Aim of the Game

It started with a little whisper of an idea and my fingers were able to spin it out into a story. Nearly 10,000 words on my first day of NaNoWriMo. All spun out by my muse.

Yesterday I wrote nothing and lay under a mantle of icky feelings. Today I have turned back to it and it is a different ball game altogether. I made the mistake of allowing my eyes to linger on what had previously been written and someone how it doesn't seem to shine so bright. The effect of the morning after. We lose the moment.

I also have the problem that that tiny idea has taken me far further than I had expected. My main character has, within those 10,000 words, changed the world completely and utterly and also by accident. Now she has to figure out to live in it. I don't have much idea where she is going or how she is going to get there and the words no longer feel alive as i write them.

What do you do when you lose the plot? You keep going, one word at a time because even the plot just doesn't matter, all that matters is writing those 50,000 words. One word at a time... How slow it will be if they don't start to flow again...

I guess it is kind of appropriate that my main character is a lost soul too.

How Long?

Time for another whinge about being ill....

I had my nasty chest infection and the doctor continued to sign me off but didn't renew my antibiotics because he felt it was viral and wanted to give them a chance to work. I was starting to feel a little better when F comes down with a bug.

Suddenly I have snotty man with a temperature lurking about. Of course my immune system is shot. Not just from my own bugs and chest infection but also from the antibiotics. I am not sure if the antibiotics were damping down my own bugs or if F's bug have now come to visit.

Yesterday I had to visit the shop to get some food for Little Dog and I felt dire when i got back. A twenty minute excursion was all it was. Today my chest has bloomed and is sore etc. Work call because they want to know if they need to get some cover in or not and to try and get me to get an appointment as soon as possible.

Feeling a bit harassed I tell F, who is a little stern with me about money and so forth. Then I call the Doctor and find that they are snowed under and obviously have sickness too. So I am off to the Doctor next week and not even to see my own. Apparently the Doctor will be backdating my certificate.

I feel miserable now. I feel as if I have been backed into a corner of being off all week, whether I need to or not. I feel as if F is losing sympathy a little (I suppose at least one of us a constitution made of sterner stuff but I guess it makes it hard for him to appreciate where I am at). I now know that whether I need drugs or not, I can not get any.

I think the term for my position is snookered.

Things that go BANG in the night

I am sat here as per normal with Little Dog lolling on my legs having a nice cuddle. What is different tonight though is that she has a little shake on. Apart from the shake she seem is fine. She will do this most nights now until after Guy Fawkes is over and done with.

To be honest I havn't heard or seen any fireworks yet. But she has far better ears than I do and the merest hint of that explosion boom and she knows it is that time of year again. Teenagers probably letting them off somewhere.

I remember as a kid that Haloween and Guy Fawkes were separate. Guy Fawkes was the biggy and everyone went to their local display. We went up to the village and ate sausages and burgers in buns with hot onions and tomato ketchup. No pinky hot dogs back then. We had to wear hats, gloves and scarf as it was cold. Before and after the display you socialised with the other village folk and of course you knew plenty of them. Everybody was there.

When you were cold you took a spot near the bonfire and a rope held up by pegs kept everyone at the proper distance. On top of the bonfire would go the guy. I seem to rememebr competitions to see who could design the best Guy with prizes and all. They all went up in flames though.

Now it seems as if everyone has a display, although so far this year seems far far quieter than any recent year, thankfully. I remember when I first got Big Dog they started as soon as it got dark and just went on and on. Walking him on my return from work was a fraught affair. How did mothers with babies ever get them to sleep either.

There is another side to fireworks of course. Pollution. Dust and smoke containing heavy metals are released into the air. Of course people claim that this pollution is small compared to other sources like fossil fuels, but surely fireworks are an easy extravagance to be rid of? Can't we go back to each town having it's one display? Then there is the light pollution, what effect does that have on nocturnal insects and animals?

I am not saying ban them, just all things in moderation. A time and a place for all things. the 5th of November should be it, in nice professional displays to ensure safety and that everyone knows when and where to be.

While writing this Little Dog has gone back to sleep and now the only movement is the flick of paws and ears as she dreams.

Tarot

A little Samhain tarot, using Arthurian Tarot.

Prydwen's Anchor
1. What is happening right now - Sword Five
Defeat, slander, cowardice, unethical behaviour, divisive means, thwarted plans, sloppy or malicious thinking causes things to go awry. I guess the question is, who is making things go awry, me or someone else...

2. Current direction - Stone Knight
Responsible and trustworthy, patient and methodical, may seem dull but is stubbornly committed. So I guess that is where I am heading right?

3. How am I preventing the free flow of my life - Spear Three
Established strength, controlled intention, intuitive understanding gives an expansive outlook and resulting opportunities, scrupulous responsibility, enterprising initiative. I always find this spot a hard one to read, is this what I am doing or what I need to be doing?

4. Current opportunities - Merlin
The impulse of creation, imaginative insight, mastery through disciplined skill, initiative, self confidence, perception on all levels, alignment to and free flow with one's life patterns. This is precisely the opportunity I want!

5. Home / Family - Spear Queen
Deeply committed to healing the earth, deeply attuned to its needs and has suffered in it's service. Her grief is well hidden and she is generous and friendly to all.

6. Job / Vocational - The Wounded King
Wisdom gained through hardship and experience, spiritual insight, commitment to inner principles, a changing of one's life, inner healing, meditation, purification, stripping away inessentials, self sacrifice. I think this fits with work...

7. Relationships - Sword Nine
Suffering, grave doubts, guilt, premonitions, nightmares, cruelty, despair, depression, inability to take personal responsibility for one's path, the need for a disciplined lifestyle and commitment to logical thought. I don't like this one bit.

8. What should I become self aware of - Stone Nine
Accomplishment, enjoyment of solitary pursuits, love of nature, aesthetic pleasure derived from one's belongings, relaxation and leisure, ease, fulfillment of physical needs.

9. The Past - Sword Three
Sorrow, separation, deep disappointment, loss, the possession of the thoughts by jealousy, brooding on personal slights, it is necessary to analyse one's receptivity to the tide of events and acknowledge one's responsibility for others pain. I can go with that.

10. Possible future outcomes - Sword King
Giver of justice, a wise counsellor, analytical judgements, severity tempered by impartiality, shows how love of self-analysis and truth ay govern one's life.

A mixed bag for next year then. I hate the court cards, I find them so hard to place in a reading. I can't say as that reading feels me with joy, there are some difficult things in counterpoint. It completely agrees with the feeling of impending upheaval that seems to be circling me. I don't think it is going to be an easy ride at all.

Let's look at self limitation with Mabon's Gate...

1. What I would like to achieve - Taliesin
Tradition, revelation, inspiration, insight, preservation of heritage, initiation, advice or counsel, transformation of the mundane into the spiritual. Pretty spot on I think.

2. Blocks - Sword seven
Unstable effort, little progress, plans fail as a result of confued thinking, self-deceit, passivity, over-defensive, the need for proper conceptualization. Harsh but fair I guess.

3. Unconscious blocks - Arthur
Leadership, authoritative energy, the weilding of power for the good of all, will power, organisation, courage, responsible love, fatherhood, dynamism. Eek. Not sure how this fits exactly. Maybe it just means I worry to much about others.

4. Already achieved - The Sun
Innocence, purity, enthusiasm, warmth, a loving heart, joy, freedom, enlightenment, wholeness, health, intolerance of shadows in any aspect of life, clarity, directness, true vocation realized. A nice card to get, perhaps overplaying things a little....

5. What helped me - Stone four
Earthly power, conscientious ambition, material gain, possessiveness, selfishness, spiritual miserliness, time to be generous with others.

6. How have I helped myself - Grail six
Rediscovery of one's roots,ancestral memories, the pleasure of remembered links, a sense of tradition and continuance, atavism, karmic recall. so digging around in the past then...

7. The way others see my idea - Spear six
Victory, advancement realized through steady growth, pride in achievement, recognition, intuitively self-confident, ceremonial honours.

8. Who will benefit - Stone hallow
Incisive energy, the dispelling of illusions, conquest, championship, strength and power, love of truth and justice, the power of the mind, rational deduction or perception, light in dark places. Who?

9. How I can revisualise my idea - The Flowering of Logres
Restoration, culmination, triumph, attainment, perfection, rapture, spiritual healing, creative growth, the new aeon. What? Really? *blush*

10. The next step - The Spiral Tower
Reversal of energies, withdrawl of old customs phases and concepts, shocking change, liberation from outworn concepts, humility, the realization of limitations, natural forces at work, a curative illness, loss of cosy security, transfiguration, self-awareness. Oh dear, so much for a peaceful life...

11. The key to unlock achievement - The White Hart
Love, both sexual and spiritual, the vision of inner beauty, emotional ties, trust, the marriage of hearts and minds, friendship, fulfillment of desire. I guess the other reading was being a bit mean about my relationships then....

I don;t know why but prydwen's anchor has been mean recently, not that I have done many readings using it.... Mabon's Gate was much nicer and offered much more hope.

Spirit

Pinkfairygran asked a question about the difference between spirits and ghosts. I did a little reading....

We all have a soul. Our soul exists before we are born and will continue after we are born. Our spirit is more connected with us and grows in strength with us. So some people have stronger spirits than others. It is our essence, what makes us us in this life. Spirited people have stronger essences.

Lots of things have spirits if you believe in animism. Trees, rocks, whatever....

A ghost is the spirit of someone that has died but tends to be used to refer to an apparition of a dead person. They haunt the place that they died. I have heard them described as the emotional energy left as a sort of tape recording of traumatic events. Some ghosts are more than mindless reinactments of past events. I think it is these ghosts that are a little more that are more truly spirits because they still retain something of the original person.

I remember ghost stories from my childhood being all about ghost horsemen and people seeing some traumatic event being replayed. It doesn't seem to be so much like that these days. Maybe it is because of programmes such as Most Haunted. Most Haunted would definitely be all about contacting spirits rather than watching ghostly apparitions. The spirits of Most Haunted might be able to move things, talk through a medium, affect the temperature or appear as an orb but they don't seem to be able to appear as ghosts. Do you ever hear of ghosts in this way any more?

All i know is that I have never seen a ghost. Have you?

I did a ghost walk once of an old market town. He had made quite a study of the ghosts in the older buildings around the market square and had some interesting insights.

Ghosts respond to their own culture, not the culture of those trying to get rid of them. A Chinese restaurant in this town became haunted by a hanged person. They were very superstitious and tried every thing they could from the considerable wealth of lore they had from their varied homelands. Nothing worked and eventually they had to admit defeat and call in a local ghost expert who exorcised the ghost and it was never seen again.

Ghosts in that town appear to have a time delay. They start to appear so many years after their death and then so many years later they fade away. So all the ghosts appearing in that town came from the same era. The earlier ghosts reported by other past generations had faded away and were no longer seen. The energy fades. The recording stops. The ghost fades. The spirit moves on?

A shaman called Reya who writes the blog The Gold Puppy wrote about a war memorial in DC that suddenly seemed to have become a doorway for the spirits of the dead from the Vietnam war to start moving through. Maybe their delay was over. Maybe we all sort of stick close to this realm when we first die. Maybe it varies from soul to soul. I don't know.

But also it seems to me that the behaviour of ghosts has changed over the years too. Maybe the way the ghosts behave depends on how they believe they will behave. Maybe those spirits who died horrible deaths, just wanted to show others how they died. Maybe some spirits just don't want to leave their homes. Maybe some want to scare people because they like to do that. Maybe the mother visits the child because that is what they want to do. Maybe the spirits that Most Haunted find don't want to appear, maybe they can't.

I grew up in a very old cottage. Over four hundred years old. It used to be two tiny farm labourers cottages but at some point they were made into one. The house had no foundations and creeked and moved as it heated and cooled, dried and sucked up moisture. I grew up used to all te noises of wood and brick moving. Two staircases with one splitting half way up to go to my folks room or my room. If someone went to my aprents room i would not wake but if they set one foot on a stair in the fork to my room, i would instantly wake. Those noises were the house and were familiar and known. Not scary but comforting and familiar.

I never saw a ghost or felt a ghost there. Many people must have died there over the years but I never felt anything other than happiness and quiet support from the house and garden. At one point in my life I attracted some nasty thing. A black blob. For a while i had to make a circle to sleep in. A witch friend I spoke to on the phone about it felt an echo of it that night and had to sleep in a circle to. It followed me, like a black dog from Cornwall to my parents house (maybe it went because I got Big Dog... hmmm....). And there it had to stand at the gate, it couldn't step onto that land. I have no doubt some powerful folk lived there and they set up protections that still remain. Maybe their spirits linger and protect it. Who knows. I can't remember how but the black thing one day went....

So I guess we shouldn't be scared of ghosts or spirits but we should treat them like we would people. Don't take sweeties from strangers (*laugh* except at haloween) but allow them to gain our respect and trust so they can be friends, if they deserve it. Just cos we can't see them, doesn't mean they are not there. And just because they are there doesn't mean we should pester them.