I sit, quiet and still. I wonder not. I sit and welcome in the lines of dark branches. They sway entangled with each other against the gray of a sky that knew both night and snow.
I sit and sway, quiet. I have drunk in the stillness of the shaded pond and have become. Life swimming, swirling, snogging below the surface within me. But I remain still. And think of it not.
I live and sway, quiet. I need not. Not of things, not of thoughts, not of what has passed nor possibilities.
Stillness
Do you negotiate with yourself? Make deals? Body, if you do this, I’ll give you that?
As if we’re somehow separate creatures. Though then again, with our component thinking, feeling, being parts, we kind of are separate creatures sharing one poor out-of-luck body.
But I digress.
Since I can’t wait for you to respond, I will continue as if you had agreed with me (oh, suddenly the megalomania of it! Love it! In my head you are all suddenly puppets and I’m in charge! Oh, shit. I’m in charge? I don’t want to be in charge! Don’t you dare be my puppets. You had better all be free thinkers evaluating your own perspective of my ramblings. If you’re not, I’ll, I’ll…make faces at you and be most disappointed.) Where was I?
Oh, yes, so I negotiate with myself. This week was about food. My knee still isn’t up to snuff and there have been many opportunities for lovely eating extravaganzas. It’s a simple equation and it wasn’t working in my favour.
So I started negotiating with my body about this sugary, fatty food habit and how for the health of all of us it really needed to slow down.
Can you guess how that went? Exactly, body snickered in my general direction and flipped me the bird.
But here’s the trick, I didn’t tell the body what I wanted and walk away thinking that it would magically listen to me and do what I say. And I didn’t ignore the insults and walk away.
I sat down with me and let me emote all over the place. I asked myself the question of why I wanted the food.
And then I FELT the answer. I don’t know about yours, but my body doesn’t talk in words. It talks in desires and emotions and feelings.
How did it feel about my healthy food plan? Pretty fucking pissed. How dare I simply assume that giving up the tasty treats was okay? Don’t I know that it likes the extra weight?
Do you? I asked. Why do you feel that way? And do you remember how it felt when we were in shape? That the workouts were hard, but how good it was afterwards?
A very reluctant agreement. Further exploration of feelings and needs and desires. Slightly better agreement.
It’s an on-going discussion. But isn’t that the way it should be? A shared multi-level experience of living.
Happy negotiating!
~Abysmal Witch
Okay, yes, I’m a little slow, but hey, I have at least one silly story and some fun pictures to share. Like this one
It was a fabulous night. I and my covenmate got together early in the day, where early still means afternoon. After all, I’m just not that much of a morning person. Our first stop of the night was to pick up meal, snack and mead provisions.
I will say now, the mead didn’t make it. It was my first attempt. Our eyes glistened with sadness. It was horrible.
Okay, phew, got that hard part over with.
While most of what we did I won’t be sharing (sshhhh, it’s a coven secret LOL really most of it was only interesting to us), the start of the night was sharably entertaining.
As twilight fell we attempted to leave my apartment to go visit Grandma Willow and do our first ritual of the night. Yes, attempted to leave. We were a tad inebriated. It was fabulous, don’t get me wrong, but it led to a few false starts. But I’m slightly ahead of myself.
We bundled up, all nice and cozy and warm for an evening of walking. I’ve got my long, black wool diva coat on (others have described it that way, it’s not my own label! lol), my Wicked (TM) witch hat (I adored that musical) on and some funky make-up. My covenmate was in her robes. We’re headed out the door and as we walk through it I commented “You know, for most people it’s come as you aren’t night.”
It took her a second and then we were both laughing. She made a fabulously witty comeback which I’m so ashamed to say escapes me now and we headed to the elevator.
But shit! We’d forgotten the offering of mead. Back in we went, filled a small tupperware container with some mead which went into my coat pocket since neither of us were carrying a bag and then we were back at the door. I looked at her, at the door, and what did I say? “You know, for most people it’s come as you aren’t night.” We both snicker as she says her fabulously witty comeback and head back to the elevator.
Ah, crap. No gloves. The giggling has already started as we head back through my front door. I’m falling over as we get back to the door, gloves in hand and I have to say “You know, for most people <snicker> it’s come <snort> as you aren’t night.” My covenmate can barely talk as she gets our her rebuttal and we flee to the elevator.
We’re at the elevator and I have that horrible moment, “You know, I forgot–”
“Don’t even say it.”
We didn’t go back again. I don’t think we could have lived through it. We wouldn’t have been able to breathe.
Out the door and off to Grandma Willow (yes, the same one in my Grandma Willow post). Unfortunately, the lid came off the tupperware and by the time we arrived we only had half of the offering left to give. And I spent the rest of the night reeking like an English pub. Made me thirsty. From there we went on a meandering walk back to my place, through the side streets filled with trick-or-treating kids and decorated houses.
And a lot of people with little dogs.
Every time I saw one of those, I cried out “Damn you, Toto! It was your fault! I know it was.” That made for a lot of laughter on my side and on theirs. The dogs didn’t seem to care.
On one house there was a large video screen stretched out from the balcony railing to roof playing The Blob, entertaining the adults while the kids went up to the house.
We passed a particularly friendly fellow and I insisted that my covenmate get her picture taken with him.
There was this one apartment building near my place where a group of residents had gotten together and done a wonderful set up in their front lawn. Though the best part was the very movie style zombie wandering up to two blocks away who would come towards you with brain stealing intensions clearly written on his empty face.
And my final picture for you is of the “Smash Me” pumpkin. I can’t help but wonder, did it survive the night? What do you think? What are the odds?
We spent some time in a coffee shop chatting about all kinds of wonderful things and then it was back home to cook dinner for us and the anscestors and watch some Halloween classics: the original Halloween and Wizard of Oz. In and amongst that was more ritual. What more can be said than:
Happy New Year to all! And to all a Good Night.
~The Abysmal Witch
Ah, the joys of obsession. You know them, don’t you? When you start a project and in your head you’re thinking ‘this is cool, this project of mine, I’ll have fun with it’.
Do you know what those phrases have in common?
They all presume that ‘I’ am in control of the process.
HA!
I should know better. I have cats after all. The illusion of control is one that has been repeatedly stripped from me but still, hope lingers. And it lingered in the taking on of the NaNoWriMo challenge. My fiction persona, Samantha Herne, has taken over my life and it’s been write write write all the time. As I type that I feel a little bit like the Mad Hatter.
That brings me comfort. Which just goes to show that my world is a strange one.
But as disruptive as such obsessions are, I do believe there is something good in them. There is a freeing, a releasing in giving yourself over completely to something you love. With caveats of course for things like eating, sleeping and not killing or torturing people. Well, live people. I write fiction so tormenting people is something that I’m required to do. Muwhahahaha. Oh, sorry, outside cackle.
Regardless, I will be attempting to stay in better contact. Because I know I’ve been a bad blogger and I will attempt to rectify that.
Abysmal Witch, out.