I’m not actually going to try to come up with a list for the entire year, but I’ve grabbed the books that I’ve gone through in the last couple of months or that I’m reading now. I’ll add a couple books that have been significant to me in the last year that I can recall further back also. But, I’ve had to stop somewhere, and so I know I’ve missed some and listed almost none from more than 6 months ago.
These aren’t necessarily listed in any order other than where they ended up in my stacks.
Still Reading or Just Starting:
Gilbert, E. Eat, Pray, Love.
Nix, G. Sabriel.
Muellner, L. The Anger of Achilles.
Yates, F. A. The Art of Memory.
Burns, D. D. The Feeling Good Handbook.
Weinberg, F. M. The Wine & The Will: Rabelais’s Bacchic Christianity.
duBois, P. Sowing the body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women.
Segal, R. A. In Quest of the Hero.
Brezsney, R. Pronoia is the antidote for paranoia.
Ellsberg, R. Dorothy Day: Selected Writings.
Recently Completed:
de Lint, C. Widdershins.
Gaiman, N. The Book of Magic, Vol 1.
Moore, A. Promethea, Vol 1-5.
Morrison, G. The Invisibles, Vol 1-4.
Maguire, G. Wicked.
Yalom. M. A history of the wife.
Geras, A. Troy: a novel.
Kerenyi, C. Eleusis: Archetypal image of mother and daughter.
Starbird, M. The Woman with the Alabaster Jar.
Leloup, J-V. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
Bullock, S. G. Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840.
Hearn, M. P. The Wizard of Oz. The Critical Heritage Series. (Half of this book is a collection of reviews and essays spanning the time since the story was printed.)
Re-Reading or Recently Re-Read:
Paxson, D. L. Taking up the runes.
Anderson, V. H. Thorns of the blood rose.
Significant Books Not Already Listed (that I remember right now):
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.
Augarde, S. Celandine.
Clarke, S. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
Butcher, J. The Harry Dresden Series.
Okay, I’m just going to stop there. I’d have to list so many, many others if I kept going … It would be interesting to actually keep track of this over the whole of next year.
far fewer moments of bliss
than I remember or wish
to remember with her
but I fantasize and dream
in her eyes of seeing
the reflection of my love
unshunned by her
but her eyes are glazed over
and she looks over my shoulder
excusing herself
she has things to do
taking all the pain away
would require tequila
and no liver
“Former Guantanamo inmate set free.” Wait. What? If he’s already a former inmate, then he was just set free from where exactly? (Yeah, okay, the article does make it make sense, but it’s a funny headline.)
Rondo Alla Turka – Turkish March – by Super Polish Musicans
I knew that it was horrible to be with me while I struggled. Maybe it was horrible to be with me even when I wasn’t struggling too. So, I did things to make it easy for her to go. Like not expressing how much I loved her, because I didn’t want that to become a trap. In the beginning, I felt I couldn’t tell her that I hoped so very much that she would change her mind and find that she did want to marry and maybe even have kids. (Or, you know, at least that it was possible.) Later, I think I stopped volunteering how much I loved her because I was afraid that by expressing my love I was trapping her into staying.
But, I couldn’t understand why she would stay with me during that time if she also wasn’t willing to commit to me as a life partner. If things were just until some point or that she was willing to go, why didn’t she?
The only reason that made sense is that she felt trapped. She felt trapped by connection. Maybe she felt trapped by responsibility, and not wanting to drop me when I was down without any other support.
So, if she was only staying with me because she was trapped, then the only thing I could do was to help untrap her by making it easier. She moved out and had her own space and time away from me. I stayed away from her work. I didn’t go to her drumming group or her storytelling group. I both felt that I had to let her have space of her own where I was not in the way, but I also felt that I wasn’t really welcome in those spaces of hers. So, that was a double reason that I felt I couldn’t participate in what she was becoming.
And, feeling like I couldn’t participate; like I had no role to play in her life any more … I felt even worse about myself. What could I give her anymore that she actually wanted?
Suggestions I made to her she didn’t like until someone else said them and then the same suggestion was such an amazing idea that she loved. Like the idea of doing oral histories of the BCWC people. I suggested that to her as something around the time of the first witchcamp and it was nothing she found interesting at all, finding reasons not to do it or that she didn’t like the idea. Then, a year later, someone other than me made the same suggestion to her after camp and all of a sudden it was an amazing idea.
I had no purpose to fill in her life. There was nothing I could offer her that she wanted from me, but it seemed like I need only find someone else to suggest the same idea and she would have loved it. She couldn’t believe me that she was amazing and wonderful, and so why keep saying it? When saying something and having it rejected hurt so much, how could I keep going?
I wanted so very much to support her. I wanted to support and be loved by her. I wanted to be valued in her life because I could offer her the support she wanted and welcomed. But, she didn’t welcome my support. My support was constantly rejected.
In some ways, I think I’ve always felt that I was made for a close relationship. As if my purpose on this planet was to be in love with another and to be the support and partner to another’s growth. I felt that I could fulfill my purpose in life in a relationship with another in mutual support, becoming better and greater than each of us could become alone. So, in a way if I couldn’t support her in becoming the best she could be, then I was, at the same time, failing to be the best I could be.
It felt like anything I did or accomplished was something that she felt was a challenge or a kind of competition. I really don’t think that was any part of it for me. I wanted to be a good person for her. I wanted to be a better person because I wanted her love and to love her. So, by loving her and by having my support rejected, I ended up feeling smaller and smaller.
So I couldn’t support her and I couldn’t find my own successes either. There was nothing for me to do that was welcome. I could not help her and I could not help myself because I felt like neither were welcomed by her. So, I was trapped by the sense that she felt trapped by me.
And, when things started to get really hard, when my graduate school work hurt so much to pursue and when Segue ran away and was lost, all of this just pounded me into the ground. When I finally couldn’t afford to pay off the monthly bills, and I gave up trying to make them … all of these things led me to feel I was a failure.
And feeling like a failure mixed with depression became a quagmire. I was being sucked down and down into the blackness of my abyss. And, seeing myself slipping into this, I tried to hide it from her.
I tried to hide my pain and hurt and anguish and fear and sorrow and anxiety. I tried to hide everything from her because I feared that if she knew she would run away. So, all of a sudden I became the wizard behind the curtain. I tried to appear to have all my stuff together, but what I was really doing was only fooling myself. I knew full well the dysfunction of the patriarchal archetype in the Wizard of Oz, one where the illusion of perfection is maintained to hide the humanity of the real person. I could not escape that even with awareness of the trap.
She once asked why I had to always be right. I had to be right because I was afraid of being wrong. It wasn’t because I had to win. It was because I had to be valuable. I needed to be right in order to offer her something. Because if I was wrong, then what purpose could I serve her in her life? How could I be wrong and also support her in doing what she wanted and needed to do? It wasn’t because I wanted to win, it was because I wanted her to love me. I had to be right in order to be loved, because I felt that if she found out that I was wrong how could she love me?
Of course, she seems to have felt that as a constant challenge. She felt that I was trying to prove her wrong by being right. My attempt to be valuable to her seems to have made her feel hurt and angry and small. By trying to hide my failure and hurt, it seems she felt that I was making her fail and hurting her.
So many of these things are cases where I desperately wanted to change a fault and by trying to change that only made the fault more certain to occur. Like Queen Hecuba, I tried to save Troy by sending Paris away, only to find that by sending Paris away I helped to destroy Troy. By trying to avoid failure, I failed her.
Not only did I fail, but I hurt the one person on this planet that I felt I most wanted to love and help and care for and support and keep safe and with whom I wanted to share my entire life. By trying to avoid pain, I hurt her.
I used to wake up hours before she did, and lay awake. I would lay there trying not to disturb her, but not wanting to be anywhere else but beside her. After hours, when she finally woke up, I’d be so ready to get up; but she would want to cuddle and stay in bed. She once said that I should cuddle her when I wake up, but, she’s sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her. I was trying to let her sleep because she would always complain about not getting enough sleep. So, I was caught between being awake and her stated need for sleep, or at least the sure knowledge that she complained about not sleeping enough.
It seems like there were so many times when I was stuck between choices in that kind of dilemma. There seem to have been so many times that I would make silent sacrifices and be the one to think of those things, like letting her sleep because she complained about not getting enough or being the one to say it was time to go to bed because she would complain about not going to bed early enough. I felt I was caught constantly between the thing she wanted to do and the complaint she would have after. And, not the least of which was the dilemma of wanting her to stay but feeling like I had to make it easy for her to leave me.
I wanted to spend my life with her, but I kept making it easy for her to leave. She never made plans for a future with me. She never seemed to be willing to talk about that. She would tell me that she didn’t think she’d ever get married, that she didn’t want kids. She would tell me that she would stay with me “at least until I graduated.” So there were always messages that it would end, but never messages that she wanted it to keep going, that she … no, there was at least one time she said she thought we would be together. No, not just once, but there were so many mixed signals. Like a dilemma, I constantly felt like I had to figure out the balance between what she said and what she would complain about later. She did say that she wasn’t leaving me, on occasion. But, I’m not sure I heard that as being real, like I felt it was something I couldn’t trust or something that the words couldn’t change.
I would be hurt by things she said, but she would tell me that she would never say things to hurt me. But, I was hurt. And, couldn’t figure out if I was just imagining it all or not. I constantly internalized, but couldn’t seem to change, the causes.
What would be different that would make it so I could trust? Was it something I sensed or felt from her or was it completely my own existential horror? And through it all, it feels like if only for some thing I just couldn’t understand, it all would have been perfect. It’s like the joy and bliss were there, but I just couldn’t taste it. I was tantalized by the perfect relationship with an amazing partner, but even though I was there … I missed it. And, now it’s gone, like a dream. But, not a dream. It feels like the real to which I couldn’t seem to wake.
It felt like all I had to do was wake up, but I couldn’t find the energy to shake myself awake. I couldn’t manage the energy to raise my arm to hold her sometimes, and how fucked up is that? As if I were dying of hunger at a dinner table and couldn’t even reach out to the food; I was so unable to wake myself that I sleepwalked through my precious time with her.
I wasted the time I had with her sleeping while she lay beside me waiting, hoping and wishing that I’d wake up.
Did my honoring her decision by not pursuing her look like another distancing and retreat into darkness to her? I can imagine that it would be hard to tell the difference because they may have seemed the same and appeared to be the same. So, another question is, were they the same and I’ve only fooled myself that they were different?
I’ve become a fast fading
soon to be forgotten
footnote in the history
of true love
once again
I didn’t give up on love
love has given up on me
but she gave me
more than anyone
and I took that
and didn’t give back
and so now
I’m just a footnote
an anecdote
rarely shared
with anyone
consigned to history
a nameless boy
in a sad story
with every broken bit
of my heart
I know she
is the Kore
to my Demeter
and I have desired
to keep her
from being seduced
by new pleasures
that I cannot give
and cannot partake
she has left
and become queen
of places I am not welcome
every piece of my broken heart
yearns for her return
but now she is with Dionysios
in more ways than one
I wanted to be that for her
I wanted to be the one for her
I wanted to be her lover
I wanted to drink her wine
I wanted her to be mine
I wanted her
I wanted her
I still want her in my life
but as my partner in crime
and in loving and living
and growing and dancing
and singing and playing
and I worshiped her
in ways that did not satisfy
and if I could have changed
why didn’t I?
and if I didn’t change
why couldn’t I?
I was a total failure
keep fooling myself
that I have a future
but futures are shorter
and darker every day
this was always the time of year
when she would disappear
to places I could not follow,
places where I was not welcome.
she never wanted me closer
than arms length from her life,
it feels like.
but, I know she tried so very hard.
Some commercial on TV for a professional training program: “If you have nine short months, we can help you start a carrier in health care!” … taking care of a … baby?
Sitting in a restaurant playing Zombie Fluxx, a friend and I stumbled through mishearing each other on a great name for an expansion: “Zombie Fluxx: Axes and Alleys”.
I wanted to spend the rest of my life saying thank you for what I was given, but she reached a point where she had to let go or stay. She chose to let go.
I didn’t mean to trick her. It’s not what I had intended. The person I’ve been was not who I want to be, but it is who I’ve been. She was right about so many things, maybe she’s right that it was too late.
“Here are a bunch of phone company recordings that I have recorded off of my phone. The files are available in .WAV format and also in .MP3 format, so you can choose whichever one you want.”
“Did Philip Pullman get his daemon idea from the Aztecs? Pullman’s daemon – a kind of unique guardian animal that defends, mirrors and shares the feelings of its “human” master in his famous trilogy His Dark Materials – is very similar to the ancient Mexi
“Conquest-era Aztecs conceived philosophy in essentially pragmatic terms. The raison d’etre of philosophical inquiry was to provide humans with practicable answers to what Aztecs identified as the defining question of human existence: How can we maintain
“This website is intended mainly to supply information on Nahua (Aztec) religion and spirituality as it was in the past, and outline my faith as a Nahua reconstructionist. It also houses some of my personal works.”
“… the Minister of Industry clearly does not understand the issue of copyright because he has refused to meet with key Canadian stakeholders. He shut the door to universities and educators. He has ignored the advice of senior government bureaucrats and he has completely shut the door to consumer groups, artists and software innovators.” [via, et]
“A failure cascade is about how people react when they hit the valleys rather than the peaks.” [via] One lesson I remember about intentional community is that groups that require some kind of investment or sacrifice from members tend to weather bad times better, so a group without any sense of investment is already in danger before danger approaches. In this sense, what a volunteer gets is the reflected glow of the good work of the group for which they volunteer, so when that’s gone there’s no sense of compensation if success is the only measure of value.
Like the process of growth in Hesiod’s Theogony, immortals move from being bound in darkness to being brought into the light; a birthing into existence and their power; my initiation process will be over when I’ve emerged into the light again.
I thought I had emerged already, but I appear to still be in the chapel perilous. have gained some tools, maybe all I need to get out; but I am not yet free from the darkness.
I will have given something and gotten something from each person on my team. Maybe what I give is simply a turn of phrase that resonates, like “lightning path between reclaiming and feri,” or something more. Maybe what I get is something skillful or stateful, like having contact and relationship with powerful allies or that I have a steady healthy energetic state.
I’m supposed to stand on my own culturally determined for me ahead of my life. It’s not manly to need help. It’s weak and unseemly. It’s demanding and dependent.
But, I feel so alone and I think better when I have help. I am a better person when I have help.
