Trip Report

[kiya]

Hokay, now that I'm done for now with being utterly boggled in a kind of stressy way, let's try to assemble a PCon con report.


arawen came to get me on Thursday. We stopped off to get sushi on the way because needing the lunch and I expected to need a fair amount of protein to deal with having flights in inconvenient places that no longer serve "food" without effort, money, and correct timing. While waiting for our food, we had the delightful experience of seeing a couple of tow truck drivers sit down at the sushi bar and start seriously discussing the nature of sashimi. Though they did request a fuoahk to eat it with. This triggered a bunch of "I love this crazy world."

We retreated to TI to eat and watch Mythbusters for a little bit while preparing to depart. whispercricket came by and expressed distress at the bad-talking of greenhouse plants. We went to the airport. Checkin was odd, as I was told I couldn't quick checkin, I had to call them, there was foofaraw, eventually I got off hold and into talking with a flight person, got checked in, we had no seats. "Seats will be assigned at the gate." Okay, WTF.

So we went to the gate, sorted this that and the other out, and were informed that a half-hour before the flight someone would show up and call people's names to give them seats. A fellow who reminded me in mannerisms a bit of my brother was trying to get to Denver fairly loudly -- his flight out the day before had been cancelled due to Sudden Weather, and so he'd been there since sixish. Nobody called us up; eventually arawen went and got us tickets in a state of moderate cranky and bafflement.

The plane was late enough that we figured we'd not be able to grab food in Denver, where we had a change. Then we got to Denver and our next plane was delayed, so after some discussion with brooksmoses about the whole navigation of airport process thing, we got food, eventually got on the plane, and eventually got to SJC, where we were met by brooksmoses and suzimoses, claimed our luggage, and were conveyed to the hotel. The hotel was sore disappointed that arawen did not want a cookie.

One of these days I'll finish the bit of poetry that has this in it:

A perfect moment, arched
With outlines etched by streetlamp moonlight

Or maybe I won't, but yeah. Pretty.



Slept in a bit to make up for crazed exhaustion, eventually made it down to registration to pick up badges. Mild confusion when I tried to find mine separately from arawen's, but it was sorted out quickly. Started pointing out people I recognised -- I nodded at one guy I was in half the same panels with last year but never spoke to, for example, never saw him again the whole con -- and ran into fyrekat and her fellow as we were finishing up registration.

Went up to the room for the hour before anything started and talked about some of the crazy that's been upsetting me lately. (At some point I ran into yezida, who asked me how I was doing, and I said complicated and that I was busy doing some really intense bits of shadow and integration work, and she said something to the effect of, "That's good! I'm sorry!") Dealt with the scary, scary stuff, was held, a little less crazy now. Not sure if any of the underlying crazy was fixed, but the second-order crazy is better.

Decided that I wasn't going to go to the 1:30 panel I was considering, so waited around for the dealer's room to open instead (which it did around 2). Wandered around a bit looking for elfwreck; found elfwreck; wandered around a bit more. Was peering at something when arawen decided to run his fingers down the back of my neck. Continued peering, then headed off to the 3:30. On the way to the 3:30, ran into lysana briefly, waved; then ran into Loren.

The 3:30 I went to was the Weiser panel discussing publication issues. Speakers included Z Budapest, Diana Paxson, Christopher Penczak, John Michael Greer, Lon Milo Duqette, and a couple of other people, as well as two representatives of Weiser; there was also a woman from Llewellyn in the audience who commented extensively. One of the speakers did an extensive manuscript format lecture that I recognised pretty much in entirety from pnh and tnh; a different subfield does not change the realities of publication. Several of the speakers were of type, "You know, I think this in interesting person whose work I should investigate further now that I've seen them speak." I picked up some book proposal samples and had a brief conversation with one of the Wieser people about what they're looking for, so if I ever finish my jackal homework I have a slightly better idea of how to go about stuff.

Went up to the Asatru suite to try to find Diana Paxson there to talk about the seidh, which was scheduled against anaar's kala lecture, and I really ought to go to the latter, but strong obligation to the seidh for personal reasons. Scheduling alternate smaller sessions was listed as an option, so I was having a go at that.

arawen and I tried snagging dinner in the bar (which uses the menu from the other restaurant, to my amusement). This took forever, but at least we were sitting and had drinks for most of the forever, unlike trying to get into the Coffee Garden. The merlot I tried tasted very, very round. (Which led me to the conclusion that I think the defining flavor of merlots is 'round', and largely bemused arawen. Fun with near-synaesthesia!) The bar was playing moderately loud hip-hop stuff, which was mostly not commentable, up until the point that they played a hip-hop remake of "She's Like The Wind" and left me giggling for a long, long time.

Went to Loren's concert, which was scheduled opposite something else I wanted to go to, which arawen attended and took notes on. Loren commented somewhere in the middle that he was an escape artist -- his calling is to use his music to help people shed entangling emotional issues, more or less -- and he did a good job of it. (arawen had encountered Loren in the elevator, informed me he was a strange man; I relayed this and got a "Thank you very much!") "If someone asks if you're a god, you say yes!" was played, reggae-style, and two years after hearing it for the first time I found myself thinking, "Wow, this is ... very Feri in its way." The concert was recorded and will become a live album presuming all went well, so I'll actually be able to get a copy of the song. He also played "Southern Cross", my favorite CS&N song. (otter3: it's Kira's theme, really. "I have my ship, and all her flags are a-flying; she is all that I have left, and music is her name." Emrys will understand.)

Then arawen and I met up for what looked to be an interesting panel on luckbringers, which turned out to be cancelled. I checked for Asatru information again, and then we checked out the party floor. Specifically, we went to the green fairy party, because I wanted to try absinthe, and hey, they were handing it out. Verdict: it is not unpleasant; I do not like it. Retreated to the hotel room to deal with altered consciousness state through chemical intervention; altered consciousness further with kinked trance state induction.



Decided not to go to the 9:00 I was intending to go to. (arawen went and took notes.) I hadn't slept well, and needed the hour or two extra rest. Even though said extra rest was plagued with not-quite-nightmares, it was needful and satisfied that need. (I don't get nightmares much anymore, in the sense of profound emotional engagement/trappedness that I always perceive the word to mean. I get seriously bad dreams that haunt me for a day or two afterwards, but not heart-pounding belief in those dreams. I don't know that I'm articulating that right.)

Met up with arawen for Christopher Penczak's trance panel. Which was fascinating to me on a number of levels -- one of them being that when he actually gets down to working he sounds like someone who is almost reinventing Feri, from an annoyingly squishy-panthestic perspective. (From what he says, he's doing a lot of the same stuff Victor did -- pulling threads of commonality from a variety of world cultures and mixing it with some hefty spirit work, so it's not surprising, but.) He even did a quick protective ward guidance with the basic shield technique that I picked up from Feri training -- expand the blue fire from within into a sphere. I'm thinking I may have gotten better at trance stuff from working with yezida, who can trance me, or else weird Feri-flavored stuff trances me in ways other things don't; either way, the pathworking was productive, and leaves me back at firebird/phoenix imagery. (arawen's result was funny, but not my story. Fierce pygmies!) Penczak mentioned that something similar was done by the seidh group with the tree, and I muttered, "Well, that explains why it was the same tree"; I'd seen it at the previous year's seidh.

Went to lunch, tried the lunch line thing. Acquired pizza which arawen described as being made with industrial kitchen equipment with industrial cheese. (He got a sandwich, on the principle that it's hard to ruin a bit of meat put on bread.) Waved at Loren again, warned him off the pizza.

Went to Kirk White's (of Cherry Hill Seminary) "Diagnostic Skills for Energy Healers" panel, which was interesting in a crazed sort of way. (Kirk White always gives me the impression of a brilliant, somewhat batty idealist who would make much more sense if he hadn't dropped the three-by-five cards on which he wrote all his notes. arawen says that he comes across as a personification of whispercricket's idealised Vermont.) He covered the Galenic system of diagnosis, Chinese elemental system of diagnosis, and Ayurvedic system of diagnosis, attempted to organise them together, did a little brief workshop on quick rule of thumb 'what's wrong with this system' stuff (in which I peered at fyrekat's tongue), and basically did some good basics with a fair amount of "This is not a foolproof, complete system, it's a set of rules of thumb to start with."

Wandered by Diana Paxson's rune panel in order to ask her about scheduling for alternate seidh; she suggested that I should realio trulio go to the normal one. I thanked her and mumbled a bit, gave arawen a kiss, and retreated to the room to hide because I was hitting people overload a bit.

My room keycard failed to work. After walking around and trying it several times, and going down to the front desk to ask about a replacement and being told that since arawen made the reservation and my name wasn't on the room they couldn't let me in the room without him, I left him a voicemail, retreated to the hallway, and shook a little. Then I bought a Coke in the vending machine, sat in front of the room door, and read a booklet I'd been given. At about four, I wandered down to the dealer's room and sat behind elfwreck's table, thereby learning about the Magic Wall.

You see, there's a Magic Wall in the dealer's room. It runs along the tables. If you're on the outside of the Magic Wall, you're in the con with all its bustle and chaos and pressure of constant people. If you're on the inside of the Magic Wall, it's much, much quieter. So I chatted there for about an hour.

Which reminds me: the non-Elf half of elfwreck carved me a ma'at feather out of labradorite! Mightily shiny. Gorgeous. Shiny shiny shiny. Glee. (I also bought one of his labradorite-bowled pipes. There were three when I got there, they sold the one I wasn't interested in first, and I was dithering over the other two and was told which one was the better one. Which had the nicer stone, too.)

Then arawen and I went to find food, determined that within walking distance were a Denny's, a McDonalds, and an Indian restaurant, and went for Indian. Which was apparently hosting a birthday party for two twin boys and their extremely disapproving-looking elderly relatives, and thus had a DJ in playing loud, obnoxious music praising Krishna and were really not so great on the service at all. (Though they looked kind of apologetic about it.) This took long enough that the 7pm panel was not an option; retreated to the room a little and then went down to camp a spot for the seidh. Listened to sannion's ritual through the doors and commented, "Well, that smells like a Dionysos ritual in there." It did.

So. The seidh. I needed to go to the seidh because I wanted to ask my grandfather's blessing. He went West twenty years ago just past Yule; I realised I needed to seek this out about ten minutes after I left last year's seidh. I was kind of worked up about this; there's ... I want to be able to have some sort of healthy continuity with that side of my family, and while I've a pledge to learn a language for it farther back, those are ancestors I don't know. Bridge-building, I guess. I've always been sad that I never got to know him as an adult.

So I went with that intent. The first seer in the chair was one I'd spoken to in the Asatru suite in one of the times I went to bother the heathens; I didn't get called on for her work. The second I believe had been warding last year; when I asked her to find him, she said "Nobody here answers to that name. Ask another seer." And I sat down as the ritual leader (who I gather from reading other people's con reports was lwood, which amuses me) said "One more question, does anyone have one that does not involve talking to dead people?" (I was not the first person who got "Your number cannot be completed as dialed" on the subject of the blessed dead.) And I remembered what arawen said to my nervousness -- of how much discipline and facing of fear my grandfather would have put himself through for something he thought was worthwhile like this -- and breathed through it and accepted that this was a test, fear-of-rejection being one of those big ones.

Third seer was Diana Paxson. Eventually I was called on, and asked if she could find him, and she said, "I will try, but this seer had an uncle by that name." I breathed, I asked if using the name-within-family would help, and she said she would try. "Did he like to fish?" I nearly panicked with an, 'I don't know', but managed to get my wits about me and say "His sons are fishermen." "Got the right neighborhood..." after a moment. She spoke of a jovial man, one who liked humor, who laughed, and I thought of one red sock and one green sock, nodded, and got prompted to say "Yes." I asked for his blessing; he said, "Well, yes, of course," in tones that indicated that he thought I was quite silly. I asked if there was any way I could honor him better, and he said that children honor their parents and grandparents by living well and strong, with courage. (I note that none of this was obviously couldn't-be-anything-but-him, but it was consistent, so I'm running with it. It wasn't bad advice, as arawen said.) I thanked Diana and sat down, shaking and in tears. I had been expecting to need to flee the ritual after I actually spoke to someone, but I just needed to sit for a bit, and it was nearly done -- four people after me, I think -- so I sat. When we concluded (with the dwarf blessing that I adore on sheer Discordian grounds, of course) I asked for some salt, talked to a few people, and was finally permitted to leave when I answered a sharp "Will you be alone?" with "My partner is with me." I was told to go and take care of myself.

So I went and snuggled arawen and talked about things, mostly aroung things, and finally snuggled and went to sleep. And slept well.



Finally hit my stride on settling into an altered consciousness state when I woke up. I will probably wrote some more, somewhere, about the whole power exchange fealty thing, the stability of it, but I basically woke up there, stayed there all day and much of the rest of the day, and didn't lose it until yesterday, which I spent dealing with too much crazy. The level of centeredness I achieved was pretty amazing.

We eventually went down to breakfast at the Coffee Garden. There was a fifteen minute wait for a table, they told us; arawen pointed out a round table that was open and asked if it was reserved. "No," we were told, so he turned to the people next to us and said, "You want to join us at that table?" Eventually we acquired another couple, what appeared to be a mother/daughter set, and a stray Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn person, occupied a seven-person table, and had a very strange breakfast. Waited a long time for food, discussed the overloading the con hotel wit hungry pagans, nd various other things. Thought I saw Ogam (identified as 'one of the Celts who abducted me for dinner'), he didn't spot me; wound up discussing music a good bit when I was one of the three left at the table.

I wasn't going to an eleven, so I was given a Task and wandered off to the dealer's room, where I ogled things a bit and had my attention caught by an interesting dress. Enquired about it -- it was from the same woman who had carved arawen's raven, which is also his story -- got asked if I wanted to try it on, said "I have a Task, I'll be back", and wandered up to the auction room to vulch over the auction arawen wanted to win. Having assured his victory in battle, I returned to the woman and tried on the one dress (which was blue and purple velvet). It was, amazingly, too tight in the bust. I critiqued a bit, and she said "Do you want to try on another?" and I hemmed, hawed, and said I'd been looking at the blue one. She said hmm, studied it, declared it possibly a little larger, and shooed me off to try it on.

It fit perfectly.

Sigh. So I bought it, and while I was in the process of doing so, someone came by and said mournfully, "You sold the ruby raven?" and got told "I did, actually, to her partner". Acquired dress, said I was going to go change into it and look for my boyfriend, and got told that if he didn't say "Wow", I should get a new boyfriend (but not a new dress).

Changed, called teinedreugan and informed him I failed my saving throw vs. slinky blue dress, which amused him. He directed me to wear it when I got home. Then I said I was going to change into it and look for arawen, and he expressed envy, and wandered off to play more Warcraft. arawen called, though it was odd because the reception was terrible, determined where I was, and I went and found him, and after some poking I managed to get an "It's a nice dress" out of him. (I will keep him anyway.)

Wandered about a bit, then retreated to the room to recoup energy and also to be not doing something for teriel and lupabitch's book signing slot; played a little Civilization, then wandered down to see them. teriel recognised me without introduction, complimented me on the Uppity Minion usericon that oneironaut did for me, expressed great appreciation for the dress, hugged me, and was informed that he was a slut by lupabitch with great affection. Chatted with them for a bit, and stray others, said hi to Loren when he showed (as he had the following slot), had lupabitch sign her book. Did not pick up one of the others for teriel to sign for me because no cash, alas.

Eventually went to meet arawen for Penczak's ritual initiation thing. Made dinner reservations at the nice restaurant in the hotel through Guest Services, though with a bit of a bump in which a kilted official told me to put my shoes on. (Mmph.) Settled in to observe the ritual. Far, far too genericised for complete participation -- it was energetically crowded in there. Also, one of those 'this would have been a good ritual if a tenth of the people had showed' sort of situations, which was not helped by poor crowd management and a congregation that did not track ritual cues well. A bit of ritual drama obscured by people who did not sit down when they should have so others could see; I eventually just sat down because I couldn't see anyway, so why bother standing? Interesting bit of meditation work which I paid some attention to, though was distracted by the whirlpool of energy running around my ankles clockwise. At one point I opened my eyes, noted Penczak walking clockwise at roughly the same speed, said to myself, "That explains it then," and didn't worry about the phenomenon any more.

Went to pick up arawen's new Mage Tarot with him, and we wound up discussing the paradigms thereof a bit in the room while waiting for our dinner reservation. I counted the cards, noted the tweaks, and then went off on a ramble. You see, a while back I got into a stupid argument on alt.religion.wicca.moderated, in which someone was arguing that one couldn't know that something (in this case, specifically, polyamory) was not right for one unless one was enlightened enough to try it, and my basic perspective on which was that this person can't be all that enlightened if they can't figure out what would be a waste of their time? Which was a questing avatar vs. primordial avatar problem: some people are dumped, cognitively, in the center of a vast plain and directions from there are fairly arbitrary, one must experiment. I got dumped on a mountain path, and my choices are pretty much 'forward, back, into the mountainside, and over the cliff'. I don't want a pickle.

So we went to dinner, they told us Guest Services hadn't talked with them but they'd let us in anyway, and we went and stared at the menu. I figured if I was gonna be charged that much for food I'd have a filet mignon; arawen figured that if he was gonna be charged that much for food, he'd have a gigantic prime rib. We had a nice dinner, talked, got hit with someone's slow-moving energy dump in fascinating ways, tried to figure out what the hell that could have been, failed, and ate our steak.

Then we went to Ted Andrews's shapeshifting panel. Which was awfully interesting -- the man has a stunningly warped sense of humor, which was worth seeing all its own. The shapeshifting meditation is fairly similar to the one I use, though he put in some motion stuff, reinforcing a lot of what my Feri work has pointed out -- that getting things into the vital body requires ritual action, actually doing things, to tranfer the concepts. Did a somewhat different avian-shape shift than my usual meditative practice (for the most part; my consciousness kept slipping) and determined, among other things, that if I do a deep consciousness shift this way, I still have a bad left shoulder. (In loose-approach-to-practical-terms, a sharp bank left puts more strain on my left shoulder up and backwards than it can take and locks it up. So shallower turns left, maybe, and default to spiralling right.)

Afterwards, we went to the kahuna's lecture -- I saw him last year and went poking around Kalama's website. This year he mostly talked about the coursework he offers, which was not what I was hoping for, but he also did a short healing ritual. I am sort of wondering if the thing that I worked to be healed of bounced in a way as to provoke my current state of dealing-with-familial-crazy, as that is ... where I anticipated it would fall. We shall see.

Retreated to the room again and did rather a lot of amusing experimentation with sex magic. Which produced satisfying results and some really amusing noises.



Got up, dithered about morning panels, and packed, then checked out of the hotel after storing our stuff with Guest Services. Eventually wandered off to chat with elfwreck and say goodbye, then hit the Coffee Garden when they started serving actual lunch.

Saw yezida at the food and told her she'd missed seeing me in the slinky dress. Response, "Damn! You shouldn't tell me these things afterwards!" I told her "I looked for you! I found anaar. Anaar approved."

Wound up going crazed copyeditor at the menu; we got two different ones, each ordered something off the other's menu, and got our food all right, which was entertaining. One of them had something with candid walnuts on it. As opposed to deceitful walnuts. Ran into uncledark and said hi. Wandered a bit.

Eventually fetched up in the room where Erynn Laurie was going to be talking about poetic callings in Celtic traditions at about noon and decided to stay there, because wandering was not appealing. Discovered that there was free wireless there, and thus checked email; I wound up chatting with kviri and got asked how things were by ardaniel right before the panel started going. The third person to come into the room was interested in Feri, asked arawen about it, got pointed at me, and I gave her an overview and some resources, which made her very happy.

Wound up actually successully running into Ogam there. Got asked "Did you give anyone hell?" Said "No." When he made a disappointed noise, I said, "Nobody's been that stupid." That seemed to go over well. I introduced him to arawen, and he said, "Not that you need my opinion or anything, but he's cute." arawen said "Thank you" and looked mildly amused. Panel discussion of poetry, madness, social obligations and dealing with them, and similar stuff; ought look into some of this stuff. Also, discussion of the Brighid ritual from several participants/attendees.

Said hi-bye to lysana, wandered off to get a drink and eat arawen's meat, watched people go by (including uncledark and apparently-lwood), and eventually received phone call attempting to organise finding people. Remet up with brooksmoses and suzimoses, retreated to their place for a bit to admire brooksmoses's desk construction and suzimoses's gorgeous quilting, then went out for Chinese food. The food was pretty good; the music was ... alarming. If the recording had been more substantial it would have gone well in a music box. It included "Memory", reducing suzimoses and me to hysterics that appeared to leave the menfolk baffled. And it looped while we were there.

Back to the airport. They, again, had no seat assignments for us on the first flight. And the chairs were terrible. There was much hassle and thrashing, and I was in a weird mood. Wound up calling teinedreugan to talk for a bit and listen to him babble about flying; that was good. arawen got extremely cranky at the people about things. Eventually we got seats -- separately. Which was extremely aggravating. But at least we were on the plane. Read lupabitch's book on the flight to LA; this also needs more comment.

Getting on the flight home was fairly uneventful. We had seats. We had minimal drama, though the damn airplane was a bit of a hike away. It was a bit delayed. We got on without event. arawen slept in my lap for about half an hour, and we both slept for the rest of it. Uneventful extraction from Logan and waiting for the bus in a state of bleariness; eventually met by whispercricket who conveyed us to where we could nap and recover from strange airplane tricks eating up half the night.

Comments

[lupagreenwolf.livejournal.com]

*grin* Taylor *is* a slut--but he knows he's loved dearly (and he knows the mutually agreed-upon boundaries ;) Though it *was* a very nice dress, very nicely worn :)

[luellon.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you had a good time!

Some of what you mused on had light bulb moments for me.

Thanks.

::muses::

[kiya]

I hope they wind up being useful ones!

(And I am awfully curious as to what they might have been.)

[luellon.livejournal.com]

Ritual putting concepts into yourself.

I am having trouble with ritual, but I do not have much of a structure now. I have been having dreams of a shamanic nature lately. It made me think of to do is to be.

Which really struck a chord with me.

I feel like I am flailing my arms around and I feel lost.

[kiya]

Ritual is a tricky thing.

One of the reasons I wound up settling so comfortably in Kemetic practice was that Kemetic ritual was one of the first pagan ritual sets that didn't leave me feeling ... foolish, playacting. Establishing the right connective bits.

What's the other phrase? Live the change you want to see in the world?

Too easy to live in the head and not in the body and the world.

Flailing is rough. I hope you find purchase on something soon.

[luellon.livejournal.com]

"Too easy to live in the head and not in the body and the world."

That one. I need to practice. I need to do.

Kemetic ritual is good, but I'm not only Kemetic anymore. I have trouble doing it. Shamanism is coming up though.

[mindways]

Then arawen and I met up for what looked to be an interesting panel on luckbringers, which turned out to be cancelled.

...I keep giggling when I read this line. :)

[kiya]

They had plane problems, apparently.

arawen has been chortling about that every time he thinks of it since then ...