Early Morning, September 28

This morning I watched the sun rise in Iceland.  I watched it rise while huddled inside my fleece vest and down jacket just outside of Reykjavik International Airport in Keflavik (not to be confused with Reykjavik Domestic Airport... in Reykjavik).

And what a perfect sunrise it was.

I am having trouble deciding on a title for this post- a line of thought not entirely unrelated to the previous sentence.  I could call it 'The Perfect Sunrise,'- but no, that's too Hemingway, and too pretentious.  I could call it 'The Morning After the Sleepless Night, 30,000 Feet Above Sea Level,'- but no, that's too much a mouthful.

What I have seriously considered settling on is 'The Salt of the Earth.'  Because when you step outside of the airport, you don't just smell clean, clean, unreasonably clean! air, you smell clean air with a lick of salt riding the wind.  This is an island- of course you can smell salt.  But I believe the difference here, as opposed to any other salt-ridden air I have scented, is the age of it.  The landscape here (yes I realize the pretentiousness of this statement considering I have been 'here' not even a full 24 hours) is saturated with time, with age, with tradition and ancient meaning.  This land defines the word 'primordial.'

God how INTENSE it is.  How intense that first impression was.  To the point that it no longer qualifies as an impression but instead as an imprint that is lingering in every fiber of my being.  Yes, I am dramatic.  But let's face it- that's why you read this blog.  

And that is why you keep reading it even though (while it occasionally fronts as a travel blog) I rarely post photos.  Here I must admit that while I am dramatic, I am nothing if not brutally honest.  And in all honesty, I took incredibly shit photos today.  Which is somewhat disappointing considering I did the one touristy thing that everyone does in Iceland- I visited and had a dip in the Blue Lagoon. I even gave myself a silica mud facial.

So simple written descriptions will have to suffice again, my Friends.

Much love to you all, from my outpost here in the North.

ps. Spellcheck just suggested that while I wrote 'Keflavik', I probably meant 'Cleavage'.  Which should, realistically, be the working title of the post.

Thank You All...

Tomorrow Tomorrow...

Tomorrow I leave for a three week adventure through Iceland.  ICELAND!  This place that I have wanted to visit since I was a wee wee lass.  This place that has captured every bit of young and naive romance in my young and naive heart.

This place... THIS PLACE!!  How do I contain what I feel for Iceland and all that it stands for in my short and completely ridiculous life?  How do I not fall off the plane and kiss the chilly yet vibrant ground?  How do I not make a complete and utter fool of myself?  How do I not act the way I always act... especially when I am confronted by something that utterly fascinates, enraptures, and captures me...?

There's no way.

And yet, before I lose myself completely (and run the risk of never returning stateside...) I have to say that I have never felt more loved or more lucky than I do as my friends and family send me off on this particular traipse.  What a Life I have, what Love I receive from all those around me.

And for that I am utterly grateful- beyond what any of you could possibly imagine.

So before I go, I say Thank You.  Thank you all for having some vague impression of faith in me and my abilities.  Thank you all for your support.  For your grace and good vibes.  And most importantly, thank you all for your Love.

Your love, my love, all love.

See you soon, Kiddos. 

Witches' Thanksgiving

Some call it Mabon.  But most are likely to recognize it as the Autumn Equinox.

Fall officially begins today.  And in all of it's golden glory, we witches celebrate by giving thanks for the passing of time, passing of knowledge, and the sharing that takes place.  We harvest, collect, gather, and glory in the traditions.

The fall is such a bittersweet time- there is an abundance of activity and a wealth of fine traditions... and yet it is also when the first stirrings of the cold season appear.

Regardless... Happy Thanksgiving, Friends. 

A Fall Favorites List

In honor of the upcoming Equinox (In case you are curious, We Witches call it Mabon) I have put together a list of my current Autumnal Obsessions...

Fall Fall Fall Flowers!  All Fall Flowers!  The first link is a testament to my Dutchness.  The second is a testament to every happy smile that crosses the path of my face in the Fall.

This song from this band.  To be honest, I like all of their songs, but this one is sweet as.

I love the weather.  I cannot provide a link to describe fall weather or how I feel about it.  But I can give you a photo.  New Hampshire in the fall a few years ago, the clouds curling over the mountains, the sun still shining golden enough to illuminate the perfect trees in their perfect transition.  I cannot even begin to convey how much of my breath has been stolen by Autumn and her weather, how much of my spirit is linked to this perfect time of year.

Iceland.  There will be much more blogging of this obsession to come starting late next week.

Peridot.  I think I am attracted to the fern-esque green of the stone- it is so clear and so crisp and so... almost lemony green.  Go with me on that one.  It's not for lack of trying.

Telling Stories.  Always telling stories.

WITCHES!!

I am utterly digging on this blog.  She has outstanding advice for the worthy traveller.  And she has killer posts on Iceland (see the aforementioned obsession).

These companies.  The shoes they produce are balanced, beautiful, brilliant!  The perfect companions for my gnarly yogic/running/beat up tootsies.

Finally, even though I am admittedly a complete and utter book fiend (I normally use the term 'whore' here), I have developed a deliciously guilty television pleasure.  It's called Copper.

Until next time, Friends.
Cheers. 

The Countdown Beginneth

In exactly two weeks I will be somewhere high above the Northern Atlantic Ocean, on my way to Iceland.

In exactly two weeks I will be doing what I do best- running running running.  Running away from everyone, everything, everything!

And Away We Go!

This is the first time in a long time that I will travel on my own.  Totally without contacts or support.  In a land far far away where English speaking is hilariously awesome and widespread but still not the main language.  In a land far far away with ice sheets and volcanoes, with trolls and witches, with perfection.  And in this land far far away I hope for one thing- to be set free.

Almost time to pack, friends.

Until Next Time. 

How September Starts

... oh September.  My birth month.  The birth month of three of my four grandparents; the birth month of the fall; the eternal beginning and end.  This particular September is beginning with both good times and bad times.  

This is the Life Eternal
These are the Gates to Heaven

As September begins, my grandmother Isabel lay in the hospital, slowly giving up a long battle.  And here I am something like 400 miles away, leaning on my father for his strength, and looking to the earth for love, comfort, and reassurance.  

That life goes on.  That love goes on.  That movement between the physical and spiritual is worth the journey.  And that the journey is worth the end game- regardless of how that game plays out.

As September began, Dad and I hiked to the Natural Bridge... a beautiful start to my month... during our trip through Kentucky.  What I saw, heard, smelled, and felt allowed me to believe that the world, no matter what, is still so beautiful, so restorative.  I am bolstered by the idea that my grandmother will return to this Earth; that she will be at peace in Nature and that Mother Nature will take care of her.  

This is a beautiful world.  And we are all given to and received from it.  

Until next time, Much love, my Loves.

Blue Moon- or- What it is About the Mountains

Dad and I have undertaken a road trip for this holiday weekend.  Since he's The Bob and the Boss, we took his car- a stick shift.  And since I'm the Kate and the Kid and CANNOT drive stick, I was left with heaps of time to page through magazines, read, observe, chat, and THINK.

And I finally figured out at least part of the mysterious/soully- magnetic appeal of the mountains, the appeal that they have on my very essence.  They are empty.  Not, I mean, in a literal sense.  The mountains are, of course, filled with plant and animal life; with seasonal and spiritual life; with graciousness, grace, and Nature.

They are empty, in large part, of people.  People don't bother with the mountains because they are hard.... Hard to develop in a widespread manner; hard to claim in any humanly practical.   They are impermeable, impossible- they are impregnable.

Which brings me to my next realization.  I tie myself to the mountains because they represent for me, more than any other natural ecosystem, the true inability of mankind to conquer or own nature.

Sure, we can maul, destroy, mine (oh and mind we do, blast we do, excavate we do), pave, build, rebuild, rebuild again after that next hurricane, that unseasonable and infinitely unpredictable snowstorm- but there's just no way of beating her.  Nature is the great survivor.  I look at the mountains, the scenic views as Dad sails by them, and I see permanency.  I see immortality and strength beyond human capability.  I see Nature winning once again.

All of this I am pondering on this most auspicious of occasions- the Blue Moon- or second full moon to occur in one month.

Cheers to that, my Dearest Darlings. 

Another Two-fer:

'The Trouble with Old-Fashioned' and 'The Trouble with Being a Nutter'

I'll get to the trouble with being Old-Fashioned in a moment- Let's begin with the singularly odd trouble of being a complete and utter Nutter.  And yes, I do revel in that rhyme scheme.

The trouble with being off your rocker, off my rocker, as it were... is that it's completely and utterly exhausting and at the end of the day you really really want a lobotomy.   Sometimes I wonder if, indeed, a major brain reconstruction (consider the physical more than the figurative here) is not the only way to rid myself of these demons once and for all.  

The trouble with being a Nutter is that you just cannot process reason in a way that is reasonable.  In fact, you cannot process reason at all.

------------

On to it, then.  The trouble with being old fashioned... oi, where can I? where do I? begin?

I am ready to move forward.  I am ready to be a big girl in the big world again.  Alas.  The big world is so big now that one must engage the Internet in order to meet someone.

NO.

I refuse.  Literally.  I. Re. Fuse.

I literally cannot stand the idea of having to use a dating service to meet someone.  How fake, how fraudulent, how manipulative do we allow ourselves to be when we only have to answer to the almighty Internet?  It frightens me to consider how many relationships are standing on such fragile and not-necessarily-truthful bases?

I joke sometimes that I go to Trader Joe's, Earth Fare, and Whole Foods to troll for men.  But the truth is that I would a million times rather meet someone shopping for fair trade bananas than buying me a drink at Girls Night Out or regaling me over the inter net with emails about saving a boyscout troop from a marauding grizzly bear.

The trouble with being Old-Fashioned is... Honesty.

Until Next Time, Friends- Be Calm, Be Brave, It'll Be Okay.  

Sometime in the Next 365 Days...

I'd like to imagine that the gal you see here has spent the last year
or so recouping in a bar somewhere in Europe, eating the finest of
foods, drinking the best of hard liquor and languorous wines,
learning a new language, and delighting in the anonymity
of health, well-being, and a quiet mind.

I'd like to imagine that whatever corner of the earth she has been
hiding in, she'll be ready to leave, to come back, when I eventually
meet her.  Re-meet her.  

I'd like to think that I am going to to come face to face with myself somewhere in the world.  Sometime in the next 365 days I'd like to come face to face with the self that I have spent so much time annihilating, pushing around, and starving.  I'd like to meet the self who was once mostly happy, most of the time.  I wish that the self who writes in her diary about self-dismantling and deprecation; the self who disparages and desecrates; the self who hates; could meet that other self.
I wish they could meet so that I could merrily write something happy- something that my Aunts would approve of and my father would begin reading again- and have it not be forced, not be a lie to try and convince people that I am on the up-and-up.

I hope they meet and remember that once, not even so long ago in the grand scheme of things, they made up the same person- the same whole person.  The same whole, mostly unfractured person.  I want the self who, depressed, takes anti-depressants every morning to meet the self who didn't need them- and remember how golden she was; they were.  I want them to stare at each other, acknowledge each other, and embrace each other.

It does not matter where she went or what she was doing while she was there.  She needed time to be protected and I needed time to fall apart.

Even in how bad I've been, there has still been goodness... there had to be.  Sometime in the Next 365 Days I have to believe that it will once again be mostly goodness.

Until Next Time, My Friends.

Signs

I used to stand by my much voiced opinion that I may be the worst example of a Libra of all time.  But then, today, I considered it a bit more personally and took on a challenge.


Let us begin at the beginning- Libra, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is the seventh sign of the zodiac, in astrology.   No big.  Pretty run of the mill.


Until you dig a wee bit deeper.  The Libra sign is represented by the Scales.  And here we have arrived at the fun part- the part which leads me to regularly state the aforementioned opinion- the Scales, Libra, is all about balance, symmetry and balance.  Ha.  And let's face it- I am categorically the least balanced person I know.  I am not being dramatic- no need to reassure me or molly-coddle me- I am not NOT the definition of a balanced human being.


Keep going into the definition of my sign and you find that Libra's are of 'positive' quality: expressive, extroverted, masculine, outgoing.  Muwahaha.  Not exactly, right?  I am non confrontational to the point of being painfully introverted and my expressiveness comes only with the written word.  I am shy to a fault and usually play the wallflower unless I know the people that I am with.


But read a little closer and my self-deprecating definition of 'worst Libra ever' falls apart.  For Libras fall under the Air element.  And I am nothing if not elementally air or ether.  Always moving, always thinking, doing, humming and buzzing, sustaining.  Vitality, although it does not always appear that way, courses in these veins of mine as though it truly is air moving in them.  If you follow that link I provided for air you will find this sentence nestled far down the page: Air personalities tend to be kind, intellectual, communicative and social; however, they can also be selfish, superficial, vicious and very insensitive to other people's emotions.

Oh yes.  I am selfish, self-centered (again to a fault), superficial, and vicious- when I want to be, I am downright terrifying.  The air and fearsomeness of a hurricane. 

Libra is also one of the four Cardinal signs.  Here is the superficially driven part of this blog: the Cardinal signs drive the seasonal changes.  They are the hinges of astrological world- the power signs.  Of course I am one of these Cardinals.  Even though I am negative and swirl through this world with a kind of immense and overwhelming disdain- I am powerful.  I am powerful in my negativity, I am powerful in my existence- as unusual as it may be- in my spirituality, beliefs, and ideas.  I am power.

So I humbly retract my statement.  Perhaps I am not the face-value of Libra, indeed I am definitely not. But I am a Libra.  And I am fascinated. 

Until next time- look up your own signs.  Follow the maze.