“Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.”

- Albert Einstein

I’ve been thinking about y’all lately.  Yup, I mean you–in front of the screen, picking your nose or drinking a beer or sneaking a peak from the cold screen at work or sitting in the car with your Iphone.  You.  Time to talk about us, ain’t it?

There was this lesson I learned a long ass time ago about being considerate.  When I was younger (think eighties, a perm and several husbands ago) I had a character flaw that needed some adjustment: I would call someone, begin to speak and forget to ask them how they were doing.  Now, youth means immaturity–but this donkey dung quirk had to scadaddle.  Today when I call someone, lessen something’s bleeding, I ask “is this a good time” or mayhap “how are you today?” or even just “hey, shuga.”  A moment ago, I looked into my site stats.  Ninety “blog” followers, 856 Facebook followers.  Holy crap.  What happened to twelve? No pressure, right? After I repoured my wine (on account of I dropped my glass) it hit me.

I forgot to ask y’all “how’s it hanging?”  A bit to the left?

So, like a Coke commercial, this blog’s for you.

First off, let me extend my apologies for not replying like I used to do on the comments.  It truly was un-Southern of me to let that ball drop and no amount of nutballness in my fleshly world (ie: the Matrix) should keep me from it.  If you have taken the time out of your world, and gathered up some bravery for the worldwide web to put your word out there, my silly arse should take the time to hug you back.  Gonna’ work on that one.  I owe y’all homemade cookies and smooches.

Second, let me tell you what you’ve meant to me, “constant reader,” and how you saved my life: [1]

For all my hereditary, solitary, country-fried craftlife I understood that my path made me the target for some ass clowns in this world.  I have this hound dog who literally pees if you raise your voice to her, and while I’m a ballbustin’ Aries, when it comes to the craft I had been . . . let’s say a good friend of the closet.  Like, broom handles in my back and Comet for a microphone.  Would let it whiz right down my leg if someone cracked that door more than an inch.

Then one day last fall I was all: screw it.  I’m gonna die in a closet and the only one’s who’ll notice will be the mice.  I mean, I like mice and all . . . it’s just that I don’t feel that they have a helluva learnin’ curve, you feel me?

Might end up all petrified in there.  Smelling like Pine Sol.

And so, I got a bit uppity (and tipsy, truth-tellin’ matters) and made a bloggy thingy, figuring that students and my chillun’ and my hubby would have something to guffaw at besides my secret granny panties when I croak.

Then y’all showed up.

And y’all don’t smell like Pine Sol.  A bit like warm bread and beer, sometimes honeysuckle and river water.  But not Pine Sol.  Damn I love you people.  Fuck a bunch of mice.

So . . . this post won’t go long, or academic, or all Supercalifragilistic, but it will go a bit deep and quick.  Looks like we are in a relationship.  It’s complicated and I like it.

Just for the road, one quick ditty:

(I’m not messin’ with you.  You all saved my little witchy butt and I, therefore, care very much about you.  So, it’s story time.)

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who could talk to ghosts.  Not just the spooky kind, but on occasion a grandpa or three, a slave or four, once an old huntin’ dog and whoever showed up to whisper in her elf ear.  (She had huge ears.  Folks made fun, but the movie Dumbo gave her hope.)  Now, the little girl had been born without natural fear–causing her all kinds of mudpie moments–but also allowing for a deep, abiding respect for souls.  She didn’t know the word “veil,” and truth be known, when she grew up she never saw one (but imagined it would look like Queen’s Anne’s lace) and therefore thought that her noggin’ had been affected one way or the other.

She was very, very alone.

When her hair began to turn paint white, she wondered if there were others like her whose fingers (when slung to the sky in anger) made gazebo lights flicker and dogs howl.  These things, she had been told, were the mark of evil, and the grown/little girl did not want to be bad.

But one day, on account of the government had decided that the little girl could buy spirits, she sat outside and cried some, laughed some and drank some.  She was tired.  She had become the tree.  And no one was in her branches to sing with, or swing with, or weep with . . . and so . . .

She wrote a word.  And the word became a friend.  And the friend became a heart.  And the heart became a world.

And no one called her evil, or bad . . .

But she did dance right out of that closet.  On a soft shoe.

The End

P.S.  Love you.

Seba

1.  The first soul I ever fell in love with, at the ripe young age of nine, was Stephen King.  He called me “constant reader” in his prologue–and I knew then.  Some folks understand.  It’s about the connection, not the ejaculation.  Lol.

I apologize for the last post.  And the ridiculous misspelling of platypus.

Good lord.

Seba

Did you find what you were after? The pain and the laughter brought you to your knees But if the sun sets you free, sets you free, you’ll be free indeed.  Indeed.  Ben Harper, “She’s Only Happy in the Sun”

A few years ago, a beloved friend of mine and I were knee-deep in wine and magical musings when the term “witch’s duh” manifested from our speech and became part of our “secret language.”  Course, this was a might before our relationship turned awry and left the proverbial.  Sorta like a mule trying to drive a hog, with just as much screaming and mud-slinging and audience but with less smell.  Sorta.  Unless you count sulphur.

But that’s another story, and not likely ending up in something so crass as my blog.  We’re, um, working on our own little duh moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ikp3TjD-ds

For those of y’all who weren’t two sheets to the wind that long ago eve, the witch’s duh is akin to every other kind of duh moment, ‘cept with more consequences.  Goes a little sumpin like this:

“Bring unto me this man.”  Kay.  Y’all ever seen Practical Magic?  Be careful what you are hankerin’ on when you sling those fingers to the sky.  You just might end up with it.

Or, how about: “I will give my career to have xyz.”  Kay.  Sounds good all wrapped up righteous and indignant in the moment–until you’re sitting there all well I’ll be damned.  Where’s the light bill money?

But that’s risk.  That’s life.  That’s chaos.  And that’s the way of the world.  Sometimes, these moments work out really well–if you are well-loved by the universe, have a little faith and don’t mind gnashing yor’ teeth a spell.  (Loving the pun here.)  Stay with me here, we’ll get to that sugar spun place.

So, I crafted a little magic last Samhain in that way that I rarely risk anymore.  You don’t have to be a seasoned crafter to feel me here, you know the moment: all your energy, raised up nice and tight, fire roaring about lost peoples, blood surging through your arms and tingling your fingers and your head thrown back.  Praying?  Naw.  That’s not quite right.  Conjuring?  Let’s not be so Harry Potter about it all.  But, convening?  Close.  Like, when your molecules line up with air and dirt and smoke and memory and you ARE.  Like that.  So, there I was, all BEING and manifesting the fourth thing I have ever dared in this manner.  I have always, always gotten what I asked for when my skin slips through that realm and becomes the veil, and I reckon I got it this time.  Ready?

Land.  Lee County, Alabama.  Sustainable, at least a few acres, a nice little house with a well and a clean spring.  Muscadine vines.  No more rent.  The eventual site of my fleshless bones, the earth that would allow for me to turn full-time to writing/spinning/teacher and room for maters and my offspring.  All in one, sharp thought.

Witch’s duh.

My Big Momma always gives me what I ask for–in spades.  No shoes, no problem.  My happy ass is gonna’ walk what I manifested, every time.  (Occasionally, when my faith is low, this little fact is what keeps me from losing faith.  Occasionally, when I’m not busy being an asshat.)  And while I’m bitchin’ and railin’ about landing somewhere I could not have fathomed, I hear her laughter rocking the ground underneath my red-clay feet.  Great Mother, holding her tummy, slapping her knees.  The same one she throws me over to whoop my butt, rock my broken heart and teach me what I’ve forgotten that I remember.  Our relationship goes a little sumpin’ like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJUOcrQ9_RM

I’d like to change.  Goddess, I wish I could say I will, but I think the safe bet is to keep pushing for evolution (yes, “bad witch,” I said it) and I figure, when she comes for me–a child in wrinkles and pissing my pants–I’ll still be Her belligerent, willful youngun’.  Needing a whoopin’, receiving grace against her bosom of ages and asking for another helping of human pie.  Somewhere, in this life or the ones before it, I was cut by a sword I trusted.  The scar thickens my route to “happy,” burns easily under rays of friendship and altogether stands in the way of an otherwise buttery Cherokee skin.  It has also cost me untold hours of worry that no rock can rub out.  And so . . .

I forget.  Like it’s a curse, I forget to remember that I am blessed, I am Her daughter, that She will not let me fall too far–just far enough to mess my britches and learn a lesson.  (I know, y’all are all: what the hell are we talking about?  Now.  You know I’m Southern.  Hang onto your spittoons.)

So let’s review a spell:

She loves me.  I love Her.  I’m an asshat.

I have lessons to learn that no mule could cart.

Sometimes what might look like a lesson is an answer to a prayer.

Sometimes what looks like a prayer is a manifestation of my own doin’.

Big Momma will let me mess my pants.

Rinse (garden hose, optional.)  Repeat number one.

But, wait.  There ain’t enough sweet tea to get this one done easy.  Let’s review the crafting, the results, and the lessons therein, shall we?

Craft One (the guy): Said guy won’t leave when I ask, throw wine bottles at his head and variously act as if I might spin my head around and spit green peas.  Hmmm.  Man in question is too young, poor as hell, needs quite a bit of home trainin’ and drives me to distraction.

Witch’s duh:  I didn’t specify age, financial status or maturity.

Big Momma’s lesson: ”I reserve the right to teach you tenacity, real devotion and the evils of egoism.  You may have the man.” (Very funny.  Still laughing.)

Result: I have a husband who will not even turn his head toward another woman, works himself to death and turns over every penny and is dedicated to his wife and her dreams.

Craft Two (career sacrifice):  I have been demoted to part-time to avoid bureaucratic tenure, have lost my dental insurance and my kid’s tuition discount.  Broke as hell.  Angry as hell.  Still working about as many hours as I was full-time.

Witch’s duh: I didn’t specify “career” as the frenzied chase of academic journals, tenure track jobs and self-important, Wizard of Oz type departmental meetings.  I just said “career.”  Damn it.

Big Momma’s Lesson:  “You worked hard for that doctorate, sacrificed much.  Be careful what you gleefully toss into a funeral pyre for romance.  You still have children to consider.”

The result:  I’m starting to really, for really really, consider teaching online full-time, writing the hundreds of books in my head and actually spending more money on good wine and heirloom mater seed than fancy suits.  And hey.  I can come  BALLS out of the closet . . . my broom has turbo.

Craft Three (land):  here we go.  The house I love, the yard that looks like a secret garden wonderland, the place where my pets are buried, the spot where my husband offered his hand . . . is lost.  We do not have the credit to buy the house that we adore, the only home I’ve ever truly loved.  Our landlord/slumlord has decided to sell immediately (Hilton property manager) and will not wait for our credit to heal.  Or my cucumbers to mature and become pickles.  Or my heart to stop breaking.

Witch’s duh:  I should have said 146 Green Street.  The end.

Big Momma’s lesson:  “You said land, darlin.  You said sustainable, I saw in your eyes visions of chickens and goats, muscadines and pear trees.  This will hurt you more than it hurts me.  But not forever.”

The result:  well . . . still thinking on it.  But, two acres surrounded by muscadines, pear trees, blueberry bushes, a natural spring well, three bedrooms, a huge screened in front porch and a tire swing showed up last week.  Rent to own.  Twenty-five miles out–right there on the ass hair of the Lee County line . . .

As soon as I get over the drive, the loss of “home” and my pride, I’ll let y’all know if SFW has gone straight out of her mind and moved to the boondocks for good.  Someone once told me that, when you feel unanchored and lost, reviewing what you do know is mighty helpful in sustaining your spirit.  And so:

She loves me.  I love Her.

I’m still a learnin’ to walk on water, but I swim pretty fine.

Apparently you can teach an old witch new tricks.  Goat-rearin’ anyone?

Craft One and Two worked out might fine.  Craft Three might just rock the house.  Literally.

I’m still an Asshat.

Last words:  yesterday evening, I was teaching a magic student and smoking a clove cigar and it was hot as donkey balls in tall grass.  Out of nowhere, I felt the need to tell him about the “witch’s duh,” as he is devoted and brilliant and I don’t need the pressure of pedestal-ship.  And it was hot as balls.  Makes me a bit cagey, I expect.  Anyway, it reminded me of a moment between my Dad and I ’round about twenty years ago that went like:

Me: You believe in God, right?

Dad: Yup.  (Deep toke on a Winston, nice draw on a beer.)

Me:  Do you thing that “he” makes mistakes?

Dad: Humph.  Ever seen a platypus?

Long silence.

Me:  I love you, Bri.

Wish y’all had been there.  It was audacious.  Taught me humility, living with the consequences and making magic out of fuck ups.

I love those goofy platypuses.  ‘Specially when they come in the form of land. I’ll let y’all know how the muscadine wine comes out.  Until next time,

Seba

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing cause I’ve built my life around you.  But time makes you bolder, children get older.  I’m getting older, too.

Fleetwood Mac, Landslide

SFW ( yor’ local deep fried witch) recently lolled about and amuck on Jekyll Island, Georgia for a week.  There was fried oyster shenanigans, low country boil tomfoolery and none of us looked at a watch when dumping 5 buck wine in our coffee cups.  Somewhere between too much smoke and too little sleep, a super moon showed up–appropriately on the astrological Beltane eve–and this lil’ ol’ witch tiptoed down to the sand with a bottle and bare feet.  And so . . . my big toe went to work, crafting circles and carving names, while the youngest picked a guitar in blue moonlight on the rocks.  Several folks thought it a good idea to traipse down and ponder the symbols in the sand (several ran, two smiled, one said “Happy Beltane) and then the moon shooed the sand rats away and hushed all sound but ocean.  And that’s when it happened.

And no, not sharing.  Panty color, government middle names and that night are my little secrets.  Well, that and 1982-1985.  (My momma reads this blog, y’all, and still threatens my butt with a wooden spoon from time to time.  And she’s a lady.  Wouldn’t cotton to my airing those years, I ‘spect.)  But it went something like: my hair felt long, my bones drew down into salt and something broken and red laid down and wept under Her great memory.

Just lay your head back on the ground, let your hair spill all around me, offer up your best defense, this is the end of the innocence. [1]

I’m not afraid of much in this mundane world.  I’ve had knives to my throat, slept in cardboard boxes, swallowed the wrong/too many pills and lived to see my hair turn white and my social security grow into something of substance.  Regrets don’t factor in my tractor–I find them redundant and self-masturbatory at best–and I am, overall, unafraid of boogeymen, ghosts and my rusted trunk of a past.  But . . .

Aging is getting my goat.

I’m not ready.  Not prepared for diapers, wrinkles, the risk of a broken hip when screwing like a wild child and I am certainly not warm and fuzzy on the idea of some fancy doctor dude taking away my butter and wine.  But that’s not the real problem.  It seems to me that the girl/woman/crone who sat in the sand that night was afraid of something, after all.  Seems like it’s story time again . . .

Granma.  Rocking chair, sweet tea and my babies in the house counting quarters.  She’s looking into the oranged sun, her eyes almost gray against the glow, and I see her.  All of her.  And a deep, wrenching fear slices across my chest and lands in my stomach.  I say: Granma.  Don’t get too old.  To which she smiles: Baby, I don’t like the alternative.  And there it is, y’all.  There it sits, slapping its knees like someone is gonna give it a biscuit.

Getting old is not for the faint of heart.  Death is like a Tuesday.  Getting old is work.

She was a tenacious old broad.

Last Thursday week, I’m sitting here in my back forty throwing out a magic lesson to beat the band.  I only had two hours–we tend to go on for a spell–and I was under the gun to hit that place where the universe congeals like glue in a circle.  Oathe of Secrecy aside, we were pondering, um, levels of existence in respect to our acknowledgement of those plains.  I have this beautiful, Balinese spirit chaser who became part of the conversation-Kodak, the frog-whose primary concern is to snort out negative energy and hound it out the door.  (I’m extraordinarily fond of this wooden fella.)  Now, the last three nights my froggy friend has hung over my bed . . . pointed at me.  I was right tickled at this development at first, as it proved the legend a bit and as I’m a sucker for a good scary story.  That is, until it occurred to me that it’s job is to chase boogers out of corners, basements and old, salty witches.

And so I sit here.  Thinking about my little magical box of negativity.  About an hour ago, I opened the lid, batted all the cobwebs away and took a gander at the interior.  When the dust cleared, I saw her: a rather interesting looking old woman with my eyes bound in rope.  Well.  Slap my ass and call me drama.  That’s not gonna do.  She might need to become a grandma, make cookies, grow belladonna and concoct hot buttered rum at Samhain.  She might need to throw her fingers into a night sky and give some fireflies a show for once.  She might know some cool ass shit, have some wisdom, tell some audacious stories while smoking a pipe.  Hell, she might even be able to screw.

If only I would loosen the rope a bit.

Grandma–I forgot that day on the porch.  Turns out, I don’t like the alternative either.  Turns out, I need to kick my own ass.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.  [2]

So, this post is gonna be water hole short on account of: a student just showed up with the universe in his eyes.  The sun is waning across my lap like gold dust and whiskey, and I have cheddar stuffed jalapenos wrapped in bacon bubbling brown in the oven.

The landslide has brought me down.  But there’s always bacon.

I reckon I’ve made my choice.

Love, Seba

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAdmeP8RxUc&feature=relmfu

1.  End of the Innocence, Dan Hagerty.

2. Shawshank Redemption.

Caroline:  But I heard it can’t hurt you. It can’t hurt you if you don’t believe. Hallie:  Then I suggest you leave that house, before you do.

Skeleton Key, 2005

Well.  Y’all.  It’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it?  Like every other warm-blooded body, I’ve been in a bit of a down swing lately.  Laying down like I’ve done is not just unlike me, I have not ever considered such a move an option.  Reckon it was just my turn to see the sky turn black and the wind rip my shelter down to dirt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYsKt-eAjXk&feature=related

And, here in the tapping of my fingers to the sound of a storm against the window, I am trying . . . to save me.  No one else can make that magic.  No one else can help me.  Wish me luck.  I’m rather short and out of kryptonite.

So here goes nothing.

I saw Skeleton Key again the other night and found myself just as shaken by bad writing and bad lighting, just as troubled by the final scene and haunted by the slice of truth embedded in a salt circle.  Seems to me, it’s the same damn conversation about faith that I keep running back to: believing is energy.  Let’s play with “The F Word in the Craft” again, shall we? (See February’s post.)  We were talking back then about faith being an active verb, but what I forgot to chew on was the alternative.  If taking no position in politics equates to having a position, if being an Atheist is taking a position, then we can deduct that NOT having faith is one, as well.  Hang on here with me . . .

I’m gonna say it again: if energy cannot be created nor destroyed, and we agree that we hold energy, then we have a foundation for faith.  Holding my energy back, aka resistance, requires energy.  It is an active state.  Science states that solid matter is still moving (aka energy) but at such a slow rate that it holds shape.  Hmm.  Let’s call these two states resistant and aggressive rather than negative and positive just for shits and giggles.  After all, being resistant to bashing in the noggin of some nimnut is not necessarily a “negative” act–you feel me? And vice versa.  Have you ever noticed how much energy it takes not to tongue lash some deserving soul?  How in carnation could that resistance not require energy?

• Then . . . when we “lose” faith and plunk our arses down, become “resistant” to it . . . we are doing so actively.  It takes energy.  There’s no way out but the crying, y’all.  Everything is everything.
• Therefore, I saw a black hole, was pissed at the hard rain in my life, and actively jumped in.  Y’all know what rain does to a hole?  Mm hmm.  Dumb move.
• It sucks down here.  Dank, dark and musty.
• You ever try to pull a crying, kicking child up off the floor?  Mmm hmm.  They have to WANT to get up.
• I just found some rope.  Now, I could noose it up-which is aggressive energy–or I could fashion a ladder with the same energy.

Just as soon as my bawly ass stops resisting action.

Back to our crappy movie: so, Blondie doesn’t believe in magic.  Blondie starts researching, thinking, and believing.  Blondie backs herself into an attic, fashions a salt circle for “protection” against a magic she claims not to hanker to–and poof.  Fubar.  Permanent resistance.  (Well, at least according to the writers.)  But, what if . . . Blondie fixed her broken prison of a body she had been cast into–now that she “believed” and all–and got her ass in gear after Miss Voodoo?  What if, stay with me, she didn’t lay down?

Well.  I guess Papa Justify would be in for a shock.

Seems to me we’re cruising around the whole “bodies, rest and motion” moment again.  A body at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.  And vice versa.  (Energy still holds here, folks.  Anyone heard of gravity?)  Alright.  Then:

• Resistant energy is still effort.
• The world doesn’t give a hot damn if I want to sulk.
• I need an outside force to piss me off and make me move my energy.
• I’m pissed at a whole cartload of folks and situations.
• I think I know how I wanna use that rope–right after I crawl out of here.

It occurs to me that, while bad ju ju might have created the black hole, it was my silly butt that thought it a good idea to jump in it.  Well.  Slap me naked.  It can’t hurt you unless you believe in it.  Stay with me.  I have a memory.

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of a scary, vicious witch who would chase me through twilight REM states in order to eat me up.  One night, before I fell asleep, I sat crosslegged in my bed and closed my eyes and chanted: you can fly.  Don’t forget you can fly.  From then on, when I heard her click through the hallway of sleep, I would wait until she was the breath on my neck and I would lift off, floating above her without a broom.  Later, I adapted this sleep power and would transform to the carpet beneath her feet, the crow on her shoulder or a car passing by on a dusty road.  Decades before the Matrix, I had figured it out: NOT believing in her power was an active state, while believing in mine (while also active) gave me power.  Turns out, I’m moving at such a slow rate I cannot fly anymore.  My shape, my “matter” if you will, has become crap, generically solid and unable to transform itself into air.  So:

• I DO NOT have to believe in the bad ju ju cast in my path.  Rather, I can drag the monster out from under my bed and have a hardy belly chuckle at its astonished, moldy face.  Ie:  Don’t give monsters energy.
• Believing is EVERYTHING.  I believe I’d like to kick a few asses.  I believe I can kick a few asses.  I believe I will kick said asses.
• I can fly.
• Lying here has about wore me out.

I had a friend once that said: “Turning the other cheek assumes that you haven’t been knocked down yet.”  And I’m all out of cheeks.

So.  Do I have faith?  Oh, yes, darlin.  The question is: what do I want to do with it?  I remember a saying from a movie about resistance being futile.  And I reckon that’s true.  Guess there’s nothing much left to do but . . .

Tell them I’m coming.  And hell’s comin’ with me.  Tombstone

Seba

And I can taste
That honeysuckle and it’s still so sweet
When it grows wild
On the banks down at old camp creek
Yeah, and it calls to me like a warm wind blowing.

Little Big Town, Boondocks

Balance.  This word has come out of my mouth more than my favorite curse word lately, and that’s saying something.  If pagans had a motto (that they all could agree to) it would be this concept of balance.  But lately, I have been conceptualizing this idea in a whole new manner.  Go figure–it only took forty-six years.  Have I mentioned that I’m an Aries?

I remember the anguish of being ten years old and my first lesson in balance.  It was “free time” outside, there was this balance beam and my lanky ass waited until all of the gymnastics gals were done with their somersaults and tight-wire acts to tip toe over to that long plank.  Assured that they were busying themselves with gossip, hair flips and Bonnie Bell lipgloss, I attempted to walk–practically pissing my britches–across the beam.  For just a moment, I felt it: confident, strong, weighted just right in white Keds, just before I heard Suzanne B. behind me.  Look at you.  You think you’re a gymnast, doncha?  Dummy.  And . . . I fell.  Bloody knees, humiliation.  No balance when you’re ass-first in the dirt.

You see, this is where the other little thing has been wearing on my brain.  Stay with me.  So, balance sounds all nice and cheesy safe until we forget about our real, visceral location in the universe.  Like mean-girl-land.

Let’s try this another way.

Last Mabon, we were all snuggled up in the back forty with Mabony foods and fire.  Somewhere between beer bread and presentation of corn dolls, the assumption was made that we were in a particular numerical harvest . . . on account of that’s what Pagan Wikipedia had declared.  Hmmm.  Now, all those books and standards were carved in a land far, far away from lower Alabama where it’s eighty degrees by March and often the same well into October.  Turns out, we’re semi-tropical.  We have loads of red clay.  Our roaches could drive a VW and our sun sets much later than many other geographical locations in our sweet world.  See:  our geographical/physical location doesn’t just matter, it’s critical, ‘specially if we want sweet maters.  It’s like I tell my magic students: you can have all the secret/standard words, stand in a certain direction, throw on your purple cape, wear that pentagram and holler on all witchy all your little heart desires . . . but if you haven’t considered the ground under your feet, not much is gonna happen.  Lessen you count the funny looks you get the next day from your neighbors.

Yesterday evening, I took on my last student for a good while.  The sun was still warm, I was having a little hair of the dog and we were gnawing a bit about what would be expected in her witchy learnin’.  If found myself repeating (like some old, forgetful bitty) over and over: because we want something to happen.  Everything else is just, well, performative.  Just imagine: we craft a little ditty out of Egyptian spice, throw in a bit of English Rose, shake a little Ethiopian pepper and fire over the whole shabang in Indian oil (dots, not feathers) while speaking a foreign tongue.  How y’all think that little spell is gonna land?  Mmm Hmm.  A bit to the left, I expect.

Riddle me this, Batchildren.  Why do we get all uppity about eating local, growing organic, farm-to-table dining and such but do not incorporate those pragmatic, earthy premises to our magic?

Aha.  That’s what I thought.

We want something to happen.  Then what the blue blazes are we doing in the back forty with a foreign magic?  Laws, we look silly as hell.  Then we’re all why didn’t my spell work?  I said all the “right” words.

Balance, anyone?

Now, I’m not denying that we bring other places with us.  After all, we are some righteously recycled souls from some righteous lands.  The question remains: must we deny the ground beneath us to assuage our wander guilt?  Listen: no one has more Irish blood coursing through their veins–lessen they’re straight off the boat–than SFW.  On that count, I honor my ancestors, call Samhain by its rightful name and have been known to bless a soul or three in a Gaelic tongue.  And then there’s the Cherokee in me, three generations back, and a rough thrashing of Apache from my paternal line.  Now.  I live right-slap in the middle of the Cherokee Trail of Tears–not Limerick, or the Isle of Wight, nor Arizona–and so?  And don’t think it’s escaped my wily head that the Irish settled down South back in the day.  It was a recipe that made my skin.  I reckon some Celt hottie turned to some mocha Cherokee and suggested babies.  Aho.  And thanks, y’all.  Someone pass the cornbread, someone pass the mead.  Looks like we’ve got a party called Seba.

Hang on.  I’ll make the point in a bit.

Last year, my tribe got a little cagey and built a Burning Man/Green Man out of the fourteen foot mater vines we had chewed on all summer.  It was the most thumpin’ burn I have ever seen at Samhain: adorned in cucumber and old honeysuckle vines, thrashed through with bamboo from the back and sprinkled with last year’s ash.  That sucker popped and spit and made it look like a Pagan Fourth of July (and got some of us a bit anxious about the po-po) before the night was through.  You see, it was local in its bones, it hankered to our Celt ancestors and was lit up under a late “Ripe Corn Moon” of Cherokee land.  Balance.  It’s ash went down into 2012 mater beds and a bit has been saved . . . for the land beneath our feet in October.  I have this little saying about ash:

Give unto the new seedlings the sacred ash of their ancestors.  May the circle be unbroken.

Balance, y’all.  On account of we want something to happen.  Everything else is performative, theatrical, cerebral masturbatory crap.  Doesn’t compost well.  Many things may be woven in contradiction, but laws save me from such a thread when it comes to my spirit.  Some things are sacred.

But wait–I haven’t forgotten 1976.  That’s right, I’m the fallen colt by a balance beam in a land far away when the air smelled different and Suzanne B. is standing over me in an Etienne Agner belt and perfect hair.  And I looked up at her, from gravel and disgrace, and I said:

At least I tried.

And then I got back up.  And then I walked it again, chanting I will, I will, I will walk over you.  Bitch.

She was my geography.  I had to balance between my desire, her hatred and a fifth grade schoolyard.  She never forgave me.  I’ve never loved myself more.

Fuck ‘em and feed ‘em fish.  Let’s practice local on the ground we bleed upon, cry upon and roll around like belligerent children.

I am Southern.  I am Cherokee/Celt.  I live in the Bible Belt.

And I’m a righteous witch.

Blessed Be,

Seba

http://www.cmt.com/videos/little-big-town/59758/boondocks.jhtml

Cooking is like love: it should be entered into with abandon or not at all. 

Harriet Van Horne

Years ago, I was chillin’ with the Southern Mommy in the woods of Florida and we got to chewing on the subject of love.  Not just the existence of it, naw, but more the concrete proof of this feeling that makes the world have meaning and meat.  Momma sipped her wine, looked off and pondered upon a book she had happened upon called The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.  Marketed as a Christian work, I balked a bit as she attempted to explain its premise: that we all show love in disparate manners and that all of these were valid.  Hhmmmm.  I reckon that late afternoon, so crystallized in my memory complete with the way the sun lit her dark hair red, has risen itself to the surface skin of my thinking these days.  Turns out?  This Christian fella was on to sumpin’ real and thick.  Turns out, I should have chilled a bit more and listened a bit harder.

Now, I’m not about to expound on Mr. Chapman’s book, on account of he’s a devout Christian and it would be ugly of me to lay his work out on a witchy blog.  (I am Southern, y’all.  No excuse for rudeness.)  But the whole thing brings me ’round to kitchen witchery, in general, and the art of paying attention to love gifts in particular.  It’s like this:  last year I learned to make homemade ricotta cheese.  One vat I spin with honey and nutmeg, the other is kissed with chives and parsley and they both land on my table with crusty bread for my loved ones about once per month.  Now, I could go buy ricotta and it would most likely satisfy hungry mouths just the same.  I’ve noticed something, though, about the deep grunts of contentment and the general magic of a family table in agreement when I steam milk, curd with white balsamic vinegar and strain with cheesecloth this divinity called ricotta cheese.  Seems that something chemical about my adoration traverses the whole process in its holy little route to my beloveds’ mouths.  It’s a gift,  an art of giving that has become lost in the shuffle of pre-packaged goods and restaurant chains in our modern world.

Let’s try this another way.

I hate, I mean despise, failing my own expectations.  Cooking for me is a risk: what if it doesn’t turn out?  What if no one notices the love infusion?  What if I have to scrape it out?  I’ve been known to sling a hot iron skillet into the ivy, husband and son wailing behind me, on account of it just wasn’t quite right.  I am my hardest critic, but I think the crux of the matter is that my heart must be in the food–and if it’s not–I shrunk away, chickened out and didn’t properly fuse my love to my work.  I used to feel this way about my academic work back when the Ivory Tower still held my unadulterated esteem.  I don’t remember the day She (that pretentious bitch) broke my heart or tore my dreams,  but I figure: better now than after I had marred her fickle ass.  While I can write, publish and tear the academy a new one, I choose not to feed an unappreciative and frigid dinner guest.  SFW turned here to nourish other tummies–ones that like it when I deep fry a phrase, dig it when I whip up a little linguistic tap dance and variously burp in appreciation when dinner is served.  See, it’s my love gift.

Now, why would I serve that to someone on a diet?

Sista, please.

And this is how kitchen witchery works for me.  Y’all know I have this little ritual called MND (Monday Night Dinner) with a little tribe of folks who engage in a little culinary hocus pocus.  We’re four years in, kids and all, and the premise of our dinners is simply: cook anything (hell, make pb and j), but do it with love.  It’s like, um, church.  You can’t get that feeling by ordering pizza, y’all.  I suppose it necessarily means the sacrifice of working hands, steaming waters and the feel of a wooden spoon with some sweet soul in mind while you stir.  Mmm hmm.  Now.  How you gonna’ go and cheat that?  Might as well drive through a window and holler out “no pickles.”  Get on.

Lately, here in my older days, I’m leaning a might more toward doing it right or not doing it at all.  Guess what that means to my relationships?  Yupper.  Starving a few dogs these days, feeding more lambs.  After all, these are the moments of my life I will look back upon one day and want more of–and if they are squandered on needy vampires, crass brass bitches or greedy mongrels, there will be a deep, grievous hole in my heart.

We’re taught down here in the Deep South to be polite.  I contend that this stricture, while valuable and honorable, has infected our right to our own true happiness.  We suffer untold hours with asshats, serve up love-food to undeserving hungers and miss out on making cookies with children and grandmas.  I believe that we do this because, regardless of what science has warned us, we sincerely believe there is always more time.  Why must we waste our precious hours in asshatdom?  Serve our energy and hearts up to the robotics of political correctness and its wasteland of doing the “right thing?”

Why, I don’t believe we have our britches on straight, y’all.

Look here: SFW abhors, detests, and other verbs of this nature any departmental function under the sun.  I have found that pieces of my soul have been left on the tile floor of discussion that go a bit like:

Have you seen the new Handbook of Composition?  Page 64 is just not designed to truly educate our freshman.

Or:

He doesn’t have tenure yet (eye roll.)

Really?  He’s had years to publish in the academy.  Removal from the graduate faculty will be of his own doing.

The eighteenth century ideal of citizenship had nothing to do with her presentation paper.

Well, I certainly wouldn’t vote for . . . he/she will run the department into the ground.

Right.  You feel sustained?  Moved?  Alive?  Me either.  Stab my eyes out with a rusty spoon, y’all, before I use it on someone in a tie and a tweed jacket.  (I tend to find the only smoker in the room, fill my wine glass and sneak outside to discuss the ramifications of AC/DC’s Back in Black tour on early 1980s youth.  And snicker.)  These little exchanges, all of us watching that our cleavage nor our childish ambitions show, leave everyone hungry for something with a little more bacon fat on it.

And for this old witch, such an evening is the equivalent to ordering pizza for a ritual dinner, or worse, feeding homemade ricotta to someone on the Adkins diet.  Now, let me be fair here: I have deep, abiding friendships with folk in the academy.  Usually, those whom I would save if the ship were going down are those I have drunk a bit of whiskey with while singing Glen Campbell songs, or gone berry picking when preggers and nauseous or those who have taken one precious moment to tell me about some dusty dream they remember having.  It’s the hellish ritual I abhor, not the participants.  Hell, they can’t help it the zombies bit them, any more than I could help it that I was immune.

And every now and again, I endeavor to fork a little ricotta in their mouths.  Rouses them a bit.

But I’ll be damned if I’m going down like that.

Tonight is MND.  Weren’t my turn, but my brother’s–and he’s been bitten by a daywalker.  Because of the love that rips through my derma layer like acid, Imma cooking: Mexican sloppy joes with avocado crema, bacon tarragon potato salad and sliced maters.  I may be tired, but the love transference is at risk . . . and I never miss a chance to put that phenomenon in the mouth of a family member.

For one day, far and away, I might be fragile and gray and miss the feel of my spirit reverberating on a table.  I might miss the laughter against the tin of scraping forks.  I might miss the way tomatoes smell, fresh-cut from the vine and drenched in truffle oil and fresh-cut basil.  I might miss . . . living.  It’s a gift.

And I never return those.  Lose your receipts y’all . . . and eat with the simple abandon of someone who is dying.  Because you are.

To life.  ‘Cause of in the Deep South, it’s a family tradition.

Seba

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu54Tcsdf2o

My son and daughter, after the screaming was done.

Until you’ve seen this trash can dream come true,
You stand at the edge while people run   you through.
And I thank the Lord there’s people out there like you.

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, Elton John

Yesterday, recovering from my birthday extravaganza, I watched my animals playing/fighting in the living room and nursed a forty-six-year-old hangover.  The Yorkshire terrier (Rasputin) would chase the cat (Elvis), the cat would turn suddenly on the five pounder in aggravation and swipe a bit too hard, the dog ran the other way with feline in tow–and this went on and on until everyone was hissing/yelping.  What had started as play became war and, at the end, both were sore and hurt and pissed as hell.  Made me wonder: why do we hurt each other?  What are we doing?

Just walk in on these two in the middle of the day, Elvis with his black velvet arm slung across Rasputin’s scrawny neck, snoring to beat the band.

Then we have my younguns, two of which couldn’t bear the breath of the other growing up.  She was angry at his uppity birth, he was pissed at her elder position and I would cry in bed at night: they are never going to be friends.  I have this memory of Mom’s Night Out when Sissy calls me against the audible sound of screaming demonic boy indignation.  Me: what the hell is going on?  Her:  I’m sitting on him.  Me: why?  Her: he wouldn’t get right.  So I sat on him.  Right.  Last week, these two twenty-something offspring went to the beach with other and came back with sunburns and stories that started off like: my gansta brother, you aren’t gonna believe what he did . . .  Laughter.  Smiles.  Love.

I had a friend/sister twenty years ago.  Here’s what happened:

Getting really, really close risks something.  How couldn’t it?  Now, you know all their secrets, the way they bite their nails, what they secretly fear–and when pissed–you can use them to gall their soul, rip that forever feel and variously screw the pooch of all that history.  We, well, fuck up.  All of us.  I think the problem is when we take a ruler and hold it to the fuck-up pile.  1998.  2003.  1976.  What the hell are we doing?

I wonder at the brazen manner in which we tear at the soul skin of the one we love the most.  At our death, will these be the moments we hold so close?  Let’s do some comparison shopping, shall we?

Kelli:  holding my pregnant stomach, hitching up in her throat when my son kicked, smoking cigs outside of a trailer and pondering perms, watching Lost Boys while eating chips and hoping a husband or two or four wouldn’t cheat, lie or quit his job.  Cause there’s another baby on the way . . .

Then: A misunderstanding, a Uhaul bound for Auburn, boob jobs, new men, lost men, babies and police in the wrong room together–all without the sound of our country-fied laughter, all without her hands in mine, no solace in sight.  Wasted Time.

Finally: Sixteen years  later, holding each other in sweat and tears and no shame at the display of our grief and history.  I love you, bitch. I love you so so much.  How did we let this happen.

Oh, but we do let these loves and moments wither in our hands like an unrooted plant without water.  Pride.  Righteousness.  And chunks of life lost become a broken favorite toy in a trash pile.

Jekyll Island, Ga. My healing place.

I knew a woman once who had been so utterly bruised by a long relationship that she had begun to hate the man.  Bitter, stinging hate that stayed with her long after the last words spoken between them had taken root and become the comforting ground cover of a lost thirteen year span of time.  Justified?  Sure.  But the same woman once taught me a little analogy:

So . . . you’re driving along in a Volkswagen and come upon a green light.  Now, you see to your right a semi barreling right toward that intersection.  He does not have the right of way.  You do.

You wanna die just to be right?

Her personal semi truck is the one dying now, slowly and in agony, and she has spent the last few months hauling chicken soup, prayers and support to his house.  Guess she made her decision.

And who’s to say that it wasn’t the right one?

I spend so much time writing about being justified, standing up, holding up defiantly against unruly semis that I felt it was time for a little, um, brake check.  Just wait a hot Texas minute: do I love that driver?  Well, damn.  And then it hit me, the other side of the analogy.  (I hate that moment.  Makes me feel four years old, like I’ve stepped in shit and walked all over the house.)

What if the moment of impact, all justified and right, hurts the semi driver, too?

Uh huh.  It’s one thing to be all, I’ll die to prove I’m right!  And it’s another to say and I hope it kills him, too!  Wait  . . .

Shit fire and fall back in it.

And that’s when it hits me.  Mr. Semi driver might have had a bad day, mayhap his wife has been ragging on about some nonsense, mayhap his son has driven him to distraction, could be that he is so dog tired that he didn’t take note as he barreled at that light?  AC/DC’s Highway to Hell was turned up a bit and he was remembering sixteen in summer?  Or, goddess forbid, life had wrapped itself around his spine and cut off his will to spend another friggin day in that truck?

And, in the justified comfort of our little car, we’re all but I have the right of way.

Are we so sure?  I’m not anymore.  Here’s a list of what being right has cost me:

1.  Missed afternoons with Gran.

2.  My mother’s stories of growing old without the love of her life.

3.  My little sister’s side of what it felt like to grow up without me.

4.  Twenty dead pumpkin plants in 2011.

5.  Untold moments dancing with my husband in the back forty under a fall moon.

6.  A friend who didn’t speak the same language as me because I refused to translate.

7.  A daughter who still doesn’t know that she was the most beautiful thing my body ever did.

8.  A brother.

9.  Untold wine glasses, broken against walls in righteousness.

10.  My peace of mind.

I told a friend (love you, Maddie baby) last night on the phone:  we don’t know how long we have.  Come home to me and drink wine and eat bacon.  What I would give to say that to young Seba, or even last year Seba.  It’s almost gone.  You know that moment when the sun is setting all pink/gold/red across the back yard?  And just for a minute you can’t breathe?  And wish you could hold it there, as the crickets rev up and the softest breeze lifts your hair?

My ridiculous monkey toes next to my hubby's hobbit feet. Love.

Yeah.  Me too.  And it took me forty-six years to figure out: that’s every moment.  What we would give to have these back at eighty, eyes all watered by time.  I will want that moment in the car, singing eighties songs with the windows down in some lost July–not that blog that enraged me, that injustice I couldn’t let go.  I will crave my son’s arms around my neck, too young to be macho, on a beach in Georgia–not the rolling eyes or the dirty socks on the sopping wet bathroom floor.  I will miss the snuggle of the “bad dog” and his caramel eyes–not the poo on the carpet.  And one day, far and away, I will miss the way my muscles work, the feel of walking with purpose, and the ability to make love like a wildebeest–not the Showtime series, the cigarettes or the connections I have made in academia.

In other words . . .

Death is a Semi.  A Mack truck barreling at the intersection of who we wish we had been and who we were justified in being.

And I don’t want to be right, anymore.  I’d rather just be.

Seba

My young, angry ass at Easter. Someone stole my egg!I have wandered through this world

I have wandered through this world           As each moment has unfurled . . .
I’ve been waiting to awaken from these dreams.
People go just where the will,
I never notice them until
I’ve got this feeling that it’s later than it seems . . .

Jackon Browne, Doctor My Eyes

I have this memory haunting me lately, every time I walk out back to what has begun to look like a garden.  Standing there the other night, feet firmly planted under honeysuckle vines and wanting to never leave, this memory from the past wound itself around my ankles and through my chest.  Sixteen?  Not sure anymore.  Standing in my Grandma’s backyard watching her sturdy fingers weaving grape vines through lattice, the sun tripping across her movements like gold and red water in the late afternoon.  My god.  What I would give now to help her with that work, when then?  I was all I’m bored.  She was all pay attention, Kathi.  And is if by magic, ahem, this snippet of time imprinted itself upon my heart and leaves me aching for the sight of her bitten nails in grapevine.

And it draws me in.  I have another memory: a metallic blue car with white leather interior, a Sunday drive (me, longing for a smoke, her, longing for a glass of iced tea) and a winding country road that led to her Aunties’ home.  You know that feeling?  You’re young, don’t want to go and have the time of your life while looking sullen?  We’re such assholes as children.  Can you see me?  An ass of a wile chile with long, dark hair sitting at a rustic table eating biscuits made with lard, drizzled in molasses, drinking coffee swimming in crunchy grounds and desperately trying to put on a miserable face?  Oh yeah.  I had the time of my life.  Two other scenes sallie up alongside this moment: the bathroom had a clawfoot tub in porcelain and a heavy, white-framed mirror tipped at an angle that looked precarious and dangerous–I had NO intention of looking in that glass.  Outside, on a porch that looked a bit more like a pirate deck, another porcelain tub stained the most luscious shade of purple.  Screens strung and hung from ceilings, strange bottles in dusty corners . . . and the distinct smell of fermented grape permeating every inch.

And then . . .

Driving home, the sun going down and my Grandma pursing her lips together before saying thank you for coming with me, Kathi.

What an asshole I was.  Someone posted on Facebook a little picture that said Sometimes I just want to go back in time and punch myself in the face.  Oh, hell yeah.  Over and over.  Bodyslam myself into the red clay like the punk I was–and insist a few things, like:

Take a damn journal with you.  Write down every word these women say.

Pay attention, idiot.  One day, you won’t be able to call her on the phone and ask how much cocoa goes into the pie, or that trick to make meringue rise, or how long a pot roast should simmer, or how she fell in love with that man who would be your grandpa.  You know.  The one you never got to meet.  Idiot.

Wrap your hands around her neck.  Whisper, scream, sing how much you love her.  Tell her how she saved you when you wanted to die behind a dumpster in New Jersey.  Kiss her sweet cheek, breath in her skin.  Do it again.  Idiot.

Just once, plant her a flower like she did for you.  Rake her yard instead of listening to AC/DC while some hired hand takes her money.  And, for god’s sake, stay on that porch ten more minutes when she tells a story.  Shut the hell up.  She doesn’t need to know your childish angers, frustrations and desires.  You need to know HERS.  For soon, no one will ever again . . .

Don’t get on that bus headed for Texas.  For heaven’s sake, turn around.  She’s crying, right under the Greyhound sign, one hand over her mouth.  One day, the memory of what happened in Texas will choke you, but laws, the memories you could have made that year cooking in that dark, wooden kitchen will torture you for its loss.  Turn around.  Idiot.

No one, I mean no one, gives you her wedding ring because she cannot bear the anguish her first grandchild feels at not having one while walking around eight months pregnant.  Guard it with your life.  Your first ex-husband is going to pawn it for drugs, dumbass.  And it’s going to break her heart.  (But she will never tell you.)  And no man, I mean no man, is ever going to love you that much.  Idiot.

Record that time you finally get her to sing Sweet Home Alabama on the front porch after dinner.  She’s eighty.  Singing Lynryd Skynyrd like there’s no tomorrow.  (Hey, idiot: THERE ISN’T.)

Tell her: no one will ever make me lemon cake like you do.  And the rest of my life, I will long for the taste of lemons and the sound of your voice on my birthday.  Damn it.

(Don’t say Damn It.  She doesn’t hanker to cursing.  Stop breaking her heart just because she will let you.)

Yes.  I have been haunted lately by a memory, called a life.  When I become injured that my children refuse to learn my recipes, check out when I plant my herbs and dismiss my advice as intrusive and unwise . . . I remember.  Karma.  Hi there.  How are ya?

But for myself . . .

I make wine like my Great Aunties.  I roast beef nice and slow, not forgetting the salt.  I sing M and M and Little Whoever rap, never tell them when they break my heart, ask them to remember their grandfather when his face becomes misty in their memory and put up with sullen faces at the moments that will crush their soul when I’m ash.  It’s legacy, this kind of lovin’, and the best I can hope for is that one day I will drive a grandchild to see my mother . . . just a longing for a glass of sweet tea while they long for a smoke.

Hell, I might just have one with them.  You never know what makes the memory.

My daughter and my son and the former's twenty-fourth birthday. We had run through about two packs at this point, she and I.

Someone asked me the other day what makes things magic.  Well, darlin, I can’t tell you that one.  You got to feel that, and sometimes it rips through you like a kidney stone, while somedays it hangs in your nose like late honeysuckle after a hard rain.  But, I can tell you what makes you immortal:

Let some soul love you.  Write down all those recipes that made them heal.  Sing their songs off-key and with abandon like the shell-shocked rhythm of your heart.  Tell all your stories like there’s no tomorrow.  ‘Cause of: there’s not one.

I knew her death would break me.  I used to sob in bed (to the great dismay of my lovely mother) at the tender age of four about her impending death–that took four more decades to come to fruition.  And it did, it outright broke my damnable idiot heart.  But there’s more . . .

I have found myself considering the cycles of the earth in the old ways that sustained my childhood.  Save the seed from the fruitful, tenacious plants for they will yield the sweetest harvests.  Ignore claims that “new and improved” seed is better–sometimes, that mutt seed shoves through mud and blood and rock and sinew in the most belligerent, warrior manner.  From these plants?  A strong line.  When everyone gave up on me, Granma knew better.  When everyone thought “bad seed,” she hung on–preserving that potential energy in my hard, knotted shell for a time that even she wouldn’t be privy to see.   When I forgot that I was a strong seedling, she watered the stalk of my life and defended my wiley limbs.  And with the sun set and gone to the other side of the world, I remembered her warmth against my leaves and fought for dear life.  Idiot?  Oh, laws yes.  Her legacy?

You better damn well believe it.

May the circle be unbroken.

Seba

Aka: Katharyn’s Granddaughter

P.S.  Grandma: A boy came along and loved my eyebrows like you did, holds me when I’m sick and thinks I hung the moon.  Thanks for sending him.  He bought me lemon cake for my birthday.  You have anything to do with that?  Forever your wile chile, Tater Head

My husband and both my sons camping in Alabama. With staffs.

I am an old woman
Named after my mother,
My old man is another
Child that’s grown old.
If dreams were lightning
And thunder were desire
This old house would have burnt down
A long time ago.

Angel From Montgomery, John Prine

A few months ago, a very unhappy and angry soul declared that I was in dire need of a lot of “shadow-work.”  Now, I’m not about to attempt to define this for all readers–mostly on account of everything is subject to interpretation.  However, I do lean a little this way:

The goal of Shadow work is to integrate the dark side of ourselves; the side we have attempted to hide or run from; and the side we are not aware of. Shadow work cannot be accomplished with a single method or trick of mind. It is a complex ongoing process calling for great commitment, vigilance and honesty. Owning our shadow involves a deepening and widening of consciousness to include what has been rejected. Shadow work involves an ongoing process of taking another point of view to respond to life with our undeveloped traits and our instinctual sides. It involves shining the light of consciousness into our dark corners and owing [sic] what we find there as our own. To live the “tension of the opposites” – holding both good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark, in our own hearts.[1]

I have so very much to chew on here that I cannot decide between the ear or the hoof.  Thereby, I shall take my sweet, Southern time.

I knew a couple ’round about twenty years ago who were going through enough crisis to cause the squirrels to take out running from their yard once per day.  The hubby, Mr. Green, decided that Mrs. Green was just touched in the head and needed a bit of therapy . . . head-shrinkin,’ I think he called it.  He was just plum certain that Doc would clear up “her” issues, make her act right and screw him more often.  Mr. Green hollered on about this little revelation until his missus caved, threw on her good shoes and went into town.  As self-righteous as our hero felt at the time, I reckon he’s still wiping egg off his face, out his ears and ain’t sticking his nose quite that far up his ass again.  You see, turns out, Mrs. Green proceeded to do a little self-investigation, got real honest with herself, weighed it all, wailed a bit and divorced Mr. Green.  Doc wrote the letter that garnered her alimony and today all is well.  She’s about ten pounds heavier and crazy in love.  Fat and happy.  Amen.

Turns out, Mr. Green was right.  She needed a little “shadow work” and . . . don’t ya’ love it?  Guess what was in the shadows???

Tickles me pink to think of him, drunk and scratching his juicy fruit on a front porch in Hollywood, Alabama all wtf happened?

And, when I got that little email back when, it actually sunk in:  looks like I actually need a little work done, after all.  Be careful what you wish for, y’all.  You just might get it.

I had spent most of my adult life whoopin’ my own arse for my childhood, berating myself for “sins” that had led me down gnarly paths, upbraiding myself for being selfish and variously making myself a martyr to my past.  Turns out, I had only checked out my own tired shadow–and then it hit me that day staring at the rude email.

I had forgotten to look at the shadows, slipping round the corners and dust bunnies of my soul, that others were casting. [2]

I Wake Up Screaming, 1941. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

Wait, what the . . .

I don’t wear a friggin hat!  I’ll be damned.  Well, maybe a feather or two . . .

I think my favorite part is the whole shadow work insistence to “call it our own.”  Hmmmm.  I see.  Then: I’ve let this and that shadow take up residence.  It’s my fault.  Mine.  Aha.  Well . . . that means, if it’s truly mine, that I’m just the one to choke it out:  I brought you into this world, I’ll take you out.

And while I realize that the email in question was sent as a manipulative ploy to draw me into submission, turns out it was just the medicine my body craved.  Can’t thank the writer enough.  Here’s what I discovered lurking about in the shadows:

1.  I am very, very Native American and a little Celt in my craftlife.

2.  I’m not down with gift-giving that demands either: a) my refusal of said gift (a horrible offense and often punishable) or b) a gift in kind (to which the refusal is also punishable?).  Chaps my ass when folk misuse Native history by claiming that this was the system of trade.  Naw.  There was the trade/barter system.  And then there were outright gifts.  You know.  When you just love some soul and want them to have something out of that love.  It’s a might difficult to enjoy and receive a gift from one hand with the other one shoved up your face all gimme.  Gimme now.  (Isn’t that called, um, “manipulation” in modern culture?)  I feel another post coming on . . .

3.  I am utterly, unbelievably, and with salt and pepper, unable to disseminate my sacred training and secret knowledge like it’s a Tuesday.  (This blog does not endeavor to “teach” those moments.  It is against my legacy, my blood and my recent “shadow work.”)

4.  When I refuse to share my research, my training, my techniques and my Barbie dolls, angry souls will attempt to goad me into defending myself–thereby revealing these lovely things.  Uh uh.  Think I’m unresearched, believe that I am untrained all your little heart wants.  It’s like most of us say about the South: Folk think we’re crazy and dumb down here.  And that’s just the way we like it.  All to ourselves.  Keeps the rif-raf out and enough land and corn for our suppers.

5.  I like me.

6.  Covens are awesome.  I don’t do them.  Covens are awesome.  I don’t have one.  Wiccans rock.  I can’t be one.  (Can we all still be friends?)  [3]

7.  When I’m busy trying to make someone fit into my life, I’m missing out on all the good parts and coming in all out of breath for the commercials.  If it offends, pluck it out.  Got it.

8.  Life’s too short to put up with assholes, even if the motive is political correctness.  See number seven.

9.  Writing a medicine woman book in Cherokee syllabary is a worthy endeavor.  And hard.  And worth it. (Do something for myself, check.)

10.  After all the teaching, rituals, training, blogging and thwarting of villains is done: kneel.  Touch the earth.  Commune.  An exhausted high priestess/priest/shaman/chief is useless.  One who has forgotten to listen to the wind is worse.

And, finally, the most important one to date: you can let someone go and still love them.  Sometimes, the life you save is your own. [4]

But we ain’t nowhere close to shore yet, y’all.  Look back at that passage at the beginning of this post.  Ah.  Yes.  The integration of the dark half.  Hmmm.  Cherokees would have called this “wellness” and the translation is disjointed at best, as their word for “health” and their word for “peace” is encompassed in the same word: tohi.  The balance between the night and day, the sun and moon, the physical world and the spiritual and between the warrior and the peacemaker was critical for tohi.  The idea of balance, also translated as “the right way,” was/is duyuktv and demanded sacred adjustment if shaken.  Hokay, nuff lesson and onto the hard stuff.  So, what of this “love and light” we espouse in our emails, our Facebook statuses and our t-shirts?  Mmm hmm.  I say, nice!  Very lovely.  Use it myself.  But–what happens when it becomes our creed, our ruling sun, our motto and our armed guards?

Sigh.  Not much.

I’d say we need our, um, duyuktv adjusted a little to the right.  (Insert Hank Williams, Jr. Attitude Adjustment reference here.)

So . . . . we are to have balance between the dark and the light.  We are to come to peace with ourselves, refuse fracture and become whole again.  And when someone/something proves to be hurtful, damaging or downright dangerous we . . . holler love and light?  Aw, naw.

Y’all weren’t raised right if you haven’t heard tell of Southern justice.

Now, I agree.  Going all half-cocked on a situation just ‘cuz your ego had itself pantsed is gonna leave you, well, naked.  And embarrassed.  It’s just that, I’ve found myself throwing up a little in my mouth lately at this whole “love and light” sensibility when it requires victimhood to satiate its true thirst.  I get a little squirmy when I hear it used as judgement against a mother who attempts to defend her young.  I feel a bit squeamish when it goes trotting across my screen as a cover-all for acts of offense, transgression or outright attacks.

I kinda want to get my skillet.

Reminds me of church.  Kinda recollects my head back to the policement of Christian dogma.  Sorta puzzles me at how far we’ve gotten as Pagans away from words like justice, protection and defense.  (Reminds me of a friend I had once who said: Imma looking for a man who can just as soon defend me with the same arms he wraps me gently in . . .)

But worse, it weighs on me that we have begun to use it in a more Southern “bless his heart” sorta way.

When did we become so naive?  At what point did we all endeavor to only shit rainbows and butterflies?  And, here we have it: is that truly balance?  Who needs shadow work, now?  I find that I can no longer use this term.  We (my tribe) are however trying out: blood and justice, general disdain and partly cloudy, complete adoration and mostly sun as well as affection with chance of rain.

There has been talk of raining spaghetti with a chance of meatballs, but no consensus has been reached.

And do we like the idea of love?  Light?  Oh, hells yeah.  Is that always appropriate?  Oh, hell naw.  On account of: we’re human.  And on account of: we’re attempting honesty.  How ’bout that holy mess?

Turns out, I’m really tickled that Mr. Green sent me to the doc.  I call her Big Momma.  And laws, did she have a diagnosis for me:

She said: be yourself.  Protect your warrior side.  Forgive everyone, forget nothing.  Cut out disease.  Don’t look back unless you’ve run out of salt.  Hold your line.  Love your family too hard.

And fly.

Deal.

1.  Delightful post at:  http://www.drjontry.com/workshops/shadow.htm

2. The pun has not escaped SFW.  The Cherokee understood witches to be in two categories: “ordinary” (like, it’s a Tuesday) and “killer” (like it’s a bad B movie).

3.  I wrote a post about the forcing of hats on strange heads.  Acceptance is one thing.  Colonization another.  And I have two uber close Wiccan friends who I adore and adore me.  As of yet?  Neither have a problem with the fact that I don’t look good in their hat.

4.  Last year, I was forced into a divorce from a beloved friend.  It was the most astute move she has ever made.  I agree wholeheartedly with her and applaud her courage.  I just didn’t have the heart to do it myself.  Strangely, even though she still smacks my ass in her blogs on a regular basis, I have recently felt the most mysterious and calm connection (?) with her.  I assumed, after a recent blip in the screen (See Pagans of the Deep South), that somewhere in the back of her witchy heart . . . she had my back.  She loved me once.  If I am wrong, I never, ever want to know.  Love and light, it ain’t . . . but occasionally, a meatball falls.

This post is dedicated to my Granma’.  The last thing she ever said about/to me was when my sister said:  it’s Kathi, Granma.  Don’t you remember her? 

Granma:  Kathi.  Oh, Kathi.  When she was good, she was so, so good.  And when she was bad (eyebrow slowly rises, lips turn to smile) she was just rotten.

Forever your girl, Granma.  You always loved all of me.  And it saved my life.

Authors Note:  (see Theda Perdue’s Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Exchange, 1700-1835, U of Nebraska Press, 1998):

“Cherokee women participated only marginally in the Indian trade and seem to have understood exchange in very different ways than did men.  Unlike the Choctaws and their neighbors, the Cherokee had no outlet like New Orleans where multiethnic bartering thrived throughout most of the eighteenth century, and both circumstance and attitude restricted Cherokee women’s entry into a frontier exchange economy.  Women did not seem to internalize basic assumptions about commerce as completely as did men.  In her memoir, a Carolina colonist recalled that a Cherokee woman warned backcountry settlers of an impending attack because she ‘disliked very much to think that the white women who had been so good to her in giving her clothes and bread and butter in trading parties would be killed.’  This ‘giving’ was almost certainly trade, as Carolinians define trade, and not charity.  The white woman who recorded the incident, however, had spent several of her teenage years as a captive, and her wording genuinely reflects the Cherokee woman’s attitude about the exchange–it was gift-giving, not Trade.”  (72)