They didn’t even see me coming.

“Now.  Write your name at the top and pass them forward.”  Tell you what, when I shuffled those pages and handed them back to strangers, you cut have cut the tension like moving a piano wire through butter.  ”Now.  Read the identity in front of you . . . and attempt to emulate it in your own paragraph.”  Y’all, it was like I had suggested rolling in hog sweat.  A while in, this sweet young man in the front row put his hand against his head and hollered: this is making my head hurt!  Mmm hmm.  Haven’t tried thinking in a while, have you son?

Had yor’ head stuck up some standardized text.  Memorized every word.  And, suddenly?  Someone asks you to look into another library: your head.

Personally?  I find books to be akin to salt on taters.  Makes ‘em taste better, but it shor’ don’t make ‘em taters.  You feel me?

Now, let’s be clear here: I hold a doctorate in, well, books.  Most of my walls are covered in everything from Stephen King to Michael Foulcault–they get me all slobbery and sweaty and have pushed me to evaluate the soot and ash of over 2,000 years of thinking.  They make my own thought processes salty.  But here’s the crux: allowing those printed words that started out as the blurry/sharp, sane/bat-shit crazy ponderings of another brain to become the ontology of my own thoughts is, well, the ultimate lazy act of a soul without faith in itself.

Let’s try it in a kitchen witch sorta way.

You’re reading along on some audacious, Foodnetwork-sanctioned recipe by your favorite chef.  Somewhere between the saute of peppers and the addition of chicken stock a–goddess forbid–thought crops up: that sounds like too much stock.  And, laws, I would have added a smidge of wine to that to scrape up the brown bits . . . but the recipe doesn’t dictate that and you are working extra hard not to think and follow blindly through to the end.  Baaaaa, said the sheep.  All would have been fine, except for that moment when the fork hits your tongue and that lingering almost thought tastes a bit bitter.  You wonder: what if I had put my own stamp on it?  What if I had let myself fly?  What if it had been the most succulent bite of my life?

And there we have it.  Worse than regret.  The great “what if” of not following your gut.

How many analogies can y’all factor here?  Lesse: that person gives me the willies.  Give that one a bit, consider instead their tightly-crafted resumes and ignore the feeling.  Let me know how that turns out.  I’ll bring the wine.  Or how about this: that person feels like family.  Ignore that one on the basis of a rough resume, let’s say on account of unemployment or a skin color that you don’t share.  Enjoy your great “what if.”  Or, better yet, go with that one, then pull a chair up to my rocker in ten years.  Tell me all about the love of your life or the friend that fed your soul.  Revel in what yor’ gut brought to the table of your mortal travels.  I’ll bring the wine for that one, too.  [1]

Let’s turn back to college, shall we?  Hang on: I’m Southern.  We have to lean on the fence post a hot minute.  [2]

I teach books. That’s right, lots and lots of books.  And this is the way that rocks in Dr. Seba’s class:  you read it?  Good.  Now put it the fuck down.  That’s right.  Put it down.  Tell me what you think.

If I had a nickel for every time my babies begged me to tell them what I (their illustrious teacher) or the academy (that damnable hooker bitch) or theorists (self-masturbatory, anal old hags) had to say first, well, I could retire and be the minister I want to be.  I can’t blame them.  Must be scary, to forge through all that published thought and ivory-tower crap and have a thought.  ’Specially when they’ve been methodically trained to do otherwise, lessen they have their hand smacked for not reciting the “correct interpretation.”  But: there I stand, pushing them off the proverbial cliff.  Looks like they forgot to fly.

Now.  Y’all didn’t think I was talking about college, did ya’?

I have been chastised, quite publicly, for what appears to resemble a misconception of my regard for book learnin’.  While I find this to be, at the very least, humorous considering my job title, I found it to also be a learning moment in itself.  And here it is, for clarity and prosperity:

Read.  Read all you can put your sweaty hands on about the craft, magic and the traditions that have come before you to carve a tapestry of paths across our little planet.  Then put the fucking books down.  That’s right.  Then put them down.

What do you think?  What do you feel?  You know, it just tickles me pink to think of my ancestors (the Celts and Cherokees and even the Apaches) in a bit of a magical pinch: Aw, damn.  I don’t know what to do.  Anyone wanna give me a ride to Barnes and Noble?

Seriously?

Brotha, please.

Real magic happens inside.  You know, when you have a thought that hasn’t been policed, presided over or graded.  For lack of a better way to put it: get yor’ street smarts on.  [3]  Push.  Think.  Feel.  And if somebody/somewitch shows up, in a blog or in person, and blasphemes those sacred umphs?

Well then.  Send them to me.  I do more than rock on my porch.

Blessed Be the soul who reads.  And bless the soul who listens to their primal thump.  For they will inherit the Earth.

Seba

1.  You know, heh heh, I have also been condemned for drinking wine in the afternoon.  My bad.  I was under the impression that we were all Pagan here.  ”Toasts to the air.”  To each, their own.  I haven’t been drunk in years, maintain a legal and lovely life, work three jobs and homeschool my awesome Jacob.  I’ll let you know when a glass of wine becomes a problem.  (Good grief.)

2.  Sometimes, writings (in print or in cyberland) are hyper-intellectual to hide fear and other smelly emotions.  Mine has no truck with that sort of pretention.  I’m a storyteller.  I’m Southern.  Get over it.

3.  And try not to do it like SKW did.  Bikers and drugs are nothing to dance with when you are only fourteen, my friend.  But: get yor’ feet dirty on the streets of yor’ soul.  Be blessed.  But do it full throttle.

P.S.  For the record:  I get most of my understanding of Biblical names from my Momma.  A Methodist teacher, a Sear, a Witch from birth and an educated, hot chica who has read the Bible, cover to cover, over and over.  You would be amazed at how they thumb at her when she calls folks out on their own, personally-motivated and strange interpretations.  Go Momma.  Keep it REAL.

Or, just skip reading this post and watch this:

I think there’s something you should know
I think it’s time I told you so
There’s something deep inside of me
There’s someone else I’ve got to be!

George Michael, 1990

I was only nine or ten when I met him, that skinny, scraggly blond boy in glasses that no one would play with at P.E.  It was the seventies in Northern Alabama, back when KISS mattered and no girl worth her salt would be caught dead without a Bonnie Bell lip gloss in her bell-bottomed jeans.  We’ll call my friend Scottie, the young man who held my hand when my parent’s divorce made me the local piriah and forced me to the corners of a playground.  He was wealthy, smart, pretty–and awkward.  And gay.  I’m pretty certain I’m the only one from that town who knew this little secret; I’m pretty certain that I knew how jagged his path would be and pretty positive that no one knows this, still.

But one day, by the picnic table at “outdoor lunch,” he leaned in while I wept at the ostracization of my little ass and whispered: it’s okay.  No one will play with me, either.  I kissed a boy.

Funny, ain’t it?  That I didn’t get the magnitude of that statement in 1975?  I was all, so? And it made us fast friends, defenders of each other’s place in the lunch line, and inevitably laid me face first on the ground last year when I heard of his suicide.  You see, I never told.  That was proper.  The problem came in when he didn’t, either.  Marriage, children and the drugs to drown out the pain drug him through decades of isolation and hopelessness that eclipsed that moment on a bench in the past–but I never stopped hearing him.  It’s okay.

And today, I get it.  The day I came out to my students, my sisters and a sweet child (the King of Frat at AU who right nearly drowned himself in Jack at the realization) that I was Pagan, I drug my beautiful Scottie with me.  It’s okay, I whispered to the universe.  And oh god, baby, there’s just so many summers . . . and just so many springs. [1] I could not bear another moment of denial to my primal thump.  I could not bear it because I had witnessed the wretched deboning of an illuminated, god-shaped child.  I could not bear it, regardless of the cost.  I did it for him, I did it for me . . . but I did it, finally, for the raw hope that one day, far away, a child of this Earth wouldn’t have to “do it.”  Rather, they could just thump.  From birth to death.  No holds barred.

All we have to do now
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don’t belong to you
And you don’t belong to me . . .

And then, there was another who came into my life.  We shall call him Matthew.  Six-foot-four (at least) and well over 200 pounds–and black.  And Catholic.  And gay.  In the Deep South.  Whew.  The man who would become the godfather of my boys was also the man who taught me this: we have no choice, other than death, than to be who we were born to be.  We share a birthday month (Aries), but more importantly we share a defined insistence on the celebration of the self.  Black/white, straight/gay, Pagan/Catholic, tall/short–the diversity is dizzying.  And delicious.  Why, I wouldn’t anymore live without that kind of tapestry than I would only eat white bread the rest of my life.  And then . . .

Class of 2006?  I met Ms. Self.  Aztec roots, blazing black eyes and the first to sling her delicious mocha latte’ hand into the air as I taught Sappho of Lesbos in room 2146.  She will always dance across my memory in that tie-dyed t-shirt, summer sun across her face.  I knew she was gay.  If she did then, she didn’t come out for a while.  And when she did . . . she told me one day: “you made me want to push myself. Be the real me.”  I signed her copy of Sappho’s poetry for her.  But still . . .

But today the way I play the game has got to change
Oh yeah
Now I’m gonna get myself happy . . .

I had a little secret. The defender of gay rights, the first one flying a rainbow flag in the parade, I had applauded the cracking of that closet door . . . and hidden in another.

You, you’re taking out your loans
You’re burying your bones
Before your cover’s blown
You better take it home. [2]

Sigh.  Well, fudge.  Turns out, I hadn’t learnt’ shit.

You know, it just chaps my ass to hear a Pagan brother or sister wax on all homophobic.  Y’all can’t pick your bigotry, damn it.  It has the tendency to bleed its nasty colors onto all of your flesh.  (Now, that includes our own against other religions.  Come to it.  I know it sucks.  They often suck.  We are validated in so many justified ways.  But come to it.  We, of all folk, need to practice more active tolerance.)  It occurs to me here, though, on this rainy ‘Bama afternoon: I was riding on my LGBT family’s bravery and earned bravado like a monkey in a circus show, after too much cotton candy.  Check yor’ self.  Before you wreck yor’ self, Seba.

Fuck.

Well it looks like the road to heaven
But it feels like the road to hell
When I knew which side my bread was buttered
I took the knife as well.

And there you have it.  My ass out on a limb, finally.  Not a borrowed ass, mind you–not my student’s, not my friend’s, not a cause, but my own, white, Pagan ass.  Look!  It’s a full moon, y’all.

Because it finally hit me: I ask so much of everyone else.  I had asked for honesty, bravery and a John Wayne sensibility . . . just a’ wavin’ that flag in support from the small and dark crack of my Pagan closet.

Screw that.

My government name is Dr. Katharyn M. Privett-Duren. [3]

And after all this time
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes
Do not make the man

And my Great Spirit calls me Seba.  Y’all can, too.

I’ll hold on to my freedom
May not be what you want from me
Just the way it’s got to be
Lose the face now
I’ve got to live.

Look, Ma!  No hands!

Blessed Be,

Seba

1.  http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1uavx_don-henley-last-worthless-evening_music

2.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7BqDhsZ1Wg

3.  Hey, if they fire me, Imma’ gonna’ own Auburn University!

This post is dedicated to my “Scottie” and my new friend, Jason Williams, who teaches me every day to listen to our primal thump.

They’ve got catfish on the table
They’ve got gospel in the air
And Reverend Green be glad to see you
When you haven’t got a prayer
But boy you’ve got a prayer in Memphis  

Marc Cohn

It occurs to me, in this dizzying, delectable Indian spring, that we are coming into our own sweet thump as Pagans and Southerners.  This post will be short as I am readying myself, steadying myself, to pass a sister through another stage of her spiritual journey by nightfall.  Candles will be lit, Oathes will be laid at the table and hands will be held–sweaty and warm–across fires, like so many swollen hearts.  Here it is.  The reason I breathe.

Born here, bred here, birthed life here (and once a long time ago, ran back to “here” like a starving woman) I find my sawed-off Pagan ass so very thankful for our confederate jasmine.  So utterly grateful for a birth certificate emblazoned ALABAMA across its frame, so humbled by the land that withstood the Trail of Tears and so many of my own.  You couldn’t wrench my bones from this land anymore than you could change my eye color, and brother, I am thankful.  In the Bible Belt, I have crawled and squalled, bled and tread against everything from disregard for my own syrupy drawl to our checkered, bloody past . . . and still.  I am thankful.

We were here (us Tribal Pagans) first and foremost and we are here today.  Walking in ties and pretty shoes, earning paychecks as teachers, lawyers, and sometimes, ministers in strange and alien churches.  But we walk to leave our legacies, and one fine day, our bones.

Running is never an option, y’all.  Running is for yellow dawgs and traitors.  Run, I shall not; Pagan and Southern, I am.  Why, my sweet South needs me–needs all of us–and to turn my back on honeysuckle summers and a paid-for history is not an option for a Cherokee.

Naw.  Tonight?  I’m just thankful.  My roots are thick, deep and rich.  I reckon I’m just gonna stand my ground.  Anything else ain’t right.

My ground.  What a sacred sound.  I hope it will be the last one I hear, rockin’ in a hammock with a bottle of muscadine wine.

Bless our home,

Seba

And to my sacred path, a serenade:

Running ragged, I threw a herbed pot roast into a cup of sherry, four cups of beef broth, a handful of onions and chopped fennel, four carrots and am patiently bearing the smell after several hours in the oven.  My eldest son is coming home for dinner on the warmest day yet of February, sunny, still, perfect.  And now you think this post is about food.

Well, everything is, I suppose, as long as we agree that food is sustenance.

The salty truth is: I don’t know what this post is going to be about yet.  I decided to try divination while moving my fingers.  So let’s just pull up a chair, lean back and factor what She has to say.  Wanna?

I had a dream once.  It was misty blue/gray and slow-moving.  I was driving a car toward a beautiful statue that stood at a crossroads. you could go right or left, and the road was slippery.  I was going fast.  I knew that in that last glassy moment I wouldn’t choose either and would hit this statue of a woman with wings and her hands pressed tight together.  Death.  In slow motion at the moment of impact, the statue released her prayer and reached down, some twenty feet, to gather me.  In your love, my salvation lies in your love played in my head on the way through the mystic.  [1]

And then I heard her, molasses thick, in my ear. Choose.

What?  What the?

Choose.

I woke up in a cold sweat.

And never wanted to dance with suicidal daydreams again.  (If only I could quit smoking, there would be no flirtations, either.) I think it was fear that had driven me to the edge of the precipice, over and over, in my forty-six years of struggling with taxes.  And wrinkles.  And failures.  And mornings.  I was afraid of trying and crying and dying and then She whispered: choose.

Today, with the sun sliding over my typing fingers, smoke rings in glass-filtered rays, I have chosen.  And (forgive me, Momma) I remember a story of how I came to be. She was young and so heart-wrenchingly beautiful.  And pregnant.  It was the sixties and she had left that Apache man (wedding ring on her hand) with the white leather shoes without knowing how I grew there in her size four belly.  Grandma, her momma, took her back in and hackled up against the man who had sown my seed–a man I wouldn’t meet for sixteen years–and Momma was lost.  One evening, in a car I cannot remember the make of, Momma sat with an old boyfriend (Ivan?) who offered her an out she had not allowed herself to conceive of–it’s legal in New York.  I could pay for it . . . Momma is fond of telling me this part.  In that moment, between victimization and twenty-something freedom, her hand found a swelling belly and tightened down as she said no.  She wanted me in that moment, in that car, in the sixties.  She wanted me because she had a choice.  She chose to bear me.

And I was born. So, it was having the primal gift of choice that gave me love, nourished my veins, made me real.  [2]  There it is, y’all.  There it is.  See?  We must choose to love, live, thrive and even to give those moments.  Everything else is chicken shit.  Or worse, denial of our primal thump. But . . .

For decades I was seduced by the quasi-nihilistic option of suicide: thinking all the time hurts.  Knowing things hurts.  It hurts.  Well, duh.  Don’t it?  Hell yeah, it hurts.  The question remains . . . then why do it?  The answer is gonna suck, y’all.  Stop reading here or don’t blame SKW.

I held on.  Now, this doesn’t mean that I wasn’t rushed to a hospital or three in my teen years, didn’t ponder a blade or two in my twenties, or didn’t write out a handful of rushed notes between birth and now.  Even today, there are moments.  It is my lot in life to consider my own possibly end.  But it finally, like a good grandma, hit me slap across my backend: that’s a control freak impulse.  So afraid of death, so terrified of the dark angel coming for me when I was just getting in my groove, I had attempted to force its solemn hand. Well.

Slap my face and call me drama.  Or chicken shit.

Another memory slides across my mental frame.  It’s rainy and cold out and therefore I am smoking through my bedroom window, peeling white paint under my tapping finger, as I wax on with an ex-friend about a dream.  I want to start a church. [3] Not just a church, but a safe harbor–inclusive, diverse, I’m thinking the word “roots” here . . . to which she answers: me, too.  In the months that followed, I dodged this conversation, paperwork and every possible moment that would lead us back to that moment.  Not ready, I kept whispering to myself, I won’t have any time alone anymore.  Not ready. And then she enacted it. [4]  Included the word “root” in her ground store and ran with the dream that had brought me ’round to that moment on a cell phone.  (We all need a nemesis, y’all.  Without this, I would have never gotten off my Alabama ass.)  For all the pleading my friends had pressed upon me over the last ten years, I had held onto this bad friend: ignored her transgressions into my intellectual properties, closed my eyes to her power-hungry plays to my dearest of tribe members, begged my loved ones to accept and take her into their circles.  Turned my head away from her stolen boxes of hair, nodded my head to her visions of power when she “called the Archangels” into my living room, and bit my tongue when she lied to everyone with a quarter-mile about everything from her marriage to her faith.  I think the hardest instance of denial I enacted was when she lured me to her backyard under the pretense of a bottle of wine (me in civilian clothes, her in full on priestess garb) and asked me, out loud, to “make a magic baby” with her.  Slammed across that moment are the words that made me shiver:  ”we could take over the world.  We could be God.”  And there you have it.

Choice.

And all along, my dear friend (a tenured professor in Virginia) who has never let me down, hanging onto my shirt-sleeve:  Let her go.  She is so damaged.  She will hurt you.  Let her go. [5] And there it was, one day, her (the Bad Friend’s) arm attempting to twist mine and all I could think was “time to choose, Seba.”  And I did.  She granted me that crystallized moment, and for that, I am so thankful after a decade of deceit.  Finally.  And then, what happened next? I got off my ass.  It was a might dusty, y’all.  But . . . Someone from Chicago sat there in a proverbial car-with-no-make-or-model with me and asked: wanna got to New York?  And I answered: oh, hell naw.  This is my baby.  And I’m birthing her.  [6]  On the ground that my own proverbial and literal placenta blood was spilt.  On account of: She loves me.  And it’s time for me to love her back–and come home, for realz.

Sweet Home Alabama.  Y’all ready for a Pagan presence? We named it Grass Roots Church.  In Alabama, you really have to factor that Pagans are not usually granted 501k status–therefore “church” is, I suppose, a contentious term.  But, at the end of the day, we just wanted shelter.  Not a grove, not an offshoot, not a Facebook entity to cover our hearts.  My bad.  I woke up one day and . . . I chose life.  (Like a Vitamin B12 shot.) Blessed Be, Seba

1.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKGm1vQuC18

2.  We have to be pressured, sometimes, into doing what we are called to do.  No one really wants the job, unless they are into accolades and power plays, because they suck as a job description.  And keep us from chillin’ with a good book.  Such is the call of the Divine.

3.  My Grandfather started a church before his death and my momma always wanted to be a minister–even as she is a witch and a sear–but the laws of religion would not allow her this on account of her gender.  She has laid her blessing on my witchy noggin.  Work it is.  Work I will do.

4.  My sweetest, most hidden dreams were laid at this black table of bad friendship.  (And the worst of what I unwillingly witnessed, I will take to my grave.  On account of: wow.)  We all make bad choices in loving, y’all.  That was my last sacrifice to loving the wrong soul.

5.  This voice was not the only one.  I literally walled up and bucked up against tens of colleagues, friends and family.  Turns out:  we should listen to those who love us.  Could save us all a might of pain and time.  (But, RB: I did it.  I finally did it. No guilt, no looking back and thank you for having faith in my strength in those final moments.)

6.  I have never known this human to admit a wrong, or a hurt.  What I have found, after a decade of having everything from my titles, book editors and dreams stolen out from under me is thus: those moments teach you to stand up and do your own work.  Consider this my montage moment.

P.S.  SKW’s momma worries VERY much about my posting anything she considers “negative.”  After sitting on this one a spell, I found my hands were tied.  After all, my convening onto this moment was brought around by a negative situation–and it made me a better person.  This post represents my last word on that time, as life has whisked my red-clay feet to a new place.  BB

P.P.S. “Seba” is not an “ironic misnomer” anything.  On account of this isn’t a game.

For the formal spelling: (1.) One of the sons of Cush (Gen. 10:7). (2.) The name of a country and nation (Isa. 43:3; 45:14) mentioned along with Egypt and Ethiopia, and therefore probably in north-eastern Africa. The ancient name of Meroe. The kings of Sheba and Seba are mentioned together in Ps. 72:10.

Italian (ancient) translation: Witches Sabbath.

Also mentioned in Hebrew, Buddhist and ancient Egyptian traditions as Sabbath of Magic.

For the way I heard it as a child: dat baby can’t lie on her back.  Dat baby gots wings.

One evening, after teaching Postmodern theory all day to a culmination of almost ninety students, I was stunned to hear “Kat!” hollered across the concourse.  After all, most of the afternoon I had been addressed as “Dr. P” followed by “I need” or “Can you help me?” while dodging questions on whether or not the movie I Am Legend was a valid translation of the book. [1] Later, shuffling my way through the front door, I was accosted with “Mom! Mom!” as my accumulation of hounds whined in similar fashion.  Checking in with Facebook, I signed several emails with “Seba,” then traipsed over to my blog as SKW.  After BLTs and with my feet up on our outdoor bar, I called my momma.  Somewhere knee-deep in the conversation about eggplant spread and the church my grandpa built, I must have gone over the proverbial line to have earned “Katharyn Michelle!” through my Palm Pre.  Of course, it was followed by a sweet ending that went a little something like “love you, Kathi.”  And–somewhere in the dark that’s none of y’all’s nevermind, I heard “My Baby.”  Yup.  Turns out?  I actually AM every woman.  It’s all in me.

I find myself thinking and studying on what it all means.  [2]

I was born Katharyn, my grandma’s oldest grandchild and her namesake.  My family insisted on calling me Kathi.  When I left North Alabama sixteen years back for my sweet, orange and blue Auburn–educating myself, recarving myself–I became Kat.  Lately, more and more, my magic name has taken over as the name to which I not only answer but thump against, loud and bass, as the purest signification of me.  Seba.  A rough translation of “little holy day,” or Sabbat.  It’s brought me round to a lesson on magic names, what they mean, how we get them and how they affect our lives.  Here we go.

Now, we all know that SKW doesn’t follow rules well, doesn’t hanker to the BIG BOOK of the craft (insert isbn here) or categorize neatly into Pagan terminology that could make folks feel a bit, well, more comfy.  Numerology isn’t my game–but perk up here–I said not “my” game.  Respect it?  Hell, yes.  Kneel to it?  Hell, naw.  I simply refuse to deny the Divine voice that whispers up against me because it doesn’t fit a predetermined equation. I’ve always wondered: why do folk assume that refusal to wear the hat they have chosen for their own selves is somehow a visceral attack on their hat?  Shucks.  I just don’t wear hats, y’all.  Can I still play dodgeball?

I never really did enjoy dogeball, come to think of it.  That whole part about picking teams scarred my little girl heart.

But that ain’t all.  Those conceptions, memories, and preconceived notions about “the truth of me” that came with the name “Kathi” almost killed me.  I was a drug addict as a teen, a runaway, a biker property and a bit of a slut.  Yup.  Today is truth-telling day.  ”Kathi” was a broken little gal–had lost all of her faith in ever finding peace.  That girl was raped and beaten, almost lost her mind and lied about everything from the color of the grass under her feet to how she felt when Jackson Browne sang “The Pretender.”    I loved her, I did.  But her time was over and she was making a hot mess of things.  It was her or me.  So . . . .

So, Kat was born.  The fam was not too fond of this development, as they were confused as to what had happened to Kathi (they loved her, see, in spite all of her piddle and poo on the living room floor), but Kat had reared her head at the ripe young age of thirty and wasn’t giving an inch.  In graduate school, she learned a new word: amalgam.  Good word.  Would literally save her life later.  But, it was like a Tuesday.  Kat had three kids to rear, three degrees to earn and lots of chicken to fry–and so, the word remained in a “to consider” box under two hundred library books and an empty bottle of wine.  And Kat turned forty, became “Dr. P,” and rocked the academic house–and was still vaguely tortured by the whisperings of another name.

One afternoon, shucking corn for the grill, a memory glided by like memories tend to do.  Circa 1972, late afternoon sun and pine needles under shiny, red go-go boots.  A little girl with long brown hair was singing Rod Stewart’s Maggie May and in love with a little boy next door.  The boy, my sweet first heartbreak, was one of the few killed durning the Persian Gulf Storm years in a helicopter, but in ’72 he looked like he might live forever.  That long ago day, he told me his secret name and asked me mine.  Without a thought, I touched his nose and told him Seba.  An impromptu marriage then insued, gifts were exchanged (I still have the gray ceramic momma cat with babe) and we held hands back there in Innocent Land.  What I remember the most, other than Rod Stewart and corn-yellow hair, is the way he said my secret name.  With reverence.  With deference.  Like a memory in the birthin’.

Oh, baby, baby it’s a wild world, I’ll always remember you like a child, girl.  

And, decades later shucking yellow corn, that moment came dancing back and broke my heart.  (Isn’t it funny?  We only think of ancestors as the ones to turn to in moments of need.)  This is the way it turned out on my end:

Katharyn, Kathi, Kat, Mommy, Dr. P. and Baby are all the same, fucked-up-beautiful being: Seba.  This name is the alpha and the omega of my thump.  I don’t have a backup tag, aka one that I use for “other” magical moments, naw–just this one.  Out loud.  Seba is the “amalgam” of my identities, the whole of me, no pretention or salutation necessary. I figure, there was no need to create a name, push myself through any hoops or ask a prophet: for She had already done the work of naming me.  All I had to do is be still and listen.  The thing is, I’ve always understood the importance of brining the soul.  Shocking, coming from this old kitchen witch, eh?  Here’s the magic part: when you salt your meat, you pull out the moisture that would rot it, that would harbor bacteria, but in the process the flavor is preserved, concentrated and exhalted.  This is the process I use for developing a magic name, a signifier, if you will.  Salt yor’ self.  Factor what’s left.

But: wait.  What about the O’Kiley?  Well,  y’all didn’t figure I would leave you on the back porch like the milkman on that, did you?

SKW teaches the craft to a very close and adopted tribe.  One of the lessons we trudge through (a tenacious one, it is, causes tears and wailing) is the soul line and blood line section.  As mortals, pulsing all hot and paying taxes, we have a lineage of ancestors and family names, crests and traditions that are inherently valuable to our lives.  This vein of life is called the blood line.  Now.  If, as Pagans, we agree that we have souls that have traversed the universe and have thudded this earth (or others) a handful or more times in the past, we have another lineage that is just as critical to our understanding of our passage through time.  This is called the soul line.  Together, these “lines” make the amalgamous tapestry of the self, and attempting to cull one without the other is like mud wrestling a pig.  While our hearts may yearn to cut those ties that bind us to our fleshly state, it is an ignorant (if not blasphemous) endeavor that leaves us alienated from our earthy experience–now, who’s gonna learn from that?  Well, then.  Best remember that when coming around to a surname–yes?

Yes.  (Sorry, no math will be employed here.)  Alright. Let’s put the chalk on the proverbial board:  Seba is that name that denotes the soul within my frame.  I do not have another 007 secret phrase with which to speak to my  Great Spirit/aka/Big Momma.  There is no need, as I do not hide anything from Her, do not hide anything from my kin, and worry very much about hiding anything from myself.  So-kay.  But a surname?  Well.  O’Kiley is in my, um, family tree.  Push it far back, and we run into O’Keeley (although the “o” gets dropped when my Irish ancestors hit the Big Apple).  Right, then.  I reckon that’s the one that drips the sweetest down my spine.  Do I worry that I have not incorporated my heavy Native American blood in my name?  Huh.  Since when has a tribe needed that kind of English signification?  (And, spend a little time in the etymology of Seba and guess what you find?  Mmm hmmm.)  Naw, I grew up hearing my Grandma’s stories of the Cherokee Auntie I embody–and then heard a few about the Apache father who’s hair looked blue in the light.  I figure: have you seen me?  All done.

Irish and Native American.  What a love fest.

Soul lines and blood lines.  Pass the sacred wine.

For in the end, we are all amalgams: of our past lives and present, of 1970 somethin’ and today, mommies and daddies and lovers and teachers, brothers and sinners and survivors and whores, Southerners and Westerners and Christians and Magicians–and that thump–that thump–is the beat of all that we are.  Hell. Yeah.  Anything else is as boring as a Baptist minister at 11 a.m. in Alabama.

And I’m an equal opportunity witch.  That means: I accept all of my selves, muddy and bloody and flawed and fucked-up-beautiful.

Pleased to meet you.  Hope you guessed my name.

Seba

1.  Um, no.  No it is not.  They were vampires, damn it–and the ending is everything.  Just like in life.

2. I was asked last fall to write about the creation of magic names and was invited to do a guest post on a blog.  As the blog owner and myself disagree about EVERYTHING to do with magic, I backed out.  She never forgave me, I think, but if I had done it, I would have never forgiven myself.  BB

P.S.  The pictures are of my silly ass.  Not pulled from the internet, not transposed onto the body of someone sexy, my silly, f-ed up, short, goofy Seba ass.

This post is dedicated the the girl I met in 1966: Cherry Ann.  You will always dance in my mind young and beautiful.

I’ve lived all across the South – Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida – and I’ve tried all kinds of chili at different restaurants. I can say that you won’t find me at any fast food joint orderin’ chili. It’s greasy and lacks flavor other than ‘maters and meat.

And that just ain’t right. Gods bless ‘em.

For a good Texas-style chili, chunks of steak so tender your throat just opens up and takes it whole is the heart and soul of stewin’ up some of the best eatin’.

The one time I made this recipe for my friends, I received a standing ovation – the first one ever. Made my daddy proud, that did.

Now, it would be, to my mind, sacrilegious to just hand out the opus of my recipe, but what I’m happy to provide are the basics, and the rest, you can conjure to taste.

Unlike my sister, who prefers Nina Simone or Ray Lamontagne, I like to crank up some Garth Brooks, Creedence or – love ‘em ‘til I die – Big n’ Rich. My chili likes me singin’ country to it.

Just like any good potion (‘Cause that’s what it is, right? A stew and a brew?), you gotta talk nice to yer meat. Massage it, get personal with it, tell it how pretty it is.

I like using steak, but feel free to use a good stew meat. Either way, set it in some kind of soak (don’t forget the wine) and leave it be for a couple of hours in the fridge.

This is a good time to whip up some cornbread, chop up some fixin’s, like raw onion, cheese, jalapeños, bacon and what-not. (Keeping a damp cloth or paper towel over the onions will help keep the vapors away, and if you cook the bacon up while the meat’s soakin’, you can use a bit of the grease for the sauté coming up later. And dump the rest in the pot. Trust me.) Whip up some guacamole with fresh ‘maters and onion, adding a healthy dollop of salsa, and set it in the fridge to chill.

Take the meat out of the soak but keep the juice. We’ll use it later. (No point in wasting, right?) Roll those beautiful chunks of meat in a bit of masa or flour then toss ‘em into your cast iron pot to sear the hell out of ‘em in butter or whatever. Pour in the soak, your fave ‘maters, a bit more wine (having a glass, while you’re at it) and whatever chili seasonings you like to use.

Bring it to a hard simmer then lean into the steam, smile and take a good, deep breath. Don’t add. We’re not there yet.

I like doing this next bit in a separate pan, but you can do this step earlier on if you like. Either way, you add them about the same time. In that bit of leftover bacon grease, sauté up some onions, peppers, garlic, mushrooms and whatever else you like with that carmelized yumminess that comes cookin’ all that down together. Toss it all in the pot and stir real good. Turn the heat down a bit.

Give it a good whiff and taste. Needs more juice? Go ahead. Add salt and pepper or whatever other spice or seasoning it needs. If it’s too soupy, that’s okay. You’re gonna let it simmer for a bit. Keep a lid on it but let it vent a little, have a glass of wine and relax.

Check the chili and stir. If you like it spicy with some heat, add a couple of dashes habeñero sauce to the pot. If it’s still too soupy, now would be a good time to add some masa or whatever you use to thicken. Too thick? Add some liquid. We want this to cook just a little bit longer, so don’t use much.

Be sure to check your cornbread. If you burned it ‘cause you were too involved with yer meat, cut off the burnt part, crumble up the rest, and call it a topping. Make yourself some more cornbread. (Yes, I’ve done this.)

I like to have another glass of wine about this point, turnin’ the heat down low under that chili pot. Have a sit and relax, remembering to check every now and again and stir the pot.

Check your cornbread. You don’t wanna burn this one, else you’ll run out of time.

Take the chili pot off the heat and let it set for a few minutes with the lid letting out some of the steam. Get out anything you need for dinner that you haven’t already taken care of, fetching the guac from the fridge along with some sour cream. Then get yourself a healthy-sized bowl and dig in.

After you take the meat out of the soak, this conjurin’ takes an hour-and-a-half to two hours.

And darlin’s, trust me … you ain’t gonna miss the beans.

Photo credit: http://www.americancowboy.com/blogs/cowboy-cook/real-texas-chili

Camenæ E. deWelles is a High Priestess in Pagan family spirituality, a certified Reiki Master-Teacher, a single mother, a writer, an editor, a domestic goddess, is educated and still has a Southern accent, and is a transplant from Texas to the Deep South. You can follow her personal blog at http://theliterarywitch.wordpress.com or find out more about her professional writing and editing at http://jillianmsmith.wordpress.com.

Reading through this, I saw myself over and over–then it hit me: this essay could hit home for someone of any faith.  As to magic?  Well.  Imagine holding in your energy when it needed release . . . and imagine the wisdom and courage it takes to do so.  Madolyn, you are truly brave–and thank you for sharing this audacious story:

The Strength to Cry

Despite anything I might say here, please don’t get the wrong impression.  I love my parents.  I may not love everything they did, but they are mine and I wouldn’t trade them.  They gave me my bright blue eyes, my love of great music, and a home more stable than most.  And bless their hearts, they did the best they could – especially with a strange child who talked little, read constantly, and questioned everything . . . even if the questioning was just a wide-eyed stare of information absorption.

But they had problems.  Both with each other and themselves.  And they cried.  Both of them.  A LOT.  At the drop of a hat, about anything.  And being a highly self-sufficient little girl, I saw that as weakness.  A terrible, cloying, worthy-of-being-disdained weakness.  So I decided early on that I didn’t cry.  I was too tough and nobody could break me down like that.  No way was I pathetic.  And with a very few exceptions (an occasional movie & the end of my engagement being the only times that I can remember), that scared-little-girl vow held until I was in my 20s.  I thought I was strong.

But I was wrong.  Oh bless me, y’all, was I wrong.

My best friend of now-fifteen years started in on me almost from the day we met.  Maybe he recognized how closed off I was – or maybe he didn’t feel from me what he knew he should.  Whatever the case, the topic came up one day & I told him about my no-crying policy.  He had suddenly found a mission.  He started with trying to make me see logic in the “without darkness there can be no light, and without pain we would know no joy” variety, but I just knew I had it all figured out and was quite enjoying my light & joy, thank you very much.  So he pushed me.  HARD.  Sometimes I think back on those early days and I’m convinced that a good number of our problems he manufactured specifically to rip me up.

Because he was absolutely right.  Locking down your emotions, keeping them ‘in check’ so that you never show them in living Technicolor isn’t strong.  That’s hiding… and it’s cowardly.  What I thought were my joys were pale imitations of the real thing – and I didn’t know, couldn’t have known, until those walls got torn down; and me along with them.

What I finally learned is that all types of crying are good and absolutely necessary.  It’s like a spiritual “shower.”  I now hold dear each & every variety… the communal weepiness at a particularly sappy movie or TV show; the hiccup-y, sniffly state when you’re fighting with a friend; the glowing, glistening, proud-mamma tears when you see your best friend’s little girl play her first solo (he was fine, I was the wreck . . .  go figure!).  The so-filled-with-emotion sorrow from loss or separation that the crying just slides out of you—e en the gut-wrenching, soul-searing, bawling agony that soaks the pillow while your spirit screams and every fiber of your being feels as though you’re ripped open, raw, and bleeding.  Yes, even that.

‘Cuz sometimes you need it.  Sometimes you need to get knocked just a bubble off plumb so that you can recognize when you’ve come back to center.  And as bad as it gets – and in as many different varieties – that’s your joy, too.  I didn’t believe it, but it’s truer than I could have imagined.

And that . . . facing all that pain and knowing why . . . that’s true strength.

Madolyn Locke is one of the most amazing photographers I have ever known.  Check out her site at:  http://www.sylverlightphotography.com/

And her witchy awesome blog at: http://brighidwitch.wordpress.com/

Note: the first picture is of the author and her bestie back in the day.  The second is a current image of these two wonderful friends.

However.  Even in the making of a pb &j there can be magic.  So . . . for your tired ass, and mine:  the crockpot.  Like it’s a Tuesday. Even Kitchen Witches need a Tuesday, yes?

Grab about two pounds, or whatever you can get your mitts on, of stew meat.  (Don’t get ticky here: any basic kind will work, we’re gonna cook it’s pants off.)  Dust well in all-purpose flour.  Brown up in a sizzling iron skillet, just to sear the outside–not cook.  Plop in crockpot that has been lightly scattered with olive oil.  Now.  In the yummy brown bits of what’s left in your skillet, add a bit of olive oil, one big or two small onions (pick your color here, I hanker on purple) and two sliced red peppers (see cook’s note).  Saute until clear, add a few cloves of chopped garlic–cook for just a witch’s titty minute.  Plop in crock.  Scrape yummy bits in, too.  (Deglazing with just a bit of red wine works well for this, your call.) Sokay–now we get crunchy.

Add one small (like, around four to six ounces) can tomato paste, two large (28 ounces or so) San Marzano tomatoes, a green bell pepper, several jalapenos (take out seeds if hot is not your game) and two tablespoons brown sugar.  Sprinkle in a teaspoon of cumin, a tiny bit (unless you crave heat) of red pepper flakes, a tablespoon of GOOD chili powder, and salt and pepper to taste.  I add a handful of chopped banana peppers if they’re handy and willing.  Now: give the whole thing a container to a container and a half of chicken stock and one chick bouillion cube, several bay leaves and a sip of red wine. (See Cook’s Note.)

Top down.  We’re gonna go at least six to seven hours on this puppy.  You have plenty of time left to work on your BOS, call your bestie, or participate in some afternoon whoopie.

Call me.  I’ll bring the cornbread.

Cook’s note:  In a pinch, canned “roasted” red bells work just damn skippy.  If you need two pans for all those veggies, as I did, get to it.

More cook’s note, but on a witchy vibe:  Add more stock if it looks a bit low, tasted a bit too strong, whatever.  This will thicken and concentrate in time–we need elbow room in the pot.  Be careful.  Taste your broth.  You can always salt it more later, but you can’t take it out once it’s been christened.

That’s when you need someone, someone you can call, when all your faith is gone, feels like you can’t go on  . . . let it be me.

She was chubby, a space between her front teeth and wild ringlets that intermingled in brown and blond across those fairy eyes.  I was a scrawny little shit, smart as a whip, locked in a dance with loveless men and the horror of youth and poverty.  I have a picture of us, her behind me with her arms locked on my nine month belly, laughing in the late April sun in 1990.  Part of our love still spins there, somewhere lost on Water Street in an Alabama town of foodstamps, backyard gardens and the smell of our latest perm wafting like halos over our young faces.  We called each other “sister,” and shuga; nothing births that kind of alliance like fear and youth and bad men.  Her name was Kelli.

Still is.  It crawled up my ass one day, beaten down and scorned and laden with three small babes, to take out.  I left Scottsboro with such a vengeance that the soles of my feet still bear the scars, deep and pebbled like the life I carved within that valley surrounded by mountains.  I ran.  I ran so fast.  I ran so fast that I forgot that I loved her.  I was saving me.  (Is it strange that Pandora is suddenly playing Radiohead’s “High and Dry,” Kell? Nah.) Baby gurl, if there is such a thing as sin, it was leaving without telling you: thank you for that time you threw me a baby shower, poor as you were.  Thank you for the time you trusted me with all those secrets and we cried over wine coolers on the front porch.  Thank you for the time you lent that sweet, Southern drawl across the phone line the last time a baby threatened birth–promising me my own courage to leave that mountain, that man, that torture.  Thank you.

But. Time, geography and stupid, ignorant youth cleaved us.  Religion in Northern Alabama slung its fat ass in between love and squatted there like an alien.  In the mist of tongue-talkin’, snake’ handlin’ country souls, we were strange–and didn’t know our own names.

And spinning there, somewhere in the stick and blood of our own lives, we loved each other.

The last time I saw her, coming up on sixteen years, she was in a down-home rage with her fist in the air as my Chevy Nova sped out of those projects forever.  Time went by, like sweet time tends to do.  My babies grew and moved out, had their own hearts mightily crushed like a box of ripe maters, a few academic degrees accumulated on my wall and a sweet man took my hand for better or worse.  Then one afternoon, sipping a cup of joe and smoking the afternoon cig . . .

A Gmail flag on my inbox, in response to a Witchvox article that I had written a few weeks before.  Let me refresh you. About 20 years ago, you and I were inseparable. We did everything together, our kids played together and were like brother and sister; we were there for the births of our children. In short, we were best friends. Ringing any bells yet? Yes, it is Kelli.

Well.  How ’bout those taters?

Guess who else is Pagan now?

You see, it’s true.  Love finds a way.  Kelli is not the only story that I’m thinking on tonight in this luxuriously 70 degree, February eve.  For then, there’s my Robin.

In the spirit of not going on long, let’s just say:  that’s a Christian I can get behind, baby.  Woman has loved Jesus since she was old enough to breathe out–Georgia girl, she is–but has heard me out.  Known my soul.  Accepts my Pagan-ness.  You see, I explained it to her, told her why, shared how I pray and hoped that she would love me enough to meet me in the middle.  She did more than that, and through these twelve years, she has sustained my wild heart with hers in perfect love and perfect trust.  She rocks me like a rock, oh baby.  And there it is:  I could have lost her, don’t think I don’t know that, y’all.  I COULD have.  But: I didn’t.  Oh, sweet baby Jesus, I didn’t.  Perhaps, I couldn’t, because real love finds a way.  You feel me?

Then, there’s my Momma and my sister.  I won’t break Oathes or tell their own paths, but I can tell you this: they both walk the path of Christians.  Every day.  They both follow this blog.  It’s called cowboy-ing up, standing by family when the wind blows strange, but it took dead-on honesty out of me.  I had to, um, walk on water.  I said the “w” word, nice and clear–didn’t dirty the water of our trust by pretending that they understood what I was until I had claimed it, out loud.  Coming out?  Well, yeah.  Can’t shove a toe out and then holler all sanctimonious-like: “I did it!”  Naw.  You didn’t.  Not until it’s crystal clear and you’ve risked the loss of their soft cheek against yours, not until you have accepted the possibility of their anger, confusion or disappointment.  To quote my son: Bullspit.  Shit or get off the pot.  (And, if the situation won’t allow for anything more, getting off the pot might be the most ethical choice for ‘yorn.)

They know who I am. And still love me.  Whew.

Because love finds a way.

This post will not echo as poetically as the rest. It had to be done.

But, at the end of the day, how about this: have you ever walked on that kind of faith?  Trusted that the love you have swum in like blood will buoy you through the moment?  Known in your heart that, if you lost someone for telling them the hard thing, that at least you were bone-hard honest?  Or–try this–imagined a moment in which, after some tears and a few ego slaps, the voice of a beloved says: I love you, no matter what.

If everything is intent, as many of us believe, then: what is our intent?  To save those we love/need from the pain of dealing with the truth of our own identities?  Maybe.  I can see a case for that.  But what I find too often is that we are a smidge more concerned with saving our own ass.  Or, goddess forbid, staying blind to who truly loves us.

Because real love doesn’t know that road of judgment and denial.  On either end.  And as my toughest professor once reminded me: If it were easy, everybody would do it.

Go love.

With love for Kelli, Mommy and Re,

Seba

P.S. The lead pic is of me and baby sis.  The middle is of Rob and my silly ass, and the last is dancing with Mommy.  Can’t wait to get one of Kelli.

P.P.S. Jillian goes without sayin’.  Duh.

P.P.S. Kelli no longer has the gap, or the chub.  I love her either way.

And I wanna rock your gypsy soul, just like way back in the days of old.  And together we will float into the Mystic. Van Morrison

The sun is breaking my heart, like a lover across a smoky bar.  Please stay, come closer, warm me once again.  Damnable star.  She wears me thin out.

My husband once asked me, as he is inclined to do, “how do you want your last moment to go down, baby?”  As I am fifteen years older than him (damn it), I reckon he will be present for my last act.  Used to be, I’d answer him this:

I want to be swingin’ in a hammock, slow and with one toe tickling grass, with crickets in full swing and fireflies blinding my memories of everything but that moment.  I want honeysuckle to be the only thing I can smell, and I want a glass of good muscadine wine in my hand (I’m thinking white, that time) and a Cuban cigar.  My grandma’s afghan should be across my back, your hand on my knee, and Van Morrison singing in the background about sailing into the mystic.

And then I want to go.

Until today, I hadn’t thought about the whole last day.  What if, y’all hold on to your overalls, we all could (I dunno) cast for this last moment?  And that’s when it hit me.  I was all “white on rice.”  We can.  Well.  Slap me silly and call me drama.

Why is it do we forget that we are magic?  Now, I don’t mean in those torrid moments of anguish when some nimnut has spoken our name in disregard, or those worrisome Mondays when our bank account looks shy.  Naw.  I mean: why do we forget the simple and sacred moments that are within reach of our athame like peanut butter at the end of a celery stick?  I can feel that thump of something profoundly real at the tip of my fingers, so I’ll keep typing.

Since I was a very small child (and I’m a small adult, so go figure about fairy size) I have wailed and grieved and lamented the impending death of my beloved Grandma.  Went on and on, as far back as my addled brain can factor, about her leaving this earth–and drove my momma to distraction, I’m sure.  I’d rev up my little pink mouth into howls that rivaled that hound dog I loved as a child, Lucy, until my momma had no choice but to rock me back and forth: Grandma isn’t gonna die for a long time.  Why are you doing this?  Guess I knew that one was gonna’ hurt.  And it did.  But I was well into my forties the night my mentor let go, so afraid to die–and I finally looked it all in the eye.

You see, I think I predicted her fear.  Even talking like this lends my mind to emotions that smack sticky of betrayal and disloyalty.  She was my hero, but in those last blasphemous days of body humiliation and pride-leveling pain and degradation, she dug in her heels all stubborn-like and would not, could not, let go.  Tenacious, she was.  And I knew she would fight it, even as a child.

Maybe she needed a plan.  I wish I could go back and craft that with her, perhaps a porch swing and the sound of finches right at that moment that the sun starts to look antique against grass.  We could have plotted for sweet tea and cheddar cheese sliced so thin you could see your fingers.  We could have spoken of her man she lost in her thirties, milk cooled in wooden boxes against river currents and she could have kicked off her shoes to let her sweet, nubby toes have a bit of air.  I could have given her one last reason to have squinted that eye at me–always with a glint of humor and intelligence–and maybe we would have waxed long about those houses she planned and built, that boy she brained with a lunch box and the little girl she loved so much she couldn’t tell her.

I think she needed a plan.

Smart Southern women always need a plan.  She spoke with me about everything, her hopes and dreams and regrets and disdains, but never the death plan.  Not a real one, ya know, where you face the universe and trust the wind.  And goddess forgive me, I loved her too much–to the point of injuring my own momma’s heart–I loved her way, way too much.  So.  I’ve been thinking about the sun.  Let’s do this.

Addendum to the “death plan” aka spell-for-my-walk-into-the-Mystic:

(Doing it for you too, Grandma.)

Let everyone within a mule mile know how I love them.  Give too much, only leave enough energy for what I need, and cook like my hand’s on fire.

Write, write, write my memories and hopes and dreams like a drowning woman so that when my tribe misses me, they can find my voice tripping across a page.  Loud.  Soft.  Wistful.  Belligerent.  Me.

Tell my children that they are strong, that they are smart, that they are beautiful.

Say I’m sorry when I mean it, refuse to do so when I do not, and lay everything down at night before my noggin hits the pillow.

Plant things.  Grow things.  Cook things.  Kneel to the sun, to the moon, to my Great Spirit like it’s 1999.  No holds barred.  F**ck em’ if they can’t take a joke.  This was my life and ain’t nobody playing here.

Risk everything.  Yes, risk everything.  Risk betrayal by lovin’, humilation by speaking and condemnation by believing.  I don’t have a lot of time here, at least not enough to waste like so much salt over a shoulder.  Let’s do this.

Be kind to me.  Why, I’ve been dancing around this love affair with myself too long: reckon I’m gonna’ commit to the old girl.  I love my scars, my failures, my weirdly long toes and the horsey way I laugh after I drink tequila.  ‘Bout friggin’ time.

Remember I’m a magic ol’ bitch and plan the last day.  Ready?

Pancakes, coffee, my children and can it be May?  Sunny, no rain, say about 78?  I’m thinking baby birds outside the kitchen screen door and bare feet.  Silly laughter and syrupy fingers.

Planting all day, at least attempting, ‘maters and herbs and peppers.  My fingers deep in black dirt, music playing in the background.  Barbeque and cole slaw with white bread, Lays Masterpiece chips and dark beer for lunch.  Feet up, surveying all we have cultivated, my husband telling me I’m pretty covered in sweat and earth.

Dinner.  Maybe Slap Yor’ Momma Chicken.  But if I’m dying: mashed taters with crisp applewood-smoked bacon and melted cheddar.  WAY too much port wine.  Coffee, ’cause it doesn’t matter anymore.  Chocolate creme brulee.  More wine.  Happy children, mayhap a grandbaby or two?

Laughter.  Truth-tellin’.  Hugs.

Watch the sun fall slow across the back forty.  Hold my guy’s hand like he wants me to do, so badly.  Hear those crickets, smoke that cigar.

Bravery.  I plan to wait for Grandma’s voice, that sweet voice, and then bravery.  (Cause of she’s gonna’ have my hide over that cigar and wine.)

And so, I have a plan.  Mostly on account of: my children need this, too, need to see me content, need to remember that thump and need to feel my heart unafraid.  They’re in training for death, oh sweet lord, yes. We teach them everything from tying their shoes to paying their taxes, but here, in this deep well of goodbye is the one place we just don’t seem to want to put the chalk on the board.  Let’s cowboy up.  It’s the one thing we forget to cast, that last unknown walk.

I plan to rock the house.

(Meet you there, Grandma.)

Seba