branches up, roots down

I can feel the dark descending, each day getting shorter, and the cold streaming in thru all the many cracks and crannies in this old Victorian house. Coming back to my beloved San Francisco , one of the first things I heard about is how some of my friends have been struggling to get an accurate telling of our experience in Seattle challenging the WTO. There’s a movie being made, The Battle In Seattle , which comes complete with real Hollywood stars like Charlize Theron and Woody Harrelson. For years, hanging out at the Black Cat, reminiscing about various actions and uprisings we’d fermented, we’d imagine movies being made about us, and who would play us. Finally, this day has come. Characters will be amalgams, mixtures of many of us, but at least one comrade will play herself, facilitating a spokescouncil meeting, I think. It helps that she’s stunningly attractive, but heck, it is a Hollywood production. As fate would have it, last night I saw Bobby , the movie just out ...

Our first night in New York, my girlfriend made a beeline with me in tow to Katz’s Deli , where she introduced me to half sour pickles, and I did my best to finish a pastrami sandwich of gargantuan proportions. Then we hit the streets again. New York is a city for walking, and walk we did. We found ourselves soon at Toys in Babeland , a much better feeling place than Good Vibrations . There’s something to be said for a sex-toy store that is completely woman owned and run. It was a perfect place to spread the word about GlobalOrgasm.org . The store clerks there got quite exited and swore that they would be spreading the word. I’m glad, as this is a magical endeavor of proportions bigger than the sandwich I was busy digesting. It could be argued that all magic IS sex magic, as all magic involves the life force, which is inherently sexual. Given that, magic that literally uses sex packs a powerful punch, and tends to be effective. A call to action to have people around the gl...

This week brought the first rains of winter. I thought of my friend Reya, and the way she writes about the weather defining her . Witches have the saying “As above, so below”, a sentiment which is echoed in our belief that what happens between the worlds, affects all the worlds. The relentless grey skies of this week and my interior landscape have been perfect mirrors to each other this week. This week has been a case study of “as within, so without”. The grey hasn’t lifted yet, in all the realms. Early this week, the rain came down in a torrent soon after the phone call where I learned that my mother has breast cancer. My mother has been dying ever since I can remember. The diseases and maladies have been more phantom than real, and the last time I was worried that she was being operated on for cancer it turned out that she was actually having a face lift. This time, however, it appears she has The Real Thing. It looks like she will have a double mastectomy. As a witch, I’ve m...

Several days before the tide-turning election, The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about the newest slur sound bite from the Republicans. Even the most arrogant of them could feel a shift in the wind, the distinct possibility that this election couldn’t be stolen, and that not only could the speaker of the house be from the west, but that speaker could be a woman. The slur that started being slung was “ San Francisco values”. As soon as I read that term I broke into a grin. I knew that change was coming and that magic was once again at work. “ San Francisco Values”. I know that this term is meant to invoke fear of gays, wierdos, hippies, beatniks, and radical stances of infinite variety. And I’m sure it does. But what else does it invoke? Beauty, more than anything. New York is full of intensity, New Orleans full of debauchery , and San Francisco , well, San Francisco is full of beauty. It invites poetry, and anything that takes away your breath also makes you ...

I’ve been up to my neck in sugar skulls for the past week. The Great Studio Cleaning began as a hunt for my molds, which were never found. After several attempts with rigging my own out of cheap plastic skulls from Walgreens, I finally gave in and bought the expensive clear molds I’ve had such contempt for. Finally, in my travels to the cake decorating store for icing fixings, I found the molds that I had originally had, molds straight from Mexico , made from heavy duty plastic and much more traditional looking than the clear versions. It seems the dead this year want a variety of different kinds of sugar skulls, and it’s my job to create them. As I left the house this morning, I left behind a sticky stove and gritty floor. As usual, the magic is much more in the process than the product. By Samhain, my altar will hold beautifully decorated skulls of sugar, with names of the dead written carefully on them with brightly colored icing. However, up until that point the magic is in ...

It’s been well over a month since I broke my elbow. Since then, equinox has come and gone. Samhain approaches, with each day the air thickening with incoming dead. I continue to mull on the meaning of the break, it being the third in my household in the past year (my son and housemate both were on crutches in the early spring) and the third time I’ve had an elbow break in the last fourteen years. Was it a lucky break or a break-through? The crack in the elbow facilitated a break from writing, the longest one since I began writing this blog. A break was taken, due to the break. Being a witch, I can’t help but try and divine the significance in every little thing. My broken elbow was a rather middling to big thing, so you can imagine the sifting of significance this has engendered! Six years ago (November 11 th to be exact) I found myself out on the street with my young son in the middle of the night, clothed in only the top of my flannel pajamas. My house was on fire, and the flam...

My ex-husband is director of a San Francisco non-profit which plants trees all around town. One of the banes of his existence is the fact that many won’t plant a tree in front of their home or business due to the small chance that someone will trip and fall, and sue. This is so much on his mind that his first words to me when I called him on Tuesday night to tell him I’d broken my elbow were, “Can you sue anybody?” Given that I’d tripped on one of his trees in a freak accident, I’m choosing to hold fate responsible, and you can’t sue fate. We both ended up laughing heartily and he’s now forced to believe that people actually sometimes fall due to the dip between concrete and dirt, while I’m still shaking my head that one of those people turned out to be me. Those Fates sure have a wicked sense of humor! Every seven years for the past 14 years, I’ve broken an elbow. This is the third time, hopefully a charm, something I won't have to do again. I’m thinking on the significanc...