Astronomy Domine

 Celestial realms and mothwing secrets. 

Twister Weather

No, not literally. It's my internal weather that's been spinning me around, wringing my life out, blowing it back in. Atmospheric conditions of circumstance. In the end, I feel like no more than a will o' wisp, flickering faintly in the dark. That sounds sort of romantic, until you realize that a will o' wisp is bioluminescence produced by decay. 

I long for a cool blue morning, the sort that spreads out around you like a map, in which you could go anywhere, do anything, and maybe you won't, but you could and that's the point. I miss having some other horizon to look toward. 

The world changes so fast. I want to shout at it to stop for a moment, I'm not finished with the way it was. I'm not ready to fade out. But I'm only a faint flicker, and the world doesn't listen. 

Maybe tomorrow I will go out to some hilltop and try to read my future in the ever-expanding pattern of streets. Perhaps I will look at the sky and see my fortune in the clouds. Perhaps I will gather some strands of a spiderweb and start weaving another sort of life. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Note: Another name for will o' wisp is foolish fire. In case there was any question. 

When Flying Was Easy

Looking back, it seems like time was a place then, existing in space between the known and unknown. The distance between boundaries the same as the time it took for the new to become ordinary.

The sunlight that blazed down on the unfamiliar road is now lost to me, the sun and the road both. The sun and the road still exist, but the space they once occupied is gone.

Pluto Is Crossing the Sign of Capricorn

Pluto has been transiting midheaven in my astrological chart for a year now, and there are some nights I could swear I feel it out there, grinding away, cosmic machinery without mercy.

(Pluto is only 263.2 light minutes from home, but you get the point.)

 

Late Nights and Dark Mornings

Have a little music while I think about what to post next.

Winterlude

Being that we're under a winter weather advisory again, I can't help but be carried back to last year's storm, which was no ordinary storm, not even a freak storm, but something dark and ominous, even before the lights went out. Or maybe it just seemed so me, a Texan who's never been so cold in her life.

Is it silly to admit that with the onrush of cold wind last night I felt a tinge of fear? 

Snow has always been a short-lived novelty in this area, but it's becoming more and more common. Perhaps it will become so common that we'll even start buying mittens, so we don't have to try to catch snowflakes with our chapped and frozen fingers, like I did last year.

There are certain days when winter seems like its own world, and this is one of them.

Cor Dolori

I may live on until

 I long for this time

             In which I am so unhappy,

         And remember it fondly.

        ~ Fujiwara No Kiyosuke

When I said I was adapting to hopelessness, I meant it. To be hopeless, in essence, is not so bad. Hopelessness is a scrap of ground in a flat field, and you can't leave, but that's all right; there is nowhere to go. In time you begin to notice the shifting light, gradations of gray, patterns in the drizzling rain. You can let your mind wander there; there is nothing more to keep it tethered.

What hopelessness is not, is heartache. Heartache is a whole 'nother story. Heartache is as caustic as acid, a cruelly inflicted wound. Heartache makes you despise what you are, the way love makes you love you. It pulls you close just to hit you harder. It makes you wonder what you did to deserve it. 

Heartache steals from you, too. You find yourself flinching at what was once beautiful. It makes you regret every smile. That's the hardest part, I think. Having to be ashamed of what makes you most vulnerable.

No, give me hopelessness over heartache every time. It doesn't accept, but neither does it reject. A disinterested companion who at least never pretends. So let me look into my non-future and see nothing. It's not the life I would have chosen, but better than a life of wishes that won't come true.

Tristitia

Slowly I am adapting to hopelessness, learning to live around the empty space inside of me. 

Distant Early Warning

Or maybe not so distant. Who can say?

I'm loathe to talk about anything approaching current events or even the outside world here on this blog, because...well, don't we all get enough of that already? Everybody has their own opinion, and mine carries no more weight than any other. I'd rather write about my own small but mysterious world.

Sometimes the two intersect, however, in ways that demand attention.

Such was the case on the night of January 2, when I was startled from sleep by a dream-that-wasn't-quite-a-dream. Without so much as a pardon the interruption, the pastel wonderland in my head was replaced by a picture of a bright, shining, but completely empty city.

What happened next was rather unsettling. 

"Soon, the human societal structure will no longer be capable of supporting human biological needs," a voice - calmly, almost soothingly, neutral - announced. "The seeds of this have already been planted. The imbalance of power and the transfer of resources from the real to the unreal have made the situation untenable."

I knew, somehow, that the cities I was looking at were places where the residents had been forced out, leaving most of the property in the hands of a few.

''Soon, the ability to access shelter, medical care and even to reproduce will be limited" the voice continued, and I understood that when this last thing came to pass - interpreted by me as not only infertility, but the avoidance of childbearing due to lack of safety and no functional society to support childrearing - this would be a point of no return.

Again, I was shown vistas with no people, this time filled with bitcoin mining facilities instead.

"An event will occur that will skew the balance of power even further," said the voice, along with a tumult of images: office blocks of malfunctioning computers, a financial crisis, money losing its value or becoming somehow "unreal." It all felt desperate and grim.

Another, more distant voice began to shout from the desolate landscape: "There is no one at the helm. There is no one at the helm."

I'd been half awake through most of this but came fully awake with this phase in my mind. It had been so vivid and realistic. At first, I thought maybe I'd overheard some apocalyptic tv program, but no, all was silent - everyone else was asleep. 

I lay there for a long time, eyes closed, mulling it over. 

There were many things understood but not explicitly stated about this quasi-dream. The importance of the real vs the unreal, for one, the massive amounts of energy being used in bitcoin mining, the extremes to which the balance of power would be skewed due to the "event," the impact of societal breakdown on the climate, and more. The emptiness of the cities I interpreted as a metaphor, but the sense of a few haves and many millions of have-nots felt very real indeed.

"There is no one at the helm." I lay there with that phrase echoing in my mind and understood that this - should it actually happen - would be a so-called black swan event that the canny would use to their advantage while there was no one to stop them.

I'm not one to stake everything on a dream or even a non-dream; I'm taking it with a few grains of salt. But when these articles crossed my path last night, I had to raise my eyebrows a few inches. This one from January 3 talks of the potential for a situation much like the one described in my vision, and this one from January 7 even more so, with a darker and more conspiratorial turn. Called, most intriguingly, The Unreality Of Money

It's worth thinking about at the very least. 

This New Year's Eve Post Is Brought To You By ...

My silhouette drinking from a plastic cup at the Levitation festival. Cheers. It's been a hell of a year. 

Glow

Since I still don't have words for the things I want to say, here's some light in the dark instead.

One Year And A Lifetime Ago

I dreamed I was standing at a crossroad in the center of an empty town. I could feel but not see the lines of the world. An unknown voice said, "while at first there were reasons for doubt, as the months passed, the truth had become clear.'"

I knew (the way you know in dreams) that this was a portent of change. - December, 2020

One year later, was this so? 

It's true, I'm not the same person I was then, on that neon corner, in that colorful glow. But even a dust devil will lose its power when it grows too cold or moves too slow. And that's to say nothing of obstructions.  

What's that pithy saying, again? "The truth hurts, reality bites." 

Sun In Opposition

 My anti-birthday. Cold sun splintering 

As The Crow Flies

The crows have gone away to fetch it. 

Blink

It's darkest November now, and the signal blinks through the early night. It's faint and faltering at times, but persistent. It still shines. 

Interlude

I am still here, still being, still doing, even if half-hidden in a mirror on a dark and windy side-street. Loneliness and sorrow and even conjunctions of Neptune and Pluto notwithstanding. I have a lot to say, but it's hard to say it. Sometimes words...

Never mind. If it's meant to come, it will come in time.

Happy Halloween.

Flicker

 

The Unrequited Sidewalk

Please forgive my writer's block. I seem to have come to the end of part 1 of my life without any idea of what happens in part 2.

While I wait in this interval for some sign to appear, let us take inventory. What do I have left to carry me from one phase to the next? A few crumpled leaves, a cracked sidewalk, a lot of feelings. Not much, and only one truly belongs to me.

Sometimes you turn the page yourself, and other times you must wait for another hand to turn it for you. Sometimes you become acutely aware that you aren't writing this part of your story. 

This is one of those times, so for now there's nothing to do but wait for my chance to take back the pen.

(The title sounds like it should be an Edward Gorey book, and frankly, it would be better that way.)

Waiting Around For Grace

Saturday, nothing but the echo of blowing leaves. Wind caught in corners. Feathers float without a sound.

If there is anyone here, they give no sign.

Sometimes I wonder if it's my fate to know people by their absence, a procession of empty spaces.  An impression at most, maybe; a fading handprint in the summer heat.

It's not that I mind being lonely so much, though it would have been be nice to share the emptiness once in a while. It's not being lonely, it's the difference between words and meaning, being looked at and being seen. 

I suppose that's what I'm doing here, walking this threshold as I do. Trying to see and hoping that someone will see me. The grace that comes with something more than indifference. I know by now this is unlikely, that I might as well sit on this bench waiting for a dead friend or a phantom lover to appear, but the heart is persistent, down to its last agonized beat. Maybe even longer.

If I know myself at all, in a hundred years, I'll still be making the same plea. I was not just a thing, an image, an obstacle that blocked the light. I had a meaning. A soul. By then, I will be truly invisible, merged with the wind. Still pleading. Still waiting. 

Fever Dreams

Lying here ill day after day, I find myself pondering the way some people take concepts and fashion them into weapons. The way some omit facts to maintain the false superiority of knowing the truth. There is the devaluation of lived experience and independent thought. Insularity that breeds mediocrity. It's all weakness masquerading as strength, but if the last few years have proved anything, it's how easily we will buy into a façade. 

When I'm strong enough to stand up, I contemplate my image in the bathroom mirror, my awareness of -- the appearance of being -- an object without value. It may come as a surprise, but this hasn't always been the case. I've been a valuable object a time or two, and this is how I know that the difference between them is no more than a hair's breadth, entirely dependent on the whims of the one who thinks they decide your worth. This is not to say it does not hurt. If you care, then oh god yes, it hurts. Devaluation can feel like dying while having to stay alive. Self-objectification is worse yet. It's what happens when your survival depends on watching yourself through other people's eyes. 

I'm aware I'm not making a very good case for myself by telling this half -- my internal half -- of the story. I'm aware I could kick my image up a notch by switching the view. That requisite hair's breadth. I could convince you that I'm more worthy of your attention than you think I am. I note the impulse, see the shadow of it in my words (see, I've been valued, I've been loved, don't take me for granted!) but these days I lack much interest in self-deception. 

...

Last night I dreamed of a phrase etched on my own flayed flesh: "just because you've been given this doesn't mean it's a gift."

I woke up and realized it was true. 

The distance between seeing pain as a gift and pain as a punishment is a hair's breadth, too. 

These are the things you notice when you are sick.

(Illustration: Martin Ware, Donkeyskin)

Underneath

Cruel summer. Miserly summer. All steaming drizzle and sodden heat. Mosquitoes breeding in muddy puddles. There aren't enough baths in the world to wash away this malaise.

There's nothing to do but wheeze and cough and think about all the work left undone. The air is thick with both disease and disgrace and it's a toss-up as to which is more suffocating.

My ideas wither under that corrosive dripdripdrip, the one you think I don't notice. 

My thoughts are toxic condensation, collecting beneath an August that never really came.

All Birds Come Home To Roost

Early one morning in 2007 - it was in the Autumn, I think - I dreamed I was standing in the driveway of my father's house. It was early morning in the dream, too, the sky overcast, the smell of damp gravel rising into the air. It felt so real, as if I were really there, even though I could never imagine going back again.

In the way of dreams, my cat Misu was there, too, with her kitten, a silver tabby named Fog. One moment they were stalking a pair of mourning doves and the next - in the way of dreams - they were the doves, flying to safety of the telephone wire above, higher even than it could've really been, a dream height that could only exist in my mind. 

I woke with the image still in front of my eyes, the cat-birds ascending ever higher, cooing their melancholy song. The image faded in a moment, but the dream has stayed with me ever since, refusing to yield even a hint of its meaning.

Flash forward 14 years, and it's two weeks ago, early morning. I am standing in the driveway of what was once my father's house. The sky is overcast, and the smell of damp gravel rises into the air. I see two cats - the neighbor's, probably - a mother cat and her kitten. The baby is pouncing the mother's tail. Misu, an elder stateswoman these days, peers at them disdainfully through the fog. There is the sound of wings, and a pair of mourning doves land on the wire overhead.

At once, the dream-feeling comes over me. I am - as near as possible, dream illogic aside - standing inside the dream. I feel slightly afraid. What will happen next? 

Immediately, there is a loud crack in the silent morning. The birds and cats are off like a shot. Unnerved, I find the source of the noise: a birdhouse has fallen from a tree and shattered into tiny pieces on the rocks. Instinctively I begin to question how it could have broken with such force, made such a sound, but the knowing in the back of my mind tells me not to be a fool. 

That shattering was 14 years' knowledge landing with a blow. 

Things break apart.

All birds come home to roost. 

I See, So I See So

I see more than it might seem.

The Hum

I've always liked the sight of electrical pylons; the way they stand alert on the horizon, their hum suggesting things of which we can't speak. 

(They are a little hard to draw, though.) 

When It's All Too Late

A few days before my birthday, I emerged from an early morning dream of a memory.  It really was a memory, too, though not much of one - just waking up and getting dressed for school on a cool blue morning, a long time ago. How long? Tears For Fears on the radio long. 

Not much more to it than that, really, the morning and the song, and I woke into an atmosphere much like the one I'd just left. I shivered, though. The disjunct between then and now - or was it the lack of one? - left an eeriness that clung to me, as if I'd carried it over from the dream world. 

It was a curious feeling. I ran through my actual memory of that time (such as it is - who really remembers the details of such an ordinary moment?) Putting on my uniform and shiny penny loafers with dimes. The open window through which leaked the watery light. It all feels very alone, but then I always do.

Spring, 1984. Was there anything eerie about those days? No, I can't imagine so. They just were, in the way things are, and it's only in retrospect, or in the overlap of waking and dreaming do I have the sense of something vital that's been forgotten, some arcane gesture or fate now lost.

And yet, even now I can feel it there. The faint humming of time.