The return of the Keyboard
Finally got my replacement keyboard for the Tablet. I carried it around at Pantheacon in tablet mode the entire time because I really didn’t have a keyboard on it at all. The metal piece under the keyboard had gotten bent, and while I was able to keep using that for awhile, it only lasted a couple of months that way. Now I’m just typing away with no metal piece popping up and down. Huzzah!
Been reading about Microsoft’s new Origami concept. I think I’d like to see the peripheral options for the Nokia 770 first, then maybe I’ll think about it. XP Tablet Ed. has horrible memory management, and without a keyboard, as is available on my hybrid tablet, I think it’d be a big pain to clear everything up. Plus the pen-input is a real CPU hog sometimes, so I’m not sure how they’d manage that with a smaller device. I do look forward to it in the sense that it will make everything from the Nokia 770 to the OQO and even Sharp’s Zaurus SL-C palmtops more visible, not to mention making tablet technology a bit more mainstream.
Finished the second tincture (salvia divinorum), and I must say that it was a good one. It wasn’t an entirely pleasant experience at the beginning, but once you get your sea-legs, it’s really not bad at all.
Mirrormask was an excellent movie. I liked how it showed how one can work through an issue by accessing symbolic representations of its constituent elements. Pretty good all-in-all.
Kadmon is becoming a full-time job in and of itself. I actually enjoy being busy, so it’s nice to be working and helping people where I can. I’d like to be able to create a better response network for people when they have questions or problems and need advice. It’s something I’m brainstorming on at the moment.
Etzmot
Life is never an exact science. It is a dynamic system wherein some measures are sleeping, and some are waking. And a small subset of the waking world sees to trying to wake up the sleepers. But I look at how resources are being applied in specific locations, and I notice that they are spread too thin in one place, and too thick in others. Stagnation results, and even in overworked areas, the proper experiences for awakening can’t happen, since there is an overabundance of stimulus in one place and a lack in another. When we refuse to apply ourselves with the entirety of our capacity, when we slack off and make excuses, there are others who will step in to fill the void. They will heed to call that we sought from the start to shirk. We will continue to bask in feelings of belonging, while they remain outsiders, never at home, always dressing after the fashion of their country. They will allow themselves to be drawn from mediocrity into the silence that speaks, into the swift currents of universal will that sweep away doubt and fear. They will be filled with the power of that Will of Wills. We will sit idly by, while they prepare to jump from a cliff of near endless height. As we watch, we may notice that the leap of faith is unnecessarily more difficult. We have been the bearers of ill news and the compound interest upon already heavy debt. Our lack of action has snowballed severity, and when it hits someone, we laugh as they are shattered by the weight. Their pain becomes our joy; their sorrow our laughter. What madness is this? It’s not a zero-sum game. Picking up your share may not help anyone else at all. But at least you will know that you tried. Others have taken up similar ideals and worked themselves to the bone for them. The burden and the mantle that is being passed – the duty to awaken others – is real. It is as real as death, and as cold as the grave, so let us not release ourselves from responsibility just yet. For when they fall, it is for our weakness that they do so. When they weakly laugh off the pain and try once more, it is that we might make it one step further toward the place that they are. The place of service, not only to our ideals, but to our fellows. It is for the continuance of that lineage that they gasp their last breath muttering their last wishes. It is a bitter hope, this torch of enlightenment. A hope that cannot succeed but must. I hope that it will not suck marrow from bone, life from flesh, but I know that it may. This is the meaning of the dry bones of Ezekiel 37. Do not read Etzmot (bones), but Etz-Mot (Tree of Death).
Nice
My sister came for dinner tonight. I made fish tacos. Suprisingly enough they came out really well and even the kids liked them. Done light, they are grilled marinated white fish rather than fried. Have I ever mentioned I love to cook? I really do. I am also finding that I really like spending time with my sister. Maybe we both needed some time to grow before it would be possible. So it was a good dinner.
I finally got to watch MirrorMask. I really enjoyed it. I have been looking forward to it for a while. Nice to have easy good nights once in a while.
I put in an application for Borders. I like the idea of being paid to hang out and fondle books. I do it for free now, so getting paid would be a great bonus. They had a sign posted and I couldn’t resist.
Home again, home again…
Well, let’s see how this works out. After finding a fix for Live+Press that lets it work with WordPress 2, I’ve upgraded our blog (on the site, it’s something of a dueling banjos affair between K and I). I’m still recovering from Pantheacon, but I’m mostly caught up on tickets again. Four days of catch-up is no fun, let me tell you.
Thanks to phygelus and queenbarbora for some wonderful conversation and tea. I was very pleased to be able to meet with vakratunda and treecat also. The OSOGD ritual was pretty cool – props to them for putting on a great one. Really enjoyed Elisheva Nesher’s presentation, as she is very good at explaining the archeological angle and is cautious about making unfounded suppositions. My favorite was Lon Milo Duquette’s lecture. The subject matter was okay, but it was really all about the story-telling, in my opinion. It seemed that much of the crowd was hanging on his every word. I’d read his books before, but the humor falls a little flat in the books when compared to him telling the story. I ended up buying another copy of Chicken Qabalah (someone nabbed mine a year ago) which he signed.
Discussing imperialdragon is still tough, but things needed to be cleared up. I feel like he’s still here sometimes, but I think that maybe in some ways, that feeling will never go away. In any case, I’m glad to be home. I missed Drayt, Boo, and Lil very much.
Still have an essay to write for my conversion stuff that will be going on in the next couple of months.
Afterwards
I must have gone into Pantheacon with some sort of expectations that I wasn’t really aware of because I kept feeling like there was something just off about my experience of it. From the rituals and presentations I attended I was most certainly entertained, amused, inspired, and given much to contemplate. Still I felt as though I had been holding my breath, and the signal to let it out again was forgotten. The “event” just never took place. I did have a wonderful time. There was Chinese food and tea with friends. I think that the tea must me our Pantheacon tradition. It wasn’t the same, as some were not present and missed. However, it was a good time, and something I look forward to doing again.
Yet on the way home I had the brilliant fortune to miss the planned exchange on the freeway, which led us to take an alternate route. We drove the 101 south to 198 and headed east. My husband was tired, and half slept and I drove. Now, the 198 is not the large 4 lane or even the two lanes per side affair, it is one lane going each direction winding ways through the mountains. So I drove, and I thought, and I realized what it was that I was missing. So I contemplated and I drove. I wanted this weekend to solve the problems floating and grinding in my brain. I wanted something to distract and reset me. It wasn’t there. But driving up and around a bend so sharp for a moment the world falls away and all you see is sky, I realized something.
I have been looking for a group that is like me. I was looking for a group that I would feel apart of, because through liking those like me, I may learn to like myself.
I have been searching for proof of the divine, of deity, of my god in my world. I look for those who have felt what I feel, and see what I see. What I wanted was a safety net, a group of people who had gone before and would keep me from that point of sky and earth where it all falls away. I was looking for a proof or a confirmation.
I wanted to have a profound experience fall in my lap. I wanted the feeling of connection, not so that I could feel connected with others, but to reconnect to my own soul.
This is what was not at Pantheacon. For all its pageantry, glitter, ritual, fun, and fellowship, it is just those things. It is a time to make new friends and reconnect with old ones. It is a time to show off, or to be amused. It is a place to network, meet people, and to just hang out. So I left, having had a good time, but no closer to having the grinding gears in my head fixed.
My soul was not waiting for me at Pantheacon. It was where it always is, waiting a little less than patiently, foot tapping behind my eyes.
My gods were not to be handed to me on a platter by some unknown attendee of Pantheacon. My gods are in the wind and rain that battered my car on the road to San Jose. They were in the hallways of the hotel, sitting in the workshops, and wandering the marketplace. My gods were in the winding roads and the mountains they crossed. My gods were in the ice and sunshine. My gods were in the ravens and the rockslides. They are wherever I go if I but raise my eyes to see.
My problems are mine to solve, and they were also waiting here with me. Each a little daunting, but not unfixable. Yet, each day that I was gone taught me, or reminded me. Each person was a mirror, example, or an inspiration. Each day was another day I was given to learn, work, and explore this mystery that is me. Between the earth and sky there is only me. Between life and death there is only me. Between my success and my failure there is only me. Behind my eyes there is only me, and only I may lead my way along this path. Only I may touch my gods, and bring their wisdom back into my own life. I am the point between what has been and what is to come. All that remains is to keep placing one foot in front of the other until I learn to fly.
One more reason…
…that I know my gods love me.
Ramblin’ Man
Well, the student-rabbi says we’re on for March/April. Basically we’ll all go before the Beit Din, then the kids and I will do the mikveh, and we’ll announce the whole thing around the beginning of Pesach. It’s really exciting for me, but I can’t wait until the pressure of the Beit Din is over. It’s a Reform conversion, but I don’t think that means that they will be less exacting. When the student-rabbi gave me Mordechai Kaplan’s Judaism as a Civilization, I started getting pretty nervous. I haven’t done real testing in a long time. I’d hate to have spent all this time and effort to be rebuffed now over a history lesson unremembered.
I’m sure that’s not what is going to happen though. There are a lot of changes going on around me. People seem to be more comfortable around me, as though something odd and off-kilter in my nature has settled and now instead of raising the hair on the back of people’s necks, I exude calmness. I’m learning slowly how to deal with temper and anger, although it’s still a long road out. The issue is a double-edged sword, in that I cannot deal with it as I once did, burying the emotion and ignoring its presence. That approach ended badly. However, I can’t continually let this daimon roam free, now that I have acknowledged it. And that’s where I’ve been for a year or so, wrestling and sucker punching the crap out of this ally (and vice versa). C’est la vie.
I’m not sure where it all goes from here, but I know that it would be out of character for me to stop looking for new opportunity. Vigilance is the cost of opportunity, I suppose.
Dinner and Conversation
My sister came for dinner tonight. It is refreshing not having to worry about food. She eats vegetarian for the most part, so there is no awkwardness at choosing meals. Dinner was quite good, and I was so inspired by having a living breathing guest over that I made an apple pear crisp for desert. It came out beautifully. Have I ever mentioned that I love to cook for people? It was great fun. Conversation swung in wide bi-polar sweeps from topic to topic and kept us laughing and the children completely appalled. It was a very successful dinner. It struck me how much has changed with my sister. The last time she came for dinner she was not nearly as relaxed. Much of what was said seemed to be her giving herself reminders as to who she was becoming. She seems to be coming to terms with herself as a human being instead of trying to force herself into a model that is not designed for living in. It makes me so happy to see.
One of the greatest discoveries I ever made in my life has to be that people judge you based on your actual actions, not what you want to do, wish you did, or fantasized about doing. In part this was important because I am not internally the nicest of people. However, what I am naturally inclined to do is rarely what I do because it would be problematic. I used to believe that this meant that I was not being true to myself and my own nature. I realized that this was not true when I learned the difference between what I want right now and what I want long term. The other reason this was an important discovery for me is that it allows me to realize that my actions are how I should judge myself. I may really want to choke the dumb person that is irritating me, however the fact that I do not, means I am a fairly decent human being.
Why is this relevant to having dinner with my sister? I think she has made this discovery. She seems to like herself better for it. This also makes me happy. I think liking you for who you are is way better than liking yourself for who you are hoping to become in order to fit your preconceived idea about what makes a good person. It also is important because it brings about a type of honesty that allows my sister and I to connect. We are both the byproduct of a rather strange and crazy family, so we tend to be bent in similar ways. For the first time this gave the two of us much delight. We also made a pact, that if either of us began to act like our dad; the other of us would just shoot the offender and put them out of everyone’s misery. I think that all who knew my father would agree this is important.
All in all, it was a good time. We are hoping to do it again soon. This largely depends on one of us not being flakey and forgetting to remind the other not to forget. Scary, sad, but also true.
This is what my brain looks like…
Pinwheel Forest
Dreamt I was walking down a path through a forest. The trees were all giant pinwheels on pink stems. The breeze had them spinning lazily casting dancing brilliance across the path. As I continued on I could hear pine needles crunching underfoot. Then the wind picked up and the whirring became a surreal keening. The day heated up and the smell of hot plastic coated my mouth. The heat began to cause the pinwheel stems to bend under the weight of the tops. I began to run, choking on the smell. The tops came closer to head level. I ran.
