and now a word from the cranky crone

ten years ago at some point this year, i very politely refused my doctor's recommendation to have a mammogram. i had just turned 40.

you know 1 out of every 8 women gets breast cancer, he advised, very earnestly.

i looked him in the eye and said, you know what i think that really means?

what? he said.

seven out of eight don't, i said. i'll play those odds.

ten years later and im proud to say that not only have my boobs NEVER been mashed in the monster masher, but i'm still here, still alive and breast cancer free.

luck, contrariness or good genes?

you can put it down to anything you want.

just this week, the medical establishment conceded, for all intents and purposes, that i'm right. and you know what? im REALLY glad i didn't waste one minute of my forties hanging out in a waiting room for a mammogram. i never wasted one minute of my time rearranging my schedule to accomodate some machine's availability, and im really glad i never wasted one second of the last ten years of my life living in unnecessary fear or anxiety. im even happier i protected my hard-working girls from needless discomfort.

not only that, look at all the money i've saved the health care industry.

and how did i do it?

call me crazy, but i think it's because i just said no.

and furthermore, the war will end. blessed be.

oh, what a week

i haven't blogged much recently and i've felt bad about it - not that i haven't had things to say or thoughts to share - but much of my writing energy has been drawn in two directions - the Eating the Angel Way book, and this new-old work of fiction.

with the help of some new writing buddies, and a bit of input from some old ones, im excited by the progress of the story. the direction it's taken is much different from the one i originally envisioned, but i think that's one reason i don't mind letting ideas stew as long as i let them. it's one reason why, when i feel the impetus to back off, to let an idea rest, i do. it's frustrating to a degree, and it means that there's a lot simmering on the back burner in my head, and it means there're a lot of ideas that have yet to really see more than a glimpse of the light of day.

but Rachel is emerging slowly but surely,and the story is spinning itself out in ways that's taking me by surprise, so i find myself beguiled by it, drawn in, entranced. i don't know if im communicating anything of that to a reader, of course, but for right now, ive been enjoying it so much, i don't want to stop.

i've also been working on the Meg's-Room Project - all the furniture i can reach that needed to be painted is painted, as are her wall shelves. her wall shelves are painted the same color as the wall, and i am very pleased to see how bright and fresh a color it is. even her big sister approved. im hoping the contractor gets to the bathroom before thanksgiving.

the number of readings and reiki sessions i've been doing has begun to increase, as well, so that i seem to be doing as many readings and reiki sessions as i can comfortably manage. in my free moments, i've been enjoying carnivale and hunkering down for winter.

so that's what i've been up to, Gentle Readers... how about you?

just another magic monday

these last few days have been the kind that only make me remember it's november when the sun sets so early it surprises me and the chill in the air is nearly instantaneous.

my decorating proceeds apace - meg's furniture, at least the stuff i can reach - is painted. the colors are picked, the new fixtures for the bath are delivered. we await now is Joe the Builder - who is supposed to come this week. i plan to begin my sewing projects i run out of things to paint.

i have over 9000 words of my key west story. i've polished the first three chapters as much i need to, i think... im getting a good handle on the main character, and the others seem to be developing. i'm going to move forward later on.

this afternoon libby and i have some errands to run, some shopping to do. i picked up a few stocking stuffers at marshall's the other day - it's getting to be That Time of Year.

and furthermore, the war will end. blessed be.

freaky friday

a few weeks ago, i gave a brief talk at one of the local universities on, among other things, the difference between witches, wiccans and pagans. it was a wide-ranging lecture, and we covered a lot of areas - the after-life, reincarnation, the tarot and quantum reality among other things. i had a lot of fun and i think most of the students enjoyed my talk too

the professor who invited me to come mentioned a television series he thought i'd like that wasn't on any more... called Carnivale. set during the Great Depression, it's about a troupe of carnival workers - or carnies - who travel from town to town.

check it out, he advised. i think you'll like it.

i thought i would too, but all my efforts to acquire season one were thwarted for one reason or another. i resolved to wait until the library was kind enough to call me.

until today, when i found season one waiting for me at passiflora, thanks to ron...i've already enjoyed the first episode. i especially liked the part where the tarot card reader says to the guy with the healing ability in his hands, "these people in these towns... it's like they're asleep. they go from house to job to house... just sleeping. and we wake them up."

i'm all for anything that wakes people up.

and furthermore, the war will end. blessed be.

blogging for peace

today is guy fawkes day, as well as blogblast for peace day and the juxtaposition of these two events makes me wonder what message the people who chose today of all days to blog about peace might really be sending.

one of the more interesting - to my mind, anyways, - movies of recent years that's been largely overlooked is the film V. set in some bleak near-future britain, it's about a guy who's so disfigured by what the government has done to him and so furious about the living conditions, he decides to finish what guy fawkes started in the seventeenth century - blowing up parliament. by the end of the movie, the audience understands this to be not an act of civil disobedience but one absolutely called for and justified.

no one riots as old ben comes down - they just watch in silence as the walls come tumbling down.

and no, i dont think the way to peace is to blow the government, ours or anyone else's. i think we have to be willing to change our beliefs, our worldviews and our mindsets in such a radical way that most can't even imagine how such a thing could be possible. trained to believe that we should only be sure of what we can see with our five senses, how can we trust our imaginations to lead us into places we have not gone before?

and yet, despite the results of tuesday's election, i believe peace is possible. i believe peace is achievable, on both a personal and global scale. i believe that in order to do that, we must be willing to "blow up" all about the past we have been told to believe in but is patently showing itself to be outdated at the least and toxic to children and other living creatures at its worst.

and i don't believe this has to involve explosives and other dangerous accoutrements.

what i do believe it involves connections, a lot of imagination, and the willingness to turn all that we collectively agree is "good" on its side and see if it really, really is, or if it is because people have told us for so long they expect us to agree.

i believe that peace will be a reality when there's enough of a critical mass of a new world vision, one that might not even yet exist, but that i believe is struggling to be born. i refuse to allow the voices of the hatemongers and the fearmongers - the Lush Limpballs and the Phlegm Flecks of this world - to color or to cast what i can begin to imagine as anything other than what i know it can be. i believe that some day there will be enough who share my vision and my belief to tip the scales. if there are enough of us who believe in peaceful cooperation and coexistence, perhaps eventually the others will simply Go Away.

however, if we dont and we manage to create the Armageddon so many of us appear to want to believe in, i personally believe that world peace will someday be achieved.

in a hundred million millenia after humanity has blasted itself and the planet into a nuclear wasteland, consciousness will rise again in the form of sentient cockroaches. i think we're going to thank ourselves some day, as we munch our way peacefully through the mounds of garbage we're so thoughtfully creating. we're going to admire the ability of humanity to not only obliterate itself with the thoroughness of the dinosaurs, but to leave behind such fertile soil from which the mighty cockroach - made invincible by exposure to generations of our chemicals - at last arises to take its rightful place upon the trash heaps of the world.

so in a way, i guess you could say im crazy enough to believe that peace is not only possible, but inevitable. which is why i say with such confidence that someday, the war WILL end. blessed, blessed be.

all in a day's work

it's not that i haven't had chances to blog in the last few weeks - it's that when i've sat down, i've been TARRED, as my little brother david likes to say. really TARRED, bone TARRED, and this time change hasn't helped.

the other reason i haven't blogged much is because i've been writing other stuff - though maybe rewriting is a better term. a story i've been kicking around for ten years - ever since i noticed this house about an hour outside of key west - is coalescing in a whole new way that i didn't expect.

i've been enjoying it so much that when i haven't been too TARRED, i've been too entranced by the story. like a newborn baby, i can't stop myself from touching it, from fussing with it. today, however, with the moon so full, i felt blocked - i have learned i don't write well under full moons, and thus don't expect it of myself.

i write most easily as the moon wanes into the new moon until a few days before the full. (this story began to flow, in fact, with the last new moon.) today, instead of writing, i did three readings, met with a young woman from the CCSU lecture i gave last week, and had dinner with a friend who is rapidly becoming very dear. i also made two kinds of chicken soup and snuggled Baby Jake for most of the day - the poor little guy continues to swarm with germs of the common cold variety.

tomorrow im planning on going back to the key west story - im up to chapter four and have nearly 9000 words. it's not quite the nanowrimo goal, but it's close. how bout you, Gentle Readers? have you noticed any correlation to your creativity to the phases of the moon, the change of seasons or hailey's comet? anything at all?

just curious...

and furthermore, the war will end. blessed be.

back to the future

the old sun is brilliant today, the mist has burned off and the gold light spills across the still-green lawn. most of the trees, though, are bare... only the silver willow clings to its yellowing leaves.

this morning, i had an appointment with libby's guidance counselor to discuss libby's Future - her Plan after high school. where i come from, the Plan after high school is as preordained as the direction the sun sets every night, but this year, i like the sense of ritual surrounding it.

it's the last time i'll have to do it.

and furthermore, the war will end. blessed be.