early rising

Georgia and I woke up at 5:15 this morning. Why couldn’t we sleep? I’m jet-lagged, but time at home would be 2:15, so that doesn’t quite explain it. Maybe we’re excited about camp. We’re leaving shortly, and we’re now all packed and ready to go. Georgia’s worried about bugs, and I have to say, hearing about the abundance of chiggers and ticks has me feeling like I should wrap myself in saran wrap. What would a camp be without bugs or poison ivy or oak?

I’m teaching with my good friend Rook and we’ve bitten off a lot, doing a path on which utilizes the iron and pearl pentacle in examining the intersection of the Reclaiming and Feri tradition. Georgia’s been planning her path for months, and has a big binder with the path all typed up and laid out. Rook and I are winging it. There’s not a goddamn thing on paper yet, and I’m trusting that our many conversations on the topic will yield something. Co-creation in action. Which I think really means not planning much.

It’s only been one day so far, but it feels like so much more. But in a good way. I like everyone on the team, and the hospitality of the Spiralheart community is really touching. Joe has fed us well, and everyone is being housed comfortably. As usual, being out of the Bay Area makes me realize just how darn traumatized I’ve been by my experience of being the Cassandra of that community. It’s so great to be able to speak freely and openly and to be appreciated for my views! Last night before I went to bed one of the teachers I’d just met said “Oak, you really work well with others.” So nice to hear, especially since I’ve been accused of running with scissors.

Hearing yesterday of the big changes with California camp was wonderful. The scissors I’ve been accused of running with are my perceptions that the way California camp has been structured isn’t in accordance with our principles of unity. These perceptions have become more widely shared, but up until very recently, there was a strong prohibition about dealing with it openly. Apparently, it’s now all out in the open, and a new pattern has been cut. . Between this, and the newness of this longing for my new girlfriend, I’m kind of in shock.

As I write this, the house is becoming abuzz and alive. Soon we will be leaving. Being with a bunch of witches is always interesting. Who knows what this week will be like? So far, so good.

we go to camp

I’m in Maryland, where I’ve been meeting all day with the Spiralheart witch camp teaching team. It’s been an amazing day, with our planning going smoothly. Besides easily coming up with a great arc of rituals for the week, we’ve also shocked ourselves by our quick agreement to shift a major paradigm in witch camp culture. We not only decided that we all should get paid the same, we decided that really meant ALL of us, including the student teachers. The battle to let go of the pay scales has been a mighty one and a ridiculous one as well. I was the first voice raised to question why a bunch of anarchist witches who supposedly value non-hierarchical structures would want to create different levels of pay for teaching teams. That questioning has made teaching at my local witch camp untenable, but not surprisingly has taken up supporters throughout the wider Reclaiming community. It’s less money for those of us with long years teaching, but for me, it feels so much better. I’m a big believer in energy following intent. If we intend for it to be a team, and we put our money where our beliefs are, a team is created. And that feels good.

Today, that good feeling intensified with this surprising move to pay the student teachers. For years the idea of student teacher has been almost meaningless, as by the time someone usually gets picked to teach, they are seasoned priestesses. For over five years or so I’ve never been able keep in my head who is or isn’t a “real” teacher versus a student teacher, and in true Reclaiming style, sometimes it’s the “students” who are more accountable and in service to the camps then the full teachers.

So, here I am, planning a witch camp and reveling in the shifting paradigm of camp culture (learning today that my local camp is FINALLY becoming consensus based) while meanwhile, my fourteen year old son is at a fundamentalist Christian camp in the Southwest. How bizarre is that? My son spends several weeks out of every summer with my sister’s family in New Mexico. Her son is the same age as mine and living out in the country, they have a completely different lifestyle than ours. This year my sister suggested they go to a camp for the week, one which her kids went to last year. My nephew loved the food, the cook being also the chef at the Doubletree Inn, and the selling point was that it’s only $60 a week. I had big doubts about sending my son, given it being Christian camp, and the fact they had to take a bible and can’t wear swimsuits. Also, being asked whether I gave my permission to have my kid baptized really set my teeth on edge. My son told me I had a closed mind and was a big hypocrite, only being open to things if they went along with my beliefs. So I sent him. Let him see for himself why I wasn't so open hearted.

I couldn’t get to sleep last night, wondering and worrying about him at camp. Maybe he’s getting lots of attention by testifying about his life in the sinful city of San Francisco and maybe he was baptized today in the river. Maybe he’s not saying a thing, and just taking it all in. The bible study classes have got to be somewhat interesting for him, given that he has no familiarity with theses stories at all. Maybe he’ll come back saved, and his teenage rebellion will take the form of quoting scripture as opposed to piercings and strange haircuts. Whatever the case, I can’t wait to hear about it, and even as I write this, I know that he’s not going to gratify me with telling me much about it all. Especially because he knows I'll be dying to hear. He's going to act like it was no big deal, and there will be some eye-rolling as I try to talk to him. He's a teenager. He can't help it.

Tomorrow we all pack up and head out to our camp, located somewhere in West Virgina. The river at camp will be in the story we are doing, and clothing will of course be optional. Bible scripture won’t be quoted, but there will be plenty of pagan chanting and drumming. My guess is that there won't be the chicken fried steak my nephew is looking forward to, but there will be plenty of healthy vegetables and coffee in the morning.

Who can ever imagine what can happen in a lifetime?

reading the news, it sure looks bad, they won't give peace a chance, that was just a dream some of us had...

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

the price is right

Spending the weekend at my new lover’s house, I thought about how I fled to a hotel last year, craving respite from the chaos of my own home. This weekend was also respite, but respite infused with pleasure. J. has no kids, no pets, no housemates, no neighbors coming in the back door, and no plants. I was heartened to be pleased with her aesthetic, and discovered that when someone says their décor is “mid-century” they mean that it’s from the 1950’s. With both of us born smack dab in the middle of that decade, I found myself quickly feeling at home, every lamp and piece of furniture reminding me of something from early childhood.

With phones turned off, our attention remained solely on the slow discovery and unfolding of what it means to be together. Therapists have a name for that very particular and specific psychic space that gets created between two people. They call it the “intersubjective field”, something that is as individual as a snowflake. For those of us with a magical background, the word “alchemy” resonates, the magic that gets created when two base metals come together and create something precious. Can anything be better than the beginning of a love affair, especially one that is profoundly mutual? The field is so charged, the blend of energies so intoxicating, it’s the most potent magic we humans possess.

I wasn’t surprised that not only my iPod battery burned out, but the hard drive on my laptop did not survive the weekend. My problems with running life force current and its effect on appliances is long standing. I’ve never been able to wear a watch, and when things get intense, all my various gizmos tend to go on the fritz. Why I never remember this continues to confound me. There must be some way to avert these problems. Isn’t there? Thankfully, J. simply dropped off my computer with someone she’s worked with before, and in less than 24 hours I had it back. It was dropped off at a hole in the wall shop and picked up at the chinese restaurant next door. No wonder I’m in love.

Over the weekend, J. would occasionally bring out a photo, record album, or other relic of her life, and my sense of her would expand. Seeing her early school pictures, a baby butch with short hair and a boy’s shirt, made my heart melt. Looking at pictures of her in her 20’s and 30’s, on an album cover and photo shoots for her band, my attraction to her began to include having the hots for this younger self. Falling in love in your fifties is a strange thing….the time when we are in the flush and bloom of youth is long gone, but seeing the photos, I found the young J. in the turn of her smile and the twinkle of her eye. There’s a lot of catching up to do when you start to be lovers in middle age, and it’s amazing how that catching up can happen in a blink of an eye when you take in old photographs.

According to J., I’m the first witch she’s been with. In the short time we’ve been lovers, as she’s told people about me, she’s discovered she’s surrounded by us. Her administrative assistant and another co-worker are witches, and as I’ve met her friends, the broom closet has flown wide open. The funniest moment was on Sunday, when we went to meet a group of friends she’s described as “the family”. J.’s warned me about the kinkiness of some of her friends, as the line between the butch/femme community and the BDSM one is thin. She hasn’t noticed any dog collars on any of my friends and family, and was a little concerned I might find some of her friends a little wild. Being warned, I walked into the restaurant to be greeted by “Aren’t you Oak?” from a sister Feri initiate who I respect mightily. The “out there” friends of J.’s are part of my tribe. We are family as well.

When worlds collide, when energies mix, new universes, fresh galaxies get created. Something is happening here and although it’s taken out my gadgets, (and now my office phone seems to be disconnected) I’m thinking it just may all be worth it. Could somebody please let me know if there’s a way to keep my gizmos safe?