life – The Abysmal Witch

Things can change in an instant…but mostly they stay the same

Or change really, really slowly.

I nearly died today. One of those moments that happens periodically, when you feel the brush of death closer than usual. Not the slow caress of death from bad habits or long-term illness, but the flirtatious goosing from a near miss.

I was out for a walk, headed to a favourite park that requires walking past some major intersections. Please note that I was wearing a purple jacket, orange and black socks, and green laces on my shoes. Really, I was a jokeresque symphony of colours. Not exactly blending into the background. I have proof, check the picture. The pic is from after the rain (and thus my drowned cat impression) but at the time of this story, the rain had yet to start so visibility was perfect.

I had already started to walk across the street, cheerfully following the instructions of the little glowing white man on the pole across from me. That’s when a truck decided to run the now ended left turn advance signal. Thankfully, the person he cut off honked. I say thankfully because that’s why I looked up and paused and waited for the idiot to pass me by with a couple of feet to spare.

If I hadn’t paused, at minimum he would have clipped me but most likely I would have been perfectly aligned under his right wheel as he hit me.

He noticed me about ten feet past where he would have run over me.

I shared a bewildered head shake and shoulder shrug with the woman in the car beside the crosswalk. Idiots. What can you do?

Life can change like that, one instant to the next. Boom. Crash. Bang. (Anyone else remember that Roxette song? Well, Crash Boom Bang technically.) And all of our life can be gone, all those unique memories disappeared into shmutz on a road. We are ephemeral by definition of our lives. It pays to remember this, at least now and again.

Naturally I kept on walking. Because what else do we do? My life hadn’t actually changed. No broken bones, no death, might as well keep to my purpose. My thoughts churned around the importance of life and all of those typical things and then, as we tend to do, the moment passed and I was back in the musings I’d started with.

About a week before I’d done the same walk with friends. On that walk I came across some banana peels that demanded I take their pictures. Hey, it was my birthday weekend, I didn’t say I was sober during this walk! lol. Here are those banana peel portraits: Banana in Puddle and Banana with Bag.

So here I am a week later, on essentially the same walk, and what do I see?

Oh, banana, poor poor banana. Slowly fading into the past. As most of us do. Most of life doesn’t change in that quick instant, that lightening strike of a car. Most change is slow, changes coming in small bits, microbes eating away at who and what we are until we oh so slowly decay from living until death unto dirt.

Thankfully, it is slow! Meaning there is so much time to enjoy the moments, large and small, crazy and plain, thunderous and whisper soft.

Those goosings from death are a chance to take the appreciation for everything else a little deeper into ourselves. I know this in my head but it’s my heart that needed the reminder.

Time to go live some life. Because what is fed, grows.

Blessings of the deep and wild to you all.

Saturn,
The Abysmal Witch.

Discombobulation…and closet re-orgs.

Do you ever feel that way? Just discombobulated in everything. Things not fitting together in quite the right way.

Oh, the majority of my pieces of things have been really great. No, seriously, aside from when I want to kill him, having my partner move in with me has been a fabulous thing (if you had asked me last year if I would be living with someone the following year I would have snorted my kahlua and chocolate milk all over you); my job has changed which has brought challenges both interesting and painful; my coven has changed which has been unadulterated goodness. Despite my partner being a foodie, I’ve kept my body in the shape that makes me happy. There are two new (1 as of yesterday!) slithery bodies in the house (we now have a ball python, a desert king and a corn snake). I’ve started dancing again in small doses. I can feel the magic around me, swirling, pulling, daring.

So many different pieces, trying to get them to align in the best way possible, to find my way in my severely changing world order has been interesting. And a challenge. And while that is mostly under control, it has left me with a sense of not really knowing where from here.

I mean, sure, you’d think that I’d just settle in, that I would savour getting everything resolved and organized (we got the last of the boxes unpacked yesterday).

Apparently not quite.

Oh, I’m savouring. Hell yeah! But how will this all work going forward? The most wonderful option would be if it would all just work out with no effort and no planning.

Ha!

That’s what the universe says to that. Or I say to the universe. Depends on the day.

Today I feel somewhat combobulated. It makes a nice change but I don’t trust it. It could easily just slip away into the dis and I get left once more floating in a sea of not-necessarily-articulated options and pulls. Pulls being our interests, desires, wants and needs.

Hmmm, I wonder if this is what a closet or drawer feels like when you pull or dump everything out of it, sort through it all and then start working on getting it all back in, minus a few pieces, perhaps with space for a few (planned?) new items, and everything hopefully making more sense as you put it back into a probably re-configured space. I think I’m at the contemplating parts going back in and where the best places are for things and what will get left out and what kind of space will be left over for the other important things that I’ve wanted to put into it but never had the room for.

It’s an interesting time. I really want my “closet” re-org finished. I’d like to move on to other things, thank you very much, Universe. Just saying.

Deep and wild blessings to one, to all, and to you in particular.

~Saturn

~The Abysmal Witch

It’s Your Life

It is, you know. Just yours. No one else’s.

You decide when to get up and when to sleep (don’t try that “I have to get up for work” shyte on me because working is still a choice, making it your decision ultimately to get up.)

You decide who to love.

And who to hate. (You may be influenced by other people, but your emotions belong to you, and no one else.)

You own your life. All of it. Every scrappy, crappy, happy piece of it.

So sink your hands into it! Go deep, into the wrists, the elbow, the armpits. Sink down deep into your own life and wrap it around you like the smoothest fabric, the softest embrace, the best, most tangled, wrapped up, caught up, cuddled up enfolding of yourself into yourself.

Take hold so deep, so hard, that no one can ever separate you from yourself again.

Grab hold of your life and love it, hate it, feel it, share it, f*ck it, dream it, OWN it.

It’s yours.

Not your friends’. Not your parents’ or your family’s. Not your boss’s and not even your kids’, pets’ or fern’s. It’s bloody well yours.

And absolutely no one can tell you otherwise.

Not even yourself.

You can try and toss away your life, your responsibility, your choices and decisions but in the end such actions always fail because no one owns your life but you.

Which means no one can ever take it away from you.

It’s your life.

Live strong.

~Abysmal Witch

The Meaning of Life

Apparently I had me a smarty sounding moment back in 2004. My boss was having a bad day and I guess he’d been muttering about what was the meaning of life, anyway. Apparently I decided to answer that in a note I left him at the end of the day. While sorting out some papers today I found that explanation and can’t resist sharing it:

The question “what is the meaning of life” is inherently misleading. It asks for a quantifiable and descriptive quality to be applied to something that is by its very nature existing in realms that exist beyond the scope covered by our limited concepts of verbal communication. It is a question of the same ilk as the mind/body problem or the nature of deity – these are questions that we want to answer the way we have been taught is proper through our western education, with formulae and charts and explanations that can be graded.

Yet life extends into dimensions we have barely started to be aware of and possibly beyond that thereby confounding any such attempt. We have not yet been able to fully define life and so long as that definition eludes us, so will a definition of its meaning.

However, should we attempt to contemplate the mystery of life, we start to see spiralling and cycling possibilities of interconnectedness that hint at an inherent goodness (i.e. positiveness) that exists within the act of living. At a most basic level, it can be said that there is meant to be life because life exists, on a par with saying that there is a universe because the universe exists.

But it is likely that the scope of the question being posed is of a far more narrow view: what is the meaning of life for me living s a human being in this world at this time? A ‘why do I exist’ style of question rather than why do any of us exist. This type of question is often interpreted as the seeking of purpose, a questing on the part of our human spirit that needs to feel useful in order to be satisfied in its current situation. Typically this type of seeker is not satisfied by the type of answer that is a fall out from the previous category of question: that s/he is alive because the universe is a living, changing organism composed of a multitude of living creatures, being and experiencing, of which s/he is a part, that her/his life is simply (though necessarily) another strand in the wonderfully complex weaving of what is.

So what answer would satisfy?

Would only a quantifiable answer, one that can be described and labelled and fulfilled be acceptable?

Because when a purpose can be fulfilled, there is a meaning in that, something that only that person can do. To say the purpose is to live, continue life through the creation of offspring and die, often seems hollow, lacking in a fullness of answer that was hoped for. Truly, any interchangeable answer seems to be lacking for this seeker and that leads to the possible conclusion that s/he is in actuality looking for validation for their own existence, a comforting pat on the shoulder confirming that they are special, unique and that without their existence in the here and now the universe would not exist (either as a statement full stop, in the way it is ‘meant’ to exist, or simply not as it does now).

And for those seekers, my answer is that they are entitled to that pat on the shoulder for if they were not living their unique life as they are now in this moment and in this place, this universe (even though in which of the three aspects I cannot say) would not exist. 🙂

Life is Good – Savour it when tasty

You know those moments, right? When you stop whatever you’re doing for a mental check in and just feel *good*.

And it’s not necessarily about anything in particular. In fact, there may be a shit storm flying through your world, but right in that moment, in that centeredness of being, you feel and remember that life is good to live.

Okay, sure, there may be a few sweat-induced endorphins helping to inspire the sensation <ah-hem> but still, isn’t it great to be alive? To know people? To see the sunset? To experience and taste and touch and giggle and shiver and feel so in love with life that your heart is going to explode with the joy of it all?

And if this sounds like over the top hooey to you, have you thought about how cool it would be to share my ecstatic/joyful/just-plain-satisfied sense of being? You know you wannnnna.

Dance with some favourite music, smell some good smelling flowers, eat your favourite fruit, touch your skin with your favourite fabric (or person if they’re handy) and realize how damn good it is to be alive.

Booya!

Blurry

When time moves too quickly, when everything is a rush of move-move-move do-do-do run-run-run, life becomes a blur.

Focus is lost.

Details are smudged and become simply part of the background.

But isn’t life in the details?

Feeling alive happens in the moment.

The sharpest, most intense memories are those moments we were present for. I remember the feel of the lounger under me when we were in Mexico, the feel of the sun on my back, the wind in the few trees that provided some shade, even a hint of smell in the air. Because I was present for it. There was nowhere else I was thinking of being, no thoughts of other things to do that stole me away from that moment. I was there, present, engaged in my own life. I could list many such memories. I hope you can too.

It’s easy to avoid the things we don’t enjoy just by not being present for them. And that’s okay. But sometimes life just gets on a fast track of ‘need-to-get-things-done’ and we forget to breathe, to look around, to pay attention to the details.

That’s been my life for the last week. Two weeks? I’m not even sure how long it’s been because it’s become that blurry.

There’s still things to get done but I think it’s time to start taking time out. Periodically slow down. Take a deep breath.

Pause.

Live.