Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Bride's Day, 2010

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Bride, return to Us and lift the Cailleach's white plaid from the earth so We may be young again.

She Washes Her Plaid

ETA: I love how this turned out to be journal entry #365. OH, UNIVERSE, <3!

Last night the Old Woman washed Her plaid in Corryvreckan, stripping the bold colors from Her tartan as She plunged it into the ocean's churning spiral, using the whirlpool as Her cauldron as She transformed Her traditional dress into the white shroud of winter. (They say that the snow's the Cailleach's bleached plaid, thrown across the land, blanketing the earth as it dries beneath the sky.)

I'm not unfamiliar with raging, temperamental goddesses. I understand the fire and the ice, I understand the volatility and how a breath of air can either inflame or extinguish. There's a fine line between creation and destruction; one hand lowered, one hand raised, both extended parts of the same body. It's a cosmic balancing act, a tightrope performance as old as time itself.

When the Old Woman called I didn't know about Her, but I knew Her. "We're blue skinned, you know," the Black Rabbit told me when I was Underground. HOLY SHIT, I thought, EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT US. Blue is, if you think about it, universal. The blue skinned are the creators and destroyers, the raging ones, the fighting ones, the dead and risen ones, the ones who scream, fuck and storm. They tear, they claw, they lash out, but within the whirlwind of passionate action and movement, there's hidden compassion, hidden love and a greater purpose to the maelstrom of violence.

(Of course We're complex and contradictory, We're Woman. That's the beautiful, awe and fear inspiring thing about Us. We storm, sometimes on purpose, sometimes because it gets away from us. The trick is controlling the air flow. INFLAMING (too much air) and EXTINGUISHING (not enough air) aren't the answers, they're primitive - and very powerful, in a primal, animalistic way - extremes.)

(All of Us have extended hands, one lowered, one raised, but not enough of Us work on equalizing the extension. Instead of pointing at the ground and sky (creation, destruction) We should be reaching out with both hands, because, honey, that's the ONLY way you can grab and control something (unless you're thoroughly convinced that Jesus is going to take the fucking wheel, good luck with that, BTW).)

(My stomach valve had to break in order for me to appreciate this shit. Hopefully one of your body's involuntary functions doesn't have to suddenly STOP WORKING so you can have your own personal epiphany. But that's my magic; to know blood you need to know blood. I had to learn the importance of a breath of air, and in doing so it's begun solving two problems (one physical and one spiritual).)

(Now I'm REALLY tangenting from the original point of this entry, sorry.)

The Cailleach called me down to Her whirlpool, where I was stripped clean in the divine washerwoman's "cauldron". There was more than that, though. There was jumping into the tumultuous water of the whirlpool to save people from being swept down into the vortex. ("MOTHERFUCKING RETARDS," I shouted from rocky craigs overlooking the swirling mass of water, having to jump into the dangerous waves again and again to save drowning lemmings.)

The spiral that twisted the sea was feminine. Ancient. Feral. Terrifying. If the burning bush was the face of God, then the whirlpool was the vaginal canal leading to the great Creatrix's womb. I could only look at the roaring waters from the corner of my eyes, partially out of fear, but mostly due to the overwhelming feeling of absolute sacredness. It was the Ark, and even though I wasn't a Nazi I was still at least PRETTY SURE looking directly at the whirlpool would melt my face.

I also dreamt about a terrifying monster of a bull appearing in a field we were cutting through. He charged; there was no place to go. His body blocked the sun as he barreled towards me, and instead of escaping, instead of racing from the inevitable I stood my ground, lacking every survival instinct I otherwise should've had. I was prepared to die, an unseen, silent sacrifice.

Petrified but certain I closed my eyes when I felt his hot breath blast over my skin, not wanting to see my own death...but it never came. Humid heat from the panting bull rolled over me, but not through me. When I opened my eyes - still alive - the sun broke over the bull's back, partially blinding me with fierce light and outlining the massive beast that was kneeling in front of me.

The Great Bull submitted to me as sun spilled over our bodies, his giant, curved horns pointed down in submission and supplication. Breathless I reached out and placed my palm flat against his sweaty brow, reeling in shock that I was still alive and what surely had to be a divine creature was kneeling - BOWING - to me.

I was sick that night almost three (four?) years ago. I had a cold that wormed its way into my chest and was threatening to become a V. serious case of bronchitis. It was also the beginning of the last great depressive episode in my life. When I woke up from the lucid dreams I was shaking and unnerved. I retold both to Italics, and during a moment of curiosity I typed in "goddess" and "whirlpool" into Google and was rewarded with the Cailleach of Corryvreckan.

The Corryvreckan is the world's third largest whirlpool and, unknown to me at the time, is located in Scotland. Attached to the oceanic feature is the ancient figure of the Cailleach, the winter hag, the storm bringer, the divine washerwoman. She's presumed to be old. So old, in fact, that She's believed to have once been considered one of the greatest of goddesses (the goddess of the goddesses, the mother of all), but time's weathered Her image and She's now remembered as an elemental (temperamental, heh!) deity of folklore.

When I realized there was a whirlpool in Scotland I didn't even know about I began crying. When I realized there was a whirlpool in Scotland I didn't even know about AND a very primitive, elemental goddess (at the time I had expressed interest in controlling the weather - bringing the snow, stopping the rain, making the winds blow) was attached to it I began crying even harder. I was bawling by the time I realized every image of Her I came across depicted Her with blue skin.

(I, uh, cry a lot. Language is frustrating, a lot of things don't translate right (or well) when filtered through an autistic brain. Emotions, however, don't need to be explained, so they're naturally expressed through tears. Happy tears. Sad tears. Tears of pain, tears of joy. Ecstatic tears, despondent tears. Freya's golden tears of living, loving and losing.)

A lot people drop the "I WAS CALLED" bomb in paganism and witchcraft. I try not to use popular vernacular (primarily because I don't consider myself your normal, run-of-the-mill witch and don't want to be confused with - or lumped together - with a scene I'm trying my hardest to avoid), but if dreaming about a very specific natural feature (and the primordial goddess attached to it) despite not knowing about it and then finding out that the same natural feature - goddess included - is only SEVERAL FUCKING HOURS AWAY then, fine, yeah, "I was called".

ANYWAY...!

(If you've been reading my journal for any length of time you'll find that it's absolutely impossible for me to tell a story without wandering off the path to tell several stories to better explain the original story. I talk. A lot. But I also want people to UNDERSTAND where I'm coming from, which is the entire point of keeping a diary that's open and accessible to others.)

(The thing is, I don't want people to mimic or copy, I want people to GET ME and GET HOW I THINK so they understand why I do the things I do. And in that understanding I hope that people will BEGIN THINKING FOR THEMSELVES instead of relying on the same book that's been kicked around for years.)

(Not that books are V. V. BAD, but they can become a crutch. Someone who relies on books is someone who isn't working on instinct (or displaying any signs of innate creativity) and, more often than not, simply consuming and regurgitating someone ELSE'S experiences and beliefs.)

This entry was only supposed to be several paragraphs long (re: last night's first snow and how I celebrated the Old Woman returning home and doing Her laundry) but I got a LEETLE sidetracked. I REALLY, REALLY wanted to sink my teeth into how I "work" with the Cailleach, but that'll have to wait for another time. Seeing how winter's officially fallen onto Scotland I'm sure the topic will get kicked around a few times before the (Virginal Spring) Bride returns.

PS:

ALSO, WHILE I'M ON THE CAPS:

TWITTER, I AM //SO// NOT APPRECIATING YOUR UNEXPECTED GREMLIN CHOICE OF REVERTING TO THE "GREEN ANGRY POINTING HARPY WOMAN PICTURE THAT DOESN'T WORK AS A TWITTER ICON" INSTEAD OF THE "DEAD GIRL CRAWLS OUT OF TV TO KILL YOU THAT WORKS OKAY AS A TWITTER ICON" WHICH I HAD SETTLED ON.

(OKAY, OKAY - I KIND'VE SORT'VE LOLED A LITTLE INSIDE.)

(LOLOLOL, SHE'S BITCHY AND ANGRY. OH DEAR, ISHTAR, OH DEAR.)

Patience, Grasshopper

Due to a serious case of almost-way-too-near-NO-I-AM-NOT-FUCKING-JOKING-GIVE-ME-ONE-REASON-TO-START-SCREAMING-LIKE-A-TODDLER burnout and the newest installment of OVERLY INTELLECTUALIZED IDENTITY CRISIS this journal entry's going to be excruciatingly mundane. (APOLOGIZES IN ADVANCE; I'LL UP THE FUCKING SWEARING IN THE HOPES THAT THE CHRONICALLY RECURRING EXPLETIVES SOMEHOW DISTRACTS YOU FROM THE FACT THAT I'M SERIOUSLY FUCKING LACKING IN THE "FEELING LIKE A REAL HUMAN FUCKING BEING" DEPARTMENT.)

(AND WHEN I MEAN "SWEARING" I MEAN HILARIOUSLY OVERUSING "FUCK" SINCE THAT'S THE ONLY EXPLETIVE THAT'S WORTH SPITTING OUT LIKE A TOURETTE'S STUTTER.)(AND WHEN I MEAN "HILARIOUS" I ACTUALLY MEAN "NOT ACTUALLY AMUSING OR FUNNY IN ANYWAY" LIKE WHEN SOMETHING IS "SICK" OR "FAT" (OR ANY OTHER MODERN INTERPRETATION OF A WORD THAT, LOL, SPINS THE ORIGINAL MEANING INTO //THE EXACT OPPOSITE//! LOLOLOL!) WHEN THE THING IN QUESTION IS, IN FACT, NEITHER LITERALLY "SICK" AND/OR "FAT".)

I'm going to leave the HEAVY shit with Marty "SORRY BOYS, YOU'RE JUST TOO LOUD" McFly and dazzle the internet world with a shocking amount of INNER PERSONAL DEPTH that's SO OVERWHELMINGLY COMPLEX THAT ANY ATTEMPT TO COMPREHEND THE CORE OF MY BEING WOULD SURELY DRIVE THE AVERAGE PERSON TO THE EDGES OF SANITY for another day. (SORRY, INTERNETS, YOU'RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO SETTLE FOR ANOTHER EXTRA SPECIAL PERSON TODAY WHO ISN'T ME.)

The wonderful thing about Spring is even when I'm in the throes of despair and beating my flailing fists against my chest in existential crisis I can't help but be taken in by the awe-inspiring beauty and rejuvenation of this season. Waking up at twilight I shuffle around the house and watch - through windows - as darkness begins to blanket my mirror to the outside world. Everything disappears beneath a wave of blackness, all the life, all the brown turning green, all the tender shoots that gently bend beneath the sharp breeze.

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When night comes it drapes a curtain over the world I spy on, obscuring everything except the highlighted, glowing outline of neighbors' drawn windows. When night comes the light illuminating my world - the light I live by - is cold and clinical, spilling out of spiral shaped, environmentally friendly florescent light bulbs. When night comes I feel Diana stirring in me, and, like Her, I covet the golden warmth of light, and pine for the feeling of absolute completion that comes with the morning's sunrise.

(OH, DEATH, WITH YOUR IRONY AND ATTRACTION: AFRAID OF WHAT YOU ARE, NEEDING WHAT YOU AREN'T.)

Morning's first pitch black, with twinkling stars that pulse blue-white-red against an endless backdrop frozen in time. In the east the horizon cracks and splits; the fringes of space and sky interweave, slowly painting the domed curvature of a Byzantine cathedral. (AND FROM AN ANCIENT, EARTHEN PASSAGE I EMERGED INTO THE GREATEST CATHEDRAL OF THEM ALL AND THOUGHT MY HEART WOULD BREAK IN DIVINE ECSTASY WHEN I SAW THAT THE HEAVENS WERE UNDERGROUND - THE GOLDEN ORTHODOX STARS BREATHING LIFE INTO THE FLAWLESS, MAJESTIC BLUE THAT CLOAKED THE CONCAVE UNIVERSE IN A UNHEARD, BUT STIRRING, HYMN.)

And from that deep, unconscious blue the hope of light appears, lifting the rolling darkness from the world, drawing up the curtain until black is blue and blue is a lighter blue, a free, exhilarating blue of promise that races at full speed to the very end of the world. (LIGHT FROM DARKNESS, SOMETHING FROM NOTHING.) My world - everything I love, everything that brings me happiness, everything that brings me joy and makes my heart sing - reappears, and I stand on the other side of glass watching a waking world, a living person instead of a forgotten ghost.

(NIGHT, SHE SAID, IS OUR TIME. BUT WITHOUT DAY, WITHOUT LIGHT, WE'RE INCOMPLETE. SO WE KNEEL AT THE HOLY ALTAR OF THE SUN, OUR OPPOSITE, OUR OTHER HALF - WHAT WE INHERENTLY AREN'T, WHAT WE INHERENTLY WANT, WHAT WE INHERENTLY ARE DRAWN TO - FINDING THAT HE'S ALREADY THERE, KNEELING, WAITING AND DESIRING OUR DARKNESS WHICH BRINGS RESPITE AND RENEWAL.)

LOLOLOLOL, WAIT, I SAID I //WASN'T// GOING TO GET ALL HEAVY BECAUSE I DIDN'T THINK I HAD IT IN ME. (I GUESS "HEAVY" IS MY DEFAULT SETTING? WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT, RIGHT?) I'm ditching the waxing poetic tangent from this point on and filling that self-analysis void with THE PREVIOUS PLEDGE OF OVER-THE-FUCKING-TOP SWEARING!

Back in February we were hit with an amount of snow I've never, in the eight or nine years living here in Scotland, seen. It took nearly two fucking weeks for the overlaying quilt (I OFFICIALLY OVERUSED "BLANKET" SO NOW I'M GOING TO HAVE TO GO THROUGH ALL OF MY BED SHEET SYNONYMS!) of white to recede, and when it did I found that Spring had been cozying it up beneath that figurative quilt of ice'n'snow.

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I was, if you remember (see Bride's Awakening), inspired to brush off months of dormancy and air my winter gardening sweater. (WINTER GARDENING SWEATER = A HORRENDOUS WINTER SWEATER BOUGHT AT FASHION BUG IN THE LATE 90S AND GIVEN TO ME AS A CHRISTMAS GIFT BY A BEST FRIEND.) Due to my sleeping schedule I didn't have a chance to tackle the few outside jobs I had planned, so the evening was spent planting seeds indoors.

Within days of planting two of the six Voodoo seeds germinated, the dill, basil and tobacco sprouted and all of the vegetable seeds bought to fill my GIANT SEED VOID arrived. The dill and basil were left in the backroom while the rest of the seeds/sprouted plants were moved beneath the light. (OH, I AM TOTALLY ENJOYING HAVING THAT FUCKING GROW LIGHT ON FOR 18 HOURS A MOTHERFUCKING DAY AGAIN.)

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I managed to complete some pretty intense gardening over the course of a day or two, shit that //HAD// to get done before my father-in-law, Mr. Awesome, returned from his month long sabbatical at the Florida property. (THE DIRTYARD IN THE FRONT AND THE APOCALYPTIC WASTELAND KNOWN AS THE BACKYARD HAS BEEN, FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, ABANDONED BY HIS ROYAL GARDENING HIGHNESS AND WE'VE WATCHED THE COMMUNAL SPACE SLIDE QUICKLY INTO RUIN, UNABLE TO DO //ANYTHING// TO PREVENT IT SINCE, TECHNICALLY, THIS ISN'T //OUR// HOUSE SO IT ISN'T //OUR// GARDEN.)

Once I noticed that the bulbs Italics bought me during our 2008 CASTLE PIE ADVENTURE were beginning to bud all six terracotta containers were dragged from their under-the-bedroom-window pad and moved to the concrete patio steps so I could monitor their progress through the patio door. (MONITOR PROGRESS = STAND FOR A SUSPICIOUSLY LONG TIME WITH MY FIRST CUP OF TEA OF THE DAY WHILE SILENTLY ADMIRING THE DWARF BLOSSOMS TREMBLING IN THE CHILLY SPRING AIR.) They were relocated just in time; the day after the first of the irises unfurled beneath the cold February sun displaying their ghetto velvet purple to the world.

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The green scrapes of my witch's garlic were covered with buckets of dirt, each pail of damp earth carried (CARRIED = CRUSHED) against my chest from backyard to sideyard, almost every trip back and forth accompanied by the overprotective blackbirds who've nested in the ivy hedge. (THEY'LL GET USE TO ME...EVENTUALLY. IN THE MEAN TIME THEY GO APE SHIT LIKE A FAMILY OF SOCIALLY DISTURBED CRACKHEADS WHEN SOMEONE WALKS PAST THE NEST.)

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I weeded what was once the predominant garden feature - the raised rock bed - something I don't think I've ever seen my father-in-law do. (I MEAN, SOME OF THE BRACKEN THAT I REMOVED WAS ON THE VERGE OF BECOMING FOSSIL FUEL, OKAY? THAT'S POSSIBLY DECADES OF NEGLECT!) Unfortunately, I'm currently waking up at a super awful bad time to take pictures to reveal the finished product, so the images below convey the BEFORE rather than the AFTER.

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(I USED A HAND HELD BROOM AND ACTUALLY SWEPT THE ROCKS COMPRISING THE EXTERIOR OF THE WALL. I USED A HAND HELD BROOM AND EVEN SWEPT ALL OF THE EFFING STONES MR. AWESOME HAS SITTING ON TOP OF PILES OF ROTTING BEAMS OF WOOD. I USED A HAND HELD BROOM AND EVEN SWEPT THE FUCKING //DIRT//, OKAY?)(DIRT, BTW, CAN ALWAYS USE A ONCE OVER WITH A BROOM - DIRT CAN ALWAYS BE CLEANER, ALWAYS!)

Now that Mr. Awesome's returned from his holy crusade I'm pretending like I did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OUTSIDE and if he notices any change, any discrepancy, any difference out back I'M JUST GOING TO PRETEND THAT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK HE'S TALKING ABOUT. (Even if I did leave the pile of weeds and rotted wood just sitting at the foot of the cloth's line...OOPS.)

The problem now? Since I've dug it out of ruin, cleaned and polished it until it gleamed it feels like it recognizes ME as the ALPHA LEADER because, clearly, ALL OF THOSE SPLINTERS, ALL OF THOSE CUTS, ALL OF THOSE RAW WELTS FROM YANKING WEEDS OUT OF AN UNYIELDING GROUND IS INDICATIVE OF NEW OWNERSHIP. (THE ONLY THING I DIDN'T DO WAS PISS ON IT TO MARK IT AS MY TERRITORY.)(PS: DON'T THINK THAT IT'S BENEATH ME TO DO IT, BTW, BECAUSE IT'S NOT. AT ALL. NOT EVEN A FRACTION.)

Patience, grasshopper, for the crazy old man will inevitably get nothing but crazier and older, and in that maze of dementia you will inherit what is rightfully yours. (I HAVE SPLINTERS TO PROVE OWNERSHIP AND RIGHT, OKAY?)

Let's Exchange the Experience

First windstorm night; pulled and tied gusts in fluttering apron just after midnight. I'M THE OLD WOMAN, THE WASHER, AND I BRING THE RAIN. (She's getting closer to the top of the hill.) It crashed and hissed and exploded like wings (surf breaking? only a lobster, clinging to the ground...) and when the cold air touched the small of my back I arched and shuddered in the darkness, my fingers knotted around the old white cotton of my wedding dress, holding the wind and feeling the weight of the world bear down on me as I inched up the hill.

Happy 100 posts, baby.