05 Saturday Dec 2015
Posted in Uncategorized
Its been over a year since I’ve posted here. So much has changed. So much has grown and shriveled and mutated I daren’t even try to detail it for fear of fucking it up. So I won’t.
Instead, a wish for all who read it this season-tide: May you never lose your wonder. Even when it is terrifying, even when it is painful, never lose your wonder.
21 Thursday Aug 2014
For when you want something tasty that you can at least pretend has vitamins.
Mix cucumber slices and red onion evenly. Sprinkle very lightly with salt; pack firmly into jar. Try to pack it relatively solid- air pockets are not helpful. Once packed, add the Flavorful Vinegar in whatever amount you like. Top it off with the Tasty Vinegar until it just covers the veggies. Put in your two pinches of sweetener. Seal jar and shake it vigorously. Check vinegar level- you may need to top it off.
These are really tasty. The smidge of sweet tones down the vinegar bite, while the vinegar mellows the onions to a tolerable level. You can eat them fresh out of the jar, in which case the veggies are still crisp and crunchy. Let them set in the fridge and they will wilt somewhat, but the flavors will marry and the red onion will tint everything pink.
What do you do with fridge pickles once you make them? Whatever strikes your fancy. I like them straight out of the jar (onions too), but they are also good in salads and as side dishes in bentos.
Try to eat the veggies within a week- as long as the vinegar covers them they will keep, but they are best within that week. The brine can be reused with a fresh batch of vegetative matter; simply strain through a paper coffee filter and pour over the new batch, topping up as needed to cover.
Experiment! Try pickling peeled broccoli stems, carrot rounds or shreds, and any other sort of vegetable that you think could use a dip in tasty vinegar. The brine itself can be used to make vinaigrette. As you can see, this is a very flexible recipe. If you keep your batches small while testing, a failure isn’t a horrendous waste of food. Besides, a rotation of different types and flavors keeps this tasty and un-boring.
Enjoy!
13 Wednesday Aug 2014
Posted in Meditation, Rant, Spirituality
Tags
(Crossposted from Tumblr because 1) I want to save it and 2) I should probably post something on here before the year runs out. Enjoy.)
The title of this post is from a Terry Prachett Discworld book. Which I honestly think should be required reading for everyone, but especially those who paddle in woo. Can’t remember which one (and am currently not in the same house as the books so I can’t check), but it involved that world’s version of dwarves.
The king of the dwarves held up his axe, and told Captain Vimes that it was his father’s axe, and the axe of his father before him, and so on. Sometimes the handle would break, or the blade require replacing, but it was still his father’s axe. It could be completely replaced and have nothing of it’s original making left to it, but it was still the axe of his forefathers. Which was summed up in the phrase “It is the thing, and the whole of the thing.”
It is the thing, and the whole of the thing.
Its a pretty good description of the vast majority of symbols we use. Especially if we are using it to symbolize something we cannot touch, whether because it is intangible to begin with, or because it is unreachable for various and sundry reasons. A mass-produced resin saint statue, for instance, or a picture of a holy place. All ways to connect to something we otherwise couldn’t. Sort of a symbolic telephone network.
The one great strength and flaw of symbols is their malleability. Anything can stand for anything else. It is the viewer who determines what the symbol is. Let’s think of that mass-produced resin saint statue. We’ll say its a statue of Saint Barbara. To a Catholic, it is the saint. To a practitioner of Santeria, it’s Chango/Shango. (I am vastly oversimplifying here for the sake of word count.) To a pagan, any sort of deity or spirit that they think should or could fit the statue would then use that symbol, for them.
This leads back to the role of perspective in the use of symbols. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that no one, ever, can own a symbol. They can only own their own perspective of it. The pentagram is a good example. For Christians it symbolizes the five wounds of Christ. For Pythagoras’s ancient Greek group, it was a symbol of mathematical grace. For modern Wiccans and various flavors of Pagan, generally it represents the four Classical elements overseen by Spirit.
Even oathbound, closed, and any other sort of tradition with a huge “DO NOT DISTURB” sign on them cannot own the symbols they use. They can own their perspective on it, and they can control the distribution of that perspective. Which is basically all any culture or group does to shape the reaction of it’s members in the direction that is appropriate for that group. But someone who uses the exact same symbol as an oathbound tradition but lacks the perspective the oathbound folk have will not necessarily have the same experience.
Which brings me to another point. The journey of finding your own perspective of a symbol. In the process of learning about and interacting with a symbol, you form your perspective. Without that process, there would be no perspective. Cultures and outside information can change the process, thereby changing the perspective. So choosing the influences you allow, shun, or encourage while studying a symbol is vital. And if your perspective of the symbol shifts, you still have the value of the study. If you had not studied, the shift wouldn’t have happened and you would not be where you are.
It is the thing, and the whole of the thing.
It is the thing, and all that it entails.
It was the thing, and now is something else.
It is not the thing yet, but it will be one day.
It was never the thing, and for you it never will be.
It is the thing, and the whole of the thing.
TL;DR- I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT SYMBOLS AND PERSPECTIVES AND SHIT. AND THINGS. AND TERRY PRACHETT.
30 Saturday Mar 2013
Posted in Meditation, Spirituality
Tags
Disclaimer- I know no more than the next person about this. I have no direct line to the inner workings of the Universe. This is my brain fomenting, so take it as such.
This particular triumvirate has been on my mind for a while. For a long time I was focused on the bone and blood. It wasn’t until the flesh part kicked me in the head that I really understood.
So, what the hell am I talking about? I’m talking about a conceptualization of a particular person’s ancestors- that they fall into the three “categories” so described.
The Ancestors of Bone are the ancestors that come through the family line, the literal antecedents and relatives related by birth and upbringing (an adopted child could very well go with the Bones of the adopted family, for example). They are not necessarily active nor interested in a descendent, just as the descendent may not be interested in them. Still, without them you wouldn’t be walking around so they form the bones of the operation.
The Ancestors of Blood are those that you honor but that are not necessarily related. Family friends that are dear to you would be one example. A member of a coven may appeal to previous members, or an aspiring writer seek to honor long dead writers. The idea here is the sharing of like blood; a resonance that links the two together. There is also the notion that blood can be changed and shared in ways that bone can’t be. (It is also quite possible that the ancestor in question may not involve themselves with the one seeking them.)
The Ancestors of Flesh are those of Blood and Bone that actually interact with a person. You can have a whole bunch of dead folks in your family tree (thus being the Bones) and have a mere handful that actually interact with you. They would be both Ancestors of Bone and of Flesh. You can honor many writers, but say only Yeats really reciprocated. He would be both Blood and Flesh, as well. The flesh part is a reference to the person in question, the one doing the honoring and venerating.
In fact, the whole system is in relation to the person with the ancestors. Bone at the core, Blood to animate, Flesh to make us who we are.
(That’s my brain-foo for the day. Enjoy~)
22 Tuesday Jan 2013
Posted in Story
They skim the shine off moonbeams and trap skeins of sunlight in dusty dirty liquor bottles. They steal the glint in a lover’s eye and the glow of hate’s embers. They are not interested in color (though what they leave behind is curiously dim), nor magic (though what they take is sometimes powerful indeed). What they want is the light.
Every junkie has a preference, a secret recipe. Three dippers-full of straight sun, a half a coffee can of neon-tube glow, a scant handful of the bio-luminescence of certain deep-sea creatures brought up to the surface by strange tides. Some prefer the harsh bite of an arc-sodium lamp, others the strong clean taste of LED. Those with a more classic palette adore the smokey burn of a bonfire or the quick acid bite of a glowworm or a firefly.
Most start simple, drawing the light away from a candle or a quick sip of a passing sunbeam. Once you start though, the craving sinks in deep, to be filled with the light, illuminating all the dark corners. People spend their lives chasing it, tasting all the different ways the light changes itself. Some burn themselves out chasing the glow. Some kill themselves rather than court shadow again.
Some change.
They look like any other light junkie on the outside, but inside…. its like a dark hole. The collapsed heart of a star desperately drawing in everything it can, even light (especially light) to fill the aching hole where it once shone. They pull the light in, all the light, the light in a young child’s eyes and the reflection of sunset on water and the green-tinted light of a forest and the brightness of a painting and the soft illumination of love on a young man’s face. All of the light, every speck and sip and drop, no longer drinking it in but still swallowing, gulping it down and never ever getting full because the darkness grows as fast as the light streams in.
They’re desperate, you see. They’ll do anything for more light, purer light, better light, truer light that will overwhelm even the strength of an event horizon and fill them, even though their shadows have grown so very very deep. They are desperate. They’ll do anything.
Drink the moon.
Swallow the sun.
Absorb the gleam of the Milky Way.
Eat all of the universe, every sun and star and planet glowing with life and death and everything in between.
Anything, for a fix of light.
02 Wednesday Jan 2013
I thought I’d pass these along 🙂 I made the Trollway a couple months ago, the Door around Christmas. Enjoy and let me know what you think of them!
It’s supposed to look vaguely like a door with a handle. Ish. Can be read with or without a question in mind.
Since I posted this on Tumblr, a person called lacartetreizieme did a wonderful adaptation, so go check it out 🙂 It has a photo and everything.
This one, as my charmingly crap Paint picture says, is the one I call the Trollbridge, or the Trollway. It is designed to show you the beginning of a journey, the stuff in the middle, and the end (i.e., the beginning, the end, and the bridge that connects these outcomes). The Troll comes into play (a la 3 Billy Goats Gruff) as the card that menaces you. Doesn’t matter how nice it appears; that’s the card that is going to try and put a stop to your bridgewalking.
Spread can be used at least two ways; one normal, one a sort of witchy hybrid.
Method 1– for use with or without a question
Method 2– For use with a specific question (please read entirely before doing, folks) (could also be used as a writing exercise for the plot-driven among you)
11 Thursday Oct 2012
Crosspost/gatherup of a series I did on my Tumblr. Enjoy!
I should probably mention at this time that rubber gloves and soap’n’water may be helpful in preventing nasty death bacteria from infecting you. I was stupid lucky and didn’t catch anything from a domestic goat skin that had spent considerable time under salt. I also have a relatively good immune system (when chemo had just finished? You wouldn’t have caught me near this shit). The chemicals involved will help protect you to an extent, but (ESPECIALLY when tanning wild and/or roadkill hides) rubber gloves and careful sanitation will help keep you from contracting NASTY DEATH-DEALING INFECTIONS OF PUKE BLOOD SHIT AND TERROR that will send you to the hospital and require medicines and money to fix if they don’t kill you outright. Much better to just wear rubber gloves and wash with good soap, yeah?
[I’m trying to scare you, but not completely off- with simple rules and precautions (NO LICKING THE HALF CURED HIDES. DO NOT DRINK THE BONG TANNING WATER.) tanning this way can be fun, pretty simple, and totally worth it. But there’s no need to be stupid about it, and an untanned skin can rot. Anything rotten can grow bacteria of a sort that can seriously hurt you. And it is far better to be safe than sorry when handling dead things. Be sensible here, people.]
So, you want to tan a hide, for various and sundry reasons. But you a) don’t know how, b) can’t buy a lot of special ingredients, and c) are more than a bit intimidated by the whole process.
Fear not. I have the answer 😉 The recipe is good for tanning hides with hair on or off. Not so good for feet-on, though. It works for any kind of skin, from rabbit to goat to cow. It is mammal only, so no tanning bird leather this go-round 😉
First off, we secure the necessary chemicals. Most can be found at a grocery store or a place such as Wal-mart- what can’t, can be ordered relatively cheaply online.
Here’s your list (for the very basic recipe):
That’s it! Please get ALL THE SUPPLIES before you start. Trust me, it will make shit a lot easier later on. And the beauty of it is that none of it goes bad, so you can get it far in advance of any skins.
In addition, you will need a bucket large enough to hold all the skin(s) fully submerged in water, a brush to scrub with, a sharp knife to scrape the hide with (if it wasn’t cleaned previously), a bowl to mix your ingredients in, a brush, a place to hang it to drip dry, a warm place, and a cool-but-not-freezing place. Once the leather is tanned, you’ll need sandpaper and/or a pumice stone.
I HIGHLY SUGGEST you do this outside in scrubby clothes. It has a definite aroma, so factor that into your preparations. Or, do it in an easy-to-clean bathroom.
(I leave it up to the reader to procure the skin. These instructions are for once you’ve got the skin off the animal in one nice floppy piece or more, depending on how good you were at cutting.)
Now comes the messiest and most time consuming part- de-fleshing the skin. With a sharp knife and a pair of pliers, scrape, pinch, and pull off every scrap of flesh and fat and membrane until you have only skin left, corner to corner, edge to edge. What you can’t scrape off will have to be trimmed off later. You could tell on my goat skin because the skin was clean and white, and where cut you could see the hairs rooted in the skin. It also took me two hours humped over the damn board to do that, my knife and pliers and hands were soaked in greasy goat fat, and I smelled. (A protip- sometimes the membrane comes off easier if allowed to dry slightly, especially on fatty animals.) (Another protip- do not wear your best clothes or shoes for this shit.)
Now, since I took a while to get my supplies together, I stretched and salted my hide to preserve it from flies (my mom managed to start a colony of dermestrid beetles in a forgotten skin so the concern is a viable one). (By stretching and salting it, I essentially made goat rawhide. Regular rawhide can be used to practice on, should you not want to ruin your pretty pieces.) To prepare it for use, I soaked all the salt out. You could freeze skins fresh, if time is a concern, or use them fresh off the animal. Just let them sit in salted water to draw out any subdural blood, rinse well, then continue with the tanning process.
Now you must decide if you want hair on or off. If you want hair on, ignore the rest of this paragraph. If you want smooth leather, allow the skin to sit, fully submerged in water, for several days in a warm area (a sunny spot, in a bucket, with a board or lid to keep the bugs out works admirably). What you are doing is basically letting the skin rot slightly so the hair loosens and pulls out easily. Tug on it every day and when it starts shedding like a white cat on black velvet start plucking and scraping.
For each skin you’re tanning (because you can do more than one at a time, depending on bucket size and amount of chemicals), take a half ounce of the borax, saltpeter, and sodium sulfate (if you have the sulfate. I didn’t and it came out just fine.) (If you have a large skin, like, say, a goat instead of a rabbit, you may have to increase the amount of chemicals to get a decent coat on the skin. Just keep the ratio of 1:1:1 and you’re golden.) Take your distilled water and add just enough to make a spreadable but not runny paste. You want this crap to stay in place, not ooze out the sides.
Now, spread your goop on the FLESH SIDE ONLY of your hide (even if you scraped off the hairs. This is very very important.) Make sure you get a decent smear on there; it doesn’t need to be caked on, though (think a glaze instead of buttercream frosting, if culinary metaphors get you going). Fold the skin in half, flesh side inwards, trying to be as even as the skin itself allows. (If space is an issue you can fold it up further, just as long as the goop stays on the flesh side.)
Set it somewhere cool, but with no chance of freezing, for 24 hours. Yes, that’s right, 24 hours. (I recommend starting it at a time when you know you’ll have time to work on it each day. This recipe doesn’t involve much intensive labor but it does involve daily poking.) I started mine in the evening because that’s when I had spare time. You can start it whenever is best for you, though I do recommend having your 24 hour sitting place be a) outside and b) as fly-proof as you can manage. (a because it smells, b because actual preservation does not occur until day three so the threat of maggots is a real one.) I also recommend having a hose or water source available to rinse the skin(s) during the tanning process. Be careful of runoff, because some of the crap is not good for living green things.
Near as I can tell, this is a three stage process. Day one (this one) seems to pull the fat and rancid-causing crap out of the skin (I base this idea on the yellow greasy shit that appeared overnight while my goat skin was undergoing Day One.) Day Two cleans all the icky crap off of the skin, while Day Three+ actually preserves it. (For all you pagan types and/or spiritual peoples, this translates awful well into a ritual of release for the spirit of the animal, should that be desired. Or a ritual of transformation. Just a simple thought…)
Once it has sat for 24 hours, take your skin and hose the worst of the fatslime off. (By now it should be smelling a leeeeettle ripe. Fear not, it’ll get better.
You got two ways to mix up your goop for today- with powdered soap (like I did), or unperfumed castile soap (Kirk’s Coco Castile is just about perfect, if you can find it). If using powdered soap, take 1 ounce sodium carbonate, 1/2 ounce borax, and 2 ounces powdered soap, and mix together in distilled water. (Cool chemistry fact- the concoction will heat up even if you’re using cold water. Not enough to burn, just enough to be warm.) If using castile soap, mix up the 1 ounce of sodium carbonate, 1/2 ounce of borax, and 2 ounces of castile soap in a pan on the stove. Melt the soap slowly- DO NOT ALLOW TO BOIL– and mix thoroughly.
Either way, once you’ve prepared your goop, spread it over the flesh side and fold in half again. Put it in a fly-proof container and set in somewhere warm for another 24 hours. (Or, put it somewhere where it can catch the sun for half that time.) This stage gets the rancid-causing stuff off and cleans the skin very very well.
Hose off the worst off the goop, and get some hot water (you can boil distilled water, or use hot tap water if you have soft water) sufficient to dip your skin into wholesale. Add 2 ounces of Sodium Bicarbonate, dissolve completely in the hot water, and then soak your skin in that.
While the skin is soaking, prepare another batch of hot water. Take 4 ounces of alum and 8 ounces of salt, and dissolve that to the fresh batch of hot water. Take the skin out of the bicarbonate water and wring most of the water out; then put the skin in the alum/salt water.
Let sit for twelve hours. Remove from water; wring excess water out then set it up somewhere to dry (either hang it up or put it on an incline). Allow to dry for another 12 hours.
Once the skin is dry you can move on to the next step, which is repeating the alum/salt bath and the 12 hour soak/dry cycle up to 4 times, depending on preference and how soft you want the hide. I did mine twice and it remained pretty flexible, so feel free to experiment with how many repetitions you do here. By now it should smell like leather instead of wet dead thing (the repeated alum/salt baths really helped with that stank, I found).
So, once you’re done with the final drying, you’re all set right?
Wrong. Now comes the most pain in the ass part of the whole process- working the leather to suppleness. You bend it. You fold it. You beat it with sticks. If you have no hair on it, you chew the motherfucker into submission. You roll it over pipes and play tug-o-war with it until the fibers in the skin are loosened and it behaves. Neat’s foot oil can help (though not if you’re chewing it, because bleh), though not too much at a time because then it turns into a greasy mess. When it’s finished your leather will be supple and easy to bend and fold. (Improvement comes with practice. Lots of practice.)
For those interested, I got the recipe pretty much verbatim (though translated into modern vernacular) from Dr. Chase’s Recipes, which you may purchase in a paperback edition or read for free on Google Books. (Yon link should direct to the recipe itself. If not, search for “fifty dollar leather recipe”.) I do recommend it, because it’s stuffed full of how to do the things that most cell-phone-toting peoples have forgotten how to do. Take it with a grain of salt though, because some of the medicines and preparations and things have since been found ineffective or just plain toxic (like the white lead in the patent leather recipe).
23 Sunday Sep 2012
To all the assholes in my life. To the ones who carped and pinched and told me that I COULD NOT. To the ones that laughed at me for finding God and tried to justify why it COULD NOT BE. To the ones who will never see me as grown. To the ones who never listen beyond what they want to hear. To the ones who called for help but refused to use it.
To every single gaped-open, yawning chasm of fetid fart-laced buttfuckery, this is for you.
Thanks.
Thank you for proving that I am stronger than your crap. Thank you for driving me to prove you wrong. Thank you for making what I used to be so unbearably shitty that I had to change or drown in diarrhea. Thank you for being a vaguely brownyellowgreen tinted example of what I should never be. Thank you for providing the fertilizer for me to grow into a person worth being.
Thank you. Now go wipe.
10 Monday Sep 2012
Posted in Magic, Remember, Spirituality
Tags
As I was puttering through unread posts in a forum I lurk in, I stumbled upon some interesting ideas that coalesced in a strange way. So, bear with me on this while I try to make some sense out of my brain goo.
It all started with a thread on past lives, where everybody aired their perspectives. What caught my attention was the “recycle” theory- that what we think of as souls are just a particular cupful of soul goop that got shoved into a body. (This gives a plausible reason why so many people think they’re Cleopatra or someone else famous- they got part of Cleo’s old ectoplasm.) I’ve heard of it before, but it jelled with another thread in my head, about humans on a path to divinity.
So, here’s my theory- over time, a strong personality can hold on to their soulbits upon death, thereby retaining a greater percentage of “their” memories. Over time, this aggregates into a personality that is unchanged by physical death- a Spirit. An Ilk. Maybe a divine one, even.
Not too radical, right? But here comes the part that got my head spinnin’: if one assumes that Time in not only non-linear, but non-circular (meaning that you are not limited to one level, one cycle, at a time but all of them at once), not only could you possibly meet your reincarnation while still alive, you could worship “yourself” while still a human.
Take it a step further- a god “dies” and it’s godstuff enriches the universe. We are made of that godstuff (we are divine), but at the same time the god is still “alive” as a god, as a person, and as the Universe. We are alive and dead and dying and birthing in a dance too complex to see as-we-are, too simple to explain as-we-will-be.
Bring in soul retrieval and you have a whole new layer- finding the bits best suited to making your personality whole, even if it changes who you seem to be. Want to know the future? Climb the ladder of ancestry and ask yourself. (We use that anyway, bloodwalking down to see the past. Why don’t people just climb to see what’s up ahead?) Ascension into godhead? Some part of you has already done it, even if it wasn’t you-that-is.
This has been your Dafuq Did I Just Read? for the day. Please continue your regular “Net surfing.
(This isn’t even the result of drugs or sleep deprivation- this is on pure water and an early bedtime.)
01 Saturday Sep 2012
Posted in Magic, Meditation, Otherworld, Spirituality, Story
Tags
Magic, meditation, Otherworld, pagan, paganism, spirituality, story, strange
There is a Key that is a Knife that is an Invitation. It gleams in the moonlight, silversharp and waiting. You forged this Key, with straightforward paradox and enigmatic simplicity, with scraps of legend and the heat of your heart’s blood and a whispered sigh of longing. Your wishes, your hopes, your desires shimmer across it’s edge. It is time to begin.
You pick it up, breathing slow and deep. So many choices- to Do, to Feel, to Fly, to Run, to See, to Know. It is a Key fit for many Locks, one that will open many Doors. For some it will only ever be used once; for others, it will be used again and again. The Price varies with the person. No telling what it is until it is used.
The Choice is not yours to make, though you may plead and beg and cajole and sweet-talk to your heart’s content. You can only trust in the Keymaster, and hope. The Keymaster chooses the Door and the Price. No one knows what, if anything, influences the decision. It may be your pleading, or the phase of the moon, or the state of the tides on this day in the year 3049. No one knows, for the Keymaster doesn’t speak of reasons why. One may as well try to bend a tsunami to their will as force the Keymaster into explanation.
You offer it to the Keymaster, this razor-edged Key, who picks it up, inspecting it minutely. With a slow nod, it is deemed worthy. (A good thing, for some must reforge it again and again, a lifetime’s worth of work. Some are never accepted at all.)
The moonlight grips you in bands stronger than steel and softer than cloud. You are immobile, at the mercy of the Keymaster and the Knife The Opens. Struggle is futile, though a token wiggle is almost as traditional as the Key Itself. The tip ghosts over skin as bare as the day you were born, leaving goosebumps in its wake. To Do, to Feel, to Fly, to Run, to See, to Know……. and to Choose.
The Keymaster’s grin is sudden, frightening, and the Choice blooms your mind, filling it with dread. You know what it means.
To Know.
With shocking swiftness, the Keymaster stabs the Knife that is a Key that is a Way into your skull, directly between your eyes. The KnifeKey feels like white-hot flame, like a dagger of ice, like pure pain carved into the shape of a Key. You cry out like an animal in the throes of death. You pray for death’s release from this torture.
Why, why, why did you ever want this?
Through the pain that blinds you, you see the grin change into something almost warm, almost kind.
With infinite care, the Keymaster turns the Key in it’s Lock, and Opens the Door.
nightwalkinghedgehog 