Cleaning! Cleaning?

Yes, I’ve been cleaning.  This is not what I would call a typical thing for this witch. Or even a happy thing.  Now I would say that it is a good thing.  A clean home is a wonderful thing and the first thing we do when casting a magical circle is to cleanse the space, but yet, cleaning, it’s a torturous and evil thing.

And yet, here I am, on a lovely, if rainy, Saturday afternoon, cleaning.  And considering it a good thing. Of course, my intention and my great moving forward and getting things done attitude has been slowed by my slipping into the internet world and writing this post.

Hmmmm, suggests a certain discrepency between my stated intention for the day and my actions, doesn’t it?  And that would be my signal to get back at it.

And I am.  Getting back at it, that is.  Yes, yes I am.  Can’t you tell?

I really am!

Right this second, even.

Well, right after I post this.

And this, dear friends, is what procrastination looks like in written form….

Getting older

I’m sitting here, updating my facebook status and very proudly stating how much I am looking forward to staying home tonight.  And eventually the thought kicks in:  when the Hel did I start looking forward to staying in at night instead of going out?!?!?  How old am I?

Okay, sure, there’s the difference of having my own home that I adore rather than living at my parent’s place, that’s certainly a…what’s the opposite of deterent?…an incentive for staying home, or at least in a certain way a distinct invitation.  But it’s not like when I moved in here I suddenly spent every night at home.

Have I gotten too old?  I mean, I know I can’t drink the way I used to – on the up side, it takes very little to make me happy so there’s no need to.  But I know I don’t like staying up until 4 in the morning, not as a rule anymore.  Perhaps I am getting too old.

Or maybe it’s just the overwhelming busyness of the rest of living, having to be out and about and doing so very much of the time, that getting the opportunity to relax at home with a book or a movie and a cuddle (with cat or man, either way or preferably both) has become the unusual and therefore strongly appealing desire.

Or maybe I’m just trying to find excuses for turning into a fuddy duddy.

Sigh.  It’s probably the last point.  Where’s my cane?

Fire dozing

The end of a long day, the tension of too much history and too much pain and too many turns just wrong enough that the feeling is that of being lost in the woods even though the road is quite visible still through the trees.  All of it sitting in the belly, solid and weighty, very separate from the marvelous meal that rests in the official part of the stomach.

Distraction calls with its usual voice.  So long as we keep dancing with the flow of constant information, there will be no need to rest deep inside with the fear and the pain.

The fire is lit.

I start the music and by will and choice stretch myself out before it.  Warmth envelops me but I do not relax.  Or do I?  I drop the distractions and settle into my stillness.

The fire calls, pops and sings to me.  Not to get my attention, but purely to savour its own ravenous existence.  It will consume everything until it dies.

And it does not care.  It is enough that it will be for as long as the wood shall last for in that time it will be fully satisfied in its consumption.

Warmth reaches out to me just as I crave it to do.  But as of yet I would not beg for it.  Not yet, not quite.

And there I lie, basking in its warmth, looking into its depths, hearing it murmur to itself without any interest in my existence whatsoever.  And I glory in its indifference.  And I start to doze.  Lulled by its heat, by its fast progression of life, by its beauty, into a place of rest.

In the deep warmth of the fire, I shall rest.

Grandma Willow

She has seen many things and the passage of time is so familiar as to have lost meaning to her.  She is old, she is glorious.  Every few years a branch breaks off but always there are more growing.  Perhaps one day age will win over growth and she will pass fully into the land of the dead, but until then she remains, Grandma Willow.

I have circled beneath her branches, made magic around her trunk, as have many before me, of varied traditions.  None of that mattered to Grandma. She welcomes all as she will.  Many have drank beneath her, have been raucous, have been silent, have done drugs and drunk and stayed sober.  Have fed animals from her branches, have dangled feet over the ledge of her massive arms.

The squirrels dart along her branches, the birds sing in her leaves, and all the while she rests, growing and dying, and breathing, always breathing as we move on, and she remains.

Goddess in the silence

All is quiet, the silence profound and inwardly sweeping.  Searching for the unkown, the question still not fully formed, and the stones are laid out before her.  Let the answers slip towards being, let Her light guide the way.

Listen not to the inner whispers, listen not to history and wishes, listen only to the silence, open only to the silence.  Within that home She waits, listening, hearing in return.

Hand to stone, Her hand, my stone, my hand, Her stone, thresholds blurred, impact, I act, cast and cast again.  Whispers to the heart, the head.  Thoughts spoken.

I listen.  I hear.