My Book of Shadows

For those of you who may be interested, I have posted my Book of Shadows online through 4shared. Feel free to download it. It is free and I offer it as a gift to anyone who has been reading my blog and has been interested in the workings of a Christian walking the path of Witchcraft.

It is an Adobe document, so is you don't already have it, download one. It too is free.

Thanks to all who have been so supportive to me and Brightest Blessings Be.

http://www.4shared.com/file/100683406/d968be88/Aslinn_Dhans_Christian_Witches_Book_of_Shadows.html

Aslinn

Bully

Sometime in my blog I talked about being a substitute teacher and how I was leaving the teaching profession, at least as a sub, and looking for other work. Of course I came down with cancer and haven't seen much in the way of a new job since I got sick.

But then I was watching the news and in the past couple of weeks two young kids, one of them eleven years old, killed themselves because they were being bullied in school. And the comments were primarily about how the school was responsible.

Let me tell you something. I want you to listen really close. For every one kid who is marginally interested in school, who sits quietly, who is polite, who does the best they can, who is a joy to have in the classroom, there are five who are absolute monsters. They talk to everyone like they are animals. Their every other word is either Fuck or Bitch and sometimes they are used together. They fear no one. They hate everyone and if you interfere in their activities, you can be guaranteed to be hit, slapped, punched or otherwise abused.

I am a 5'3" woman. I was a chubby woman when I was diagnosed but I was never a bruiser. There were kids who would stand over me and tell me what I was and was not going to do. They routinely told me to get my fucking eyes off their face and keep their name out of my mouth as I picked up the phone to call an administrator or the on campus police officer. I intervened on an obvious case of bullying and got got my right eye blacked, the socket broken and my nose busted. I was reprimanded for physical contact with a student. (I was pulling the bully off another child). The child got morning detention.

I had one young man stand over me and called me everything but a white woman and threaten to hurt me. When I complained that he did this not only to bully me but one of my students, the Principal said there was nothing that could be done, that he was diagnosed as antisocial and having a personality disorder and I should learn to put up with it because he was in my last class of the day and his meds were wearing off.

And let me tell you something else about your little cherubs. They cuss, they handle the foulest language, they have sex in school bathrooms, they smoke cigarettes, dope, and drink. They hate you, they hate school, they hate their class mates. They know too much about nothing and not enough of anything. They don't have feelings. They don't have empathy. They don't care about anything that does not effect them personally.

And the schools didn't make them this way. You did. You don't pay attention to your kids, either because you can't afford to take time off and be with them because you are too silly to use the seventy-five cent condom and you are working two menial jobs to support them or you are well to do and you don't have the desire. Your children are accessories, like those silly fucking dogs you carry around in your purses. Or you may be some mom who took dope during her pregnancy and you don't want to accept responsibility that you gave birth to a monster without the chemicals necessary for self control, behavior modification, even fear. Perhaps you are one of those parents who want to preserve little Susie's sense of self worth so you never say no, don't, stop it. You redirect, use positive emphasis, rationalize. Get a grip lady, life is not fucking fair.

I long for the days of special schools and paddling. I long for the days of parents being able to punish their children. If I were a parent today, and my child threatened to call CPS over the fact that they'd been give corporal punishment, I'd say go ahead, but first let me give you a reason to call them.

Not everyone should be in a school setting. It creates an unsafe learning environment for everyone, students and teachers. It becomes so unsafe that teachers, yes, teachers are afraid of your fucking kids. So don't blame the schools entirely. Our hands are tired much of the time. And parents, you were the ones who tied them.

The Passion of the Christ

I can't attend good Friday services at my church while I am still in isolation. I am doing well, considering. I have a long road for recovery but each day seems to be a little bit better. But I miss the little things, a nuzzle from my dopey cat. To listen to the rain tapping on the roof of the house (at home, I live in my attic). A sip of cool wine and the sounds of the wind coming through my open windows.

So, since I could not be at home for the Easter services I got a copy of The Passion of the Christ.

Please don't write to me and tell me how bloody and violent and gruesome the movie was. Don't write to me and tell me Mel Gibson is a Nazi. If you don't want to read my blog, move along. Those of you who do, please stay, and listen to what I have to say about this amazing movie.

I was raised watching all those technicolor Cecil B. DeMille movies that came out of Hollywood. Jesus was so perfect, with his beautiful skin and his long hair and usually cool blue eyes, those beautiful Anglo-Saxon Jesus who were so handsome but looked nothing like the Jesus of the times or the race that saw him in the flesh.

I still love those sanitized movies with scenes plucked right out of a Michelangelo painting where the image of Christ is super glorified even in his suffering. Maybe the painter was too afraid to paint the way Jesus would really have looked on the cross.

For one thing, Jesus was brutally beaten. Isaiah wrote in prophecy that the mob tore his beard from his face. I had a husband who had a beard and I could never imagine tearing out a patch of his beard. They brutalized him, forced him to carry his own cross and then stripped Jesus naked. No, Jesus did not have that modesty cloth around him when he died. Jesus was naked. Jesus was naked because the Romans knew that the most shameful thing that could happen to a person who considered himself a rabbi would be to appear nude in public, in front of both men and women.

Interspersed with the brutal and violent scenes of Jesus arrest, trial, torture and crucifixion, we see Christ as he was, a carpenter, making a table for a wealthy customer. We see Christ as the rescuer, rescuing the fallen woman from her persecutors. We see Christ as a little boy being rocked in his mother's arms. We see Christ as the teacher, the servant, the preacher, the forgiver of sins.

We also see Christ making affirmations: "Mother, behold, I make all things new," he says thickly, his face misshapen and bloody. We see Christ as the suffering and condemned prisoner being comforted by a woman who removes her veil and wipes his face with it. A primitive Kodak moment.

We see the Devil, mocking Jesus "No man can take on the sins of the whole world. No, No one, it is too much," We see the Devil mocking Mary, the Devil mocking her virginal birth and her holy infant by being the Infernal Mother and her Imp child.

And then Jesus does something amazing. He gives us his mother. John is standing there with Mary, his mother and Mary the Magdalene and he tells John that Mary is his mother now and we are told that he took her into his house from that moment on.

Christ dies, bloody and beaten and torn. A giant tear (or is it just a drop of rain, like so many that have fallen upon the earth) falls at the moment of Jesus death. The temple shakes and the curtain that separated the people from the Holiest of Holies is rent in two and the ark is depicted as gone.

And then the scene changes to a dark tomb being opened up and as the light of dawn rolls over the walls it washes over my super hero, an unblemished Christ, perfect in his wholeness, perfect in his resurrection, showing only the holes where his hands have been pierced and he rises naked from the tomb.

We look for the face of Christ in the imprint of the Shroud and on the veil we call Veronica's. These smudgy pre-technology Polaroids are the sign of faith, even if they are not real. They are expressions of our willingness to believe in the King of the Most High. We are looking for His face everywhere, from drawings and art on cave walls, church walls and statuary, on humble pieces of cloth, even on the trunks of trees and in pieces of bread.

Shall I tell you where the face of Christ can be seen? The face of a tired nurse who bent over me and wiped my brow when I had pneumonia, the face of my doctor who held my hand and gave me bad news and good news. The face of a lover who slept peacefully in the night beside me.

He is the faces of children, "Suffer the little children to come unto me for such is the kingdom of heaven." He is in the faces of old people you pass on the street. He is in the face of your fellow man. He is in the face of even your enemy "For I say unto thee that thou shall love your enemy and pray for those who do evil for they are poor in spirit."

For those of you who do not believe in some form of God, no explanation will suffice. For those who believe, no explanation is necessary.

God Bless you on this Good Friday.
And remember, God is in the rain.

Miss March

My Lilies

March is fickle, so they say.

I think of March as an elder woman, going through menopause, hot one minute, cold the next, who pees when she sneezes. Don't be offended, I mean no disrespect to the last month of true winter and into the first month of earliest spring.

March, as they say, comes in like a lion. She huffs and puffs and brings the sudden, unexpected snow shower, the damp rain, the first fogs and the first warm days. March is when you prepare the earth and get it ready to grow flowers and herbs and vegetables. It is the mucky month, as liable to be muddy and soppy as dry and frozen. Mom called and said that she saw a big black cricket, the fiddler of the field, hopping about in the leaves she was raking, leaves that had fallen down behind the huge saw blade I painted last spring just before I went to Virginia. She planted my multi floral lilies on each side of it. I wish I could see it. I wished I could put my hands in dear old mother earth and smell her richness and feel the dampness of her on my hands as I prepare her for the fertility of the season.

I long for the early morning symphony of the mockingbirds that nest in our holly tree, the repeating call of the south fat robins and watch the cocking of their heads as they listen to the minute traffic of the earthworms below the ground. I want to watch the swallows shopping the several bird houses trying to pick the right one where their young can be hatched and raised and finally fly away. I want to sit still in the evening and watch the starlings squabble over the bird bath. They come in a large group and I imagined them, like little vacationers. I could see them with little beach towels around their necks, one of those tiny inflatable float rings, little ray bands on their heads. Now I'm getting silly. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a tiny beach ball floating on the tiny ripples of the bird bath.

But March is the promise of spring.

The Ides of March

Well, you know the old saying "When it rains it fucking pours" (or something like that). Well, my doctors came in and closed the Pella blinds. The cute doctor that sounds like Stephen Moyer came and sat on the end of the bed to let me know it looks like the bone marrow is dying. I've been placed on the bone marrow list as a top priority.

I sat there and I just couldn't believe it. I had slept late today and drank most of my ensure milkshake and watched Empathy on line and wrote some on the forum about Alex Skarsgard maybe getting the nod to play Thor (he plays Eric on TB) and wrote for a while in my journal when the doctors came in. Dr. McWilliams, my oncologist and Dr. Havers (the Brit) held my hands (something they have never done) and told me that I had the fight of my life ahead of me.

They say it is fairly rare and I am going to be sick for a long while or until my blood marrow can be rematched. So, because I have no immune system to speak of, I will be kept in even stricter isolation, put on broad spectrum anitbiotics and be placed on the stem cell research list in case there is a chance stem cell theraphy can be of any use. God Bless Barack Obama.

Okay God, can I quit now?

Mythos

So, I am on this forum, True-Blood.net, and I have never met a greater group of folks. We spend a lot of time talking about the books and the show and just talking to each other. They know that I am sick and they are really supportive and they get a kick out the stuff I write and post on the forum.

One of the threads that I have posted on the forum is about the mythology connected to the Vampire and Werewolf and shifters in the world of Bon Temps. I have a gotten a few comments, but I think most people are afraid to post because they don't want to cite their sources, which is something that I asked everyone to do with this thread so folks can look things up on their own. Mostly I wanted to see what other things I might learn about werewolves so I can add it to what I have already learned about werewolves and shapeshifters.

Though they don't contribute, there are a lot of hits on the thread so I know someone is reading the thread. So there is some interest there. I like teaching, I miss it very much, so this is a real outlet for me.

One thing that is interesting is that I get to see just how much I actually know about the whole topic of the supernatural myself. And I must seem freakish because I know an awful lot about the creatures of the night. And this was long before I became Witch. I have always felt an affinity with the world of Other. Ghosts, Faery folk, Vampire, Werewolf, Witch, they are joined in my world view.

And I know that the monsters of old are mythology or primitive attempts at understanding mental illness. But I do know that there are real Vampires, not the allergic to sunlight/garlic sucking your blood animated dead guy Vampires, but there are psychic Vampires. And there are no real Werewolves who turn into wolves on the full moon and howl and slobber over poor girl on the moors, but I know there are people who are very in touch with their animal side, their totemic animal of protection or affinity.

I think it is strange that I didn't get a degree in folklore and anthropology. I guess I don't like the notion of science and history being melded together but I enjoy the stories and how societies and civilizations tweaked the elements of the tales as they evolved with man's view of the monsters that lurked in the night.

Isolation

So here I am in isolation. It is so weird. I am in a self contained room with it's own foyer where I am protected from other people's germs. They have to get suited up to visit me. They all look like advertisements for really safe sex.

My room is in the ICU. I have these glass walls in the front of my room that are made private by these blinds, like the Pella blinds that are enclosed in two panes of glass. When they do medical procedures on me, they close those blinds and do whatever it is they are going to do me, whether it is check my catheter or give me a bed bath or draw blood. I like the blinds open during the day. I sit and watch the doctors and nurses and aides talking to each other. I can't hear them so I make up dialogue for them. My sister and I used to do it when we sat in the restaurants at home when we watched passers by walk on the street by the windows.

I have assigned special names for the ones I don't know intimately. There's Dr. Needle Nose, Nurse Piggy (she isn't fat but she does have a snout and when she laughs, which I can hear through my bloody double glazing, she does sort of snort and grunt), The Goth Nurse (she's pierced on her face and has black nail polish and black hair. How does she get away with that? She must know some evil dirt on the administrator), and Elvis, the orderly (who does look something like the King and tends to lead with the hips when he walks, like he has a terminal boner).

See, I'm a people watcher, always have been. I like to sit in crowded bars and restaurants and watch people. I see you do everything. Girls, I see you pull the panties out of your butt, scratch your itches, pick your noses and fondle your boyfriends under the table. Boys, I see you pull your balls away from your body, pick your nose, spit, pick your teeth, and cop a feel of your girlfriend's tits. But you never see me. It's because I don't stare. That's essential for the people watcher. Your eyes flick from person to person like a hummingbird, stopping only long enough to look but not to stare. I also listen to your conversations. Especially when you are on the phone. I listen to you giving your address out, your phone number, even your social security number on the phone. Stop it, someone less honest than me will someday hear you.

One of the things I notice is that people are inarticulate. They barely speak English. They don't have enough vocabulary to speak to someone else unless it is littered with obscenities. I'm no prude, I like to use good strong words from time to time, especially four letter words. But to salt and pepper your language with those words doesn't make you sound tough, it just makes you sound stupid. Stop it and buy a word-a-day calendar and brush up on your vocabulary.

One of the things I have done is downloaded the Sookie books from a file sharing place and I read them as a PDF. It is better than a book and passes the sanitary test. I still have my calendar but it is enclosed in a plastic sleeve. It's that picture from Fangtasia of George Bush as Vampire biting the neck of Lady Liberty. Bill is April. I love April.

I get out the last of May.

I watch the VCR, watching True Blood. I know there is a website that you can use to watch the show as a bootleg but it has Japanese captions running underneath it and it gets on my nerves. I notice that the nurses on the late shift like to watch it through my window at night. If I am awake, they write things on the dry erase board and ask me questions about the show. I write them back on my dry erase board or use my call button.

I actually got eat something. It was orange jello. It tasted bizarre and tangy on my tongue. I kept it down too. I miss my cat. Ishee is not a friendly cat, but he loved me above all my family. He sleeps with me and lets me pet him from time to time, mostly he just bites me. I wonder if he remembers me? Mom said that when I first went in the hospital that he went upstairs to look for me for a long time.

I have insomnia. I think it is because I'm bored. I'm ready to be out of the hospital. I hate it here.

Fewer Believers in Fox Holes

Are there fewer believers in the world today? You better believe it. There are many reasons for this, but I suspect that the biggest reason for this trend is the fact that church services tend to be an hour long infomercial explaining to believers why they need to cough up their money and give it to the church.

Jesus tells us that we are to go out into the world and tell people the good news that all men are redeemed through his sacrifice and heaven awaits those who believe in this salvation. He also says that in the end of days, there would be no physical place called the church, that not one stone would rest upon the other. We are told that those who are left behind will have to find the church in their heart because there will be no physical building, that the kingdom of God will be the people of God, not the churches.

In the film Jeremiah Johnson, this crazy man Jeremiah encounters tells him that the hills and the forests are the cathedrals of God, that the mountains bear witness to his glory, that the prairies are the great gathering places of the angels. This is the cathedral I believe in too. Not some ugly square building. The magnificence of the sunrise, the solitude of a starry night, the choir of the winds and the thunder of God's sermon and the baptism of the rain. No sacrament is greater than the sacrament of one's own presence in the face of such beauty and power. No virgin so sweet than the unsullied stand of great cedars, no child so wondrous as a new born fawn rising up to take suck from it's mother, no saint as holy as the solitary mountain raising itself up to the glory of heaven.

If I die, I want to go to the creator of the seas and the storm, the winds and the rain, the warming sun and the "dark, sacred night". I want to go to the God that makes personal covenants with each of us when we put seeds in the soil, causes the robins to break into song, and blessed me with the love of a man who covered me in the darkness and held me close to him afterwards, under the blankets, making me feel small, warm and cherished and contented.

And this is from a woman standing at the valley of the shadow, on the edge of the jumping off place. How can you, the whole and the living, doubt the glory of God? I understand about religion. Religion is a construct, faith is your inheritance. I never asked you to believe in a religion, kneel in no chapel, partake in any sacrament, but I ask you, when you behold the glory of creation, how can you deny the presence of the Creator?

Hospital Haute Coutre

If you have ever been in the hospital, you know what I am talking about. The hospital gown. It is designed for easy access for nurses and is the (excuse the expression) butt of many a joke.

I haven't had a proper sit down bath in weeks. I can't submerge completely in water because of radiation burns and now my surgical incision. And I'm one of those people who shower in the morning and then at night, I enjoy being submerged in boiling hot water to my chin with a good book and when I was healthy, a glass of wine and soaking until I was done to a turn. I resembled a very done lobster when I emerged in a cloud of steam from the bathroom about an hour later.

But back to hospital fashion. So here I am in this hospital johnny. My sister who is a nurse, usually comes in of the evenings and gives me the ubiquitous bed bath, changes my sheets, and dresses me in a gown she constructed of two of the johnnys., snapping up the shoulders and tying the sides. The hospital would really prefer she just use one, I am the skinniest person in the world right now. But I suppose she wants to preserve as much of my dignity as she can. It is a running discussion she has with the nurses to make sure that if I am not fashionable, I am at least decently clad.

To pass the time, and believe me when you are a patient, you have plenty of that, I began to concoct a tale of the man who invented the hospital gown. Here it is for your perusal.

Hospital Haute Coutre

By Aslinn Dhan Dragonhawk

In the late 1800's in Paris, a struggling fashion designer was trying to find his place in the annals of fashion design. He worked feverishly to create clothes that would set trends and cause a stir in the fickle and often vicious world of Paris haute coutre. He entered competitions, went to all the top design houses and begged anyone who was anyone to allow him to cut their clothes. No one was interested in his work. So he went to work for the French government designing uniforms and other apparel for the military, the gende d'arm, prisons and the like. It was a living, but he was uninspired. He knew this was just a way to make a living and he would simply be an anonymous government employee.

Then there was a post on the bulletin board that the Paris hospital needed a simple design for gowns for patients that would fit most any body shape and be simple to put on and take off and leave the patient easily accessible for any and all medical proceedures. It wasn't difficult but it would at least relieve some his boredom. He went to work and created his design and made a gown and had it shown at the hospital director's meeting. They praised it's simplicity and it's utility and before he knew it, most every hospital in the world would use it.

Of course the patients would never really appreciate it's design and helpfulness. They complained that it was too big or too small and it left your derriere hanging out in the breeze. All the easier for nurses to give you shots, enemas, birth your babies, or secure your diaper. But woe unto the absent minded ambulatory patient who forgot about the opening in the back as they took their stroll down the halls. Everyone had the chance to make you the butt of their joke.

So now, the decades have passed and we still use that wonderful, simple hospital gown today, but the name of the man who designed it is still a mystery til now. The name of the designer: Pierre Buttzout.

Thank you Pierre, you have made my humiliation complete.

Surgery Tomorrow

So, today, I have been going for tests, a final MRI and an intense discussion about my little stranger. The doctors have been giving me the blow by blow about that they may be doing to me during the surgery. They orginally wanted to do it laproscopically but they have decided to do it open, along the bikini line.

I have heard stories about the myths surrounding air reaching the tumor causing spread of cancer. I have been begging for a closed proceedure, but they felt that I would not be assured that all the tissue would be taken out that is effected by the cancer. They explained that the myth comes because most people ignore symptoms til it is too late and that adds to the notion that exposure to the atmosphere causes immediate spread. They promise me that this is not the case.

My dad has been donaing blood for the surgery and I have been doing a mix of synthetic blood and true blood to build up my count, and fight the anemia that I am experiencing. I will have two more rounds of radiation then they will do the bone marrow transpant and I will be in isolation.

I'm scared, I don't mind to say it. My priest is coming to anoint me and give me Communion and he will even do the ashes, on a little card to post on my window because I will be in a protected environment. I will be fully ready to go through whatever it is I will be going through, at least spiritually.

Mom and dad came to see me today. They still don't like to be around me and they are glad I'm about 30 minutes away and the weather has been on and off again so they have an excuse not to be around so much. I understand, though it does hurt.

My sister and her wife come to see me for a few minutes every day, which is nice. I like my sister in law. I can't see my little "niece" because she is seven and little kids are notorious little petri dishes, but she draws me pictures and writes me letter. I always email her a little note, just for her. She wants to know what the boo boo looks like. I told her it was a little man that was kind of ugly and the doctors were going to trick him out and grab him.

They give me about even odds, because the chemo and radiation didn't do everything they expected it to do, namely shrink the tumor. But it did stop growing and is in stasis. I hope they can get it out.

Geronimo's Bones

As I lay here in my hospital bed, trawling the Internet, trying to keep my mind off what is happening to me, yet trying to decide how much further I am willing to go, I ran across this article about the descendants of Geronimo seeking the remains and funerary pieces of the great Apache warrior to give them an honest burial so his spirit will go on to the land of the dead.

Being Cherokee and Iroquois, I have a profound empathy for the Native people of America. I know that aboriginal ways are not always Christian ways but their belief structures are just as legitimate as Christian ways of dealing with the living and the dead. I would hate to think that here would be someone in the future that would dig up my ancestor's graves or even my grave, to study and keep in a cardboard box in the dark bowels of the Smithsonian or some college. I would rather think that my remains would remain in the earth to become a part of the Great Mother, who allowed us to spring up and walk on her great body and then cradles us in the arms of the soil to nurse us in our death sleep as we wait for the time of rebirth and reunion with the Creator.

To honor the dead, whether they share your world or religious view is a human responsibility. To treat with respect the most basic thing left of us, our earthly remains is the last request any of us could make of our brothers and sisters.

As one chief wrote: Deal kindly with my people for the dead have a power, too.

And for the sake of the great spirit, go to Mount Rushmore and blow those President's faces off the side of that mountain. The Black Hills Mountain range, of which Rushmore is a part is the home of Wakontanka, the Creator God of the Lakota Sioux. Those carvings are the equivalent of drawing a moustache on the Virgin Mary. It is a sign of dishonor and respect. Those mountains are the Sioux' cathedral. Give it back to them.

My Own Sheets and Blankets

See, no one really knows what is like to be in a hospital for a very long time. And as I am going to be in the hospital for a long time, I miss my old room in my mom and dad's house. My own bed and matresses with that familiar divit in the spot where you lay the most, the smell of your own pillows, that mix of clean skin and hair and your favorite cologne, the favorite flowered sheets and the old blanket that is warm in winter and somehow cool in summer that has the little hole in it that that you finger when you read or just before you fall asleep.

So, although I am in a rather sterile hospital room, with my little True Blood calendar the nurse Sherri made for me pinned up on my bulletin board. (I'm currently staring at Eric, sitting on his throne, looking sexy and bored. Obviously she doesn't know about my Bill fixation.) I was surprised by my mom bringing my pillows and and one of flowered flat sheets and my favorite blanket to put on my bed. Hospital pillows suck anyway.

After she and dad left, I snuggled down in my hospital bed and pulled my sheets and blanket up around me. I could smell the fabric softener she's washed them in. Lovely smells of home.

They take out my little stranger (I hate funny doctors, even though he is English and sounds a little like Stephen Moyer when I close my eyes) on the 24th. They say it roughly the size of an IHOP pancake and twice as thick and sort of kidney shaped. I asked them if I could look at the little bastard (that's what I call it) when it is "born". I don't think they have ever had anyone ask to look at the thing the thing that has been held in stasis for the last eight months. That's just a fancy way of saying they have managed to make it stop growing, though they hoped it would actually shrink.

I want to see the thing that would have loved to eat me alive, that may still kill me, that made me puke, undergo alchemy, undergo the burning times, made me cry and despair, made me ugly and bony and pale. Made me lonely. Made me Other. I want to look at and say "Well done you little fucker. Even if I don't make it, I know you didn't either."

But, I like being under my own sheets and blankets.

Simplicity

Some of you will have noticed that I have changed my blog some. I wanted to change it to reflect not so much a change of heart but a change for myself. To open up this blog to creativity and a change of spirit. I want this blog to be about me, not just the occult side of me, my dual naturedness, but my human side, my frail and failing side, my creative side.

I am tired of seeing myself as just one way, for like a jewel, I have many facets. If you are looking for my magik, it is still there, just look for it in the guise of other things, in the hidden nature of art and thoughts and commentary, of meanderings and of fantasy. The spells that come from poetry and prose, the praise of God in the desire for life. The exploration of life through fantasy and fiction, to find truth in simple thoughts.

All Things in the Night

I was perusing the internet, like you do when you are bored and I saw a video for the Northern Lights and had a sudden streak of inspiration:

The Viking Vampire stepped out into the night and looked up into the black sky. How long had it been since he'd seen the sun? He thought hard, trying to remember, something Eric did not like to do because it reminded him just how long it had been since he was human. Still there were some things he did remember. Like the way the Northern Lights would light up the midnight skies and make the snow covered mountains seem to be blooming in the thousands of shades of green that could only been seen in the light of day. But then, as the night began to melt away, the colors would fade and disappear and the mountains would become dark with the coming of the sun rise behind the mountains. But in that brief instant, the ancient dead man with his ice blue eyes could see the world in false daylight, not under the killing orb that he now avoided since being made Vampire.

These things of nature, of the night days he now lived, did not trouble him. He was leaving soon, to America, and he would not see the green fire that danced and showed him the Valhalla he would never know. The gods were dead to him now, as dead but not as eternal as he. Eric had lived too long in one place and new vistas called to him. He stood there in the cold he did not feel, he saw the symphony of green and blue light which would be the only day he knew. Would the American nights be as beautiful? Or would they simply look like the velvet blues and blacks of a thousand other human places. He once killed a jeweler in Germany and scooped up a piece of velvet with a small mound of diamonds on it as he left. In the privacy of his nest, he spread the cloth on a table and spread the diamonds across the soft silky pelt of the fabric, and though he was not given to metaphoric thought, the Vampire mused how the diamonds looked like stars in an inky black sky.

The female, his second in command, eternally young and beautiful with her long blonde hair on her shoulders stood next to him.

"Everything is ready," she said.

"We leave tonight," he said. But he stood there a moment longer to watch the lights.

Love and Betrayal

So, here is something I want to talk about as I have taken the time to read and reread the Charlaine Harris books. I'll warn you now there are BIG TIME SPOILERS here so if you don't want to know, back out now.

Being that I am in the hospital and likely to be here for at least another two months, I have read the Charlaine Harris books multiple times. I had really stopped reading them thoroughly after book three after she so uncerimoniously broke Bill and Sookie up. I just wasn't that interested in reading about Sookie or Bill sleeping with other people. It's because I loved the love story and the notion of true love, every bit as real as true blood.

So, in Dead to the world, Sookie goes to clean out her cousin Hadley's apartment. Cousin Hadley was murdered and, unbeknownest to Sookie, Hadley was Vampire. In the course of her activity, she is attacked by the same people who killed Hadley. This is what Sookie discovers.

Sookie discovers that Hadley had been the favorite of the Vampire Queen Sophie Ann. In the course of their relationship, Hadley tells the queen about Sookie being a telepath. The queen is intrigued. She then forms a plan to draw Sookie into the world of Vampire politics by sending someone to seduce her. You guessed it, Bill Compton.

It's terrible. It's an idea so loathesome, that even I, a Bill Compton devotee, feel my skin crawl. There are a lot of reasons for this. Bill is so courtly, so gentlemanly, so sincere and he did take Sookie's virginity. (Some of you might say "What difference does that make?" It makes a lot of difference if you cherished your virginity and wanted to give it to that special man as the gift you can only give once.)

But then I took some time and thought about it. What choice did Bill have? None, under Vampire custom, he has to follow the orders of his queen. If he hadn't, someone else would have been sent who perhaps would not have been as patient. Did Bill really love her? Absolutely. That was something the queen and Bill didn't bargain for. He was sent in to bring Sookie into the world of Vampire, and James Bond, Bill is not. He ended up falling in love with a mortal. Is Bill a victim in this, too? Sure. Maybe not on the same level as Sookie, but he is. He even suspects his descendant, the person he inherited his home from, was murdered to make room for him in the world of Bon Temps.

I still hold out hope for the romance. In Dead to Worse, he declared his love for Sookie and the declaration of his willingness to die (for good) for Sookie. I will know the entire story in March when the paperback comes out and I will know in May when the newest book comes out. I won't buy the hard back edition but I will sit down in the local book store and read it through right there so I will know if there is the hope of a Sookie/Bill reunion. I have to believe in the possibility of true love. There is so little of it out there.

The Snow

I woke up this morning and eased out of bed to sit for a few minutes in chair and let the cna's change my bed. It felt so good to hobble about and stand at the window and look at the snow that had fallen during the night. I am pretty tired, but I actually feel less bad than before.

Snow is my favorite type of precipitation. I love the winter. While everyone is hopping about wishing for spring, I actually love the idea of snow on the ground til April. I loved snow even before I was sick. It never gets cold enough to suit me. I love the changes in weather.

But after a few minutes, I was ready to get back in bed. Dad hooked up the little VCR to my TV and I run TB almost constantly. I feel not so lonesome now that I can look up at the tv and see my favorite characters and hear their southern accents. I suppose they sound funny and contrived to those who actually live in the deep south, but I love to hear them talk. Especially Bill. And the actor portraying him isn't even American. Stephen Moyer is British, from Essex, just north of London and he has the most delightful Queen's English accent. I have been watching him on youtube in the British soap NY-LON and in the Brit-Flick Empathy. He's really a very good actor. He does well with both stories though I think the stories themselves are little under developed. I loved him in Restraint. After seeing him play Bill Compton, a sort of vicious Vampire with a heart of gold, it was tough to watch him play Andrew, an agorophobic art dealer with a dark and definitely insane side to him. In the beginning of the movie, he is so vulnerable, unable to defend himself, but in the end, you discover that he is filled with his own sort of evil, darkness. You feel less sympathetic towards him, but you are intrigued by him.

I am glad I have True Blood to distract me. I feel as much a part of that world as any of the characters there. Kinda sad really, but as some of my mates on True Blood.net have said "Whatever it takes,"

I'm sleepy now.

My Will and Testimony

Everyone makes one of these, sometime or other, so here is what I call my Will and Testimony. It is not a declaration of what I will share in my death but what I have shared in my life. My possessions are so few and pitiful that this is all I really have.

To my Family:

I have tried to be the best person I can be. I always tried to be a good daughter and sister. I have tried not be an embarrassment or a burden. If I have been those things, I humbly apologize and beg your forgiveness. I have devoted myself to every family endeavor and cause and have tried to champion you in every public and private forum. I have tried to honor you and respect you and I have always loved you from the bottom of my heart. Do not look back on my life and pity me. My life has been an adventure and I cherished every moment of it.

To my friends, living and dead:

I have always tried to cultivate my friendships with a few people who deemed me important enough to call me a friend. I have appreciated your intimacy and trust. You have seen me at my very best and my very worst. I have tried to protect and serve you with all that is in me and though I sometimes failed, your acknowledgement of my endeavors have been reward enough. You accepted my eccentricities and embraced me when no one else would.

To my lovers, living and dead:

To my husband, who is dead now more than ten years, I tell you you were not my first heart love, but you were my first lover. You claimed the only prize I had to give you. I surrendered to you as well as I could and loved you to the best of my ability. You claimed me for only a short while, but I was yours completely. All men who came after could never claim the one part of me I could only give once.

To my heart's love, you loved me as well as you could but I have always and will always love you. I wished that you could have loved me as much as I loved you, but you couldn't. I hope that where ever you are, you are well and happy and healthy and loved.

To my God and my Church:

I am a sinner as you well know. I have many times failed you, but I have never fallen from the palm of your hand. You forgive my weaknesses and make your presence known to me by the people you have placed in my path.

I was accepted by my church when no other church would have me. I have not always agreed with you and sometimes I have disobeyed you, but I have never strayed from you. You are my mother and you nurture me and give me peace.

I found my spiritual path to magik not by the straightest of lines. I discovered the innermost heart of God by understanding the special energies flowing through all people and all things and I have always tried to respect all people and all creeds and all practices so that I may learn of all the world the will of God in my life.

To my Students:

I was not a great teacher, but I worked hard to try to be one. I hope you will forgive my failings, my shortcomings and celebrate the precious times we had together. I tried to reach those who others gave up on and tried to embrace the ones no one would embrace. I loved you all. You were my childen.

To my Idols:

U2: Thank you for your music and your poetry and your beauty. Thank you for helping me through heartbreaks and lonlinesses and my sicknesses. Thank you for being the soundtrack of my life, the rhyme in my heart, the passion of my soul.

Mel Gibson: Thank you for your beauty and your humanity. Thank you for Braveheart, The Patriot, Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, and Apocalypto and The Passion of the Christ. Thank you for your failings and your triumphs. Thank you for your Vision.

Dog the Bounty Hunter: Thank you for being street level, for your big heart, for your story, for your pain. Thank you for being foul mouthed but soft hearted. Thank you for your bravery and your justice. Thank you for your mistakes and your successes.

Stephen King: Thank you for scaring me, for creating characters I loved because they had a part of me. Thank you for your subtle wisdom. Thank you for your words. You made me think I too could be a writer and you inspired me to put pen to paper.

JK Rowling: Thank you for Harry Potter, thank you for magic in my life, thank you for vindicating Snape, though I had him pegged as the eternal villian.

Charlaine Harris and the cast and crew of True Blood: Thank you for being my refuge, for the chance to contemplate my humanity, my feelings of Other, and for helping me recognize my levels of tolerance and intolerance.

Thank you for the love story.

This ends my will and testimony. Brightest Blessings Be to all I mention here and may you all shime on in this world and the next.

Aslinn Dhan Dragonhawk

Creepiest Places on Earth

Excuse the Vampire. He isn't pertinent to the discussion, but he has the cutest smile, don't you think?


Ever see that show? I liked that show. They pluck some suburban American family from their comfortable lives and drop them down in the most creepy old places in the world, usually somewhere in England, and attach those back and front cameras onto them so you you get this strange coming and going feeling when you watch them sneaking around in this dark old house.

But I can tell you what the creepiest place on earth is, hands down. A hospital at night. Yeah, pretty damned spooky. I think it is because it's not like a hotel room. You can't close the door and lock it. Anyone can come into your room. And there is nothing like waking up to someone taking your pulse in the middle of the night, or changing one of those IV bags. And they are creepy because they are very quiet. Like Vampires that way. One minute you are lying there, staring at the ensure milkshake they made up for you (Drink it all down Miss Dragonhawk, every last drop) and the next minute there is one of them and they want to check your sugar (Oh no, they are Vampires LOL) Which finger you want me to prick Miss D.? I always show them my middle finger. You know they have seen that gesture millions of times from millions of patients but they all laugh like they'd never seen it before. I bet they are taught to do that, to keep our spirits up so we don't get down in the dumps. Too late.

Pneumonia...that's what I am in for. Pnuemonia. Went my whole life without pnuemonia and now I have it. Bloody infections. And I still have to go for my nuke sessions. I thought "Oh goody, a week off from nukings, I work on my radiation burns and rest maybe break that fever" But no. Not only am I sick from the pnuemonia, I have more burning to deal with.

You know why I think hospitals are so costly? I'm not reaching here, I know. I was admitted for pnuemonia while I was here for a nuke session. I wear this bracelet with a bar code on it. Supposedly, they are supposed to be able to scan me and pull up my records. What I discovered is I am in another department and I have to fill out all my paperwork again. Here I am dying and they want me to sit my fucking SATS. I didn't do it. I called my oncologist to send photocopies of my records to ICU so I wouldn't have to do them again. I then sent my dad out to KINKOS and smuggle my records out so he could make a couple of copies so incase I have to go again or go to a strange hospital, I would have them. Let some RN fill them out. LPNS are the ones who do all the work anyway.

So, anyway, it's always funeral home quiet here. Depressing. They have TV but no HBO and no VCRS so I can't watch True Blood. More depressing. I have my laptop though and so I am writing in my blog, getting ready to watch Stephen Moyer in NY-LON on youtube. Checking in with my TB buds. I wonder if that VCR in the closet still works. I may be here for two weeks. I may have dad bring it and hook it up for me so I can watch TB. I could probably watch it online somewhere.

Depress, depressed, more depressed.

Dear Mr. President

Today is inauguration day and we are swearing in our 44th president. This is a momentous time in our history. You see, our president, Barack Obama is black.

Everyone wants to know what black people are feeling right now, and it's important, but I have to say it is important to me too. I am not free from the shackles of racism, I still fight with the seeds of intolerance and hate within my own self. But I voted for Obama, not assuage my guilt but because he is the best man for the job.

I will tell you a little story. Know the movie Deep Impact? The asteroid movie with Morgan Freeman and Robert Duvall in it? I loved that corn ball movie, it had a depth to it that I enjoyed with Tea Leoni and her conflicted feelings with her dad, the young kids who were just kids in the neighborhood who let us see the world through their eyes and the astronauts who were preparing to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the world.

It's all there in this improbable plot, the plan to send the Messiah up to break up the asteroid, the Ark rescue plan, the moral dilemma for ordinary people over fifty excluded from the chance of rescue. But the most improbable plot line in a movie filled with them, was the notion of Morgan Freeman as president of the United States. I told my mom that that was the only thing that really stands out as improbable. "There will never be a black man in the White House in my lifetime."

Now, history has made a fool of me. That's okay. It's time for Barack Obama to come into his own and change history, opening up the door to all hues, just as Kennedy broke the barrier for Catholics, Obama will break the barrier for people of color. God Bless Barack Obama.

Do your best Mr. President, work hard, you have been left a country in shambles and a world on the edge and white people did that. Sorry it is in such a mess. And Americans, be patient. It took eight years for America to be made a shambles of. It will take far longer than that for America to be put to rights.

I'm white, 42, a woman south of the Mason Dixon line, a Roman Catholic and a practicing witch, I am over educated and underemployed and uninsured and sicker than hell. I am fighting a system that would sooner see me in the grave than well and working. But I voted for you Barack Obama and I wish you well. Good luck, you are gonna need it.

Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Acceptance

This chick named Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book about the stages of death. Being that she was living at the time, I wonder if she had the neccesary qualifications to really write a book about what it was like to meet the notion of mortality. Now that she is dead, there is no way to know what she thought about her own death process and whether or not she felt she was correct in her assumptions.

So, now that I am facing the possibility of my own mortal coil, I want to see what she means by the stages of death.

Anger- Am I angry? I am. But I don't think I am as mad at my own human weakness and the possibility of my own emminent death as I am of other people around me. Everyone says "I'm praying for you" or giving me those little yellow bracelets or giving me cliches about how God doesn't put a burden on you that you can't handle. I wished God wouldn't trust me so much. This is one burden that is just too heavy. I know their reaction is just an inablity to cope or relate to what is happening to me. I feel sorry for them on some levels because I know they are afraid. I am living proof of everyone's eventual demise, their own human mortality. And they are afraid of what they see. I know they are saying "Damn, that poor bitch is wasting away, I hope I don't go like that," If you can't say anything besides those old worn out chestnuts, just don't say anything at all. Just come and sit with me and talk about all the gossip or bring me a magazine or a good book to read. You don't have to comfort me because you can't.

Denial- There's no denying that I might be dying. I don't deny it. I think the people around me are denying it. They don't want to believe that I and they will eventually die. I think it is more about them than me. It's like, if they don't believe that I might die, then they won't die. Which is such a load of shit.

Bargaining- "Let's Make a Deal" remember that show? I am not playing that game. I have nothing to bargain with. I'm God's to dispose of as He sees fit. But the doctors like to make deals "Hey, Aslinn, the hospital would really like to put you through this drug trial. If you do, they'll knock off that fee that the state says it won't pay," What is it doc? "Well, we'll have to take you off the morphine and put you on this new non-narcotic nsaid, sort of a super aspirin, thing is, once you start it, you have to stay on it, even if your pain increases and it may cause ulcers and bleeding." No thanks doc, I'll fight the system and keep my morphine.

Acceptance- I have no fucking choice but to accept that I may die from this. To not accept is to play a vicious game with myself of being high and low. That doesn't mean that I like it, I don't, but what can I do? I have already done more than I thought I would. I always swore that I would never do chemo, never do radiation, but here I am, I'm doing it. And I have to accept what it is doing to me, I have no choice.

So, is Elizabeth Kubler-Ross right? Maybe she is, but not for the person who may be dying, but for those around them. See, I have no choice but to be where I am. Those around me? They are the ones going through the stages.