Seeker!

I'm now officially a Gardnerian Seeker, accepted for training by the wonderful Trothwy and Evn, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

Maybe you wouldn't think an Alexandrian second-degree would be this excited, but I think it's a good sign; I'm excited about learning something new, about growing and changing, and for someone who frequently quotes Garth's* "We fear change", this is saying something.

My horse is still getting over pigeon fever. I need to move him to a new barn as soon as he's well. There are bills to pay and laundry to do and schedules to juggle and all the other day-to-day things that sometimes make me think that the main benefit of adulthood is that I can have cereal for dinner if I want to; but now, I also have this wonderful new world opening up in front of me.

I also have group lessons to go teach, so I'm off to go slather myself with a gallon of sunblock.


*From "Wayne's World". Yes, my taste in film is generally less-than-sophisticated.

Headed Home, or Get What You Need Part 2.

I'm going to be a Gardnerian Seeker asking for training in about 30 hours or so.

I have no logical reason - except that I like the folks I'm talking to and will be getting said training from - to feel like this, but I feel like I'm going home. I finally got what the elders on the Amber and Jet list kept telling seekers; when you find the right bunch of people, the ones you're supposed to be working with, you'll know it, and you won't care overmuch about trad or lineage. When I realized that even if these folks weren't BTW, I still wanted to work with them, celebrate the holidays and esbats with them, share funny stories and good food and all that with them, I knew: we're family.

Granted, we're like long-lost family who are still getting to know each other - nobody's finishing each other's sentences quite yet. Sure, I still need to meet with and be found acceptable to the rest of the coven. But I'm not worried, just wildly exultant and tranquilly happy all at the same time.

Even if I can't make it to their full moon tomorrow (family transportation logistics - ugh), I'll be observing the esbat with as much joy in my heart as any witch ever had.

A Rough Spring.

It's been a rough spring. A spring filled not with growth and increase, as one might expect, but with illness and death.

A friend lost a four-month-old grandson. We saw our dear little cat sent to the Otherworld. A friend's grandmother passed. Second Husband's great-grandmother died. Another dear friend's beloved dog suddenly took ill and died. First Husband had diverticulitis for a month. Another pair of close friends lost a grandmother and lost a friend killed in a carjacking (he was 22). My horse (along with half the horses in the county) has pigeon fever, which has no real cure, causes gross abcesses that can lead to secondary infections, and can last for two months.

Hence, an Open Letter To The Universe:

Dear Universe,
This really needs to stop. It's getting ridiculous. Don't make me reconsider my "everything happens as it's supposed to, so it's best to interfere as little as possible" stance. I am seriously ready to start lobbing some major mojo around if things don't even out and start resembling something like normalcy.

Behave yourself.

Sincerely,
The ocelot

Goodbye to a dear companion.

Last Wednesday, First Husband and I had to take our eldest cat, out sweet little Pyewacket, to be put to sleep.

She'd lost some weight, but we hadn't thought much of it - she was, after all, sixteen. Then she lost a lot more, and over the course of only a few days. Then she couldn't walk, and it was time to see the vet and confirm what we both knew; it was Time.

We brought her shell home, and First and Second Husband buried her in the backyard (in what's becoming our own little pet cemetery, now that I think of it - no wonder that part of the yard seems to resist domestication).

Goodbye, Picky. We miss you.

Beltaine and "The Wicker Tree".

Last night, while searching for a copy of "The DaVinci Code" for poor sickly First Husband, Second Husband and I found a copy of "The Wicker Tree", a sequel of sorts to "The Wicker Man". Did I mention this was at WalMart?

WARNING: Possible spoilers ahead.

We liked it for many of the same reasons we like "The Wicker Man"; it's a morbidly funny*, sensationalized version of what the world might be like if there were entire communities of pagans tucked here and there. We sacrifice Christians! We have sex/orgies outdoors! Christians are all hypocrites who deserve to be sacrificed! Witches are hot young chicks who all want big Christian di-

OK. I'll keep this PG-13. You can fill in the last two letters on your own.

There's some good stuff in "The Wicker Tree" (hereafter TWT), but Second Husband and I didn't like it as much as we do "The Wicker Man" (TWM). There aren't the great matter-of-fact arguments between the Christian characters and the pagans that there were in TWM (like when Christopher Lee responds that of course some women jumping a fire are naked, because it would be far too dangerous if they were wearing clothes). The great re-created folk music from TWM has been replaced with fairly standard incidentals. The people's costumes, at the big sacrificial finish, look like modern-pagan-festival-wear. One woman tries to save one of the victims. A company whose power plant is making the people infertile is called Nuada - the hell?

On the other hand, the scene where Steve (the Christian guy) gets it is actually creepy in a Greek-myth way; I was reminded of stories of the Maenads. The reference to TWM when Beth (the Christian girl) looks like she might just escape is a nice touch. The hunt scene is great stuff. I'm sure I'll find more things I like when I watch it again.

But in the final analysis, TWT tells a lot more than it shows, and it loses something for it. It also would have done well to copy the feeling of a community that's behind the modern world, like Summerisle in TWM. It's fun for what it is - give it a look.

And a Happy Beltaine to all; may you have fertility in the form that suits you best.


* Before anyone jumps on my ass, I don't find it funny because they sacrifice Christians. I find it funny because in TWM, the cheerful singing and whatnot that accompanies the sacrifice is just not what I'd expect from a desperate attempt to restore fertility to the land, and in TWT because you can see what's coming from so far away that you can't help yell at the nice little Christians like you're watching "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or something.

Housekeeping.

I'm not loving the changes to Blogger, and I'm seriously thinking of going to WordPress.

Any thoughts?

Compartmentalization?

I don't necessarily think that all the parts of my life have to be integrated.

Example: No-one at either barn, the Work Barn or Riding Barn, needs to know that I'm a kinky, poly Wiccan. It has nothing to do with how well I ride or teach. Likewise, at kinky get-togethers, people are more apt to want to know what I did to Second Husband with those rose canes that one time, and witchy folk are more likely to want to know what powders I might be sprinkling on Work Barn's surfaces to help things along. Not that I have. Yet. Ahem.

As a young queer pagan person, I thought that not bombarding a potential new friend with ALL THE DETAILS was being dishonest. Now I think that it's just that I've gotten better at compartmentalization. You friends are for riding, and you're over here. You friends are for kink and poly, and you're there. You witchy lot...well, you folk are all over the place (grins).

Does my Co-instructor want to know about my Husbands? Probably not. If I tell my Work Barn bosses, will Second Husband pick up a second job there? Probably not. If I tell my kink/poly buds about Work Barn's summer camp, will they send their kids? Possibly. Some of them are pretty sadistic.

Some of this was spurred (no pun intended) by Work Barn's intent to have a "social night" with low pay for us instructing types and two-and-a-half hours out of our Friday evenings, complete with a potluck.

This got me to thinking about how work cultures differ in the amount of your free time they expect you to give up, and how some people don't seem to understand that you might want to go home, do whatever, and leave work where it is. I put it far more tactfully than this, but at the pay they're offering for this, I'd be paying to come, run after kids, and bring "potluck food". I will not do this, nor do I think the other instructor will. I also don't think it will suddenly draw new students or more lessons from existing ones.

I give 110% in lessons. I love the work, if not the job, as it were. But at the end of the day, when kids and horses are safely off to their respective pastures for the evening, I want to go home and see my non-horse-insane family so that I have the energy to do it all again the next day (or two).

So, what do you think? Do you keep certain aspects of your life separate from other aspects? Why or why not? What factors influence your decision to do so or not?