branches up, roots down

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 on...

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 b...

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, ...

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 ...