Gotta Dance

What could be more fun than trying to decide what to wear to Willow's Blogger Ball? I tried on so many gowns! Frankly I am no spring chicken, but I thought I looked kind of great in many of them. Above I'm wearing a gown once worn by Lana Turner, and though black is very chic, I decided against it. It's a little too serious for my tastes.



Here I am taking a break from gown shopping with dear friend Clark Gable. The shiny gown is very sophisticated, but in the end I decided it was just a bit too flashy for the event at Willow Manor.

Even more fun than shopping for gowns is actually attending the ball. That's my date, Will Smith (Jada was busy filming her TV show, and was kind of relieved Will found someone to escort). Why he's carrying an old style gun is beyond me. Maybe a throwback to his rapper days? Maybe it's a squirt gun, who knows? Will is so much fun!

And yes I believe that IS a "funny" cigarette in my cigarette holder. Oh yeah, this ball should be a lot of fun!

Hope to see you all there!


My gown was worn originally by Jean Harlow. It's in excellent shape considering its age. And ... well ... so am I, don't you think, considering my age??

Thinking about Jake

Fall was Jake's favorite season. I know because he always perked up as soon as fall's cool weather arrived. Fall was hunting season as far as Jake was concerned, and though I never allowed him to actually kill a squirrel I did indulge his need to stalk and charge. Dogs are social predators; hunting was a scratch that needed itching for my dog, especially during the fall. I made up a chant to keep myself occupied while he hunkered down and slowly approached first one squirrel and then another:

Hunt and stalk
Hunt and stalk
I prefer it to a walk.
Eviscerate, eviscerate
Hunting squirrels is just my fate

I wish I could sing the chant for you. It's better with a melody.

Needless to say, as soon as squirrels noticed Jake, they ran like hell up the nearest tree. For Jake this was not a disappointment in any way. He would simply shift his focus to the next squirrel, hunker, and stalk. If dogs wore bumper stickers, Jake's would have said "I'd rather be hunting."

This fall the squirrels don't give a rat's ass about my presence. Without Jake by my side, I am no threat. On days when I'm really missing Jake, sometimes I shout Scram you little rodent! just to get them riled a little bit. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. DC squirrels are mighty cheeky.

Yesterday there was nothing I could do to convince this squirrel that he should abandon his pumpkin lunch. Oh well.

Masonic Diary

Painting and jug, creating a nice still life, on the back porch.

Yesterday was, for me, a "staycation." In my case, it was a porchcation. I sat on the sofa on the back porch for most of the day, reading The Lost Symbol, writing in my journal, drawing and sketching, petting the household dogs, thinking. I did get out for a walk during the afternoon, but for most of the day, all the arrows of my attention were pointing inwards and downwards, instead of outwards as they usually are.

Dan Brown's book is almost identical to The DaVinci Code in terms of its essence: there are beautiful, luminous truths about our humanity that are being held in trust by secret societies until we as a species are "ready" to receive them. And there are Very Bad Guys who want to destroy all evidence of these truths. He's not a great writer nor much of an original thinker.

Still, I'm enjoying the book because it's reminding me of how American history came alive for me suddenly and for the first time when I moved to DC. History is so real and present here. Almost as soon as I moved, I began studying the American past with a voracious curiosity. Because I was, up until a few years ago, a High Priestess with a love of public ritual, I couldn't help but adapt what I was learning into material for my shamanic rituals.

Looking back on these rituals, I tend to see them more as performance art than anything else, but the Sufi acupuncturist tells me I shouldn't demean my work in that way. I was following a path of spirit, after all, and the rituals - at least some of them - were really interesting.

Snapshot: Me, at Mt. Vernon, standing next to George Washington's tomb (not the swanky crypt he's in now. I'm talking about the earth-covered small room where he was originally buried). I am dumping a liter of ice cold water on the tomb, while almost shouting, "WAKE UP!! We NEED YOUR GUIDANCE! HEY!!! GEORGE!! WAKE UP!!!!" That was early into the first Bush administration when it became clear just how bad things were going to get.

Snapshot: With cohorts I am conducting rituals of recognition at each of the original Masonic cornerstones of the District, each stone precisely aligned to a cardinal direction. We offered wine and cornmeal, cleaned up the sites, danced around, sang songs, etc. We spent a whole year doing Connect DC. It was very fun.

Snapshot: Along with some of my cohorts I am standing in the rotunda of the Capitol. It is August 17, 2001. Three of us are standing in a triangle around the center of the rotunda, holding pieces of rose quartz. One is holding a sphere, one an egg, and one a long, pyramidal point. We are casting a "Triangle of Stillness" in the midst of the crazy central vortex of the Capitol, beneath the Apotheosis of Washington. (After that day I "saw" the triangle of stillness crystalize into a protective shield. After 9/11, my cohorts and I were convinced that our ritual had somehow protected the Capitol.) Yeah. Magicians tend to be grandiose.

Snapshot: I am standing at a fountain below the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, flinging dozens of marigolds into the water, sobbing, chanting, "Drink! Drink! Drink!!" (I still don't know what that one was about!)

I could go on with the snapshots: a year and a half of rituals at Logan Circle, Dupont Circle, Lafayette Park in front of the White House, at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln, on the American Civil War battlefields, etc. Oh yeah I was a very busy ritualist for a few years. I'll stop now with the snapshots, though, as I understand just how boring it is to look through someone else's photo album.

No Masons for me today: I have a full schedule at work. I'm looking forward to it! Have a wonderful Sunday.


Shadow, the ancient household dog, on the porch.

Clues

I'm deep into Dan Brown's new thriller, Lost Symbol. Of course I am - it's centered around Washington DC and the Masons. I didn't know a thing about the Masons when I moved here, but have studied them extensively ever since. Oh the stories I could tell - and have told, actually. I've written a ton of posts about my Masonic magic days in DC.

Lost Symbol, like The DaVinci Code, is a hoot, an easy read, a fabulous distraction from the habit of worry, a perfect thing to delve into on a windy, overcast Saturday.

Speaking as a student of the Masons, a lover of American history and a longtime resident of the District, if you pick up this book, please don't believe everything you read, OK? Though he says repeatedly that all his history is correct, Mr. Brown lets you know right off the bat, at the very beginning of the book, that he's writing about a fictional DC. The location of his novel is as made up as his characters.

On page 13, as Robert Langdon crosses Memorial Bridge:

"Langdon gazed, left, across the Tidal Basin, towards the gracefully rounded silhouette of the Jefferson Memorial -- America's Pantheon, as many called it. Directly in front of the car, the Lindoln Memorial rose with rigid austerity, its orthogonal lines reminiscent of Athens's ancient Parthenon."

Looking to the left from Memorial Bridge, headed towards the Lincoln, you would see Key Bridge and Georgetown, and parts of Rosslyn across the river. The Tidal Basin, and the Jefferson Memorial would be to the right. Anyone who has been in DC would realize it right away. Dan Brown left a clue in his book of clues about the "truth" of his novel.

He must have so much fun writing his books, sprinkling in some truths and some fabrications, and a lot of clues, too. It's a perfect read for today, definitely! Happy Saturday, y'all.

Knitted Brows

A man and his little dog Lana. I put a slight diffuse glow around the pic because Lana appeared completely worried. Does it help?

I am a mighty worrier. That's right: WORRIER, not WARRIOR. When Jake was alive I had plenty to worry about, i.e. Would he bite the UPS man? Is he sick? Why is he eating so many American Elm leaves? Does he need to go out? Is he hungry? etc. Now that he's gone I don't have the same focus for my habit of worry. Hence I've been worried about a whole host of other things.

Naturally I've worried about the bank account looting. That was deserving of a good worry, eh? I've been a little bit worried about my own health, too, mostly the result of transferred worry about Jake's health back on myself.

Also, I've returned to an old habit of worrying about the world, as if it can't take care of itself. For heaven's sake. For instance: as a "can-do" kind of species, we tend to want to fix things. There are scientists who think they can reverse global warming by seeding the ocean beds with something, carbon dioxide, I think. What I wish the scientists could remember is that we tend to create BIGGER problems every time we try to fix things. Leave the ocean beds, alone, please!! Instead of fixing global warming, why not turn all cars into hybrids, work on public transportation, lower the quantity of beef produced around the world, reduce manufacturing, eliminate packaging, as much as possible, in other words stop creating global warming. And then we could just see what happens. My sense is that the earth is self-healing, given a chance.

I could name many other reasons to worry about the world, but you get the picture, yes?

One thing that doesn't worry me is the news today that President Obama has been chosen as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. This is great for him, but also GREAT for the U.S. presidency, a very flawed and impossible job. Obama is bringing great energy into the oval office, thank God!

Today I'm going to do a lot of mindful breathing inbetween clients, see if I can exhale some of the pervasive worry I'm carrying around. Wish me luck!


This pidgeon died gracefully. May we all go so beautifully (when the time arrives, of course)

With all due respect to my beloved Freya

Sprinklers in Lafayette Park. Looks like the eagle could be taking a quick shower.

Ing is a god in the Norse pantheon, one of my favorites, though I really love almost all of the completely disfunctional family of Norse cosmology. A high goddess who trades sex with the elves in exchange for a nice necklace, a supreme god who willingly pokes his eye out in exchange for wisdom. Odin also stabs himself in the side, hangs from a tree for eight days in exchange for the wisdom of the runes. My goodness. What is up with that? Norse cosmology includes giants made of ice, a world tree called Ygdrassil (LOVE that name) and a rainbow bridge connecting the world of the divine with the world of humans. Their creation myth involves the alchemy of hailstones mixed with fire, and their doomsday scenario is truly fabulous. It's a cosmology of great drama.

Not so much drama with Ing, though. One story about this humble god is that he was farming his land one day while still human, when suddenly the thought struck him that maybe he could be a god. So he went to the gods and told them he thought he could do the job. They agreed and immediately deitized him. Who knew it could be so simple?

His life as a god is not that different than his human life. Tales of Ing often include him riding around the countryside in his humble cart, spreading prosperity and fertility wherever he goes.

See? What's not to like about Ing?

I was thinking about Ing before the bank account looting, though he is even more on my mind since. I was thinking about the harshness of the weather and seasons in Scandinavia and Iceland, how survival was certainly more strenuous than in more comfortable landscapes during the time when storytellers were developing the cosmology. It's little wonder that the myth cycle is so intense, reflecting the land from which it arose. (I believe all myth cycles come from the landscape; are channeled by humans but are not originally human stories. Which is why it's so hard for Americans to relate to the Judeo-Christian myth cycle that is inherently north African/middle eastern in nature.)

The Vikings are renowned for their toughness and brash courage, also for their looting and pillaging whenever possible. Whoever it was who stole my bank number is, in my mind at least, a modern day Viking, made unethical by virtue of some sense that he/she/they can not take care of themselves unless they steal. Thieves can be arrogant, but are rarely truly confident. I think of arrogance as no more than the flip side of insecurity so therefore quite brittle. You can't depend on arrogance, nope.

Ing had perfect self-confidence as a farmer and later as a god. Confidence makes it a lot easier to lead an ethical life. Confidence brings integrity, at least in terms of being honest. I'm thinking about Ing so much, asking for a sprinkle of prosperity, for lessons in gentle self-confidence. ING. Yes.

Settle Down, Reya!

Are you superstitious? I am, always have been. Well, kind of. If I see a black cat when I'm out walking around, I will invariably say to her, "Don't cross my path! I mean it." But if the cat does anyway (they always do whatever they want) I don't turn and walk in the other direction. Classic superstitions don't mean much to me, however I have a lot of personal habits that revolve around this same concept.

For instance, I have "good luck" and "bad luck" clothing. Any time I wear certain pieces of clothing, I invariably have a bad day. Other items of clothing bring good luck, or at least I think they do. I wear four different perfumes, not all at once of course. Each fragrance brings a certain quality into my day - or so I think! My personal system of superstitions is like an ideosyncratic version of feng shui. Is that a superstition or not? You tell me.

All the usual superstitions have no impact on me. Walking under a ladder? No problem. Stepping on a crack in the sidewalk? Who cares? Rabbits' feet should stay on the animal, and horseshoes are just horseshoes, nothing else. So am I superstitious or not? I think I am.

Following the recent looting of my bank account, I notice that my tendency towards superstition is amplified, compared to "normal." I passed on a chain letter for abundance, something I never do, and I'm thinking about buying a lottery ticket at the new moon on the 18th. I've never bought a lottery ticket.

Clearly the bank account looting was more traumatic than I allowed myself to understand. It shook me up. Whew!!