts that can feel that way and get so soul sick they can justify any atrocity in the name of what they have endured.....Especially if you are young and death and trauma and the indoctrination of hate against your perceived "enemy" is all you have ever known....

But here's the thing. Why haven't other nations, especially Muslim nations, setup the systems to get those kids out -- get them into loving homes and get them the psychological help and therapy they need to try to heal from the traumas and hate? At least for while they're growing up, and they could have right of return once they're 18 and old enough to choose their own path in life. Over 1 million kids are a lot and there is damage that no amount of love can undo -- but they don't move the kids out. They wring their hands and claim it's a humanitarian disaster and war crimes that so many kids are trapped there -- but they do nothing to rehome the kids and give them a better life. Forget the adults, forget the teenagers, forget those whose trauma and hate indoctrination may be beyond the healing of experiencing love and your physical needs met. Moving out the innocent children isn't done, even Egypt didn't want Gaza and the Gazans back when Israel offered it to them -- the Islamic world benefits more from holding the children of Gaza hostage in a border state war zone to an impossibly traumatic situation that breeds pain/hatred and then they can point to the humanitarian crisis as war crimes. I see the blood of every innocent who dies in Gaza as laying on the hands of EVERY Islamic nation that doesn't move the kids out and adopt them into homes with better situations. At least as deeply dyed in blood as Israel who is trying to cope with having this mess of cptsd homicidal vengeance seekers who blame the Jews and the British creation of Israel for all the problems of their life. It is not impossible for them to get the children out of the war zone and help them grow up in situations they can do more than just try to survive -- and they don't because they WANT the optics of "murdered children without access to clean water or electricity."

As far as I'm concerned militant forms of all religions are evil, especially when you say "my religion is the one true religion." I am not a Zionist any more than I believe in the Caliphate or evangelical Christian or the Hindu militants in India or the extreme Buddhists who led the genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar --  I don't believe that ANY nation should have any religion involved in their government whatsoever, fundamentalism and politics of ruling is a cancer everywhere in the world it has ever appeared. My soul is pagan and shamanic for many thousands of years before the monotheists claimed their way the only true way -- as far as I'm concerned, I'm a syncretic Alexander style Hellenistic pantheist. All your gods and forms of worship are equally valid if they work for you and harm nobody. All religions are to be treated as equally a part of the truth and as long as you're not harming/impairing the lives of others than whatever. Spirituality is between the individual and the Divine, mediumship is between the individual and unincarnated forms of spirit, and religion is about a community of shared beliefs/morality to support each other through hard times. None of those belong anywhere near how a country is ruled or what qualifies a person for citizenship rights.

So by my way of seeing it, there shouldn't need to be a need for a JEWISH nation because all the Islamic nations and Christian nations and Hindu nations and Buddhist nations should be abolished -- they should all just be nations  of equal citizenship where people can be members of whatever fucking club or group they find connection with. But the world is a long way from that and so in this world and with its history I understand wanting somewhere that the constitution allows it to be a safe haven for all Jews wherever in the world they are from, particularly given the history of pogroms and extermination and marking the Jewish people as the "other" or the "enemy." So I allow for the temporary need for allowing a Jewish nation for as long as there exist ANY religious nations. I think that Jerusalem itself has too many narrow minded  ego driven selfish people claiming in the name of their religion "Mine mine mine" not willing to share it EQUALLY and justifying it by their own ideas of the one true religion and G-d's will -- so it ought to be its own city-state, like some of the small city-states in Europe, that is run by an odd numbered council that has equal representation on it of Jews, Christians, Muslims, pagans, and atheists and that all holy sites are respected equally. So long as anybody holds it in the name of any given religion, shit is going to be a problem. As a holy city it should be self governing and a haven for all who can/will keep the peace with no religion holding more sway than any other.

The Gazans need to be separated and moved out into safer situations of where to live and there needs to be oversight of the claims that non-Jews are treated as second class citizens by conservative governments functioning as police states in Israel (just as any form of second class citizenship treatment needs to be eradicated everywhere in all nations in the entire world to my view) -- two state solution can't exist in overcrowded hiding behind innocents as hostage cptsd situation. it simply cannot. It requires good faith actors on both sides and militants within the population is not acts of good faith. Anyone who pretends a two state solution can exist in the world as it is, they are either acting in bad faith or delusional.

The death and terror and maimings and police state are all legitimately horrific -- but until there are no longer people trapped there and the innocent children are moved out of the overcrowded crumbling infrastructure with no means of supporting itself where they are encouraged to breed like rabbits to have victims for the hate fueled outrage cycle to feed on, there isn't a two state solution or way out. People need to be moved out and rehabilitated and the area should be razed of any citizenry (no settlers moved in of any religion either) and the place kept as a historical monument and museum and memory of the horrors of separating the world into "us" vs "them" mentality and ghettos. Where they get absorbed and how to do it is a difficult thing, how do you deprogram 2 million potentially radicalized by the traumatic situation they live in -- I understand why no Muslim nation wants to take them in beyond the fact they keep pressure on the goal of eradicating any Jewish state from the Middle East caliphate. But there is no way you can trap young people in such a horrific set of circumstances without this being the predictable result. You move the people out and rehome them where they can receive the mental/emotional help and physical assistance they need within cultures as close to theirs as possible and you turn all the miles of Gaza into a historical site and museum where nobody lives.Trying to make people live in an uninhabitable situation is cruelty and when you're doing it to children it's child abuse as well as an inhumanity. The children need to be rehomed and adopted out to better living conditions the same way child services does in any case of abuse or neglect where the biological parents cannot provide a safe, stable home environment for the child to grow up in. You don't get false pity points from me for the kids you hold captive to hide behind -- it's child abuse. By keeping them in unsafe situations, you are as guilty of whatever happens to them as anyone else, their blood is on your hands for keeping them there.

I am not a dove because I do not believe one side must show restraint when the other does not nor do I believe in peace at any cost to achieve the two state solution. And I am not a hawk because I do not believe that the ends justifies the means when it comes to justifying the deaths of innocent civilians even when they are being used as human shields -- but I also don't think keeping innocents as human shields within your rebel base and launching any form of attack from within a body of innocents citizenry can be justified.  I believe it is necessary to diffuse and dismantle the whole situation entirely. Violence begets violence but standing down when a bully or abuser tries to put pressure on you just increases the bullying and abuse tactics. You only de-escalate this situation by completely dismantling it and telling them they can't live there any longer, nobody can live there any longer, as it is all a piece of history to be preserved as a museum to teach about what happened and then rehoming the children as refugees to be adopted out and dealing with the adults or those actively guilty (even if minors) of causing physical harm to others on a case by case basis in the Hague. Anything else will just continue the unending cycles of violence breeding hate breeding death breeding violence etc etc.

But also, all that said. I recognize that if it weren't for a car bomb, I wouldn't know anyone or anything currently in my life and I'd be a very different version of myself as I would have grown up in Israel in the midst of living in the fear and the terror and the constant knowledge that there are people who want to destroy you and eradicate your life stuck in the old crusading colonizing spirit of "us" vs "them." As I said, every time there's violence in Israel-Palestine, I go through a bout of stoic hollows existential self-examination rooted in "there go I if not for the grace of G-d."

 I didn't say that last post to make it about me, because it very much isn't. It's about the terror campaign and all the souls who are dead, kidnapped, and missing. And all the souls who are still going to have their lives cut short or forever altered by this unfolding. I'm not even adjacent to it as none of my family or friends are among those so brutally murdered or kidnapped. It is right to call it a pogrom given that entire communities were razed and destroyed including burning down homes with people inside them to try to get hostages to leave safe rooms. It's fucking brutal and some of the stories that are known are harrowing and there are so many that are just not known whatsoever..... My grappling with the horror of the depths of cruelty in fear driven irrational hatred and recognizing that to those who see you as the Other there is nothing you can do to alter them from wanting to hurt you and my coming to terms with the "there but for the grace of G-d go I" aspect of everything that happens in Israel-Palestine (it was a car bomb across the street from my da's work that happened when I was an infant that made them decide to bring me back to the States so I wouldn't grow up far from all family speaking an entirely different language) is small change in comparison to the depths of sorrow and horror so many are living through right now -- many their first lifetime ever experiencing such horrors in person not just in history books.

I said it because it's a part of my truth in this life which hasn't been a truth in my past lives. And that means it's something you should take into consideration about who I am NOW and how I deal with things and how it differs from past iterations of my soul. You need to consider the ways in which I recognize what it is to be hated and persecuted and to know that there are those who would hurt or kill me for the accidents of birth, for who you are born into as opposed to who you ARE. That is something I have not experienced before this life but it is something I have had to grapple with coming to terms with as a woman born of American Jews whose place of birth is Jerusalem..... And trying to understand that level of irrational homicidal hatred that no actions I could ever do could in anyway lessen or temper or heal or move in any way shape or form.... It's a heavy burden to carry as an adult, it felt heavier trying to wrestle with understanding it as a child until reaching the point where all you could do is accept that it IS truth for some people ruled by fear of otherness and when you face it all you can do is recognize its ISNESS and that you will never UNDERSTAND it -- and that's probably something bright and good within your own soul when you run up against the wall of an evil/cruelty you can recognize exists in some souls on some paths of lessons they must learn/teach but you cannot relate to or understand. But still the blind hatred of the other that leads to the irrational homicidal cruelty where the cruelty is the point, that is harder to face than the acceptance that death is the price of life and a part of the cycle of all things mortal and the spiral path of incarnating soul's lessons. It is a heavy and a hard lesson to carry the acknowledgement of the great evil and fear that can exist in the hearts and souls of some people...It's heavy and it hurts and it never stops hurting, not really, that it's a wound in humanity to want to hurt the other you fear and it's a wound that can't ever be wholly healed.

Last life I converted to Judaism for my last marriage that life, back in the 1950s, and this life, for the first time in all my many many lifetimes incarnating I was born into a Jewish family. My da's side of the family is Jewish as Jewish can be and my mum converted before marrying because she wanted to have a proper Jewish wedding. Me, I have a hard time calling myself Jewish, though I am Jewish by birth, because I have spent more lives pagan tied to old gods/goddesses and working with the archangels and fey and animal spirits (even my "Christian" lives I was a pagan who talked to archangels more than a proper Christian who prayed to Christ) AND I firmly believe in the cycle of souls/transmigration of souls which exists in Judaism as gilgul and the fact that the Hebrew for life only exists in a plural form but also the Sanhedrin removed the concept to get people to focus on their one given lifetime soooo yeah AND if you take a very Universalist eutheist concept of the Divinity of the unfolding Creation then you can call my form of pantheism a form of "monotheism" but I do not bend my knee to any splintered fragment of Creation -- not even a desert god of light/sun who asks those who bend their knee to him to place him above all other gods.) And that makes it very hard to call myself religiously Jewish by the modern definitions of Judaism......I mean, obviously NOT Orthodox Jewish whatsoever but I don't really fit under even the most reform of Reform Judaism. But by blood and race and cultural identity of how I was raised through my formative years this life, I'm Jewish even if in a very eclectic accepting of the wyrd gifts that run in our bloodlines way. So I am Jewish born of Jewish descent and I carry a lot of baggage about what it means to BE Jewish and the persecutions of it past and present (and future) but to self-identify as Jewish or to classify my spiritual beliefs as falling under the umbrella of Judaism is something I'm uncertain is the right label for me. But then, I've never been particularly keen on labels....

Anyway. I recognize that my hurt is smaller than many others hurt right now. But this blog is not and has never been about me writing out the sorrows of the world -- it's about me writing out what I am processing or going through or just random thoughts and stories I don't want to keep carrying untold inside me. 

But my heart grieves enough my eyes are the blue of the October sky.... And that says a lot when your eyes are the colors of the sea, shifting between green-grey-blue-flashes of purple and amber, and one of the things that bring out the bluest blue color in my eyes is sorrow.

I learned today. The attacks happened on Putin's birthday as well as the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. And in March, Lavrov met with leaders of Hamas and it was immediately after that they ramped up the rhetoric about the retribution they were bringing to Israel.... They ramped up their rhetoric after the March meeting with Lavrov which is when the plan began and executed the plan of the deadliest intentional pogrom against the Jewish people since the Holocaust on the birthday of the man who has the means and reaps the greatest rewards for this all happening NOW. I don't have the smoking gun yet, and I fully lack any sort of espionage or security clearance to ever have it -- but the pieces fit. I would not be surprised if the ayatollahs who thought they held power in Iran knew as little about it as the upper echelon leaders of Hamas itself who were outside the planning/coordination of Saturday's attacks that launched the next wave of the proxy wars between Russia trying to reclaim its Soviet glory days before Putin dies vs the US/EU/NATO alliance.

And quite literally, this war as it moves from the proxy fronts to the point that nobody can deny the identity of the spider moving the pieces could be the death of us all as well as throwing humanity back into witnessing (and on fucking TIkTok viral video form) genocidal atrocities the like of which barbarity were thought consigned to history and war criminals and drug cartels and true psychopaths.

And that fucking pisses me off. Who the hell is he to push humanity and this planet across that brink?! Who the fucking hell does he think he is to be the source of so much darkness and cruelty and barbaric atrocities born back into this world to pull it from any POSSIBLE path toward brighter futures for humanity and all life on the planet now that we understand how far we have fucked up this biosphere? What moves him, or moves through him, to think his incarnating soul has any fucking right to drag all of humanity through the fatelines his free will choices have created and forced the entire world down? 

I understand the reasons everybody needs their ducks in order before releasing the bombshell of who has masterminded the chess pieces because mutual annihilation is a very real threat -- but he has overplayed his hand. And while the newscasters won't say it (yet) and nobody in politics will say it (yet) -- from the MOMENT I identified him as behind it and spoke that truth bomb from my deep knowing EVERYONE in the witchy spiritual community has put the pieces together of who had the means and who benefits most by this happening NOW as opposed to the obvious suspects. And to wrap up as a birthday that gift of starting THE other proxy war he needed to distract his enemies from fighting the frontlines of the proxy war zones.... How fucking sick, all of them.Now they laugh all the way to the bank while they speak through one side of their mouth that they will work with the Arab League while using the other side of their mouth to encourage the same sorts of atrocities that the Russian army has been committing across Syria and Ukraine and every one of their proxy battlefields they tested these methods...

Unrelated to my anger over the fucking audacity of this chess game and the levels of inhumanity being unleashed back into the world.... This has been one of my favorite takes from those who grieved over the weekend rather than unraveling the realpolitik answers of who orchestrated bringing us down these fatelines now.

It is the way that a soul walking the Jew's path of the mitzviot reacts. It is not the way that an ancient soul walking a path allied to the old gods and archangels who serves as a Hand of Ma'at within the incarnation screaming defiance at those who would destroy the Creation unfolding reacts. But his is the "right" reaction of the Jewish path.

It was hard taking my sparrow grandma (my dad's mom, my very Jewish grandma) to her dentist appointment today because she's all consumed right now with what's happening in Israel..... And it happened right before my parents left town so she is limited who she can talk it over with who gets it (there being only two Jews in her entire retirement home....)

 

And.... Also. Know that the stoic "there are worse things that might be endured" aspect of me is a VERY strong streak right now. So be cautious of what you might push me to thinking I can stoically survive if I release it. But also, this stoic time is one tempered in equal measure by my wonder and joy of the goodness that IS despite the fucking carnage and wreckage, that awe and wonder in me at the sparks of defiant beauty and goodness that IS despite whatever the worst that is thrown at it.  They shine brightest the darker the surround fatelines. 

 Every time shit is going on in Israel, it always puts me in an existential state of "there but for the grace of G-d go I" given the whole being conceived on a kibbutz and born in the city of the most bloody fought over inches of land throughout history and every official government document I've ever had lists my place of birth differently depending on current politics of place names..... (and no, I have never visited the place I was born into this life -- to do so would have me detained to serve in the IDF and in this life I am not good at following anyone's commands if they go against my own code of ethics. And yes, I realize that the passport I travel on makes me a target that closes much of the world from me to ever traveling there. And yes, Iwas in Kindergarten when I first started wrestling with the existential crisis of being so hated that people who don't know me never met me would kill me for WHAT I am without knowing any damn thing about WHO I am and that not a damn thing I could ever do would change that hatred that others would see as a rationalization to hurt or kill me without any moral qualms for being an American woman born in Jerusalem to Jewish parents.....which is probably why no form of bullying but especially female bullying has ever phased me because what the hell do I care for your "can't sit with us" ostracism other than to think you're a shitty human who enjoys casual cruelty so I don't desire to interact with have in my life compared to "there are literally people in this world would kidnap and murder me just for the accident of where I was born." and yeah, both my parents but especially my da are complète Hawks on the subject of Israel...they were after all going to build their life there until a car bomb across the street from his work made then wonder if they wanted their daughter to grow up so far from.all her family speaking a different language from them.)

Also. The news keeps reporting that it's Hamas supported by Iran. But while the evidence is obvious it was Hamas there's no evidence given that this action/timing was supported by Iran, and for once they're keeping silent not claiming it. And actually, the timing doesn't make sense for them, it's actively bad given they were JUST negotiating to unfreeze some of their oil sale banking account desperately needed funds for humanitarian aid where the physical objects are sent them not even money. US intelligence and Israeli intelligence have actually very explicitly stated that what little Intel they have, they can find no linked or ties or comms to Iran about THIS attack. And here's the thing with realpolitik and any student of Machiavelli let alone the ancient world can tell you this -- you have to ask "who benefits?" and also "who has the means?" if you want to get to the true first causes moving the pieces on the board. And the most "who has the means" important question is the ability to satellite coordinate the attack AND hide/scramble the comms and the list is incredibly short: US, Israel, China, and Russia. That's it. Now, who has the geopolitical means to help move the arms and the money within the region? Not really China. So the list is now US, Israel, Russia (via Syria and North African mercenaries control.) Let's ask who benefits by this destabilization? US? Well, it does potentially break budgetary and appointment gridlock and take government shutdowns off the chess board, but it causes more problems than gains. Israel? It benefits Netanyahou with his desire to aggregate military control and reduce democratic norms within Israel. It's a high price to even allow this intelligence to go unacted upon and buried and would take more than the prime minister for that to happen -- but a ruthless power hungry grab by military might make the call to ALLOW it to happen to capitalize on it even though you wouldn't organize it. China? They only overtly gain by it if they had simultaneously launched attack to take back Taiwan, all they gain now in this timing is wealth building while others spend on military -- and that was already happening elsewhere notably in Ukraine.  And it's not China's style -- they crave knowledge via espionage and soft power building empires that last centuries and always play the long game. They gain the least. Now what about Russia? Russia gains 1) removal of the Syria military base attack deaths out of the media 2) the recent Ukraine attacks on civilians the UN is already investigating out of the news cycle because the dead in Israel is a bigger story 3) the staunchest intelligence and military allies of Ukraine now have to split military focus and monetary budgeting and Ukraine will lose support at a critical time by the destabilization of a major attack on Israel. Russia gains a hell of a lot strategically and tactically.

So. Who has the means at global comms level, means of moving the arms within the region, AND gains major benefits for their own geopolitical military needs/goals? There is one answer. And it's fucking obvious.  And the answer is Putin in Russia. Now you can't make that claim as an intelligence agency without proof, especially with how close we are to WW3 direct fighting not just by proxy battles... but basic logic of realpolitik tells you who has the means and the most to gain by this happening NOW. And no matter who funds/organizes attacks, everybody knows that Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran WILL ultimately take credit for any successful attack against Israel. So. Who was the one moving the chess pieces to organize this and was able to keep it hidden? Realpolitik tells you the answer is obvious.

Now. What level of responsibility do IDF/Netanyahou/American intelligence agencies have for ALLOWING this to happen after gaining intelligence it was in the works but perhaps not knowing how bad it is? Well. That could be argued many ways given lack of proof and able to see how there ARE some geopolitical benefits to allowing it even if you and nothing to do with creating/planning it. But you'd have to be ruthlessly cold and justifying more good comes of the chess gains than the lives lost -- and I don't think current heads of state us Israel/US are that cold blooded against their own citizenry so that is an ethics judgement I'm not willing to make about anyone without evidence. But I also won't rule it out. 

And if the realpolitik logic is true, well.... just remember that right before this, on Sept 22, it was announced that Biden had agreed to send Zelensky long range missiles to Ukraine capable of hitting major cities in Russia. Military is already setting up their pieces for if/when the behind the scenes string pulling of Russia goes to declared war not proxy wars....

Anyway. I'm not the only person able to ask the questions instead of assuming it's the "obvious enemies" who planned this and executed it all by themself.  Then again, very few people have even begun the beginners version of learning how to ask the right questions at the right time in the right way. And right now, the right questions here are "who has the means to have coordinated this happening without USA-Israeli intelligence knowing" and "who benefits most by this happening at this time" and the answer to both those vital questions is not the typical anti-Israel suspects that everyone else assumes is the source of this happening right NOW. It's not who is taking credit for starting up the proxy war on this front, it's who organized it, hid it, and chose this moment to launch it -- and WHY this was the time to spring it vis à vis the biggest battlegrounds of the proxy war going on in Ukraine..... 

My advice as a modern day student of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Alexander the Great is to keep your eye on watching what gets lost or buried right now and how it helps Putin with his attempts to conquer Ukraine as a result of what's happening in Israel and everything it pushes out of the news cycle. That's where the important chess pieces are moving for the next battle(s).....  Things are moving faster than most Americans realize, and having next year be an election year (potentially THE election year of our lifetime given all the domestic posturing of the terrifying white nationalist Christians) and things are on the precipice of a scary nobody has been through within their current lifetime, if ever.....  shit is terrifyingly on the brink of no safe dateline s remaining to avoid a massive loss of life in battlefields on a scale of millions potentially billions when it interrupts global food supplies worse than taking the Ukraine bread basket offline has ALREADY disrupted global food supplies causing the current inflation in all foodstuffs.... and that's before the chaos patterns of climate change in the mix of the world geopolitical stage and evangelical christo-fascist fanatics in the states and all the other forms of fanaticism-fascism on the rise in so many places around the world.... 

P. S. Also. Yes I posted another post while the moon was in Cancer, but I set it back to private to authors a day or two after. It was a lot of emotions, mostly about why I was upset with me for letting Eric so easily back past my defenses raising my hopes in him/the bond with nothing concrete to make me believe he has changed at all or even WANTS me in his life this life.....it affects a very small circle of people and now moon is in Leo I'm too proud to have it public admitting my weaknesses in my defenses and doesn't need to be here for n'importe qui. 

 Today (well yesterday now) was one of the most unexpectedly upside down birthdays I've had in a very long time. And also, it was a bottleneck truncating point until I shifted fatelines. It's been a while since I've had my fatelines bottlenecking like that... earlier this year on a drive to a show in Milwaukee was the last time. It happens -- sometimes the fate lines that lead through get difficult to navigate. So far I've manage to shift course to find a way through, but sometimes I barely scrape through. I didn't expect I'd live past 25 this lifetime you know, I haven't had a particularly good track record for longevity in my recent lives, this is actually the fourth I'm certain of (could be fifth or sixth as there were a couple native American lives in there where we celebrated our lives cycles but didn't count them) longest I've made it in the last 600 years or so. So it wasn't because of my choices being extra reckless (well other than in matters of defying and dealing with malevolent spiritual entities) but simply my history of longevity hasn't been particularly lengthy since the early 1400s. Did you know, I died three times across the course of Eric's one last life? That's what I mean by short lives, it's why I didn't expect to live past 25 years, odds were against me. I always recognize the bottlenecks of disappearing fatelines I can survive, in every life, but there's not always anything I can do about it. Today there was. 

Today (well yesterday now) I listened to the signs and the shifting fate lines and all the stupid drivers nearly causing fatal accidents mere car lengths in front of me that I had to slinky force the flow of time to slow down and I recognized there was no way I could get us to Chicago and back safely and I didn't know why or what was down that fateline only that the closer I got to it the shorter my own and the fewer my options to find a path out -- so when the pit of the stomach dread got bad enough I asked Crissy if she wanted me to keep pushing against the fatelines and stubborning it out to go to the show. She said she was rather scared of what it might be if I was having that much difficulty with it and I suggested I could get off and see if it got easier when no longer trying to force a way through toward Chi and turned off at an exit for Stoughton. I then found my wandering way to a small park, I was planning to stop at a county park right near lake Kegonsa but instead spotted and turned into an incredibly picturesque one I'd never been to before called Viking Park -- incredibly beautiful little park with dog paths on the border with the township of Pleasant Springs. The dread and the difficulty and the suffocating bottleneck noose closing in I'd been fighting against all day stopped the moment I turned to head back away from heading toward Chicago so we discussed for a bit. And Crissy said she didn't want to spend her birthday in that pit of the stomach dread waiting for the shoe to drop and I told her I didn't think I could find a way to downtown Chi, and certainly not back, tonight without facing whatever was there truncating fatelines. The tickets were gen ad relatively inexpensive but it's been a really REALLY long time since last got to see Neon Trees and the only other date relatively near of this small tour they did is on Weds, the same night we already have tickets to see Raye Zaragoza again here in Madison. She didn't want to make the call, said she'd leave it to me but I was honest that I didn't know I could find a path through to get there and back with how difficult it was getting and that I didn't know why but that the stupid drivers were getting stupider and closer together and there would be a point I'd not be able to bend and slow time flow outside my own bubble and that I'd be using up a lot of raw energy and power just to get us there so I didn't know what reserves I'd have once there or for the drive back -- because connecting up to Source as a conduit is for healing including healing spiritual scars and getting trapped spirits where they belong -- not for my fidgeting around with the flow of time and shifting fatelines. I mean, I'm good at that, but also that's one of my gifts that uses my own reserves and the flow of energy through me. 

So I told her that we should head back toward the highway and let the dread or observed patterns of other drivers guide us while doing our best not to overthink psychosomatic create our own fates by focusing on the fear not the hope because we could always go past the highway or decide to turn back if the pit of the stomach dread came back. (whatever you focus your energy on you feed and strengthen, always, including your own fatelines/life paths; that's one of my tricks for finding a path through even where nobody else sees it -- you focus on the light, even if all you see is the glimmer and reflections of it around corners and follow it to find the way out; if there's a way through, you can find it if you focus on the places and ways that the light leads you rather than focusing on the paths that lead away from it. You don't need to bend your knee to any opener of ways if you know how to recognize and find the ways through -- as a general rule I don't recommend bending a knee to any deity or angel, you greet them with the respect due a true equal or don't mess with them, bending your knee will lead you to servitude and you need to be careful who/what you serve. Master-slave dialectic is as harmful toxic to the soul when dealing with immortals as among incarnating mortals.) Anyway, the moment we left the park started heading back toward the highway, the constricting bottleneck of the day and the weight of the diminishing fatelines with safe ways through.... And then the weird thing was, though the signs said the county highway kept going and thought it had in the past, after making the call not to head toward Chicago because of the way it felt and the visibly erratic drivers headed southward, then the road I was driving became the onramp to the north bound highway and along the onramp was a beautiful pair of cranes turned to watch and nodded ot me as I drove past. the only other birds the whole drive was a hawk circling and flying ahead leading me as I turned off the highway. I'm very keen on ornithomancy, birds have never led me astray or done me wrong (except territorial red-wing blackbirds who are just fucking asshats to everyone) and many of the immortals who are my allies and who I work with have associated birds who watch over me. Not just crows and hawks/eagles and owls and vultures and thunderbirds, there are many many birds that different people associate with me and the various divinities who watch over me and with whom I work. 

Anyway. On the drive back, the Beltline heading out of town was backed up the entire length of it and there were more than half a dozen police cars and tow trucks cleaning up... And the thing is, on the way out of town, when we went to order our birthday drinks from Starbucks, all of the nearby west side Starbucks locations wouldn't allow in app ordering -- the nearest one that would let us order was the Monona Rd location at the second to last stop before getting on 90/94 so that's where we were ALLOWED to order our drinks and without that, we would have been in the center of whatever was being cleaned up on our way back in had blocked the entire length of the highway.... And even getting to that one was fraught with erratic drivers, including a truck going from behind me, to cut into a space too small for his length back in front of me then trying to drive ALONGSIDE the red SUV in front of me as if the single lane/shoulder were two lanes then nearly smacked into a car in tehir proper lane from the other offramp and then nearly sideswiped a third car -- all in the length of time for an exit/offramp/less than a block from the highway stop for a pre ordered drink waiting for us at the last convenient coffee place on the way out of town.  

So I don't know what I missed or what was down the fateline if I had continued trying to stubborn my way down to Chi for the Neon Trees show... but I know that the safe paths were disappearing the closer I got to it until I chose to shift course and not try to find a way through to the plans we have been telling everyone for months were our birthday plans.  One of these days, when the bottleneck of my fatelines happens, there won't be a way through and there will be no alternate path to turn down. But this was not that day. Not for this life. Not yet. I recognize it in every life though, when I approach them, I always have known. And if there's a way out, I will always know what it is and how to find it -- and it will always be my choice and nobody else's if I take that path or who else I will allow to be harmed and under what circumstances for me to take a way out for me or if I accept the fatelines I can choose in honor bound ethics of those that I find open to me. It's always been my choice and mine alone -- even if I tell you "IF you do this, THEN I will have no way out" it's me saying there's no way my ethics will allow, it's not me blaming your choices, it's letting you know my options will be limited and I will make the best choices I think are available to me. 

But. That said. This remains a reward life for me, even if it's the time of a society's fall or rebirth depending on the choices made. And last life was the first life our souls crossed paths in hundreds of years through we always knew each others deaths, and it was the first time in a long time that I understood it wasn't that he didn't WANT to have our paths crossed, but that there were lessons he still had to work through especially around guilt over past selves, before it would happen. Which I thought was bullshit but because of my feelings about the sanctity of free will, instead of DEMANDING for my reward life that our paths cross again, I CHOSE for my reward life that I desired three things for this life: 1) that any soul seeking me be able to find me 2) that I should always be surrounded by those I love who can love me for me qua me, not just their IDEA of me and 3) for as long as those conditions can be met, I would like to grow old again because it's been so long since I last did.... And I remember being told that was an almost impossible reward life demand, that it would require protections to have that first condition so open and wouldn't I rather be released from my time of exile from Greece and France to go back home again? And I chose those conditions for my reward life, just in case we would both make the choice this life to find each other and accelerate the healing and the lessons... It's gotten me into more than a bit of trouble that I asked that ANY soul seeking me be able to find me... I didn't limit that to incarnating souls and I didn't limit it to those who only sought to do good by me -- I said ANY and I meant ANY. And the length of my life will be contingent upon those first two conditions being met as well as other choices and what I find down the paths and fatelines I walk this life. 

But I'd make the same choice again you know. Just to not have to wait another 100 or 200 years for our souls to cross paths again, I'd make the same damn choice that ANY soul seeking me always be able to find me. It's how I bypassed the rules of karmic healing and the timelines of lessons to be learned and the order of them. Free will is sacrosanct, including mine. And finding the ways through, finding the loopholes and bending or rewriting the rules -- well that's what I excel at, it's why I'm in the incarnations as a spark of chaotic good to shift fatelines. But those conditions and the WAY I bypassed found that loophole so we could find each other again this life not seek and long for lifetimes in what I chose for my reward life this time -- that was purely selfish and to create the chance, the opportunity, to find each other so long as he really WAS still seeking me everywhere, as he told me last life when we met before I died.

 A girl does what she must. But I won't lie -- there's a part of me that wonders what the hell was waiting down the truncating fatelines that required so much risk and wreckage to try to divert me from finding out or if it was the small influences of attachments trying to take me out on the route that was all the risk that caused the bottleneck of fatelines I couldn't thread a way through except by turning around and listening to the signs and my gods when they were relieved I was choosing not to stubbornout that drive keep fighting my way toward Chi.... I don't know which. But I do know that monsters only grow more powerful when you run from them and refuse to face them scream defiance. So whatever or whoever was at the root of why those fatelines were so impossible to navigate and whatever you were trying to keep me from meeting by taking me out early before I get there, all you did was pique my curiosity and piss me off. And the last time a malevolent unincarnated being did that, it created the seeds and paths of its own destruction by what it did to try to take me out early and the rules I had to rewrite and find the loopholes around that have just added to my gifts and allies what I wouldn't have had if it hadn't tried to take me out in college. So bring it. Let's see what new gifts and shifting rules will come of trying to take me off the board at this point... 

Also. I'm not upset at having missed the show...even with how many years it's been since I last saw Neon Trees I feel like I barely dodged a bullet -- and after experiencing how hard a time I was having navigating the fatelines to try to stubborn a way through, Crissy told me that what she felt was relief... 

Also also. I have opted to stay at work til sunrise because when I considered going home in the wee hours, there was something outside the warding/shielding that made energy flow through my palms and in through my third eye ready for a fight -- so the dog and I chose to stay at work until sunrise rather than tempt whatever was out there in the night tonight. (Well, last night.)

So. We turned around, went back home, saw the pileup and the entire length of east bound 12/18 backed up that was only just getting cleaned up at that point. So we went back and chatted with my parents and the dogs to not leave my remaining venti 6 shot birthday macchiato in the car in the heat to spoil the milk (and while we were there I told Waffles she could still go to the house with my parents because my mum had promised her steak they were cooking up for dinner when I wasn't expected back from Chi until late) and then Crissy and I went and browsed Half Price Books until they closed to use our 15% off birthday coupon. And while I didn't buy as many as I often do because their prices were a bit steeper than the last times I had shopped there, in case you were curious about my purchases, especially given how eclectic my reading habits, here's what I bought (as well as a $1 clearance Andre Norton title, Iron Cage, I didn't recognize and my da had never read which I gifted him because she's one of his classic pulp fantasy favorite authors of all time -- he didn't have it had never read it and was VERY excited I found that in the clearance paperbacks for him.)

You have NO idea how ecstatic I was over finding the Complete Book of Flower Fairies!!!! I've seen the illustrations and poems many times, especially some of the more well known poems/illustrations, but I had never found a copy of any of them before at a reasonable price -- let alone all of them in such a beautiful condition like it's never been read!!!! The author is a British artist/poet, they were all created and published between 1925-1950 if I remember correctly. Um, this is one you might have seen, if you knew any

I'm actually very excited about all the books -- the Tim Burton poems and this particular History of Witchcraft are also titles I've had my eye out to seek AND I've been waiting on the paperback release of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes before buying it because I hate a mismatched set and my copies of the Mockingbird trilogy are all paperbacks. Journey of the Priestess is a combination of good archaeology/history/primary sources then left field 90s era feminism left field conclusions with no basis, but I'm at least $6.49 curious for the good content in it. 

Anyway, more later. But I'm home and I'm safe for tonight and my open fatelines and safe life paths through are very broad again.  And I'm very excited to see Raye on Weds and then back to APT on Fri and Sat for closing nights of Anton's Shorts and Romeo & Juliet! And the alternate plans from what we had tried to do were lovely -- I'm very glad to have discovered Viking Park! And, I was actually relieved at finding out first that the Milwaukee Art Museum is closed on Mon/Tues and then that we didn't go because I had the damnedest time trying to figure out clothes to wear because I simply could NOT precog me at either place and honestly, executive dysfunction from the ADHD makes clothing/packing difficult when I can't cheat a precog of even little time loops of my future self.

So I've been thinking recently about the phrase "dream a good dream" and what it means to me. (Yes if you're wondering/hoping if it's a song lyric sparked the question, the answer is yes. I will not be elaborating further at this time, but the answer is yes to that question.) And I realized. For me, I would define a good dream is any dream where the polar bear and I share dream space from a place of love so everything feels right and like coming home. Doesn't much matter anything we do in the dream, wandering or cuddling or talking or exploring or anything at all really. What matters to make it a good dream is that feeling of loving and being loved in return that is what gives those dreams a sense of rightness and coming home.  

That's it. That's all it takes for me to call it a good dream. And no dream would be called a good dream by me without that. It could be important or sweet or fun or exciting or many another positive adjective, but for me to classify it a GOOD dream, it has to be one where there's the flow of love both ways between the polar bear and me and we get to be together to enjoy it and feel the rightness of it. 

Doesn't matter what all else is going on it, so long as that's there between us, it's a good dream. And without it, no matter how wonderful everything else in the dream, I wouldn't call it a good dream if the polar bear and a healthy love flowing between us is no part of it. 

There's a lot of answers I don't have and a lot of things I don't yet know. But I do know that truth about myself and my dreams. I'm not entirely certain what to do with that truth, but I am completely certain it IS my truth regarding that question. So that truth seems to me a good place to start as a solid foundational isness to build upon. 

Maybe it's not much to build on and maybe that's not what the line meant at all.... but it's the answer I found when I ask myself the question of what dreaming a good dream means to me, personally. 

I need to go haul firewood up two flights of stairs from the trunk of my car before heading to Chicago later today. I don't mean that in the Zen "after enlightenment chop wood haul water" way, my trunk is just full of firewood I loaded in to bring home for this winter so I could move the chopped wood from the recently felled part of the ant riddled tree at work to cure where all this wood was before moving it into the car. Regardless any other plans given the Milwaukee art museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, the plan for tonight is still to head to House of Blues for the Neon Trees show. After I finish hauling a trunk full of firewood up two flights of stairs, lol.

 I. Right. So. I know it's probably stupid of me and I don't have much of anything to go on for it, just the fact that the bond is back full strength and some curious timing lineups and just an internal resonance/knowing/how I hear the new songs.... And it's all so subjective and not concrete and maybe it's all just wishing and wanting and lying to myself... But.... Here's the thing. I. Since accepting that I can once again let the love of the bond flow between us and to embrace it and turn to it, and since I started the questioning of maybe I was wrong in my assumptions thinking that what he wanted for his happiness doesn't include me and I need to let him go, I've just had this gorgeous bubbling up brightness and joy and light and hope shining in me that I haven't felt in a long while.  And it's so cozy and beautiful and wondrous.... And I just don't want to lose it. Again. I don't want to find out it wasn't real, And I'm rather afraid of investing trust in it because the more trust you put in a false premiss, the harder it hurts when the actual truth slaps you upside the head. 

It's probably stupid of me. But I can't help the joy bubbling up inside me and all the sparkles and hope that maybe there is a way through after all. 

And it's the most tenacious infectious upwelling of joy and light and love inside me. Absolutely irrepressible and stubborn and insistent. And defiant as regards logic rather than intuitive knowing -- complete certainty that the intuition heart guided is the actual truth and the logic and overthinking is all just unnecessary complications getting in the way of the simple and obvious.

And. I want it to be true and right so bad. I can't say my head BELIEVES it is true and won't keep questioning trying to find a lie in it, but I can say my heart WANTS it to be true in a very whole hearted laser focused clarity sort of way.

Is that good enough? Can that be enough and more than enough, at least for right now? And hopefully maybe more and better later, but can that just be good enough for this moment right here right now given the distance between where things have been these recent months and this place now? Because, good enough or not, that's what I've got. Bit of a mess, but also an honest mess. And sometimes an honest mess is the best I got, lol. 

Okay, getting some work things done now between Farmer's Market/brunch/spending time with Amy and then I think heading to APT tonight to see Anton's Shorts at 50% off rush price to make sure Crissy does get to see it in case anything goes awry with having tickets only for closing night.

P.S. Also!!!! In addition to buying myself flowers at Farmer's Market, this morning when I went to take the dog out, I found someone had thrown out the live plants remaining in their floral arrangement they were gifted!!! Just set by the fence of our dumpsters at my condo building! They don't look buggy, the monstera in particular looks super healthy! My guess is the gift recipient is just not a plant person and after the carnations in florist vials shoved into the soil/sphagnum moss ground cover had completely died, they just decided to throw it away. At least four of the five will survive when I transplant them all into separate pots tomorrow, and I think I can heal up the palm type plant and get it healthy! After I pulled the 1) empty card holder 2) very very dead carnations in florist vials 3) dead leaves 4) the smelly moss ground cover to check for soil bug issues, they look super healthy and still have very separate root complexes so I can easily separate them (since they have VERY different water/light needs! I need to double check which of them might be toxic to Spock if he eats it (sometimes my cat is an asshole and he chews on my plants just to tell me he's unhappy that I haven't been home enough recently) before determining which will come back home and which will be at my work. But yay for four probably five new to me orphaned houseplants!!!

A monstera, an African violet, a cyclamen 9I think? need to look that one up to verify), a pilea (I think? also need to check that one), and a potential dying palm of some sort. Can't wait to get them into their own new pots and then find them their new homes!

 Yes we stayed for some private party session in the back pub, yes I flirted with Andrea after the show or rather he flirted with me, but no it wasn't much more than chatting up and letting him buy me a beer (because the wine in the Irish pub at the back of the old church converted into a music venue made us both raise eyebrows at it judgey.) I did warn you I would and that you should expect I would behave that way since I'm single and I see no reason for me not to. 

Honestly, session with the guys was pretty short tonight, maybe half dozen songs between chatting and drinking, because they were just hanging out til they needed to catch an Uber to the airport (they fly to West Coast for the next leg of their American tour dates) and after that it was just more of a private party with open bar of us and Amy and Sara Lou and Rory and Molly and some other people in the Milwaukee Irish music community who I know but whose names I can't recall.  

I did say it was LIGHT flirtation I didn't expect to go anywhere given timelines and the number of people around. Having dated international long distance before, I wouldn't do it casually especially in the Irish music scene where chances of continuously running into each other having mutuals is VERY high. It's not the biggest music community and also it's very much like extended family or small town where once anybody knows your business EVERYONE knows your business. Keith is a bit of an exception for me to even consider dating if/when there isn't an ocean between us - we have a LOT of mutuals and it would very much be a thing to go there at all and so light flirtation is one thing but dating would be something else entirely.  It's not off the table as far as I'm concerned, we'd just have to both be serious in agreement about wanting it. Keith from Ireland is a far more likely development into dating situation than Andrea from Italy.

Also. And there's no nice way to say this. But I preferred  their sub they had in Waterloo, Gabriel, for banjos and vocals while Lorenzo was playing with another band. Which is a hard thing to say given Lorenzo is founding member the band is his baby. But Lorenzo is a good banjo player, not a great one and can't keep up with how great the others play instrumentally AND he didn't have a very good singing voice especially not to be lead on some songs. Maybe he had laryngitis or recovering from a cold or something, but his voice was not great and didn't suit the songs or harmonize well with Andrea or Giacomo (the guitarist.) I'm still glad went to go see them and had great craic tonight and they still sounded amazing, just not as good as when they played with Gabriel in Iowa. 

O!!!!! 

And!!! I almost forgot!!!!! Did you see the moon tonight???? 😍 It was rising over Milwaukee directly in front of us as we were driving mostly easterly to the venue and it was the biggest most luminous beautiful red-colored hunter's full moon in Aries that I have ever seen in my life!!!!! I mean, I knew beforehand it was the last super moon of the year, but with the hazy fog, it was so huge and so red and the mares/craters so detailed tonight that it didn't even look like it could possibly be real! Fucking gorgeous!!!! 😍 it was beautiful upon leaving the venue and also for the drive back to Madison and to pickup my dog from my parents, but by then it was high in the sky and normal sized and lambent white in color -- it was during moonrise it was so mind blowingly stunning tonight, at least here in Wisconsin! 

Gotta run -- unclear yet if I intend to sleep, but I need to meet Crissy and Amy downtown at 7:30 and before that will have to drop off Waffles at work and get some cash and such. So whether I sleep for like 4hrs or less or more likely don't sleep at all, I'm going to stop writing here now and go make some tea and read for a bit or something. 

 Yeah no, I don't actually want Andrea, nor Keith neither. (Though the pull of Keith and figuring out our past life ties and curiosity to see where a relationship might lead is stronger than any other karmic has been for me in many many years...) Not really. Not if pulling the bond tighter and actually being together with Eric in real life is on the table. I just didn't think it was anymore. And I've spent a long while trying to swallow that bitter truth make me accept it and move on look elsewhere. And a part of that move on look elsewhere is being open to guys I like well enough they pique my interests to open up a flirtation and a more than flirtation. I don't date often and I don't bother with dating apps because I really can't be bothered with another cheap dopamine hit slot machine style social media waiting for you to hit something appeals to you. I don't have enough time/energy as is for everyone I care about and everything I want to do -- you have to be real fucking special for me to even think about it you deserve enough of my time/energy to spend on getting to know you. 

I'm not particularly invested in a flirtation with Andrea or anything more. I just think he's cute and I clearly make him tongue tied with desire/interest and I wasn't averse to giving him more of my time/energy. And in the start of August when I was introduced to Andrea, I was very much in the head space of accepting that I was no part of the happiness Eric sought to build his life around this lifetime so it was for me to look elsewhere to choose another path. It's only been like 36hrs that I've even had the question of a thought that maybe Eric isn't off the table and he had never intended for me to draw that conclusion and act on it. It's not something that feels tangible or real or evidence based, it's just that voice inside you asks you to evaluate because maybe you were wrong in your first analysis.

It's been a long while since I last held any hope or faith inside me that I might actually be an integral part of the happiness Eric seeks for his life in this lifetime. And it's a faith that hurt deeply when reality tells you they were a false hope, a pretty lie you told yourself with no foundations in reality.  You can't expect even the question that maybe my assumptions he wouldn't miss me or the bond to suddenly flower into full blown belief that he did miss it and wants to (re)claim having me and those fate lines for his path. It just doesn't work that way. Especially with nothing solid to base such a belief and hope on -- it just feels like a temptation to be hurt again when the pretty lie you want to be true proves to be just another pretty lie. Again.

Look. I know what I want if every option is on the table, and that's as steadfast unwavering as a fixed star. But it's been a long while since I even accepted the premise that what I want COULD be on the table. I'm a very long way from having any reason to believe that what I want is the same as what he wants and so between us we can find a way to bring our waking lives together to walk the future fate lines together on a shared life path. I'm not saying it's impossible to get me there, I'm just not there right now and I don't feel like there's enough that's REAL enough to make me do more than start to whisper to myself the question if maybe it could be on the table at some point after all..... 

I don't expect that's what you want to hear, anymore than you want to hear that there are other musicians I find attractive have struck up flirtations with in the last almost two months.... but it's not my way to tell you what you want to hear, it's my way to tell you the truth as I experience it and to the best of my knowledge. 

Me even starting up any form of light flirtation with Andrea and thus the potential for me being trouble tonight would never have happened if I had believed a future life path together with Eric was one of the options on the table for me. But I still don't believe it to be on the table, though in the last 36hrs for the first time in a long time I've been questioning, "but is he off the table? Are you sure that's what he wants? Because if it isn't what he wants, if what he wants is to not just be AN option but to be THE option, then you thinking he's to be written off is a fucking ton of heartbreak for both of you...." 

I don't know what he wants. I truly don't. I know what I want but until 36hrs ago I never even questioned the belief I made me accept that I am no part of the happiness he seeks so I need to release him and look elsewhere for myself and my future life path. Because you can want something til the end of the world, but if it doesn't want you back then you're wasting your time on a dead end.... 

Rumi famously said in one of his poems, "what you seek is seeking you" -- but just because a poet claims something doesn't make it truth. And when all Eric's choices up til now have always proven false any faith in that truth, it's hard to have faith even as small as a mustard seed in the questions about maybe he did miss the bond and maybe he wants the connection back and has realized he needs it central to his life for his own happiness same as I know I need it for me at my shiniest version of me with the best and brightest future fate lines in front of me. I mean, I didn't give up turn to walk away without believing I was giving him what he chose and wanted for himself..... do you know how hard it is to freely give up with no ill will, just the blessing that you hope he find the happiness he seeks for himself, one of the only damn things this world has to offer you that your heart is set on wanting?! What the hell would make you think that was ever an easy thing? Or make you think that there was any damn thing I liked about giving up sacrificing the bond and the promise of the love in it, even in the name of giving him what I believed by his life choices he desired. I'm not a saint even if some of my past lives have been sainted and martyred. I did it in the name of his happiness rather than my own, because mine doesn't exist if bought at the price of him wanting something/someone else but being stuck with me because he can't escape the bond between us. My truest most luminous happiness only exists where he wants us to be together in this life for his life path just as intensely as I want it for my life path. And if that's not his choice, well, there's more happiness for me in making me let him go to seek whatever he DOES want for his life path than in trying to hold him tight make him mine despite what he chooses.... I'd rather do what I must to give up the love and comfort of our bond if I come to believe that's what he wants than to keep it for my own selfish reasons.  I don't like losing what feels most like home and where my soul turns for love/comfort..... but better to lose it than to make him be tied to it if it isn't something he wants or values. 

So just know. It isn't and has never been that I don't WANT Eric with every fibre of my being and want to choose him and have him choose me and to build a future together on a shared life path for as long as we can. I just have no faith and hardly any hope that that's something he also wants or might ever want. And it's that lack of faith coupled with insufficient knowledge of what he DOES want that leads me to try to give him up or in any way stifle the connection between our souls. If I knew he wanted it and it mattered and he is seeking me as I seek him, then nothing in the world could deter me from making it real. Finally. But I don't know that, and I don't believe it, and I don't have any faith inside me that when I say "I don't know what he wants for himself" that what I most want to be truth IS truth.... 

Questioning everything is a two edged sword. Especially when you lack anything tangible to back up your hypotheses to answer the questions....

And I don't know if it's easier or harder remembering our past selves and all the times we were able to find each other and choose each other -- and all the times we didn't. But it's just hard to want something so very much and to disbelieve (not even doubt, but disbelieve) that it wants you back. To have arrived at the conclusion that what you seek ISN'T seeking you so just let it go and try to find something else worth searching for..... 

And just. I dunno. I just. It's hard to want something so deeply and completely while at the same time truly believing that the best thing you can do for the happiness of what you want is to release it from you and you should look elsewhere. It's just really fucking hard to act so against everything you desire in your inmost while believing it to be the kindest best and most desired actions..... it's just really fucking hard to do. And it's really fucking hard to question, "what if you're wrong and creating as much heartache in him as you feel inside you over trying to give him up?" 

And. Sometimes I wonder..... Can you even give someone up if they're more stubborn than you and some part of them finds you to be their fixed star same as they are yours? Maybe it's just too much overthinking and assuming and all we both really needed all this time is the courage to be straight up honest, "this is what I want, this is what I choose." 

We don't do that, or at least we haven't so far. But maybe that's really all that's ever been needed to untangle all the mess of complicated and make the simple simple again.... and maybe me looking elsewhere, be it Keith or Andrea or some other guy, is just adding in more complicated rather than bringing it back down to the simple core truth..... 

I dunno. I didn't sleep last night (full moons make me restless too full of energy) and I'm not tired tired right now, but future me is supposed to drive to Milwaukee and back then get up early tomorrow for Farmer's Market with Amy in town for that.... so maybe I ought to try to sleep at least a little. Even if it does mess up my freshly washed curls after showering this morning by sleeping on them.  Future me deserves better than the overtired I will be if I don't at least try to nap a little. 

Honestly. You know what I want to do to help me sleep? To snuggle into the bond and to curl up in dream space with my polar bear and trust that as long as I'm there with him and we're together, then everything is right in our corner of the world. That's what I would like. That's what would help me sleep a restful sleep of the best possible dreams, and I know it would. So why does it feel like it's wrong and too much for me to ask for what I know I want? Am I just a damn fool for overthinking what is quite a simple conclusion if I'd only stop listening to false premises as if they were true? 

I dunno. But. I miss my bear and falling asleep snuggling into the love flowing both ways down the bond and then being with him in vision dream space. I just miss him and I miss embracing the strength of love in the bond. And I just want to be able to wrap my arms round him and pull tighter the bond making it stronger than ever and claim it and own it and make it ours for keeps.  Is that too much to ask?

 Oooft. That was not my favorite Packers game to watch..... the end score wasn't as bad as I feared given halftime it was 27-3, but yikes..... just a lot of stupid rookie mistakes. Because, well, most of the team are rookies and honestly they needed at least one more rest/recharge/practice day from a Sunday game to a Thurs night game ..... 

We also decided it might be my fault because I spent the second half of the Falcons game booking my Southwest leg of my December Seattle trip to see my sister's family and then I spent the first part of this game booking a Southwest leg out there (a day earlier, when my sister wanted me for a longer visit) and canceling my delta flight out there. See, southwest had been running a two day sale for 50% off base fare which made for like $65 ticket out there (the flight back is more expensive than when I got it) which is a ridiculously good deal. So when I saw the email and checked prices/dates to see if it was feasible and there was an 11:30 departure gets in at 5:40 with a 1.5hr layover in Vegas -- MUCH better than the 5am flights for like $109 last Southwest sale. (opted at that time for the $129 delta flight out of Madison (ended up being like $159 because they now charge you for you to be able to get a full refund, and the fee is $50-100 and you only get a partial credit back unless you go up a fare class to get a full refund) instead because asking someone to drive both ways in the dark wee hours during snow/ice season to/from MKE is a bigger ask than at least one leg of it being after sunrise. Even when you're asking family and friends who are family. So I brought it up to my mom yesterday but we didn't think it worth the hassle to move things so I didn't. But THEN late last night got an email and in app notification that Delta switched my flight. So instead of a 5:48a flight to Denver with a 1h12m layover, they would be flying me to Atlanta on a 5:28 flight (check-in desk for Delta doesn't open til 5am at Madison airport) and a 32min layover between when my plane is supposed to arrive and the next depart and because it was Atlanta, it made the flight several hours longer unnecessarily. I was annoyed and pre stressing about that tight a layover given how long deplaning can take so tonight I decided that given the delta change, if my rides on both ends were cool I would fly out the 11:30 southwest flight instead and save myself the extra money. Technically, I booked it before either got back to me, lol. But I figured it was fine I would fly in the day before because Weds is my nephew Jack's soccer night. Also, because delta changed my itinerary, I was eligible for them to just refund me the money to my card rather than a future flight credit. So I made back $90 by doing that and I won't have to pay to check my bags out there because southwest (which is good as I will be there for the end of Channukah and for Christmas so I best make sure to pack presents for everyone, but especially the kiddos.)

So now my Seattle area trip is Dec 12-27 (get home morning of the 28, because red-eye flight) and times are not absurdities on either end. 

My sister's family are actually moving to a rental on the 9 while the house renno they contracted to add another floor to their house happens. It's like a 6 month project and initially they had said no visitors at all during the renno. So she was on my case about my next visit just as soon as Irish fest season ended and I TOLD her that I didn't have any stretches longer than 5 days between concerts/theatre tickets and me dog sitting while our parents are out of town until second half of Nov which is during the renno so it would be physically impossible for me to visit before the renovations started. So then she texts me one night asking IF they rent the house instead of an apartment, would I PROMISE her to come visit to make it worthwhile they spring for the extra space. (I expect they were leaning that way because they both work from home and they have three kids ranging from just over 1 to soon to be 7, and they have a cat.) I texted her back, "yes of course! You just told me not to plan to visit during the renno so I was respecting that." And she told me calmly (because Virgo) "then we will make it so" and I was like, "That's super nice and all. But don't make space for me to visit you a priority. Bigger priorities are the kids school district and allowing the cat and garage space for both your cars." And she just goes, "Nope. I miss you, we all miss you, so you are equally priority rated in the house vs apartment rental options." So then the first Southwest sale was right after they signed the rental contract so she told me to go ahead and book as long as I didn't plan to stay more than 30 days to become a tenant. And then the cheap flight timing options were to have me across Thanksgiving again, have me early Dec or have me mid Dec across Christmas (caveat being I needed to be home again end of both months to do end of month deposits at work.)  She said her first choice was to have me across Christmas for the bonus of my visit aligning with the start of kids holiday break on the 18th, second choice was Thanksgiving for the long weekend, early Dec was last choice. 

And that's how it ended up I'll be at my sister's in Seattle area for Christmas this year, lol.  I was already told via zoom by my niece Monroe, "Um. Aunt Dani Elsa! Make sure you bring the snow with you from Wisconsin! Like last year!" And Jack chimed in, "Yeah! I love the snow! I want so much snow!!!! Use your Elsa magic and make sure you get us some Christmas snow to play in!!" I laughed told them I'd do my best but no promises this far ahead but I would do my best. It'll be fun to spend Christmas with happy kiddos and watch them open all their gifts instead of a quiet day at home with my dog and cat and a fire going in the hearth. (Pretty sure Packers games are Thanksgiving Day,  Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve this year....) My nephew and nieces are very excited I'm coming and extra excitement now for a bonus day, lol. Well, maybe it's a lot to presume Elliot is already excited since she's a bit young to understand, but she will be excited when she sees me! 

It will be the first time I'm gone for longer than a couple days since Waffles moved across country to live with me, but I'm sure she'll be happy staying with my parents and their dog Sophie for a couple weeks. Sophie might not love it, Sophs feels her age now and Waffles has an one-off switch that exists in only two states: sleep/snuggles and full on zoomies full body wiggles wagging her tail. Nothing between. She's a good dog and she listens extraordinarily well, but she is a full body wriggler zoomies with a tail that can bruise shins or break glassware sort of dog given her standard dachshund-beagle-Jack Russel terrier mix. 😂 and sometimes, old lady Sophie just wants to sleep at the end of the day and ain't got time or energy to put up with that sort of whipper snapper exuberance. Waffles is still very much in her imprinted glued to my side or must have me in line of sight mode unless I tell her I'm going to run errands or have a show to get to, so jury is still out over how she will handle me being gone that long. She may be just fine, she may get depressed and emo enough to stop eating like my Pisces pup Audrey used to do. Still unknown territory with her how she will handle me being gone longer than overnights or a weekend. 

O and as for the last post. There's probably a middle ground between listening to logic that I ought to assume he's most likely talking about his real life relationship he was in while still acknowledging the timing lining up for when I had put an energy block on the bond so the love between us couldn't flow and reach each other as it always has no matter how separated our real world 3d lives are. Somewhere between assuming it's not at all about me he doesn't care about me and assuming it's all about me just look at the timing. Like, the bond and the vision dreams and all of that are something wyrd and that are by definition outside what Occam's Razor style logic assumptions allow for, so having that in the mix automatically takes you outside the expectations of just normal logic. But also, that doesn't mean he isn't hurting working through his emotions about his romantic relationship ending. They can coexist. They're not the same, but my dating other guys doesn't mean I don't love them while dating them even though that bond is still there tugging at me telling me that the boyfriend is never going to live up to and fill the empty spaces of what the bond is and could be. So why would it be any different when he dates a karmic girlfriend than when I date karmic boyfriends, y'know? 

Speaking of karmics.... tomorrow night (well tonight now? Friday night) Gadan is playing at ICHC in Milwaukee, so it's the first time I'll be seeing Andrea (mandolin and clawhammer RN tho acc sometimes guitar player in Gadan) since Iowa Irishfest (first weekend of August) when I was splitting my flirting between him and Keith (who I then also saw the following weekend at LaCrosse Irishfest.) I don't expect much to come of it seeing Andrea again except a lot of eye flirting and teasing, especially since Amy will be at our table and Emily and Jeanne nearby and Rory, Molly, and Sara Lou will all be there as well which makes for a LOT of friends around to try to make anything happen. Even if Andrea is Italian and Italian men are even smoother than French men in my experience. But also, Sara Lou who works at the Ward music archives and is the one who discovered brought them to ICHC and Rory he manages the stage for ICHC is thr one properly introduced us to the members of Gadan in Iowa. But also it means there's a non zero possibility of staying to late night session with some beers at the pub in the back of the old converted church that is the Irish Cultural Heritage Center in Milwaukee. On verra. 

I don't currently intend to behave like I'm in my 20s again, but also I'm single and have been for a long while and Andrea is hot in a very intense way and so why not? Keith and I are open ended flirtation chatting with mutually acknowledged interest there but the distance factor is a big deal so no strings both open to other connections. And as for Eric, I mean the bond is there and it's heady and a lot right now especially after so long without it -- but he's still rebounding from his relationship with the lamprey and the first words that come to mind for me if I'm honest about any status between us would be: "he's not here because he's never chosen to ask me or prioritize the bond to grow into something else" so at this time I consider that a complicated can't ignore but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere so I don't consider it enough to count against me striking something up with another guy who piques my interest. And that includes tall dark and handsome mandolin/banjo/guitar players from Italy named Andrea.

I mean, a girl can't wait forever for you to maybe someday decide you want her. Especially when you free will choose other girls instead. Ain't nobody got time for that double standard. August brought me in a lot of options of men I'm actually interested enough to pursue. Granted the ones I'm most interested are very long distance so may never grow to much, but still. That's how things be right now. If you don't like that, change it. But for now, my free will is my own and if you don't want me enough to choose me even with the bond this white hot intense between us, then I consider myself free to look for another love elsewhere.

Ope! Kettle is ready! Time to make this cuppa tea then curl up to read for a bit. Ciao bella! 

 O. I was just now years old when I re-read that email after seeing the date when the gap in the songwriting began and realized that I made an assumption about what relationship was slipping through his fingers that made it so he stopped writing/sharing songs, the assumption he meant the dating relationship he was in. But that's not exactly what he said in that email there, now was it? I just assumed it was on first read through. Because that's the obvious assumption for what he'd be writing songs about, non? But, that's not what he said, it's just what I assumed and extrapolated based on most likely real world pragmatism type reading between the lines. But it's not what the email actually said...and, at the time he stopped writing songs for his project, that's also right about when I took the advice of the Morrigan and set up the energetic shield that nobody with the lamprey's energy twined around/through them could reach me. It was the same timing that he lost access to the bond and I was making myself accept his choices and let him go to pursue them and turning away from the connection to go walk my own path seek a future elsewhere with someone else. 

I guess that I didn't notice the timing lined up like that because I was trying not to let me think on him, to close that chapter inside me and shelf it for this life path. And I guess if I did think about it at all, I  just assumed that whatever had stopped him putting up songs was unrelated to me doing what I did because I guess I just didn't think the bond meant much to him at that point in his life and the path he was choosing to walk so what would he care if he lost access to it and me? If the bond to me ever mattered to him, why would he always be choosing not me and be so certain that he'd fallen in love with his soul mate when he met the karmic lamprey he started dating and wound through his life/energy?  I never through all these months really thought he might be feeling that absence, I knew I was but I was in the hollows of grief after Audrey's death and what's giving up something you cherished having one more absence there where you're already forced into the heart space of learning to live with what you've lost and can't have back? (Or at least, not have back in the same way -- I guess I did promise Audrey that if we could get to a fateline where I have kids, she could be reborn as my son and be with me once more....) I just assumed he was happy and traveling with his lamprey and enjoying all the access to that world she's a part of and I wasn't even something he ever thought on or missed. What evidence would I have had to counter that assumption? It was only somewhere during Irishfest season right during the last day or so of Milwaukee Irishfest, which was in August after I'd set all these posts to private for a while, that I started to feel him trying to tug reach for me down the bond and I got confused by how that was happening. I didn't question my assumptions about his choices, I just stuck in them and thought that some way had been found around my energetic shielding so he was trying to reach me while still entangled with the lamprey's energy. Which is why in assuming that I pushed him away when he started reaching for me down the bond and instead I focused on Keith and other options open to me and even asked the Morrigan if something had gone wrong and I needed to be concerned about the strength of my energetic shields.... Because I never even considered that he could have missed me and the bond between us or that he would be reaching down it out of a genuine desire to reconnect because he had cut the cords to the lamprey and was trying to reach once more what he lost when I blocked out anyone/anything with the lamprey's energy attached to them. I assumed he had just stopped the songwriting process because he was lost in his infatuation with her and the lifestyle and types of people she brought to the table and was off traveling with her to who knows where. That was what I have assumed across all these months. Right or wrong assumption, it was the assumption I was believing and was guiding my choices and reactions.

I never even considered the possibility he wasn't with her anymore and that was part of how/why he was reaching down the bond trying to reconnect reach me again. That possibility never even entered my mind til tonight. And that's why I assumed in first reading it that the relationship slipping through his hand that he mentioned in the email was the one with her. because Occam's Razor. And because reading that email from him was the first time it crossed my mind to even question he might not be with her, that he might be able to reach me via the bond BECAUSE he did what had to be done for the shield to still be there and healthy but not to affect him or the bond at all. I'd never even considered that possibility, which is probably why the Morrigan called me a damn fool if I couldn't figure out how the shield could be intact and yet he could reach me via the bond again.

And... I'm not certain it's what the song says, not what it seems to me to promise. The song very much feels like the vision dream, the one with the lamprey and the ice. Not the one where the Goddess gives me a choice for what to do while I'm waiting for the time something can change about what's happening that isn't about my choices and never was, but the one where I see how it ends and how we break through the ice. The song FEELS like that moment of it right before I give up to walk away and it upsets the polar bear enough to break off from the lamprey feeding on him and race to the glacial ice and trying to break through it. That moment when he can't and puts his paw up against the ice and I come over expecting to tell him he'll have to find another path around to find me catch up later. That moment right before I put my hand up and the energy between our two hands shatters the ice so he can get through -- it FEELS like that moment when i saw the bear trying but the ice seemed too thick and it caught at my heart still to want to at least go back to say farewell from my side because I couldn't wait any longer... That moment where the bears paw is up but before I reach mine up across from it separated by the glacial ice -- that's how the song echoes in me. Like that moment of that vision dream. That's what I hear and feel in it now that I listened to it......

I'm not sure if what I hear is the voice of confirmation bias whispering to me what I would WANT it to be when I know damn well that the Occam's Razor simplest answer is the assumption I first made. And maybe it's just a little defiant whisper in me of questioning the assumptions I made and have made, maybe the simplest answer is the right answer because it normally is.... but something in the center of me is completely certain saying it isn't in this case, not in this song and not with what he actually said in the email, what words he could find for what he wanted to say. And also. With me everything always starts when something sparks in me the inflection point when you start to ask the questions you should have been asking all along....

Assumptions always seem to lead to heartaches and misunderstandings and dead ends in my life path whereas the act of questioning is what opens up doors where I never saw them before that lead to truth and better answers and healing paths through what looked impassable. So. For me. I think for tonight I'll be putting my faith in the whispers of questioning I have now. And Occam's Razor logic can fuck right the fuck off.

And without evidence to tell me otherwise, that's what I will be contemplating now after listening to the song.

 First thing Crissy said after getting in the car to head to APT last night to see Once Upon a Bridge, "I just want you to know, this new chapter makes me love Sig even more than I already did." 

Me while driving, "Half chapter, I ran out of time to finish it before I had to leave because I had to finish delving out back stories from memory archive and subconscious. But yeah. Sig is a darling. He's just such a giant teddy bear you can't help but love him as he charms the pants right off you." 

Crissy, "Right? He's just so refreshingly honest about who he is."

"He is not a particularly complicated man. Battles, sex, and beer. Sure he fucks shit up, mostly not thinking of consequences. But he's straightforward and his heart is in the right place."

"And I love that there's just all these kids who look suspiciously like Sig running around the base and that he loves all the kids equally whether they look like him or not.. He's just like warm sunshine in this bleak world. He just wants to make everyone happy."

Me, raising an eyebrow to say dryly, "Yes. Very happy. In whatever capacity he can." *pause* "But also, that's why he's hard not to love."

He's my favorite Viking himbo,  I mean, he's SUCH a Viking himbo dude bro, but in the most loveable teddy bear way. (yes a lot of how he behaves is based off  the behavior patterns of an actual person in my life, a Scottish bagpiper in a band that I've known for like a decade now, though the character and his motivations is of my own imagining.) And literally every reader so far adores this character.  I'm very glad that his character is a part of this story arc that started from me reading a really awful take on "potential solutions to climate change" that included someone thinking maybe things could be solved by injecting titanium dioxide (yes like the sunscreen) into the atmosphere or stratosphere and I just was dumbfounded at the sheer stupidity of reading that. Like, set down the article and just kept repeating, "What?! What?! What?! Do they not?! WHAT! Photosynthesis, ultraviolet rather critically important to that. Seriously what the fuck?!?! I hope you never never never get the fucking funding to try such a fucked up experiment on the ENTIRE fucking planet. For fuck's sake, you'll kill us all! Ain't shit can live on the planet if anyone ever did that.  I mean. What. The. Fuck?!?!"

She also told me she will never forgive me if Sig dies and I told her that I'm not currently at a point to know who lives and who dies to the end of the series so as an author I can make no promises, but that if Sig dies I'll make sure it's a good death not a meaningless death. 

I went through fine tooth comb editing things last night and need to type them up. And then get to work on what comes next. Probably tonight when I get home, unless my body says sleep and then I will write tomorrow.

Mostly right now, my life is writing in this series (because Crissy tried to read something else  so I could work on two projects progressing simultaneously and she just couldn't switch because as much as she loved the character and the very different writing style, she just wanted more of my vampire story) and theatre performances and concerts and playing with dogs/cats and taking care of the end of season plants and working. (also Ethan, one of my coworkers, has decided that I am his armchair therapist around some things going on in his life that are a lot; and like, he asked and i told him that I had time for it and this is a normal thing for me -- I tend to be the person that actually listens and is there to hold people together when they're breaking so they don't shatter when they hit bottom and can heal rather than give up. Apparently I'm good at listening and asking questions without assigning blame and trying to find a way through, so people feel comfortable letting themselves break down on me? I dunno, I'm someone who, as a Capricorn moon, hates crying in front of people and I have to trust you a damn lot in order to share my pain with you. But yeah, I carry a lot of hard stories that aren't my own and aren't mine to tell.... I just wish he weren't finally having his breakthrough and need to move out from his partner right NOW when I'm also juggling a friend whose life partner is dying of aggressive cancer in Kentucky, another in Chicago who's going through normal grief process of her mother dying but also she's only child with no close cousins or anything so she's very alone going through this other than friends, and a local friend who is deep in self-loathing depression survivor guilt "may never be able to trust herself to love another animal ever again" after the way her cat died over the summer blaming herself for it. It's just, y'know, I already had a lot of therapist friend energy needs on my plate before Ethan decided that I was the person to help talk things over with him just this week. At least Alana and Maddie are healed and not breaking down like I was carrying last year and the first several months of this year; that one was hard because they're both friends and both turned to me and I had to keep straight who had told me what and was telling them both they had to separate and no longer live together if they wanted any hope of repairing their friendship because sometimes even best friends fall into toxic patterns at too close proximity like living together and the only way for them to heal and regenerate the friendship is to allow each other to live separately and find out who they are as individuals. Like I said, I've always been the friend that my friends turn to when they're breaking and help them to pick up pieces and hold it together and find their way through to healing. It's just what I do, I wouldn't want them to suffer alone to a point they do something desperate stupid or feel hopeless just because where they are they can't see the light of a way out but me being what I am I can help them follow it. I don't really have anyone I turn to when I'm the one breaking.... I never really have... Capricorn moon, it's hard to get me to break or show my weaknesses to people unless I trust them deeply, even just crying in front of people feels like showing them where they can hurt me. I tend to turn inward and just stoic my way through the hollows of grieving and the most catharsis I get is writing things out and waiting until I'm through to the other side to find the sunshine in life again. It takes a lot of trust and a genuine belief that they mean it when they say "you hurt me when I know you're suffering alone" for me to be willing to open up and ask other people to help me carry my pain/sorrows. I'm much better at sharing my bubbly joie de vivre than sharing the heavy parts.)

Also. I saw Eric's email and read it (haven't listened to the song yet.) That makes sense that he's been able to reach me again via the bond and has been reaching me that way if that's what he's been going through.... I feel bad now that my reaction was to push back and focus on "I'm looking elsewhere because you made yourself unavailable and I accepted that" but also how could I have known why it was that he could suddenly get past my block the Morrigan taught me as a work around to not being able to even mute the bond but she suggested to me I block anyone/anything with the lamprey's energy? It's a slick technique and way of looking at it, I'm keeping it in my back pocket. But also, not sure how useful it is for me personally given the only person with a bond so strong that I can't cut the cord or release them from feeling a pull toward me once the karma is cleared is to Eric. But still, it's a nice technique to be able to block cords/connections when a person has a toxic/vampiric energy twined around/through them but to allow the connection to return to full health normality once the toxic/energy draining element is removed. Still, I hope he finds his path to healing because it sounds like it was a hard hard thing on him to go through. And I'm glad that he's able to write songs again -- for a writer, whether it's songwriter or author, getting the emotions into the story form is crucial for healing. It just is. I know I need it and I miss it when I don't have it.  Even when I wasn't writing here, I was still journaling, just, on paper. Even if it was just to complain about everything screaming because of the drought and how hard it was to have no reprieve from it.... being in the hollows of grieving and all the green things screaming all summer and not letting myself turn to the bond for comfort because I had to block out anything with the lamprey's energy and cleaning up some spiritual vampiric rings I'd uncovered and incredible intense money stress because I put too much of Audrey's care over the last year or so on credit card and then rate hikes on interest are making it hard to fix that right now was not my favorite year. But hey, we're out the other side now, and I'm back to my real writing for the first time in a long while and I would be a liar if I said I wasn't glad to have the bond back and the sudden unexpected rushes of love down the bond. Now I better understand the why of that shift that it opened back up for him to reach me via it, I won't push away or react by second-guessing examining where I had somehow failed in how I had cast that energetic block to keep anyone/anything with the lamprey's energy attached to them from reaching me. It was bothering me so much that the block was still there but he was reaching me via the bond same as before I had put that block in for my own ethics sake, and the Morrigan TOLD me when I asked her in dream space that it was full strength and nothing was slipping through so the answer to how he could reach me suddenly again should be obvious and I was a damn fool if I couldn't figure that out for myself. The Morrigan doesn't pull punches, I'm grateful she's fond of me but also, she's pretty brutal honest sometimes. Anyway, confirmation is good in that it makes me feel bad over my past reaction but it means that I now know so I don't have to push away or reject what comes down the bond to him for fear of something sliding past my defenses from her attachments via him. I didn't like doing that and it wasn't any damn thing I WANTED to do, it was just the only reaction I COULD have to deal with it... Between my ethics and the shadow being that tracked from her through him and his bond to me, I didn't know what else to do other than to find a way to block him from reaching me and to find a way to do it without pouring energy into trying to put the bond to sleep again because he's figured out how to outflank that method when I tried it in the past to assuage my ethics about overlays I shouldn't be getting from him but of intimate moments that don't involve me and which I don't want to see/know... I still do like the Morrigan's solution for me though that I've been using since my May Seattle trip, it's elegant and slick and it gets to the core of the problem when it's cropped up -- that it's not the polar bear qua himself that's a problem to me, it's the other energies he attaches to himself that I don't want to touch my energy or reach me in visions. 

But I have missed him and I'm glad to have the love flooding down the bond back, even if he's hurting and healing his way out of however that happened for him. And I am selfishly glad he's back to writing songs and sharing them, not just for his sake but also I do love his songs and getting to hear his voice. All the mess of the rest of it aside, I always feel joy at hearing his voice and my reaction at the core is always happy recognition when I feel him reaching down the bond toward me, and for me those are just among those "sky is blue and the sun will rise on the new day and gravity exists on the planet" sort of truths of isness. Just is.  Can't write you out a scientific theory on it, though I have my own hypotheses, but the truth of it just IS. Doesn't matter the reasons either of us pushed the other away, there will always be a bubbling up of joy inside me when the reach back toward each other happens. And it always makes my heart happy to hear his voice again, even when it's been a while of me not letting me hear him.

I need to run, need to call Crissy back and then finish watering all my indoor plants while listening to British news at work. And then whenever I head home, I need to make the edits that I wrote out last night and hopefully finish the current chapter and maybe write the next one. Not entirely sure when next get to discuss new chapters though. (My rule for reading chapters of my real writing as I write them is I only give printouts, never digital copies, because of copyright issues and you have to repay me with reactions, critiques, edits, and general discussion with the author about the work in progress. That's it. That's the rules. Physical copies only and be prepared for serious discussion and edits you found and getting to talk to the author about your critiques as you read along the chapters. And as I've said, I write best and get least distracted by new shiny ideas for new novels/series/questions I want to answer when I have people hungry for the new chapters and invested in the world.) Friday night is Gadan (an Italian band who play Irish-americana folk music; met them at Iowa Irish fest as well) at ICHC on Friday night and then Amy is staying over for Farmer's Market downtown on Saturday morning and then maybe seeing Anton's Shorts (because it's a-fucking-mazing and Crissy missed seeing it the first time due to displacing a rib; we are going to see it next weekend with my mom and Sarah who NEVER sees plays twice but wanted to see this one a second round and I told Crissy I would $31.50 sale see it three times this autumn or be happy with just twice depending on if she wants to see it earlier. It closes next weekend when we have tickets with my mom and Sarah, so can't see it again AFTER that if she wanted to.) And then next week is Neon Trees in Chicago on my birthday (I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE when I get to see favorite musicians as birthday present!!! Don't know if it's birthday gifts from them or from the universe, but I always love it!) And then Raye Zaragoza is playing in Madison on Weds the 4th. Then Fri the 6th is Anton's Shorts group, then the 7th my parents fly to Vegas for a work thing so I'll be house sitting both dogs splitting my time between my cat at home and the dogs at my parents house and working) and also on the 7th Crissy and I are going to closing night of Romeo & Juliet because there's a lot of issues we had with this production (especially costuming choices and lack of cohesion in that) but the use of ASL and increased risk of miscommunication with having Romeo and Friar Lawrence be deaf with interpreters is actually quite brilliant so I wanted to see it again closer up for the use of ASL and the blocking and physical emoting of how they did this production before it closes -- and me explaining my reasons convinced Crissy she did as well for $31.50 sale dates with the AUTUMN23 code instead of $71-100. And then there were three seats in like the third row on the right side (balcony is up on the left) and so even though we only needed two of the three, those seats made us happy for our reasons wanting to see it again!