Thanksgiving Part Two… It's a Family Affair.

And one helluva photo op….

The day, of course, begins with an examination of the back deck ceiling.  Which is dad and Uncle Tom's specialty.

It's also a brilliant way to get out of the kitchen and out of the way of the women in said kitchen while they bake turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pies, etc… etc… etc.

Holy Bananas, food.

Holy Bananas, avoidance of responsibility and masculine duty (until of course, the 24 pound turkey needs to be pulled out of the oven, then man-power is a necessary evil.).

Which brings me to another point- WTF- I'm totally capable of handling a bird of that girth… how come nobody asked me?!?!

 Meanwhile- Dad samples Pepe Nero (a rather fetching and absolutely delicious pepper brew from the Goose Island Brewery)- in yet another attempt to avoid the kitchen.  The Bob is a wise, wise man.

And so the day goes on… with such an epic degree of familial love and debauchery.  Mom decides she's a pirate (or reprobate as Uncle Tom put it)… Aunt Dee decides she's a movies star of old Hollywood proportions…

Several thousand pounds of food, drink, and merriment later, it was the end of the holiday-day.

Thank the powers-out-there because I was plum tuckered out by 6:30, curled up on the outside couch, snoozing in the happy mellowness of tryptophan.

And literally have no memory of the rest of the evening.

Happy Thanksgiving.

And then today rolled around- which means the post-Thanksgiving Day picnic.

Much like the Pre-Thanksgiving Day Pub Crawl, the picnic involves goodness, great conversation, too much food, and just enough of the white man's fire water.

There is something so special and so charming about family time.

And at the same time… so absurdly and so deliciously nonsensical.

Especially this family… And this time.

So Much Love to You All.

Thanksgiving Part One- or- The Pre-Thanksgiving Family Pub Crawl

Yeah…

It really happened.  How it happened..? Who knows- but a new tradition of nonsense and debauchery has officially begun in for the Cleerdin/Seyfried Clans.

Let me begin at the beginning...

One never knows where one may find oneself in the days leading up to Thanksgiving- even when knows where one is, errrr, physically.

Hence the day before Thanksgiving I found myself wandering around Vero Beach, Florida, with my parents, aunt, and uncle…. and we were drinking.  Heavily.

Sitting ocean-side on the Atlantic coast, watching a dog bound in and out of the water, we began the evening at Waldo's- apparently the Last of the Great American Hangouts.  This, having been to Chilkoot Charlie's in Anchorage, Alaska, is a debatable claim.  Perhaps the last of the great Floridian hangouts.

As we sat and shot the … ahem… shit, raising a glass to my grandfather (whose memorial may or may not be part three of these Thanksgiving blogs), the Bob pondered the merits of Waldo Sexton and his inability to tell the same story twice (see below).

Everything changes all the time.  Details weave themselves in different patterns.

Next up was a spot called Mulligans for some truly terrible wine and, much to my diet's dismay, truly delicious sweet potato fries (if you are ever in the Vero area- check out the cinnamon-honey dip served with the fries.  Two words: Holy bananas.)

Needless to say a fire was going to happen at some point yesterday evening.  Because, perhaps in a cosmic nod to my desperate desire for chill weather on a fall holiday, it actually dropped to 40 or so degrees.  Sitting on the back porch, flame gently crackling in the fire pit (which is another blog for another time because pit implies something sunken in the ground and this contraption most definitely sits above-ground) we polished off more wine, beer, and conversation.

There is a certain merit to being an adult in your own family.  You gain rights- rights to talk, fight, and engage in other most wonderful activities which you lacked before the rise in aged stature.

Not that my 'adulthood' within the family implies any respect from the family at all.

No indeed: I'm still pretty much the black sheep.  But this sheep can officially say that she found Waldo.  And that good times abound when you let them.

Until Thanksgiving Part Two, Or, A Whole Lot More Family Time…

Happy Thanksgiving.

Presence

I assume that it comes as a surprise to absolutely no one that I love words.  I love spoken and written language.  I love communication- both explicit and implicit.

I love WORDS.

And I love being a wordsmith.

I wrote a yoga class today which revolved around the idea of (and word) "presence."  In terms of the yogic practice presence means being totally into and with your practice, your moment.  In terms of the big world, the big yoga, presence is something intangible and tangible- real and surreal.  It is a physical, emotional, and temporal word.  It reaches beyond Websters and into the spirit of every person who is capable of experiencing it.  Presence.

Presence.

What a beautiful idea- that one is so completely and utterly here, for both themselves and for others.  It is alarmingly perfect.  To be present is to be aware, engaged.  To be aware and engaged is to be utterly given unto the universe.  Your spirit graces the wider world; it communicates on a basic, base level with everything and everyone else.

I reiterate that when you are present, you are aware.  I refuse to use the term 'alive' because it is cliche and boring.  Awareness is so much more significant, anyway.  Awareness implies a sense of consciousness that is true, honest, and magnificently powerful- because when you are aware, when you are present, when you are here- you let go.  You can let go because you realize the profundity of your surroundings.  And those who accompany you in those surroundings.

Life is present.  Be present.

Until next time…

What is, After it All, Love?

Last night I was exposed, for the first time first-hand, to "love" gone wrong; gone mean; gone putridly bad and sour.

Let me explain.  I feel heartbreak, heartache, and heartsickness.  I have experienced all of them intimately and not necessarily romantically.  I know the pain of love lost and love never again to be had.  I know how lonely lovelessness is and how wonderful the warmth of love is when it wraps around you like a blanket.  I have trounced on hearts and had my own heart trounced upon in return.  I get it.

But never have I known the pain, shame, and brutality of someone claiming to love you and then twisting that love into an excuse.  I was used as an excuse for someone to hurt himself.  My feelings were used as an excuse for someone to hurt me, to wound my spirit, soul, and trust.  Badly, and with vigor, confidence and ultimatums.

What kind of love is that?

How can love be defined with 'Either…Or'?

Until next time…

Hello, Hallowed 'Eve!

I adore Halloween.  I absolutely adore it.  Those of you who know me, know me well, and know my witchcraft, may find this odd.  Mostly because in the modern era Halloween is a bit of a joke and one run by candy companies nonetheless. But my enthusiasm for the holiday cannot be stopped. 

Nope, it certainly cannot.

I adore witchiness in all of it's kitschy glory.  I gobble it up and imprint in my soul and on my skin.

Because we witches must have a sense of humor about things.  And if we cannot have a sense of humor about a holiday that is oddly, sadly, and sensibly ours, than what can we have humor about??  We must, and I do, embrace the hats, brooms, warts, and capes.  I embrace my body which wears the hat; the air which floats the broom; the humor which necessarily embraces the wart; and the shoulders that bear the cape.

Traditionally this moment in the season marks the true beginning of the winter because it also marks the end of the harvest season.  Collecting is over, digging in is on.  The festivities which accompany the holiday celebrate not candy, not magic nor shenanigans but darkness- both in the form of the coming winter and shorter days and in the form of death- those who have died, those who have come before.

This day, for what it is worth, is a day of celebration of darkness- of evening, of oncoming, of passing.  It is a celebration of the good which accompanies the difficult or bad.  It is a celebration of livelihood even when times are thin.

It is the perfect night.  The witching night.  The night when I feel most at home in myself because there is no reason not to.  I believe that I can embody this transition from light to dark; autumn to winter; life to death.  I can embody and love all of these transitions.  They are natural, they are beautiful, they are Halloween.

My darlings, my friends and readers- Much love on this most auspicious of days.  And until next time…

An it harm ye none- so mote it be.

The Psychology of Inevitability

As a nod to the impending Halloween Holiday, I'd like to discuss (and open for discussion) what makes good horror films really good (of course in my ever humble opinion).  And I'm talking about the GOOD ones.  This does not mean the gore ones; the ones that rely on special effects and blood and guts and a gusto of absurd fight scenes blah blah blah.  

What makes a good horror movie into something haunting and memorable is this psychology behind-the deep distress of- the inevitable. Consider the greatness that is Night of the Living Dead: these people are stuck in a house, in the middle of nowhere, with the deeply uncomfortable knowledge that something is coming for them.  

Consider also the original Haunting.  

I have never in my life been more piss scared by absolutely nothing.  There are no special effects.  No gruesome scenery.  There is the simple terror of being haunted by the UNSEEN.  Neither the characters nor the audience sees anything.  We all know that something is there, hunting and ranging through the massive Hill House, but we never truly see it- we can only acknowledge it's presence and it's effect. 

My current favorite is World War Z.  And I don't care what anyone else has to say about it (booyah).  The reason it is such a great horror flick is because it is not actually a horror flick.  It's a socio-political statement about the inevitability of descent into madness, mayhem, and badness if humanity continues along the exceptionally self-centered and ignorant path on which it has currently set itself.  Of course we are going to overdevelop ourselves into disease and disaster.  

It's INEVITABLE.  

And that is key with all of these brilliant films.  The fear that we know what's coming and cannot stop it no matter how hard we try or what we do.  Whatever 'it' is, it is a force beyond our comprehension and willpower to understand and avoid.

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Do tell!

Blood Moon

What I love about the cycles of nature is that they make so much sense traditionally, socially and historically.

Tonight is the Blood Moon- the full moon normally associated with the month October.  For some reason (read because they don't do their homework and won't think outside the box) most people think this full moon is called Blood Moon because it is October's moon.  (October playing host to such a delightful holiday as Halloween- it makes 'pop' sense... I guess.)

But that is not exactly how it works.  At least not for us witchy-folk... Here is where the sensical traditional-ness comes in.  Blood Moon is called such because this is the time of year when (sorry to keep using the word) traditionally villages, towns, families, etc., began to slaughter their fattened animals for the winter meats; and to preserve meat you must first end the life of the creature.  And so blood flows.  And so this full moon becomes the Blood Moon.

It has so much to do with nature, with survival, with keeping life and light abounding during dark times.

It is a beautiful understanding.

To all, a Happy Blood Moon tonight.

The Switch- or- Self Control vs. Life

There is a switch in my brain- one that is equally as important as it is devastating.  And there is literally no way of predicting when it will happen- when the switch in my brain will flip and I will suddenly (while listening to my newly rescued shelter dog yip and sigh in his dreamy sleep) and with such relief think-

Wait.  I deserve to be here. I deserve to be loved- and to love myself.  

Last night was that moment, that heartbeat.  The bottom of my weird brain fell out and reality hit hard.  Self control, I thought at one o'clock in the morning, is a great thing.  Until you use it to kill yourself tortuously and slowly by starving yourself merrily.

And that is when the screaming in my head began...

WAKE UP KIDDO! DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO STARVE TO DEATH? DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT YOUR INTERNAL ORGANS TO DIE A LITTLE MORE EACH DAY WHILE YOUR SKIN GROWS FUZZ TO WARM ITSELF EVEN WHILE YOUR HAIR FALLS OUT?

Not really.... nope, can't say that I do anymore.

And so the still torturously slow march to reclaim myself as a person, one with wit and vim and vigor, one with humor and love, begins.

Until next time...

Deflowered

Before this evening... I was a motorcycle virgin.

And now...

Well now I am something entirely different.  Because this evening I had my first motorcycle ride.  And it was perfect.  It was exactly what I dared hope it would be- All fluidity and ease in motion.  All grace and presence.   And holy bananas- I was present beyond all experience of presence.  I watched the sun go down from a motorcycle.

I saw the world fly by in a rush of air and goodness and throttle.

But it was not flying at all.  It held still for each heartbeat- each breath I took infused with my surroundings.

Perfect.

Perfect.

Perfect.

Dear Alaska,

There will, in fact, be things that I miss about you.

But YOU will not be one of them.

Because, in fact, I did not experience Alaska this season.  I experienced Anchorage.  And, naturally, there were and are things here that I genuinely enjoyed.  My cohort.  My roommates. The stories that I now have to tell about my crazy landlady, our psychotic and hermit-like neighbors, and the misadventures of one wildly moody housecat.

I enjoyed the mountains in the distance and the strange sense of community in this strange northern town.  Dogs everywhere, street people making it a point to yell at me.

The Bear Tooth Theatrepub and Chilkoot Charlie's Trivia night.

I cannot, however, say that I will miss the town as a whole.

Again, nor can I say that I will miss Alaska.  Alaska- the big wilderness, the big sense of wanderlust and glamour and loss- did not exist for me.  Not this season, anyway.  Plans foiled; mischief never quite properly managed; fashioning of nonsense and no-good constantly foiled...

I gave up on the BIG Alaska.  I cannot regret it or regret will eat me alive... but I will be saddened by the world outside that I never quite got my act together enough to engage.

Alas- I blame myself, Alaska, not you. It is my ache, my pain, my mistake.

Love,
Kate