Magickal Realism

Blurts

My Inner Critic
I’m come to the conclusion this week that my inner critic is sentient and terrified of me. First, it tried to fool me by telling me it was actually a supportive voice - one that keeps me from pitching off of buildings to see what flying is like, when in fact it is my creative voice that does that job quite well. Now it’s just come out and is nasty. It reminds me of when someone realizes that they’re not going to get their way by manipulating people and just trot out the petulance. Since I’m not known for petulance ¹ I can only assume that the little bastard is sentient and independent of me, like an embodied form of something that doesn’t want me to create. So this is what Ceremonial Magicians mean when they talk inner demons. I’m going to find a way to stake my inner demon out in the courtyard, or the parking lot. Let it go after the SUVs of those who bribed someone for their driver’s license.

Check-in, Chapter 1:
1. Yes, I wrote my morning pages daily, and it’s been a very good experience. I’m verbalizing all sorts of things I suspected, and I’m resolving many issues simply by giving them voice. In some ways, I feel like I have an unfair advantage, or that I’ll do the way I do in some classes, where I do great early on just because I’ve experienced the techniques before. I’ve used the pages technique before as “journalling”² and I’ve encountered some of these exercises at the Women and Spirituality conference in Mankato. That said, I’ve never encountered them in a situation so organized and specific as to last 12 weeks, and these are better - no one assumes here my vagina gives me daddy issues, and the The Artist’s Way allows me to insert my own details of the issues and experiences I’ve had, yet refreshingly doesn’t encourage victimhood. I can’t name specifically the issues that are finally healing as they don’t have names yet, but I’ve realized I do want to write, I want to write fiction as well as nonfiction, and that I’m really a pretty cool person with valid, creative ideas.

2. Yes, I did the artist’s date. It was kind of boring - an arts lecture, and since I’m a verbal/olfactory artist visual arts seemed a good place to go. While I didn’t take much away from it, I did take away that my most untapped gift, comedy, is a highly unappreciated art form (I identify with Duchamp). I did take the message that “something that says something is art.” Hello, Daria, Write Where It Hurts. After this I’m going to have to write an essay about Daria as a creative influence. Except unlike Daria, I’ve never ever thought of myself as a “fraud.” OK, maybe when people first started asking me about Wicca, but not anymore - especially given some Wiccan “experts” running around.

3. Issues Significant to Recovery. Yes, I’ve been realizing a few very important things, in order of importance:

1. except from my mother’s perspective, which is not to say even then I was actually petulant since petulant in her mind meant “somehow inconvenient to my wants” [↩]
2. journalling is actually quite different, as it involves a narrative flow [↩]