Magickal Realism

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I actually had a wonderful day yesterday, blessed with Joel’s companionship, a lot of writing getting done, hilarious visuals and dinner while watching the sunset through my balcony window. The calm, gentle flow, however, was disrupted by something happening that was beyond my control as I discovered from an email message that evening. It began a full on anxiety attack, and I could actually feel the anxious, prickly energy ball flowing from me and blocking brain cells, respiratory system and my ability to receive incoming energy. The brown-orange energy was sent to smother or bury the thread, and it’s unfortunate side effect is that it also smothers me.

My first response was to try to “fix” it even though, if I’d stepped back, I would have known it was beyond my control. My next was to look for some reassurance in the tarot cards, also counter-productive in this situation. I did manage to remove myself, sit down, watch some TV and go to bed with relatively little fretting.

As I did my morning pages this morning, I looked at the anxiety and what it does to me. I suspect there may be some jealousy at the way I appear to be “booking through” the Artist’s Way material, and the reason it’s been happening is because I’ve actually been hiding from my biggest blocker, and realizing it’s been trying to creep up on me for awhile: anxiety, stress, an exaggerated sense of urgency. My boyfriend and I have adjusted my entire lifestyle because anxiety has so debilitated me.

Anxiety qualities were consistently demanded of me in corporate life, and it did a lot to block the creative impulses for which I was usually hired. If I didn’t act completely panicked about every single task, I was reported as “not showing enough urgency.” Of course, if I did rush everything, I was subjected to patronizing lectures about “slowing down and focusing on quality” from the very person who complained about my initial “lack of urgency.” It occurred to no one that “urgency” means somewhere higher up in the organization someone planned very poorly and did not do task division correctly.

Ultimately, for me, this means that the very thing that motivates my desires for security - fear, let’s be honest - is the thing preventing me from effecting those changes. When I get anxious about something, I end up becoming a hamster on a wheel on a cage. At least when you put the rodents in those plastic walk balls they have a chance of going somewhere, even if they do land on their noses sometimes.

But given how much energy clearing and releasing just doing the morning pages has been for me, it was very clear and easy to read what anxiety was doing in my aura. Six months ago I would have known I was anxious, but I wouldn’t have recognized exactly how and where it was affecting my interaction with the universe. And so, as I sat down to my morning pages today, I at last developed my own anxiety-management plan, realizing that the things I am anxious about are not meant to be acted upon while I am in a state of anxiety. And since I work for myself, I’m allowed to take care of my mental state before diving into any project.

And so, with the help of Good Orderly Direction, aka God, (Eros) I put together a plan:

1. Step AWAY from the tarot cards.

If my energy is blocked, tarot cards won’t do me much good because blocked energy is the equivalent of doing divination for a TV when it’s stuck on freeze frame. Kind of useless.

2. Meditate as soon as possible.

The first thing I have to address is the emotional state. Meditation can help me work through that in a physical way in order to reach my emotional state.

3. Use energy unblocking exercises.

The Middle Pillar is GREAT for that.

4. If it’s still a mess, pray and use spellcraft.

5. AFTER all that, coolly survey the situation to determine what you can do. Then, move on with it.

So there I have my anxiety-handling formula to prevent anxiety from blocking my creative nature. It was a lovely, very helpful round in the morning pages. Thank you, Eros.

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This week was one of the weeks where I didn’t like the work so well. I did it, but it wasn’t something I enjoyed, and I realized why: as one tarot reader pointed out years ago, somehow I trained myself out of dreaming, and much of the exercises involved making our fantasies a reality. As always the things I don’t want to do are the big indicators of where my blocks are. When you’re me and you spend more time solving problems and things you perceive as problems, you just don’t spend a whole lot of time on good fantasies. The time spent among Pagans hasn’t helped this: so many are completely lost in fantasy to the unhealthiest degree, and seeing this and wanting things to happen, I usually sacrifice my own flights of fancy to make things happen. I came to realize this year that there’s no payback from the Pagan community for this - I have served the Pagan community, but the Pagan community has not really served me. Certainly, individuals have, and I cherish those friendships. But community volunteering and coven experience as a whole does not feed my soul, it depletes it. I used to think Mike’s statement “If it stops being fun, stop doing it!” was terribly shallow, but I’m actually seeing some depth in it now, because I get it. People have commented that I don’t play, and it’s been an offset because I see so many people playing way- WAY too much. If I’m going to quit comparing myself to people, I’m also going to have to quit offsetting their excesses. If I’m in a mood to play, I’ll play. I’ve been very adamant about not spending this life as a Mommy so my mommying needs to stop.

1. Morning Pages: I did them daily. I wish I could be so consistent with my workouts. They’ve been wandering a bit more than before, in part because I’ve been doing them after being awake longer and because I’m not journaling at night as much as I once did. The night journaling is still important, of course. I’m even doing morning pages on days I expressly don’t want to do morning pages.

2. I did do my artist’s date. It was much lower-key than last week’s. Basically, I had an awesome Pumpkin Spice Latte (HarMar Mall Barnes and Noble makes the best ones, and better yet, no corn syrup!), went through a ginormous stack of magazines and the wandered around Har Mar mall. HarMar is, as one person described it, “where local businesses go to die.”¹  Most of those are gone, but the chains still hang on quite well. It’s less crowded than any other mall in the area, and while I’m heartily annoyed TJ Maxx moved out, I still find most of what I need/want in that mall if I have to go to a retail store to shop instead of going online.

3. I have had minor synchronicities, but nothing I can think of that was really a standout.

4. Issues significant to recovery: I’m coming back to thoughts on my body, and my obsessive organization. My organization is definitely a behavior I’m sticking with: it’s saved me so much money and time since I started doing it. I’m still learning how to take care of myself without being constantly, punishingly tough on myself. And not being so tough has not done what I’d feared: I’m not soft and lazy, I am getting things done, and I’m quietly enjoying the activities and people I enjoy. While I’m a bit lonely, it’s not cripplingly so, and my friends understand that I don’t have the funds or transportation for a social life - which I knew I would be sacrificing when Mike and I went down to owning one car, and which I do not regret, especially given the cost of a car these days. Joel’s little dates with me also help a lot, especially since Mike is in a research crunch right now.

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1. This is changing very soon. Har Mar has leased their old movie theater space to a Staples store that is bringing quite a bit of business with it, and my own alma mater is opening up an extension branch there. [↩]

Image by `jonathan gill via Flickr

• I have a right to be an artist.
• I now treat myself and my creativity more gently.
• My creativity is appreciated.
• I now share my creativity more openly.
• I now accept Eros’s help unfolding my life.

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1. Yes, I did 7 out of 7 pages on the Artist’s Way. It’s been getting harder - I’m getting into the much more deeply entrenched psychological stuff, along with an impending sense of stress as fall business gears up. I don’t know if I’ve daydreamed creative risks - in my case, the risk involves pursuing interests of things I know I’m not good at, like sewing and sketching. I’m even eyeballing a community ed sewing class - I’m thinking I could learn some great stuff if I don’t have emotional trauma attached to it. As for coddling my inner child…sorta? If you read my Artist’s Dates entries my inner child may have more mature tastes than I do. Seriously, what kid actually asks for vegetables? I think she’s just glad I’ve once again let her drop her membership in the clean plate club.

2. Yes, I did my artist’s date and there was nothing half-assed about it. I opened up myself to the universe and the universe took me on a journey. The date itself was a risk: nothing is more lowbrow than a mall, and given the - usually fair - tendency of all the artists I know to look down on the Mall of America my choosing it at all for an Artist’s Date was pretty risky. I let my inner child send the middle finger to my inner snob, and I wound up on the most gratifying artist’s date yet.

3. Oh yes, there was quite a bit of synchronicity. Mike coming home just as my house blessing candle finished burning. Finding a primo parking space within seconds of trying on some brujeria good luck oil. Finding coupons for my artist’s date as I sat down for lunch. It’s happening more and more!

4. I’m getting into the phase of my recovery that’s the hardest for me. Connection is difficult, because while I’m outwardly pretty tough, I’m really sensitive underneath it all and my strategy for protecting myself is frequent withdrawal, especially since there are - now much fewer - so-called friends who use my “toughness” as an excuse to be verbally abusive with me because “I can take it.” There’s a big difference between delivering hard truth and subjecting a person to bullshit as a result of not having done your homework. Since I keep a lot more to myself than most people realize, and I tend to keep more information than I realize from myself, the end result is that I’m rarely fully authentic with anyone. I’ve been making strides in this area, though - I have been engaging more and spending more time with as we’re able people I consider very positive influences, and drifting from those who at this point are much better off with me out of the picture. I only have room for a certain amount of people that use me as a mirror, and right now my narcissist’s gallery is completely full.

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I should mention that on my way to my destination I had to wander through the mall, and the whole mall had its obstacles and strangeness. Along with the unfortunates hired at mall kiosks to hawk at passerby and suck them in aggressively was the hologram from Best Buy.

Somehow he’s just not as interesting as the Cheshire Cat or the Caterpillar, but thank the gods he didn’t call me MaryAnn.

What you need to know about Underwater World is that its publicity belies its nature. The advertising is cheesier than a Bronko’s pizza¹ or cheesier than a super deluxe cheese special at Luce’² There’s the mascot Sharkie that runs around the mall and submits to getting pawed by everyone; there’s all this toy crap, the T-shirts, and the advertising campaign. It’s very much aimed for kids and tourists and does nothing to appeal to locals at all.

But once you get past the first set of down escalators and get the pep talk about making sure you use both flash and non-flash photography, the experience changes. First, their use of music is genius. The closer you get to the actual aquarium, the more soothing and trancey the music. As you leave, you get exposed to brighter colors and more up-tempo beats. By the time you see sharks swimming over your head, you’re too calm to get worried that they might be considering you for lunch.

Oddly enough, the gator here’s eyes glowed red before I snapped the picture, I think. It seemed that way at least.

At one point the voice told me to snap some shots of an egg incubation project. I’m to give it away, to it will be in my flickr stream as Creative Commons and I’ll see if I can upload them to Wikimedia Commons. It is a reasonable payment for what I’ve taken.

As I descended the pathway, I learned two things: turtles are obnoxiously fast, and sharks are camera shy. I could swear I caught a telepathic blip that translated to Goddamn paparazzi. I also now believe the guy that told me his pet turtle ran away. Yes, it is quite possible that they could outrun a human being. I also saw a few stuffed mammals - disturbingly, the wolves were trapped in their taxidermied bodies as was the fox. I hope I released them.³

It wasn’t in an overt way, but there was an interaction between the humans and the fish. The fish and reptiles knew you were there, and had opinions of you.

There was one turtle in particular who captured my attention. A hulking old thing, it told me tales of carrying the world on its back and how I keep bulking weight thinking I need to carry the world on mine when it’s not my job, it’s his, and he’ll worry about that. We were rudely interrupted by a silly girl in a sweatshirt who flashed her camera right in Wise Old Man’s eye. Ancient as he was, even he smarts from such rudeness. But it was such a comforting tale that I’d like to go back, have a few more conversations with Wise Old Man. He has so much to say to me, but trips to Underwater World are really not cheap.

Also, probably in honor of the RNC, there was a glass sharks art display for all 50 states that I saw on the way out. I kept trying to get pictures, but these stupid men kept wandering into my shot and then glaring at me for having a camera. RNC tourists. There were a lot of them, and they were just irritating.

However, I found plenty of opportunities to pause and tune into the total relaxation around me. Everyone else rushed around like a tourist, but I was there for a cultural exchange. I’m not sure how it will come out in my art, but I felt like there were definitely some acts of mutual influence.

I ended my tour with an accidental self portrait, and I have to admit as I came up from my journey, I felt ever-so-gently altered.

THE CROCODILE

by: Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

• OW doth the little crocodile

  Improve his shining tail,

  And pour the waters of the Nile

  On every golden scale!

  How cheerfully he seems to grin!

  How neatly spread his claws,

  And welcomes little fishes in

  With gently smiling jaws!

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1. for the Indiana folks [↩]
2. for the Minnnesota folks. [↩]
3. I’ve seen this before in Mankato. It wasn’t pretty. [↩]

My original plan for my artist’s date was to walk through the former Camp Snoopy - now Nickelodean world - in an altered state. Having gone through there on an overcast day a few years ago while running an errand for the job all my friends do not name but refer to as “when Di hit rock bottom” I had the trippy experience of having fallen down a rabbit hole. Besides, I had been injured on that roller coaster as well.

So, despite my dislike of the Mall of America I drove out there, and approached the edge of Camp Snoopy, where you can go left or right. The little voice spoke up. Remember what you told Joel?¹ I picked the one that matched my own energy the closest.

Eat first, the voice urged. I was hungry. I usually do these pseudo-shamanic workings as low on calories as my body will allow.  I wandered towards the food stand and it was practically unstaffed; I also found it curious that they dropped Pepsico for catering to true little kid food - tacos, mac and cheese, pb&j.

Well, this is about feeding my inner child, I thought. The kiddie food booth has a shortcut stairwell to the third floor.

Go upstairs. Eat in the food court up there.

I was informed no Long John Silver’s this visit. The tacos looked tempting. Maybe at that slightly overpriced taco chain that wasn’t Chipotle.²

No, NOT Long John Silver’s

I veered towards the other side of that half of the food court and got pointed to the Japanese food booth I always think guiltily I should have eaten at. I tried to balk.

But - my inner child!

Tell your inner child she gets to have a meal like a big girl.

My inner child was excited by the prospect of “biggie girl food.” Well damn.

I got something nutritious and vegetable heavy, and it turns out I’d been craving it. I turned to sit down and moved - I was skeeved out by how dirty the tables were.

At last I came to rest on a four seater. I realized a few bites into my food there were two blue pieces of paper on the table, giving a $4 discount off tickets to Water World. $4 brought a visit into my price range.

There’s your date today, said the voice. Now go have a good time.

1. I’ve been teaching Joel how to energy read objects without making it a big production. [↩]
2. I hate Chipotle. Yes, I am a heretic. AND a Pagan.)

   I climbed the stairs to the third floor east food court. ((There are two food courts on the third floor; it is possible to shop at the mall for years and not know they’re both there. [↩]

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.