Magickal Realism

The instructions in the book are to pick 5 flowers and to press them in wax paper. While that’s sweet and sentimental for some, I distinctly remember getting in a great deal of trouble for flower picking while I was on a Girl Scout campout of some sort thanks to Jill Lewin and Jenny Briggs conning me very persistently.¹

Since I find keeping bits of sentimental flotsam highly impractical - even my stuffed animals have a magickal purpose - I’m going the virtual route, instead. Each flower I picked has an emotional association or significance to me, and maybe a little story to go with it.

Clovers were my first introduction to herbal medicine and the idea of edible plants. You can pluck one of those petals and suck the end for a sweet honey taste - no bee spit. I tried to show this off for show-and-tell, but let’s just say that my mother and Mrs. Pyle² had different views on what was “cute.” I also found them extremely helpful in healing more quickly when I broke my ankle - they increase blood circulation, which staved off the worst of the depression I was going through at the time.

Due to circumstances entirely beyond my control, my friendship with Matt White was ruined. I knew things were going downhill when he tackled me and rubbed a dandelion down the back of the shirt I was wearing - knowing full well that it was a shirt I had borrowed from my dad. I got yelled at, and explaining I could not control the behavior of others fell on deaf ears. This was when I first began to suspect my parents were not the reasonable people I was raised to assume they were. Yes, the memory is sad, but I’ve bought my dad a couple of really nice shirts since then as I could afford to. These days I tincture dandelions and enjoy dandelion wine from time to time; it’s a very subtle, warm scent but not in the bright yellow way you’d expect. It does feel like you’re smelling the sun.

Tulips are my favorite flower - yes, I’m exposing my passkey secret. They’ve always heralded things I’ve enjoyed, like long walks home from school at the start of spring thaws. Also, my boyfriend is very much a Dutch heritage boy - his family hails from Pella, Iowa, which has a tulip festival we’d like to attend.

Magnolias were always a herald of school almost being out; my next door neighbor with the subsistence farm and the persistent dogs had a magnolia tree in his front yard. The heady scent made me dream of heady things like that burning forever passion that teenagers don’t realize needs rechargeable batteries and late nights dancing on a skyscraper roof. There was also an embarrassing poem about an embarrassing boy - and too my belated embarrassment, the boy was given the poem.³

I didn’t like the photographs of morning glories, so this is what I went with. Why morning glories? A weed version of them used to grow on the obstacle course around my elementary school - they were the first flower I ever attempted to make perfume with. While it was an unsuccessful attempt in that I chose to store them with water in an old bottle of Tinkerbell perfume, it was a very successful boy repellent and perhaps was the indirect inspiration behind my later design of LoserBGone, a tested and effective way of keeping trolls off you when you’re clubbing.

This is where the seeds of my perfumery began. And admittedly, Zombie Repellent smells way way better than that first attempt.

1. I really hope horrible things are happening to those two, the sort of horrible that makes you dread getting out of bed every day of your life. [↩]
2. another worthless teacher in the long run, unsurprising in Crown Point [↩]
3. There’s a very good chance he has long since burned, shredded, or otherwise disposed of it. [↩]

So, for the Artist’s Way, my cluster (xiane, digitalmayhem and miscellaneaarts) has agreed to do a reset to chapter 6 - I moved, another person had surgery, one went on vacation and one struggles with depression. Your life starts moving when you do this path, and sometimes the road itself starts shaking like a rogue carpet.

Given how half-assed my artist’s dates have become, I’m glad of the reset.  I’d like to hit some museums I haven’t been to in the area, and now that I’m slightly more transportation-challenged as I figure out my way around this new corner of the city (and now that Mike is working 4 days a week at his corporate job) it’s gotten a bit harder to get to the intriguing stuff.

So we’re restarting at the abundance chapter, which is the one that really jump starts the creativity. I’m already finding details I missed.

I’m already walking farther and more - it gets exhausting having to keep my guard up all the freaking time, and it’s nice to know if I make eye contact with a passerby the only exchange will be “hello.”

I guess I need to dig through the Downtown Journal, the City Pages and some of those local free papers. It’s where I always wind up finding the cool stuff.

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I am first and foremost a writer. I am a writer before I’m a perfumer, before I was ever a witch, before I was born, for all I know. And because of that, I’m having a small epiphany:
I can’t just make time to write. I have to put writing first. That’s what starting this whole strange process with the Artist’s Way has been about - removing my creative block and putting myself on track as a writer. That I want to do two million other things is just an extension of being a writer - because writers create characters, we conceivably actually get to be two million other things even if it is oddly vicarious. I have to remind myself that out of all the people I’ve known since childhood, I am the closest to my dreams. While I know there are those who would be ragingly jealous and hoping I fall flat on my face, I prefer to think that those perceptive enough to recognize my potential are still rooting for me.

Image by JF Sebastian via Flickr

This doesn’t rule out trying and being those other things - actress, small-time athlete, warlord, comedian - it just means that writing is and always will be my path to it. What kind of writing doesn’t even matter - it’s OK to write fanfic, because it helps me with my entirely original works. Derivative work isn’t automatically non-creative. It’s just derivative. Sometimes, it’s OK to be derivative if it gets you to go somewhere original.

Now that I know this about myself, some decisions need to be made about my writing and how I go about it. Perfume work and promotion will take place in the last half of the day. They are lower priority, though still important. Writing and self-care take place in the first half. My relationship, of course, is part of the center.

I’m so glad I’ve chosen Mike over everything. There aren’t words for how right he has made things for me.

I just found out a spammer had been back-dooring my Magickal Realism blog for quite awhile, and it wasn’t the kind of thing to find easily. Color me NOT amused, but it did explain the mysterious disappearance of basic wordpress features. I hope this spammer has body hair that turns to Brillo.

I’m still adjusting after the move. I am saying very little in blogs about my move except that I have moved - and anything is better than where I was living. I don’t want to stir up any jealousies; Mike and I deserve to be here, we are happy, we deserve to be happy, and what works for us will definitely not work for other people. To try to throw in opinions beyond that is just mean-spirited domination behaviors, and I have decided I am tired of people being mean to me just because “I can take it.” Just because I can, doesn’t mean I should, and I deserve better. If I am not treated better, than I am moving on. I owe you nothing, and what I give, I give out of kindness, which you are also in no way owed.

The move has thrown me off, just as vacation, surgery and general struggles brought up as a direct result of the Artist’s Way process has thrown the other members of my cluster off.

I’m still working on finding time/the right time of day to do my Artist’s Date. All I want to do is lay on my balcony and watch clouds. However, my body isn’t cooperating with the getting up in the morning to do it thing, and it’s a western balcony making it a dumb idea in the afternoons. Maybe after 5 pm? I better do it this month, since the sunset time is creeping ever-steadily backwards again.

I’m forgiving myself for losing track, and taking my time. I am NOT enjoying going through my morning pages notebooks, although I am getting good things out of them. All the anger there - and there’s a lot of it because I turned the other cheek far too long in far too many situations - needed to be dealt with. I don’t want to give myself cancer, and cancer is born in anger. However, I’m finding things within my morning pages that are undoing negative messages I was delivered about myself as a child:

It is demonstrably bullshit that “Diana can’t finish a project.” There are many - MANY - to dos that came up in the morning pages that I have actually done; the ones I have not are matters of resource. So I can damn well finish a project, and usually do! The ones where I don’t are because I took on too much out of a sense of overobligation, or are because I had a very good reason not to. That over-obligation issue is a problem, especially since I  tend to get in over my head on too many writing obligations all at once and I need to break it down around everything else that I do.

So, the Artist’s Way? Off the rails a little bit, but slooowly getting back on track.

I suppose I should do check-in for 8, but I’m still feeling vaguely dissatisfied. I’m going to make a greater effort to do a better artist’s date this week, now that I know this neighborhood and where the safety boundaries are.

Image via Wikipedia

In the meantime, elucidating my creative goals for the year.
Finish a book manuscript. I have missed this goal several times thus far, but I will make it.
Sew something.¹
Take a poetry class.
Quietly end relationships with people I find draining, unjustifiably narcissistic and/or destructive. If you can’t share a spotlight, you don’t belong in my life.

Goals for the Month
Finish the pictorial spellbook and get it in a usable pdf form.²
Get Etsyshop back online - people are already asking for Zombie Repellent.
Get my off-Etsy shopping cart open and filled.

Goals for the Week
Fix ecommerce issues on my Wordpress.
Fix how magickalrealism looks in Iexplorer.
Begin writing draft of the EGCG development plan.
Write 5 pages of urban wicca - a page a day.

1. Most of my stuff has been “cut something” because I’m good with scissors, not needle and thread. [↩]
2. This may take more than a month, but will take less than a year. [↩]

- apparently, add tags to posts written in this blog. Huh?

In any case, I am not allowed to:
Run naked OR topless in the hallways, no matter how funny I think the look on Mike’s face will be when he has to chase me down.
Send exploding telegrams to people who were mean to me in high school and college.
Lob potatoes at people who talk on their cell phone and drive and/or text and drive.
Bill the IRS for my time.
Hunt and kill Nigerian scammers and then sell their skins to a book bindery.

I almost judged myself as not very ambitious, but then I reminded myself that just a year ago I couldn’t rely on the ability to walk from day to day, so this is actually kind of sweet.

My Ideal Day with My Life as it Is now

I get up, do my morning pages. I eat a sumptuous breakfast - eggs benedict if Mike is feeling ambitious and remembers he can use the blender for the hollondaise sauce. I then go and do my workout - all two hours, with only short rest breaks. Once I’m done, I grab the bags that hold my customer orders and head out. I dump the orders in the mailbox on the way to the neighborhood coffee shop. Over coffee, I read a magazine that sparks my creativity, and by the end of my coffee, it is flagged all over with post-its that have notes scribbled on them for ideas I can use in blogging, business or writing. On the way back to my apartment, I stop at the Indian grocery store and pick up spices for dinner and oils for work. I then go back to my magically clean apartment (because Mike decided to give it a try) and after writing two pages of a book, I go on to blog and catch up on my RSS feeds. Once I’m done, I get a call from a friend who is coming over for dinner, but first: a play date. We drive over to the botanica on Lake Street where I buy a few more candles and oils, this time for personal use.  We get back before Mike gets home for work, and plan out something witchy and fun for later that evening. By the time Mike gets home, I’ve started dinner - a paella, perhaps, or something terribly creative and vegetarian. We all eat dinner together while we watch the sun set from my balcony, and we enjoy the scenery and the skyline view. My friend and I sneak off to a park to do a little ceremony, and once we are done, Mike joins us across the street from our apartment for a game of pool. Maybe there is ice cream.

While I have continued faithfully with the morning pages and in a half-assed way with the artist’s dates, I’ve fallen off my chapter work and I’m wholly dissatisfied with the choices I’ve made for my artist’s dates. Some of this is entirely forgivable: I just moved. I’m still unpacking my business, which I am totally revamping before I release it back to the public. I don’t even have a couch or silverware right now. Some of it is me cheating myself out of a misplaced sense of nobility. There are no rewards for self-sacrifice so I need to knock that off right quick.

I am spending the beginning of this week playing catch up - doing a few exercises from chapters 7,8, and 9, following up on my check-ins, and making it happen. This will make week 10 a little tight, but with only 2-3 weeks left, I’m OK with it - assuming it has to be all done in 12 weeks. I’m not totally unblocked yet, but I’m seeing progress. I started working out again, which is one of my “block” areas, and I’m also not feeling guilty when I reject something that looks totally cool.

But I haven’t quit, or wandered off, or gotten so scared by what I’ve revealed to myself that I’ve just stopped. I just moved, and had to stop for a bit, that’s all.

This week’s exercises kind of made me laugh just because 1. creating a wonderful smell is a little too apt of a job for a perfumer and 2. everything is a little harder scheduled around a move. I’m not even sure when/how I’ll be able to do my artist’s date - apparently I signed up for a library lecture this week, and I have to do a house blessing at that time.

So, since it’s the lightest of all the tasks, here is my list of 5 favorite movies. I knew what they had in common before I wrote them down:
1. Finnian’s Rainbow
2. Pump up the Volume
3. She’s All That
4. 10 Things I Hate about You
5. Black Snake Moan

Each one speaks to, in some way, causes of social justice and has characters finding ways within and without a given social system to define themselves. They also all have, more or less, happy endings - they send the message that good isn’t easy, but it can prevail. They all also have highly assertive female characters, whether they start that way or not.

I’m going to preface this by saying that in my path to creating a sense of abundance, I really have to undo a lot of messages embedded into my being about scarcity. This was a highly volatile week, and on top of it, I’m stressed out over a move where Mike and I must take stock of every single thing we own along with very expensive things we need, raising my guilt about the fact that he’s supporting me despite a pretty clear demonstration that my health and the divine wants me doing what I’m doing.

Also, because I felt pressed for time, I feel like I half-assed my Artist’s Date, even if the result was a nice blue dress I look adorable in.

So, on to the check-in:

1. 7 out of 7 pages. Mike’s even started planning our days around giving me time to do them. I didn’t really use them to find ways to create luxury - I used them more to examine where my sense of scarcity comes from, and I was unsurprised to discover most of it rests in my issues with my body, health and self-image.

2. I did do my artist’s date, but I feel very guilty that it wound up being clothes shopping. Given that I’m a fashion blogger and I love clothing, it makes perfect sense but I feel like I was somehow cheating. This makes no sense - fashion IS luxury, especially since decent clothing was something I was denied as a kid. Gee, more foibles and digging deeper right here right now. I think it comes from family attitudes/accusations that fashion is shallow. Fashion can be shallow, but mostly it’s not. Fashion is actually a highly complex way of presenting power and social status, and manipulating other’s perceptions accordingly. Personally, I think my family just didn’t get it and that they still don’t, but rather than just admit that, I was made to feel guilty about something I have a real passion for.
It’s mini-Me syndrome, and part of why I spend a lot of time informing people “I am NOT your mirror.”

3. The Goodwill incident was very synchronous, especially since that night I did a full moon ritual with Joel where I was informed “here’s what you’re writing.” Urban Wicca. This will be entertaining, reviled…and worth it. I’ve been increasingly alienated from other neopagans because of what I see as a lot of circular exploration - no one around me really seems to develop, they just loop-de-loop on the same shit over and over again. So now I’m off to commit heresy, just to see if it gooses any forward motion.

The In Plain Sight episode, Don of the Dead, was also highly resonant with me. It used my until-now least favorite character to talk about abandoning dreams and giving up when you realize you’re just not good enough. The end response from the character? “I’m good enough!” This was highly resonant for me.

4. As to my development - exercise and food are very much scarcity/creative block issues for me, and I may need some extra help working them out. I don’t think that traditional diet programs are the way to go; their very psyche offends me because I’m not really seeking acceptance. But along with getting into way more exercise classes (water aerobics, yoga, bellydance, and maybe if I can scrape up the cash, Aikido) I may seek out a counselor with a specialty in eating disorders. My health is not in danger because of my weight, but my weight is a symptom of deep-seated psychological issues and I’d like them resolved, soon. I don’t want to keep carrying the weight of my problems, I’d like to get it down to the weight of my body.