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Trying to comb the tangles out of my life is a fiddly, fiddly thing. It's a two steps forward, one step back thing at all times, and this has been a rough while - hell, it's been a rough year - which means it feels like a lot more back steps than forward steps even if I look at it closely and recognise that's not right, really.
Possibly it's that I have too much pirouetting and not enough promenade.
KJ likes to run in circles around things. "Baby run circle!" she proclaims. "Run circle mama!" when she's orbiting me. Like that, only I don't enjoy it as much as she does?
Among the things that I'm wrestling with is of course my religious work, because that is a huge portion of what I do that isn't "read Dr. Seuss books to the toddler". And of course there are all the threads of that to tie together.
I was talking with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whispercricket the other day about being a neurotic traditionalist, and that really my comfort zone is in that sweet spot of doing the things that have always been done, so that they have that nice wear like the well-trodden marble steps of the public library, the curves that make things lived-in. Which is one of the reasons that reconstructionism in theory appeals to me, the polished smoothness of old liturgy, but of course I have to build the fucking thing, so it's not really lived in, I made it last week. And it's hard to be comfortable with things being the way they have always been when I made them last week.
At the same time, there's a comfort to old liturgies, or even to adapting them; I pulled this:
and used it as part-source for this:
which is part of something that I wrote as part of my Craft work. I'm a lot more comfortable with old images, worn smooth like riverstones, even when I'm building new things.
And of course the thread of Craft I'm chasing around is transformative, shape-shifting, new-and-old, just like the shadow form of reconstruction, old-and-new, and so it's comfortable in places the other isn't, and awkward and growth-forcing in places the other is. So it's all a thing, a piece, the dance of the equivalent opposites, in search of the place where everything comes together.
And I try to make my liturgies and my poetries not come out in Godawful Pagan Rhyming Couplets, and if you're reading this I figure there are good odds that you know what I mean by that. It was ... jarring when I was reading some nominally recon-oriented stuff, with glorious verse laid out of translations of old liturgies, which then dropped with a tin-eared thud into sing-song. At least Feri witches tend to have a poetic sophistication greater than I did at age seven or so when I wrote:
I steep myself in Feri imagery, the dark mother shining with star-sweat, birthing the universe in a surge of erotic power, and then I sink myself in Egyptian stuff, and find Atum, cock in hand, doing much the same. Old-and-new, new-and-old, and then this female-and-male, male-and-female, the Creator a cosmic pangendered figure but everyone picks some set of pronouns. Cultural mediation, ancient and moderation. (But Nit, also a part-time Creator, has the odd appearance as an ithyphallic woman, which is probably the most explicit I've come across this aside from Khnum's "Father of fathers, Mother of mothers" title.)
And I come away with things like Heru-pa-Khered as the Divine Androgyne, and I think most other recons would think I'm fucking batshit, but this is the first Heru-sa-Aset form that I've actually been able to relate to, so fuck it, I'm going to run with it, and mutter about emanationist theologies and Malkuth reflecting back to Kether if you want to steal a whole other metaphor system to parse through something that's not either. King of the world has to be able to encompass the whole world. You know, the thing.
At some point it turns into something else. Even though, hilariously, I can back all of it up with ancient texts. I find that profoundly humorous, actually - the deeper I go, the weirder it gets.
Meanwhile, I agitate against the Standard Problem - the current project stalls out for lack of a book, and I don't have the $140 to get it. (And it's not in the library system. I checked. Because I'm actually resident here now, I have a library card.)
Possibly it's that I have too much pirouetting and not enough promenade.
KJ likes to run in circles around things. "Baby run circle!" she proclaims. "Run circle mama!" when she's orbiting me. Like that, only I don't enjoy it as much as she does?
Among the things that I'm wrestling with is of course my religious work, because that is a huge portion of what I do that isn't "read Dr. Seuss books to the toddler". And of course there are all the threads of that to tie together.
I was talking with
whispercricket the other day about being a neurotic traditionalist, and that really my comfort zone is in that sweet spot of doing the things that have always been done, so that they have that nice wear like the well-trodden marble steps of the public library, the curves that make things lived-in. Which is one of the reasons that reconstructionism in theory appeals to me, the polished smoothness of old liturgy, but of course I have to build the fucking thing, so it's not really lived in, I made it last week. And it's hard to be comfortable with things being the way they have always been when I made them last week.At the same time, there's a comfort to old liturgies, or even to adapting them; I pulled this:
- The doors of the sky are opened
The doors of the firmament are thrown open at dawn for Heru of the Gods.
He goes up into the Field of Rushes,
He bathes in the Field of Rushes.
and used it as part-source for this:
- The doors of heaven are opened
And you are born
You have bathed in peace
And are lifted up on the scent of morning.
which is part of something that I wrote as part of my Craft work. I'm a lot more comfortable with old images, worn smooth like riverstones, even when I'm building new things.
And of course the thread of Craft I'm chasing around is transformative, shape-shifting, new-and-old, just like the shadow form of reconstruction, old-and-new, and so it's comfortable in places the other isn't, and awkward and growth-forcing in places the other is. So it's all a thing, a piece, the dance of the equivalent opposites, in search of the place where everything comes together.
And I try to make my liturgies and my poetries not come out in Godawful Pagan Rhyming Couplets, and if you're reading this I figure there are good odds that you know what I mean by that. It was ... jarring when I was reading some nominally recon-oriented stuff, with glorious verse laid out of translations of old liturgies, which then dropped with a tin-eared thud into sing-song. At least Feri witches tend to have a poetic sophistication greater than I did at age seven or so when I wrote:
- A house cat says meow
A wild cat roars
A house cat can't decide
To be in or out of doors.
I steep myself in Feri imagery, the dark mother shining with star-sweat, birthing the universe in a surge of erotic power, and then I sink myself in Egyptian stuff, and find Atum, cock in hand, doing much the same. Old-and-new, new-and-old, and then this female-and-male, male-and-female, the Creator a cosmic pangendered figure but everyone picks some set of pronouns. Cultural mediation, ancient and moderation. (But Nit, also a part-time Creator, has the odd appearance as an ithyphallic woman, which is probably the most explicit I've come across this aside from Khnum's "Father of fathers, Mother of mothers" title.)
And I come away with things like Heru-pa-Khered as the Divine Androgyne, and I think most other recons would think I'm fucking batshit, but this is the first Heru-sa-Aset form that I've actually been able to relate to, so fuck it, I'm going to run with it, and mutter about emanationist theologies and Malkuth reflecting back to Kether if you want to steal a whole other metaphor system to parse through something that's not either. King of the world has to be able to encompass the whole world. You know, the thing.
At some point it turns into something else. Even though, hilariously, I can back all of it up with ancient texts. I find that profoundly humorous, actually - the deeper I go, the weirder it gets.
Meanwhile, I agitate against the Standard Problem - the current project stalls out for lack of a book, and I don't have the $140 to get it. (And it's not in the library system. I checked. Because I'm actually resident here now, I have a library card.)
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