Saturn – Page 2 – The Abysmal Witch

I am a delicate flower

I am raw.
My edges bruise at the faintest touch
Like a peach balanced at the edge of over ripe
Each difficulty
Each push back
Each slight murmur of error
And I am burnt with shame
Enfolded in fear
Lost in doubt
With just a soupçon of rage underlying it all

I seek bold
Fearless
UNSTOPPABLE (I’m looking at you t-rex)

These states run from me
Faster than I can chase
Or even see
And I am touched
By disquiet, disturbance, distrust
Failure looms not (not truly, not in this moment)
Yet is is my sword of Damocles
I am cursed by its weight
“I’m not touching you”
It says like an eight year old in the throes of being eight
And as unignorable
I can think of nothing else
I consider tossing away my Work
Easier to do that than live with fear
Easier to do nothing than be bound
By anxiety never-ending

I am a delicate flower
Without the luxury of living safe

I am a delicate flower and I am afraid.

I don’t know.

I don’t know how to feel. How to bring my emotions up to the level of my awareness and breathe them out.

I don’t know what I feel. Am I anxious? Stressed? Hurt? Angry? There is a mishmash of emotions and all of them edged but not as much as in the recent past. There are things gnawing at me, mild distress over choices made that apparently went wrong, feeling judged, feeling wrong.

I don’t know if I’m wrong or right. Where do my actions sit on the appropriate line? Does it even matter? Probably not. It isn’t a global catastrophe or even a localized one. Just a sense of unsettled and unright. Which is not the same as wrong.

I don’t know if there’s anything more to do. Should I do more? Should I care? Should I do less?

Should I walk away?

How do I put down the little worries? How do I put down the second guessing? How do I walk away from the endless considerations of possibilities?

I don’t know.

And that, Dear Self, is living.

Rain

Rain pours down upon me
Riddling my soul with echoes
Drops and songs of delight
And despair
Fat, thumping statements
Of shedding
Of wringing out the overfull
And overflowing
Sponge of me
There is only one rain
One fall
One drop
It touches my tongue
I remember the summer
The pine riddled flavour
The past
Now gone
Washed away
In a torrent of individual drops
Beating through my denial
My rage
My refusal until
My drops fall into the sky
And I am rain
Falling upon my soul
Nourishing
Refreshing
Releasing
Pounding
Screaming mouth agape
Until I drown
And wake up
Now

Leylines in the House!

You know I typed the title with that announcer/over the top party voice, right?

Have you ever gotten tipsy and contemplated magick? That’s what I thought. Well, during one of those moments for me I was contemplating leylines, you know, the flow of energy in the planet. Rather like veins of power running through the earth. Mostly thin, sometimes thick, sometimes clustering into a nexus which becomes a place of power.

Think Stonehenge. Or other old pagan sites. Or really any place where your hair stands on edge just because you set foot into it. Places of power. Places where power congregates. Like a river fed lake where the water pools in one particular place before moving out again. (Thinking of it as having water coming in and out regularly works better as esoteric energy not moving tends to get a bit thick and unwieldly.)

These veins tend to travel through natural channels for the planet. Like a well established river, they tend not to move around much in their path unless there is cause to do so. And like rivers, they flow, continually. Or perhaps electrical lines would be a better analogy. Regardless, you get the idea.

So there I am, a tad in my cups (I make mead, after all, so in my cups is a good, tasty, honey-rich thing) and thinking about the natural flow of energy. And then about the flow of energy in my home.

Leylines in the House!

C’mon, that time you surely heard it in that special announcey voice?

Okay, they aren’t leylines in the classical sense, but there are lines, flows of energy in our homes. Feng shui is, to my understanding as I have not studied it at all, in essence dealing with this flow. We are living beings moving repeatedly in spaces that have purpose. This leads to energy build up and energy grooves as in paths the energy likes to take.

Which leads to interesting thoughts and a way to evaluate, magically speaking, our homes. Where does the energy flow easily in my home? Where does it snag, caught up on shape or form or intention? Are there places that let the energy slip through to easily? If I’m creating defensive magicks, how do I use the setup of my things and my space to create distractions and disruptions for anything attempting to find me and/or come into my space?

Where don’t I like to be in my own home? What lingers in that space? Is it an item there or the flow itself that bothers me?

Can I feel the energy in my own home?

This is not an idle question. Just like we are the last ones to usually smell our own funk, it can be difficult to feel the energy in our home spaces precisely because they are home and thus, by definition and expectation, we spend a lot of time there. It is utterly and deeply familiar to us and so harder to feel. Yet surely, of all places, this is the energy we want to know best AND it’s the place energy we can most easily effect.

When we set our belongings in places we create effect, when we clean we create effect, when we move through and use our space we create effect. As in impact on the energy of our homes and how it moves.

I invite you to also think on that the next time you’re tipsy or even just plain upright and contemplative. Do you know the lines of energy in your own home? How they flow, where they pool, where they are clean and where they are clogged. From that place of knowledge you stand ready to change anything you will to.

The choice and thus the power is yours.

Violet
~The Abysmal Witch

Life Lessons from Pus

There shall be no pictures with this post. You’re welcome.

It can be entertaining (or interesting, or not, depending on your viewpoint) what inspires insight some days. Life is a fetid ground of putrid lessons waiting to be realized.

Some lessons are shockingly new, some are deeper explorations of something previously realized, and some lessons are graphic reminders of things already known.

This was one of those last ones.

I have had this spot on my upper, outer left thigh for years. Where spot = cyst. (A cyst is “in the body, a membranous sac or cavity of abnormal character containing fluid”, so basically a zit turned inwards that has set up home and hollowed out its own zit-cave.)

It has resisted all attempts to drain it. Okay, the efforts were grrr, stupid lump, apply squeezing pressure on either side and……nope, nothing came out.

Well, a week ago I got a tad testy and decided enough was enough. WARNING: upcoming content gets technically graphic. DISCLAIMER: this was not a wise way of handing it, but I am not always wise particularly when I am (failing at) dealing with emotional things and then allow those emotions to attack a weird problem such as this old damn cyst.

So I took a push pin to it to create a channel, shall we say, between the gunk inside and the world outside.

Tunnel created, I squeezed some more.

Nada.

GRRRR! ARRR!

Sigh.

Okay, whatever. Do I care? No. Heh. I’ll show you cyst, I’ll show you by not caring. Nahnahbllttthht. (In case you haven’t realized yet, this is a story of emotions, told through the smelly weirdnesses of body mechanics.)

Days go by. The spot reddens. Great, infection?

Well, not seriously, no (though it would have served me right given how I went about things), but it did get a classic “white-head” style of zitness happening.

So I exorcised that demon. The power of pressure compels you! The power of pressure compels you!

And ick came out. Old ick. Ick that had turned into curled lumps of thick goo that smelled like the worst, most pungent cheese gone wrong. (Yes, I smell the weird shit that comes out of my body, don’t you?) Pressure was applied until the blood flowed clear and free. Mwuhahahaha. Ahem.

Now proper healing has started. I may end up with a pockmark there (that tends to happen when the tissue becomes so used to a ‘foreign’ lump that its removal leaves behind a hole that does not fill) but the lump will be gone (I hope). The lingering embedded ick is gone.

Emotionally I have had, and bet most of you have as well, these cyst-like lumps inside me. Pockets of pain, misery, hatred, fear, that have balled up and walled themselves up inside of me. They have become part of my psyche, so ingrained that I rarely notice their presence. And when I do, and I try to do something about them, I am unsurprised when nothing changes.

Just this past week, I took one of those emotional cysts that I had previously lanced (the technical term for sticking the pokey thing into the ball of ick to release it into the world). It had become more noticeable of late, stirred up, connected back more directly to the “outer” world of my consciousness. So I applied pressure to it. Release happened.

And just like the wound on my leg, I will need to care for that tender place inside, make sure it heals well and cleanly, that it doesn’t fill back up with ick but remains clear, empty of what had been there. With emotional wounds it is helpful to pack them (i.e. put something healing into the empty space that was created with the lancing and draining) with something supportive and healing.

I am not recommending that everyone go out and lance their emotional cysts. Instead, realize that it is an option that exists and there are ways and better ways of doing it to make sure you end up better off than you were before. (I could have ended up with a serious infection given that I didn’t disinfect that pushpin; sometimes my foolishness knows no bounds.)

I have to say, getting that old crap out of me was intensely satisfying.

~Violet
The Abysmal Witch

More than Words…Looks, too!

Holey socks, Batman, I’ve gone and done a thing!

This is the thing: VIDEO!

That’s right, I’m on YouTube. Holey socks. Now you can see me as well as listen to me or read me. You know what I mean.

I’ve been planning this for awhile. My opinions are being let out now in a more personal and direct way, you can see me while I say them! Pennies will continue, though likely as randomly (slightly more frequently) as the past couple of years. Only now I will also be doing shorter video clips.

The channel is called “A Witch’s Perspective“. My first video is up and sadly, oddly and determinately it is on the upcoming Canadian election on October 19, 2015. Vote, people. That’s our power and we need to take hold of it.

Vote.

And watch me in the future on A Witch’s Perspective.

Violet
~The Abysmal Witch

Wait, did she just say Violet? Why yes, yes I did.

After Facebook screwed me over with their “authentic name” policy, I decided to embrace something I’ve been pushed (i.e. by the Universe) to for awhile. I remain Saturn, but more privately. I am now ball’s out, in the world with my legal name, doing what I do, loving what I love. I remain the Abysmal Witch, always. This is just a little first name switch. And you can still call me Saturn. I’m flexible that way. 😀

It’s the Shreddy Things!

This is a post on the little changes in life that make big Big BIG effects.

I am the proud, new owner of a shredder! Can one be proud of being a shredder owner? I suppose technically yes, and yet it seems like such an odd thing to be proud of. To be honest, though, I do not think it is the shredder so much as what the shredder does for me.

I am FREE!

Free! of the relentless influx of paper that the modern world says should be destroyed, not just thrown out, in order to protect our identities and our poor, little funds of money from being stripped from us.

For the past several years I have cast my old receipts and bank statements and other personal data pieces of paper into my composting worm bin.

Except.

I really suck at looking after my worms. I don’t cook consistently enough–no, well, yes, but no. That is a truth, but not the main truth of why I and a worm bin are not good friends. The truth is, I do not enjoy worm composting. It (and I’m sad to say this) squicks me. I have to overcome internal reluctance every single time I use it. I did so for two years. And now, now I come to a different conclusion.

I’m letting shit go.

(You should really check out the source of this picture. Seriously, just when you think life can’t get weirder you find that Unicef has done ads to encourage children in Indian to not poo in public. All power to them, it’s a good thing to encourage, but still, odd. And the ads themselves…..)

Let it go. I’m letting it go. Letting the shit go, which means the worms go, even though they makes fabulous dirt.

The worms will find a new home shortly. But my receipts, they had already clogged up my “to be shredded folder” and my purse and all other such receipt and personal data sheet places.

Now muwahhahahaha there is a shredder. It is on my kitchen counter, in the corner, just inside my front door. Which means that I can divest myself of unneeded receipts the moment I walk through my door. WOOT!!!!!

(I record all of my purchases at the time of purchase on my phone with an app called CashTrails so I have already a record of what I’ve spent and thus have zero need for those little annoying strips of paper).

I have found a new freedom. Freedom from the need to worry about something in the future. Freedom from an increasing “to-do” pile. Freedom from future action that can be resolved in the moment with almost no effort.

Life is good.

And do you know what I did with my first pile of shredded papers in several years? Check it out my previous blog post. 😀 The cats loved it.

Enjoy the little things, the shreddy things and all other little life hacks that bring a release of tension and thus another measure of inner calm. Every thimbleful is worth it.

Saturn
~The Abysmal Witch

Striped Socks, Recycling & Cats

Today has been a day of productivity, creativity and cute-ivity. I share with you a fun way to recycle with some extra recycling and cats. What a perfect combination!

As you have likely realized, I have a love of striped socks. So much so, that naturally said socks must eventually acquire holes. As I tend to have a random but vaguely-frequent-enough crazy and striped sock expansion program, there is not a lack of new socks to enjoy.

BUT my poor, well-serving old striped socks, to just throw them out is sad. Sad socks are sad. We don’t want sad socks. Or wastage when it isn’t necessary.

New life was found!

So simple, combine knee high socks, catnip and (in my case) shredded paper. I tied a knot at the ankle (so the catnip wouldn’t fall out the hole in the foot, of course), poured catnip into the sock, then shoved a bunch of shredded paper (ooooh, double-recycle whammy!) and more catnip into it until it had a good solid shape and size. Tied off the other end and voila!

I made a huggable, kickable, lickable new cat toy.

Cat approved:

Happy cat, happy witch. Happy Wednesday!

Saturn
~the Abysmal Witch

I know

I know that Venus is retrograde. She tugs on my emotions, upon the depths of my heart within my soul and spirit. The depths of old pains are risen up to the surface to demand their place in the moment, this moment, regardless of my wants or desires.

I know that I have had recent loss. I miss my baby-girl (cat), eighteen and a half years was not enough and though she slept all day and I wouldn’t see her for hours, she was there, always present now gone. Loss is in me, clear and supple in its freshness.

I know that August is an historically difficult month for me, for reasons even I don’t understand. Depression caws and calls and laughs bitter jokes at my expense, irrespective of what I think or what I do.

I know my fears about the success of my new career. Doubts abound, failure seemingly a looming danger growing with each week.

Knowing changes nothing on fear, knowing only allows a modicum of delusion, a dollop of superficial control over the emotion itself. It is dancing ants across the nape of my neck, cavorting in style over my not-yet-dead-corpse.

Knowing changes nothing. I sit and feel. Pain, sorrow, loss, fear, ragged shards pushing out from my core and piercing me, inside to out. I am jagged and fraught with danger even to myself, especially to myself.

Knowing the reasons for the feelings gives an entryway to deeper feeling, not less.

Knowing conveys an illusion of management.

Feelings will not be managed. They will not be kept or contained or bartered with no matter what parts of my soul I offer in return.

What wouldn’t we give to not feel pain?

I am submerged in the river of it and I would willingly drown if I knew that was the end of it.

But it isn’t. For the next minute continues and into the next. With all the attendant agonies crowding in for attention. Hungry children in a household without enough food. There is not enough of me left to feed them all and still be me at the end. Yet to ignore them, to deny them, to reject from them nourishment, is that truly better? They are, after all, me.

So I sit.

I hurt.

I fear.

I feel.

Hoping that the feeling will pass as a storm on the lake, leaving stillness, quiet, cleansing in its wake. Hoping the storm will pass and I remain recognizable after. Hoping the storm will pass.

~The Abysmal Witch

Reflections in Snot

This is my baby-girl. Chinook (for the wind, not the salmon). She was born February 2, 1997 and died August 2, 2015. That’s right, two days ago was her last day. The picture above was about 2 hours before her last breath. Those are the facts, the statements, the plainness of it. I am heart-broken as I knew I would be. And I have had a number of random thoughts in these last 48 hours.

We shall call these thoughts, Reflections in Snot, and here is why.

Reflections in snot. As I lay on my side on the balcony facing her on Sunday, when she was barely able to focus on anything, including me, when the purrs were gone though I know she still appreciated the touch, snot poured out of my nose. Perhaps someday I will try and draw what I saw. This rope of clear mucous dropping from seemingly midair (since we don’t really see our nose unless we focus on it) down to the grey floor of the balcony, making a thick, viscous, irregular puddle. That puddle reflected the railing and the jasmine, lines and patterns broken up and shifted into incomprehension. Chinook on the other side, my fingers touching her paw, sliding from her nose, down her back to her tail. She was done.

Reflection in snot. The time itself was surreal. I have been in a sense waiting for 3 years for this day to come. She’s been getting older and older, as we all do. Slowing down. Sleeping ridiculously. In the past week she’d been particularly slower. On the day of, I’d gone for a walk in nature, gathered my spirit and soul into calm balance, and thus prepared to do all that needed to be done, not allowing myself yet to recognize why this calming and centring was important, but doing it and knowing it was all the same. But none of this actually prepared me for the moment.

There is no preparing for the loss of a loved one.

There is no getting ready.

There is getting everything around ready. I knew what I would do with her body afterwards. I knew the costs of cremation and what I was going to do with that. I took aspirin before the crying headache really started. Had a quick shower as I was filthy after my nature walk. Forgot to eat. One should never forget to eat before heading into intense emotional turmoil. Note to self, remember for next intense emotional incident.

I had thought it through for years, knew her time was coming, reconciled myself to life afterwards. Or so I thought.

How will I get through life without this beautiful girl cuddled in my lap?

Reflections in snot. For more than 18 years she was my companion, in the fullness of the term. Was she my familiar? I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it. She didn’t help me in my direct magick, but she supported me through life in ways that I don’t even understand yet, that I won’t understand until I hit all the places where she is no longer there for me. She was an emotional bastion (heh) and touchstone of peace and love.

Reflections in snot. For more than 18 years she slept with me every night. Except for that one night when she was young and got outside onto the ground floor (she did that twice to me over her lifetime! but only once when I was asleep) and those few months when she let the boys (my other cats) take over the bed. If I had nothing else positive to say about my relationship with my ex-fiance, the fact that he brought her back to sleeping in bed with me would make it all worthwhile.

Reflections in snot. She was there every night. Curled up at my side. She would crawl into bed before me, giving me a glare if I took too long. And once I was settled she would move up the bed so that she could lie with her head on my hand or arm. We would stay that way for at least half an hour as I meditated. Sure it was awkward, but it made her happy and there were so many times during the day when I couldn’t just cuddle her as she wanted, so at night, in bed, I was all hers.

When I was ready to sleep, I would gently shift out from under her. When I was ready to roll over to the other side, I would give her a kiss on the forehead or paw before doing so.

Reflections in snot. Routines and patterns are the gems and cornerstones of relationships, where we blend into each other, fall towards each other instead of away. We had many such routines. Once everyone was settled on the bed, she would get up, eat and do other bodily function things, and then climb back into bed and into her spot. Whereupon, if I did not pet her at least three times, strongly, I would get the meows of reminder. At which point I would roll over and pet her strongly three times at least. Then roll back and fall asleep. Sometimes there was grumbling and muttering, but I’d always do it, otherwise, more meowing.

She had the most amazing belly, all white and fluffy and silky soft. She would lay splayed out as I stroked her from neck to navel, completely relaxed into me. Until she saw one of the boys. Sigh.

Reflections in snot. The amazing friend who drove me to the emergency vet (because of course this is happening on the sunday evening of a long weekend) suggested that as a good album name (the reflection in snot) for some kind of musical group. I don’t remember the type. My brain was more than a little addled. I should probably have eaten. My friend brought me food while I stayed with Chinook and the vet did the final injection. She was so far gone by then that it was hard to tell the difference. And while the last hours had all been driving us to this point, funnelling us down into the pure inescapable reality of this moment, it still couldn’t be real.

Reflections in snot. Whether I rejected the reality of it or not doesn’t seem to matter. She is not curled up at the foot of the bed. She is not stretched out on the balcony. She is not here. She will never be here again. I can cry and whimper and weep as much as I want about it but the reality doesn’t change. Because no matter how hard or long I look for her, I will never find her again. She is not lost. She is gone. And I remain.

Reflections in snot. I wondered briefly about waiting for her to die naturally. There was no question this was it. Absolutely none. Would it be kinder to let her pass on her own? I asked her. She was just done and ready to go. Only the stubborn activity of her heart and her lungs kept her going. And that was my answer.

I wondered afterwards, knowing that this was the gentlest, kindest thing I could do for her, to release her from the final pains, why we can’t find it in us to allow it for human beings. I know euthanasia is complicated and there’s no simple answer. But right now there is no answer. We are more generous and kind to our pets than to our fellow humans. Then again, this is no surprise.

Reflections in snot. All of the world out of order, lines twisted, angles shot to hell. I am so afraid of losing the sound of her meows. Did I really never capture that on video? Why the hell not? Oh, right, because it was fast and fleeting and in moments when there was no camera ready. I have to rely on my memory to hold her and my memory is horrible and so I know that she will inevitably fade out of my memory, her sweet sounds, her obnoxious cries, her downloads to her alien overlords. Gods, please, don’t let her fade from my memory, please don’t let me lose her again. Yet time, time is cruel, says Saturn, and to hold on too tightly will only change the memory from reality to a created something that isn’t her anyway. I will never hear her voice again. How is that even possible?

Reflections in snot. Have you seen the article about cat language? That they don’t speak to each other and vocalize just for our benefit? In essence, creating an individual language that is just between us and our cats? My boys have a couple of her “words” but an entire language died Sunday. Hers and mine. I am the sole possessor now and I’m afraid I never did speak it very well. Wrong type of vocal chords.

Reflections in snot. She will never be again. What we had together will never be again. Blatantly obvious right now as she was a cuddler and neither of the boys is. Maybe that will change a bit over the next couple of months but I doubt it. She would snuggle into my arms like a baby on her back and want nothing more than for me to rub her belly. Gone. How can she be gone? Just like that. One second to the next. With barely a sigh. It’s not real. And yet, there is nothing more real than her being gone. This is reality now. Now being all we have, from one second to the next. What was is gone. What is is different. Reconciling myself to that truth, that is the impossible part. Yet it will happen, whether I will it or not, for I continue.

Reflections in snot. The house is quiet. So much quieter. How did she have so much presence? She slept 23 hours a day. But it is silent now in here. The streets make noise, the boys act as they always have, but there is no more snoring from the corner. There is no more obnoxious crying while I’m teaching “Don’t worry, she’s not dying,” I have said to so many clients over the past year while teaching from home. Except Sunday she did. The silence echoes and rings. I embrace the silence in a new way, listening for her and feeling heartbroken when nothing comes back.

Reflections in snot. My bed is empty when I crawl into it. I have never been married, have only lived with someone for less than a year. But I have had a bed companion for nearly 19 years. 19 years! Longer than many marriages, I’d bet. Every night (minus those exceptions mentioned above), cuddled up to each other, or not. Loving each other, or sometimes angry. Then love again. She has been the constant companion of my adult life. I told her it was okay, that I was going to be okay, that she could go when she wanted, when she was ready. And I know that it is true, and I will be okay, and I will continue, because it is what you do.

Reflections in snot. I covered my tv with a cloth yesterday. I have always been frustrated with the ease with which I avoid life and what I think I want to do by drowning myself in movies and the internet. Unfortunately, there is work to be done on this computer so putting a cloth over it doesn’t work. But I have put the cloth over the tv, because if I really want to watch it, I can. But in the meantime, there are other things to do. There were times I rejected her attention because I was too caught up in myself, my frustrations, wanting to be comfortable while I watched another youtube video. For her, for me, I want to put an end to that. Though I suspect that may fade with the same regret as memories of her. Dammit.

Reflections in snot. Grief is so very personal, as all pain is. Our joys take us outward but our pains draw us in. I have witnessed many people experience loss just like this or worse in the past year but it didn’t feel like this. I was on the outside. And no one will feel this loss as I do, for everyone else is on the outside. We can never fully experience another’s grief. We can let ourselves fully experience our own. But it’s hard. Hard to sit with emptiness with sharp edges, the perfect completing puzzle piece of my heart taken out and gone. She is now memory and the memory of love and that will have to be enough.

Reflections in snot. There has been a magical turning for me in the past week and a half. A new commitment, a deeper sacrifice and pledge of all that I am to what the Gods ask of me. I had wondered, now that I had put myself so fully into Their hands, if that would change something for her. The transition ends this coming Friday. It’s hard not to find it related. She’s been growing slower for so long that I honestly believed it could be years more before she actually died. Had said that but a week before. Yet here we are. Heartbroken. Lying on the balcony making a puddle of snot and enjoying the last sunbeams.

I’m glad you got so much sunbathing in these past months, baby-girl. I remember the first time you found a sunbeam. You looked like you had found nirvana. I hope you are held in such warmth, love and joy now. I will miss you beyond words, beyond stories, beyond the stretched and aching breadth of my heart and my soul. I am so grateful to have had you in my life. I know that I will continue without you. But I wish you were here, just the same. Curling up with me, purring as I rub your belly, grooming me until I literally cannot stand it anymore and make you stop (though you always tried to get at least one more lick in). You were love. You will always be my love.

Saturn.