Eccentric Flower:199811/slipshod samhain

two eleven thirteen

slipshod samhain

Welcome to November. I think I put off writing this entry for two days because I didn't want November to be here. That and I wanted people to see the poem at the end of October. As soon as I press the -30- button, dear Heliotrope will correctly determine that it is no longer October and will start a new monthly directory ... and October will be gone forever, deep in the archives where no one ever sees it again.

I was proud of that poem. My writing is going to hell but at least I can still devise decent doggerel on demand dependably.

I don't think of the postcards as having titles, except in rare circumstances. The title is only something I come up with afterward so Heliotrope has something to link to. But a few people noted that they liked the titles - a lot. If it had just been my friend Eric saying that, I'd have written it off as a known eccentricity, but I heard it from others too. So I've built the title into the template - now all the pieces have titles, which frets me since it means I must now shorten my dateline to make it inconspicuous - my sense of style won't let me have two eyecatching lines at the top, competing with each other.

It's funny. I write very competent poems, funny or otherwise, and they're never planned in advance - I just compose them when the mood to write one takes me (which is why I write poetry so seldom). The titles for these pieces are literally a two-second afterthought, yet Eric kids me about liking the titles more than the entries. The journal entries themselves take very little thought - I just dump out my brain.

Clearly the secret to writing is to not put any effort into it and do an utterly half-assed job. Then everyone will love it.

Too bad I can't get away with writing stories like that.

Forgive my angst. That was the third reason I didn't write this weekend - I didn't want to inflict Excessive B**chiness on you. This is the first Samhain in many years where I have done nothing - didn't even go meditate somewhere. You'd think a cross-dresser wouldn't pass up the only opportunity each year to go out in public en femme, but I did.

One of the problems is that I cannot abide the club scene here. I'd say I was too old for it, but that's not quite right. The story "Telepath, Landsdowne St," which you'll find in the story area as usual, has my thoughts on the matter. The protagonist's bitterness about the club scene (though not her horrid outlook on everything else) is one I share.

Unwilling to go to a club, not knowing enough people to get invited to a private party, I sat at home and brooded over how poorly the CGI project was going - sigh - while a small trickle of trickertreaters came to our door. Not much of that in the Big Nasty City, don'tcha know. It doesn't help that we can't make our front porch light stay on - it's on a motion sensor and I don't know how to override it.

You want to see a real Hallowe'en time, go read Anita's entry about what she did.

Now, if you'll pardon me, I will dump one of the files in my brain. I did write a book with Wiccan characters in it, after all, and I always do my research ... and since in my current mood it is extremely unlikely you will ever read the book, you might as well profit by this information anyway.

Samhain (most often said SOW-in) is an interval of change which you can view as being the end of the old year, or as belonging neither to the old year or the new (the latter is the Celtic tradition, among others). It marks the beginning of the dark half of the year, the portion in which the male aspect of the Wiccan deity/duality is active.

(The female aspect comes into ascendancy during that famous fertility celebration, Beltane or May Day, six months from now. The Wiccan calendar is quite symmetric.)

In pastoral terms, this is the time in which any livestock which could not survive the winter were slaughtered. This translates directly into a Wiccan ceremony performed around this time, where a fire is built in a cauldron, and you write whatever bad habit or vice you want to get rid of on a piece of paper, throw it in, and visualize the vice being burned away as the paper is.

Yes, among other things coopted by other religions and rites, Al, you can add the "new year's resolution." And Anita, if you think that sounds a lot like the Cacophony's Scapegoat, you're right!

But I never make my own resolutions, because I am a stubborn creature who is normally completely content with her faults. I find it more profitable to ask other people what they think my faults are. It's usually hard to convince them I mean it, but on the rare occasions when I do, I get good advice.

Do you have any to spare?

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