Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Echoes

(I found this post tucked away in a file, forgotten until I began cleaning things out. It was written partially as an e-mail to a new teacher. It’s as important now as it was when it was written, I should make some sort of note to re-read it often.)

It’s often said that “those who don’t know, teach” but I’ve discovered that what it should say is “those who know, teach, then discover that they didn’t know things as well as they’d thought, and proceed to reinterpret their lives and learn, learn, learn.”

The odd thing is as a spiritual teacher, you’re still further ahead than those you teach. Life’s an ever-unwinding path; you’ve just seen a bit more of it than your students have.

Spiritual teachers go through frequent crises of self-worth: how can I teach others if I know so little myself? It’s a sign of humility, which is a good thing, I suppose. At the same time, one has to remember that the definition of a mentor or guide involves the idea that they’ve been where the student is now, and so are in a position to offer advice, a helping hand, or valuable information. It’s kind of like following someone through a forest, and seeing that they’ve left signs of their passing in disturbed greenery, a footprint here and there; and every so often, there’s a shout back from ahead that tells you to watch out for that root you’re about to trip over.

They will ask questions; you will not know the answers. They will become frustrated; you will become angry. They won’t get it; you will despair.

But you owe it to your own past teachers, whether they knew they were teaching you or not, to keep on.

Steal My Soul

I have a photo shoot scheduled for today, and I’m trying to work myself up to it.

I detest photo sessions. I feel self-conscious, angry, annoyed, I don’t know what to do or how to sit, or what to wear, and I always hate the results. I’d like to blame it on a Bad Photo Experience as a child, but school pictures were never disastrous events. The only family portrait we ever had taken was the afternoon after I had dental work done, so one side of my mouth is swollen and I’m not smiling, but even that photo session wasn’t bad.

My father is an excellent amateur photographer, and he used to bring back stunningly beautiful slides taken of the tundra environments up north, shots of caribou, tiny flowers on lichen on wind-scoured rock, clouds. I was given a camera when I was about seven, and I took pictures because my father and his father did as well. I don’t precisely remember when I came to the realisation that pictures don’t matter to me. It might have been after some sort of deeply moving experience where I later looked at the photos taken at the time and said, no, this isn’t it; this isn’t what happened; this is hollow.

There is a picture of me in my head that actual photographs never reflect. I’ve cried when I’ve seen some pictures of me that others seem to like. I’ve also stared at some pictures for ages, trying to suss out what it is about photographs that makes me hate them so. I hate approximately ninety-four percent of all pictures of me. Others seem to think they’re fine, sometimes even great shots of me. No one I’ve ever spoken to about this understands how these photographs hurt me on some inexplicable, deeply felt level.

HRH has used several explanations for why I dislike pictures: cold light, flat image, lack of life to add the spirit to the physical representation. Blah blah blah. Artist talk.

The only photographs of me that I’ve ever loved immediately are our wedding pictures. Maybe it was the professional photographer with personality. Maybe the love and light of the day, and my spirit shining stronger than it does on an average day triumphs over the cold 2D images. Who knows?

All I know is that I hate photo sessions, I usually hate the results, and today at noon I have one. We’re using a digital camera, so we can wipe the ones I hate out of existence right away. I’m working with an amateur photographer whose work I’ve seen and enjoyed, who has also worked as an actor and director, so he’ll be able to direct my positions and expressions. I hope to all the gods he has patience with me, because I won’t.

Cameras scare me. And that truth makes me angry, because I don’t know how to deal with it.

The Importance of Supernatural Belief

Christopher Whittle has written an interesting article on the presence of paranormal belief in modern culture, published in the March 2004 Skeptical Inquirer and available for reading here.

A sample:

We are taught about angels, witches, devils, spirits, monsters, gods, etc. virtually in the cradle. Some of these paranormal beliefs are secular, some are religious, and the most pernicious are crossover beliefs, beliefs that are at times secular and at other times religious. Santa Claus, angels and vampires, ghosts and souls, and the Easter Bunny are examples of cross-over beliefs. Crossover beliefs are attractive to children (free candy and presents), and on that basis they are readily accepted. The devils, ghosts, and monsters are reinforced through Halloween rituals and the mass media. As the child matures, some crossover beliefs, called “teaser” paranormal beliefs, are exposed as false. Traditional religious concepts are reinforced as “true and real.” They give us Santa Claus and we believe in an omniscient, beneficent old elf and then they replace Santa with God, who is typically not as generous as Santa Claus and whose disapproval has more serious consequences than a lump of coal. We learn about God and Santa Claus simultaneously; only later are we told that Santa Claus is just a fairy tale and God is real.

In a synergy of cultural indoctrination and the individual’s cognitive and affective development, a general belief in the paranormal and the supernatural forms. Once we have knowledge of the paranormal, we can then experience it. One cannot have Bigfoot’s baby until one is aware that there is a Bigfoot, or aliens, or ghosts. In other words, you cannot see a ghost until someone has taught you about ghosts. Countervailing influences, experiential knowledge, and knowledge of realistic influence have little effect on paranormal beliefs because they are applied after the belief is established through cultural and familial authority.

I don’t necessarily agree with him throughout the entire article — there are a couple of leaps — but he raises some interesting points.

(Found via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Civil Right, Civic Duty

I have exercised my civil right and performed my duty as a citizen, and I have voted. Was anyone else surprised to find names they’d never seen before on their ballot? There were nine parties listed on mine, four of which I’d never even known existed in my riding.

It’s such a small thing – unfolding a piece of paper, picking up a small unassuming pencil, making an X in a white circle, and refolding it. So calm, as opposed to the emotional responses that watching political speechs evokes.

Speaking of emotional — if I have to deal with one more crisis arising from people assuming things, I will slice my wrists open or something equally inane.

It’s Thursday

Yesterday was an Eeyore kind of day. Nothing seemed very exciting, things were a bit gloomy, and the progress I made on the manuscript was much less than I’d hoped it to be. Part of that was my own stupidity; I opened the file with the complete text to look at something and a single chapter file as well, and forgot which one I was working on, so I ended up writing new material in both. I then took an hour comparing the two screen by screen to standardize them. I now have a twofold new strategy: (a) only open one file at a time (duh), and (b) all new typing will be done in a red font. That way new stuff shows up very clearly, no matter where it is.

Ceri started a new novel yesterday in my presence. She also brought coffee and chocolate croissants with her, which was terribly generous for someone who intended to take the new-novel-plunge. She wrote over 1300 words, which beats some of her NaNo 2003 days hands-down. (It also beat my word count yesterday, but she consoled me by pointing out that I was doing research and editing too. Editing that could have been avoided, of course, if I hadn’t lost track of where I was working. I just can’t believe my stupidity. Anywhats.)

I went out to one of the local pubs with a friend late yesterday afternoon, where we talked about religion, compared the Anglican and Catholic churches, mused about the basic beauty of the Christian faith and mourned the bureaucracy that has crushed the original teachings, and talked about the sex of God vs the gender of Christ (very, very interesting). We were marginally hit upon by the two gentlemen sitting two tables over, which made us both raise our eyebrows and smirk a bit at one another – she’s been married almost four years, I’ve been married almost five. It’s good for the ego. We had two rounds plus some nachos to nibble, and when we finally left I thought it was eight-thirty. Turns out it was nine-thirty (eep!), which meant that HRH was trying manfully to rein in his raging instinct to call out the troops to search for my broken and bleeding body in a ditch somewhere, and her husband had been waiting at his place of employment to be picked up for an hour. Oops. See, God is just so fascinating; this is what happens when I talk about religion and drink cider at the same time.

I wanted to go downtown today and wander through secondhand bookstores, but I feel so guilty about not accomplishing very much yesterday that I’m staying home.

Did I mention I’m over halfway done this book? I’m trying to be impressed, but all I can see is the half not done and due on July 1.

Catechism For A Witch’s Child


When they ask to see your gods
your book of prayers
show them lines
drawn delicately with veins
on the underside of a bird’s wing
tell them you believe
in giant sycamores mottled
and stark against a winter sky
and in nights so frozen
stars crack open spilling streams
of molten ice to earth
and tell them how you drank
the holy wine of honeysuckle
on a warm spring day
and of the softness
of your mother
who never taught you
death was life’s reward
but who believed in the earth
and the sun
and a million, million light years
of being.

– J.L. Stanley

(found via Margie’s Brigid’s Hearth: Pagan Parenting page)

– Read more of J.L. Stanley’s Labyrinth Poems

Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most

(t! would be proud of this post title. It’s the name of a song.)

I’ve been all over the place this week. From the heights of confidence to the depths of despair, from anxiety attacks to listless not-caring, I’ve seen it all. And it’s only Thursday morning.

While I made dinner and he washed the dishes, I asked HRH if he thought it was my body reacting to a reduction in the dosage of medication I’ve been on for a while and thus I was overreacting (let’s hear it for hormones!), or if things were understandably wonky in my life. He pointed out that while the medication adjustment probably wasn’t helping, not only was I writing a book to deadline for the first time ever, I was teaching, preparing for a concert in two weeks, dealing with the Zombie Manuscript from Hell (now with Shifty Author!), suffering from a lack of sunlight, and had struggled through three colds in succession. He’s also of the opinion that losing my computer has thrown me harder than I think it has. (This is probably true, although it’s oddly liberating at the same time. Of course, I’ve lost all record of log-in info for my website, but that can be remedied by contacting my host and telling them that I’m an idiot and forgot to write things down.)

You know what’s really gnawing at me about the Zombie Manuscript From Hell? The fact that I’d finally reached a point where I was confident about it. I was happy with it, proud to have my name on it as editor. I was confident that it was a solid, saleable product with excellent information delivered in a sophisticated and accessible fashion to the intermediate practitioner.

Of course the info is good. The author had already published it elsewhere.

Argh.

I have no idea where this leaves us. This was supposed to be the lead title to launch the series. Part of me wants to punish the incredible dishonesty of the author by canceling the book. We’ve put so much time, money, and work into it, though, that we can’t. Think of all the rewrites, repeated edits, more rewrites we’ve done. Another option is to do an emergency rewrite on the pages and pages of plagiarized information. I certainly wouldn’t trust the author to do it, so I would likely do it instead, which puts the screws on my own book written for my own deadline.

I shouldn’t worry about this until I’ve heard what the company’s legal recommendation is. I’m creating more stress, which I really don’t need.

My contracts, which were mailed out April 14 but still hadn’t arrived as of yesterday, apparently ended up Returned to Sender because of a mistype on the address label, so they’re being mailed back to me today (and yes, the address has been corrected). It’s frustrating, because half my fee is disbursed upon signing. That means when they get the signed contract back, it goes into the 4-6 week bureaucratic process before the cheque is issued and mailed to me. It’s now delayed by an extra three weeks, which means I’ll get it mid- to late June. Then the bank will hang onto it for a month, which means I’ll finally have that money mid- to late July. The second half of my fee is issued upon delivery of the manuscript, which is due July 1. When you do the math, that means I’ll be handing the dratted thing in before I see a penny. Mind you, it also means that I’ll have the second cheque finally landing in my account mid- to late August, which is nice to count on. And sometime between now and midsummer I’ll see my editor’s fee for the second book, and the first book (if it gets published).

On top of it all, I’m restless, but I don’t want to go out. Just call me an enigma.