suz's muses

Dixie wasn't mine, but I sure enjoyed the summer she spent with me. I'd have bought her if I could have afforded her. But every pic of me in motion on her shows a collapsed chest and grabby little paws. She'd have taught me to ride better if I'd had her for longer. 

Wow, the old  Hagerstown CUUPS group, Queen of Heaven. Miss those faces. 

I'm so glad this is still here. Such big chunks of my life, stuff I'd have long forgotten, still here for me to pore over and sigh mistily. I'm barely using my 'official' blog at WP either, but that tends to be more serious. 

Not that I never posted serious stuff here. But there's so much from the homeschooling days, from the halcyon time of having THREE ride-able horses, from when my boysies lived at home, when I had all the teenagers I could want, when I was younger and slimmer and had more energy. It's such fun to read.

Now the world is grappling with a pandemic, a terrifyingly insane president who seems bound and determined to get blood running in the streets, climate crises everywhere, and kids who are married and have great jobs and are doing all the things one hopes during all the child-rearing years, but this means not a lot of time to hang out with their old parents. 

Fortunately the ol' man and I still like each other, despite all the pandemic time being shut in together. 

I thought for so many years that our trajectory was, however slowly and haltingly, an upward one. As much history as I taught back in the day you'd think I'd have known better. America is in decline, the only question is whether it will be a long, gentle descent or a cataclysmic fiery one. And our planet may not give us time to find out.

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it was a lovely Earth Day. i was off, and didn't have to leave the farm. it rained early, but i slept late, and it was warm and humid and sunny by the time i got past coffee and got to moving. the farm smells like honeysuckle and something spicy. the spicy thing blooms this time every year, and i still don't know what it is, but i welcome it.
after a leisurely breakfast and a little Great British Baking Show (how i love that show- i'll be so sad to come to the end of them) i went outside snipped down all the couple of hundred plastic eggs i hung in the trees around ostara. that was a lovely contemplative activity for Earth Day.
the eggs are silly. i don't have any kids at home, and the novelty of Egg Trees is long past (although i was the first one i knew of to do it!)
having one egg tree would be plenty, but having them all over the dang place is REALLY silly. all of the trees who have shared their names with me get eggs, lots of 'em. but also the ones around the Hermes and Hekate shrines, the 'gates', and all along the border, and some of the lilacs, and my few remaining orchard trees, and of course all over the Persephone shrine. i don't do it for anyone else, which is good, because the family doesn't pay any attention to them and no one else remarks on them. i do it for me, and i do it for the dryads, but mostly i do it for the Kore. there is no corresponding Hellenic festival to ostara, and even ostara is either marginalized or argued about in the greater pagan community. (i wonder if 'american gods' will change that?)
i don't really care if ostara was an actual goddess or a modern invention. i don't care if greece has different seasons so Persephone's Descent isn't actually etiological. i don't care if the ancient greeks did anything to honor the season of balance.
the Kore's Journey is so intimate to me, so very important, that strewing the bare-branched trees with color to anticipate Her feels not only joyful but necessary. and when i take them down again, the trees are filling out with green, most of them past their blooming. i love the promise that hanging the eggs in the chill of late winter brings to me. i love knowing that when they come down again, just a few weeks hence, spring will be well advanced.
this year i got the added bonus of super-early fireflies. i've never before seen them in april. i have no clue whether or not this is actually a dire climate change portent. i just know i'm so happy to see them. last night i danced late into the night with them, and the peepers who were singing madly, and the little frogs who clung to the kitchen window, throats pulsating.
today i also planted seeds in my poppy garden, and got the potatoes and onions in.
it was a good day. a quiet, unhurried, low key day.
welcome, spring!

don't tell me. i know it does.

dammit. and i was just getting into a size that felt comfy and looked good.

i just never seem to stay there long. just as i'm getting lean and mean and recon trim, i'll have a breakthrough in my cm practice or get caught up in some traditional witchcrafty Work, and bam! i get all poofy and puffy and fluffy, and move way too far down the ceremonial and neopagan end of the spectrum to get to hang out with the hardcore recon crowd any more. or i'll tip over into berkertland, and get so enamored with recreating minutiae of obscure cult practices that no one but the odd recluse, or terminal pedant, or eyeball-rattling insane person would find remotely interesting let alone understand. and my neopagan friends don't wanna play with me no more.

one of the things i love about the kyklos apollon, and the reason i've been a quiet member for years, is how beautifully simple it is. you worship apollon? got a minute at a particular time once a week? bam. you're in. doesn't matter if you're wiccan or recon or associate him with lugh or jesus, or if you do one of the many lovely elaborate templates, or just light a match at the right time.

the debates go on, of course, and i'm not a part of them. but i stay in the kyklos, because i love apollon, and therefore i'm welcome there.

hellenismos makes occasional burps about being a big tent, but if it is, it's holey and leaking and unwelcoming as hell.

there are a lot of people under that tent whom i do not love. there are a lot of people whose practices make me do a double-take, clutch handfuls of hair, roll my eyes. when i hear that someone is regularly offering their own blood to the erinyes, i can't help but wonder 'have you really thought this through?' but maybe they have. maybe they know something i don't. i have my own personal bugaboos, generally involving people who insist that there is NO RAPE in greek mythology, it's all just feminist reworking of what were once touching love stories. (see? couldn't resist the tiny whiff of sarcasm, could i?) but they belong under that frayed and flapping tent too. the gods apparently have use for what seems fluff to me, in the great balance of things. and since my own beliefs and comprehensions constantly evolve and morph, i sure can't be making any absolutist statements.

it's silly to get caught up in wanting a community, really. i've known for quite some time that i am pretty much relegated to solitary work, and most of the time i'm fine with it. there are maybe half a dozen folks in a 100 mile radius who will try to show up if i'm hankering to offer my theoi some public kleos with co-religionists. but if that happens a couple of times a year, it's a good year. there's just no way that schedules and personalities and proximity are going to allow for more than that. and it's okay, really. i'm a solitary person, and have my own odd eclectic round of daily, lunar monthly, and annual observances. it's very satisfying, and is constantly evolving enough to stay fresh and exciting. and when i want to do deeper Work with someone else, or observe the much-derided Wheel of the Year sabbats that i still love, or just enjoy the company of other people who are pagan and pleasant, i've got a very few witch friends i can go to, and a really nice big inclusive cheerful neopagan world to romp through.

it ain't so bad.

but for most of the neopagan world i'm WAY too recon to be a regular participant in anything else. if you're hanging out with wiccans, it's just stupid to piss and moan about the god and goddess, or demand that kthonic libations be poured out into a trench, or try to get everyone to learn epithets. i go to wiccan rituals to enjoy standing in circle with cool people and feeling the energy raise, focus and lower (assuming it does, which is another post, isn't it?) not to try and foist recon practices on disinterested people. and maybe, if i'm fortunate and not pushy, toss in some hellenic nuggets here and there. just in case there's a theoi-worshipper-in-the-making lurking out there. but my wiccan and neopagan friends aren't going to come with me on daily prayers and libations, on a 5th century athens calendar of religious observations, on learning some greek epithets and their meanings, on laboriously trying to work out and intuit just when it IS okay to offer Demeter wine, if ever. i don't think it's a matter of it being hard work at all. i think most folks just ain't interested, any more than i am in learning islam. just doesn't ring the chimes.

and yet for the recon crowd, i'm unbearably fluffy and light-minded and not nearly serious and committed enough. i skip festivals. sometimes my daily devotions are thrumming with sincerity and connection, and sometimes they're pretty rote. sometimes i recite epithets in english. if i use them at all. sometimes i spend hours crafting and preparing a ritual, and cleansing and preparing myself for it. sometimes i wash my hands and face and trudge out with a cup of raw milk.

sometimes my 'festivals' are that cup of raw milk and a prayer that is festival-themed.

my practice is gods-centered (i'm always shocked when i see purported pagans saying stuff like 'if the gods disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't have any effect on my practice.') but it's also me-centered. the gods are, apparently, much gentler with me than with some other folks, which makes sense because everyone's religion is subjective. and in my practice, it involves me, how it makes me feel, how it encourages me to grow, how it sustains me in hard times, and teaches me in times of disconnection and dark nights of the soul. in the relationship i have with my gods, it's okay for me to be important too. because i am so amazingly, shockingly, incredibly, unbelievably loved.

i don't know all the different incarnations of even the gods to whom i'm most devoted, and all the myriad differences in how they should be honored. and (heresy according to the latest outrage) my hero cultus, such as it is, has absolutely nothing to do with graves or cenotaphs or any consideration whatsoever as to the final resting spot, putative or created or actual, of the bones of the hero in question.

i don't care if odysseus was historical or not. his importance to me goes so far beyond his actuality, or bones.

i'm a bad recon.

sometimes- often- gods reveal themselves to me through fictional characters. or a person on the street. or an animal. i don't feel the need to parse that into smithereens. i assume it's the same for some folks, maybe never for others. i just know how it happens for me.

i so wish we could talk about this stuff in the few fora that are active. i'd love to hear people thoughtfully share information on how they move through relationships with different beings and spirits, mortal ones like dryads and immortal ones like heroes and created ones like egregores and elementals. i'd love for people to feel safe enough to discuss instances where they weren't sure if they were communicating with a god or not, and how to bumble through encounters that are frightening or confusing. i wish we had a few places where superiority and sarcasm weren't the vehicles for suppressing, rather than exchanging, ideas.

i suppose human nature is what it is. i'm guilty too. i recently got sucked into a forum (damn you, fern!) where an admin was holding forth on how it was her opinion that wicca was ancient, far older than any other religion on earth, and that gardner was just the guy who happened to write it down for the first time EVER, and no evidence could persuade her otherwise because it was her opinion, and dammit, she's entitled to it. and despite all my high-minded ideas, i found myself snarking away.

but i realized, when i bitchslapped myself back outa there, that all i did was garner some high-fives and adrenaline-fueled applause from already like-minded people. i didn't give any useful information to anyone who might have been searching. i didn't persuade anyone who was open-minded enough to hear other povs, because i was nasty. and all nasty gets you is an ugly echo chamber.

i think i can do better. i think the gods deserve better from me.

i do think there are wrong ways to do things, and some stuff that's frankly stupid. but i think most of us could be a lot more judicious- and courteous- before we slam an idea that doesn't jive with us into the 'stupid' and 'wrong' column. having been a n00b at one point, i know i learned far more from discussion than i ever did from scornful dismissal. and it's not all about noobs anyway, near as i can see. if the gods want someone, they get 'em. we all had to figure it out for ourselves at some point.

so, here i stand, with my religion stretched uncomfortably over my big inclusive let's-all-sing-kumbayah ass.

of course, i'm really not as inclusive as all that. if i were, i wouldn't be so obsessively solitary.

really, i just want to not be an asshole, and to have some real conversations with folks who love the same gods i do, and aren't assholes.

khairete

suz

first of all, however goofy bill shatner may be, captain james t. kirk is sex on a bun. he just never palls.
i rode nik today, for the first time in a year, and the first schooling session (although i use the term lightly) in over 2 years. i think it was before my last exalted ride on bo, the one where brian took all the pictures, before he foundered. that was summer '09.
shit.
i put the bitless bridle on her just for kicks. nik has no issues with any of her bridles, but jasmine went so well in it that i was curious to see how Psychomare would behave. jasmine loved it, but she was never trained to anything above stop, go and turn before she was lamed. nik has had years of training, and is sensitive, responsive and athletic even in her old age, but also has not lost the explosive factor. so while she has the knowledge to go with less bits of leather and metal hanging about, i was genuinely concerned about a) having brakes and b) having sufficient nuance to be able to get a response to the subtler aids.
it was a success. she started off jiggity and fussy, not surprising in a thoroughbred with too much time off. the bridle surprised and puzzled her, and she naturally wanted to test it. but she's so tuned in, even after all the downtime, to my seat and legs, that i need very little hand to keep her with me and this bridle was plenty enough to give me that. what a pleasant surprise!
my girl has no muscle tone, her topline is completely gone. she muscles up very quickly, but if she's not working regularly and correctly it goes to hell even more quickly, and she's been off for a long time. so it's not surprising that she couldn't stay on the bit for long, but bless her, she gave it to me over and over for several strides at the trot. i wasn't sure if half-halts on the outside rein and little bendy squeezies on the inside rein would go through with no bit, but i'll be damned if she didn't soften her jaw, lift her back and drop softly into my hands, the energy circling in waves through my hands and back into her hind legs, gorgeous and round. and if i let her move from that into a stretchy head-down trot, she didn't resort to her evasive mode, which is head-up and back hollowed. i got that occasionally, but not too often. when you consider her age, her time off, her lack of conditioning and, frankly, that her ma is no lightweight to haul around, i'm thrilled at how little she resisted me.
she generally tests at the beginning of a ride, and with a new piece of equipment it's inevitable. 'am i in charge? if i am, we're going to go fast. so i'll speed up now. how do you like this?' if her rider tenses up, she decides the only safe thing to do is take over, and for her that always means go lickety-split. but if her rider firmly and QUIETLY sets an easy rhythm with soft hands and an authoritative seat, she's happy to come back and comply. but she'll test. today was no different, but you could almost hear her sigh of relief that she didn't have to be the captain.
nik has talent. it's almost a shame that she got stuck with me, as i never progressed far enough to explore all the things she could have done. i bought her to event, but never got good enough (or had the money) to do it. on the other hand, she's so high-strung and dramatic that riders good enough to handle her would probably have chosen to do their thing on a horse with less baggage. so it's not so bad that we ended up together. i'm a lazy rider and would never have pushed myself to improve as much as i have if i had an easy horse. nik hasn't always been fun, but she has forced me to work hard and get good, because you can't ride her if you're not good. i'm not great, but i'm a hell of a lot better than my nature inclines me to be, because i have a horse who won't settle for less. a poor rider would never have kept a fireeater like her, and a great rider wouldn't put up with the histrionics. so i guess we both ended up right where we should be.
i love my sweet considerate jasmine, and had a blast on my scooterpie ponylove. but there is no horse in the world who thrills me like my pickles. she is such a lamborghini, so instantly responsive to my slightest movement, so forward and eager, so fiery and red. i feel completely and utterly at home in her saddle, with that long neck stretched out before me, those elegant ears swiveling to listen to my voice, that ground-eating stride.
the walk was tense and quick at first, but settled down in mostly-good relaxed long strides, not really on the bit but not high and hollow either. the trot was the best today, not super consistent but frequently brilliant. she handled the trot poles quietly and efficiently. i was worried about the canter, as i'm not sure her back end is strong enough to do it any more. it used to be her best gait, and wasn't today, but it wasn't awful either, and best of all, she held up for it (although i kept them very brief.)
i didn't try any lateral work, and i suspect the bitless bridle doesn't have sufficient sensitivity to do much there. she picked up the wrong lead to the right, her 'bad' lead, and i attempted a flying change and didn't get it, but that's not a surprise. even when she's strong, i'm not very good at them and often don't ask her correctly, so it's probably not the bridle's fault that i needed to go to a simple change. a rider with an excellent seat can probably get high school results without a bit, but at my level i probably would need one if i were going to do anything much above training level. but she and i are both old, and i just want to enjoy her. we hacked down the lane and around the boy scout field with our new bridle and it was great. we don't need no steeking half-passes or turns on the haunches.
afterwards i gave her a long bath, and the fact that she adored it underscores how i've been neglecting her. when she was getting hosed off several times a week and bathed a couple of times a month she hated it. now it feels like pampering to her.
she was SO pleased with herself afterwards. so was i.
so why don't i ride more?
khairete
suz

i know lughnasadh is a fire sabbat, dedicated to the celtic sun god lugh. but as the festival of first harvest, it always feels demetrian to me. and it's the most bittersweet of all of them.
it's usually hot at the beginning of august, with few hints that autumn is on its way in. but the hints are there. yellow leaves up and down the lane, and quivering on the river birch. the days are noticeably shorter now. still long, still plenty of time to putter around after dinner and still finish up the dishes before dusk, but fireflies are now few and far between.
yesterday my hummingbirds were mobbing the feeder. i was horrified. it's still summer! WAY too soon for them to leave me!
the grass is dry and yellow and prickly. hard on the feets.
the mares are droopy when i bring them in for breakfast. there are audible sighs of relief when i turn off the lights and turn on their fans.
i'm twitchy and out of sorts. it's hot and glorious, but i'm not sinking into it the way i want to. the knowledge that classes start next month is always at the back of my brain, nagging me to work on my syllabi, scolding me for not having lost the weight i hoped to this summer, reminding me of what i haven't accomplished. i know what i need to do, i'm just too pissy and distracted to do it.
so i leave my offerings of bread and milk, and one of the few tomatoes i rescued from the stink bugs in the garden. i pray to Demeter, and to Apollon and Lugh. and try to find my way back into the moment, the golden sweet present.
and i thought age would bring wisdom!
khairete
suz

this is the first time i've done more than a libation/prayer/offering for the adonia, and i'm glad i did. i think there are layers of complexity to this....what is it? not a festival. event?......that i'll be unpacking for years to come.
i spent the day at a horse show, baking in the glorious july sun and generally enjoying myself. it wasn't until i began fixing dinner that i began to sink into the ritual mindset, preparing fresh summer produce, mostly locally grown (today is also my monthly demeter day, which has resonances with the adonia as well). i don't know what (if any) food was traditionally offered on the adonia, but i kept in mind as i worked that this would be offered to him later.
after dinner and cleaning up, i went out in the beautiful purple dusk to water the herb garden and flower pots and refill the fountain, imagining the falling drops as tears mourning the death of the beautiful boy, the breathtaking lover. fireflies rose like sparks around me, and a male hummingbird with a throat as red as blood kept me company. it was so beautiful that it was hard to keep my mind on the ritual, but i slowly slowly sank into it. it takes over half an hour to water everything so there's time.
i brought the mares in and fed them, giving jazzie a good groom which she loved. while they had their dinner i went out to the paddock in the moonlight, and the first wave of grief hit. i was thinking about a man who died a few days ago trying to catch a baseball for his son at a major league game, falling out of the stands to his death on the walkway below. the stricken player who had thrown him the ball said the worst sound he has ever heard were the sobs of the little boy for his daddy. that led to thoughts of my beautiful brother sam, lost so young, all his potential gone, his dancing blue eyes and wicked sense of humor. michael, with all his secrets and all his rich laughter. all those men, the not so young ones as well, but tonight my mind was especially on those young young men fighting and dying in stupid, senseless, atrocious wars overseas. so gallant. so brave. (yes, i know there are women also. but it's the adonia. i'm focused at this point on the loss of male youth, beauty, fertility, manliness.)
it's so heartwrenchingly tragic and beautiful, this whole human existence thing. if it's so hard for us to bear, how to the immortals do it? watch us and love us in all our ignorance and doomed glory and certain loss, over and over again?
what a night it must have been in ancient athens, all the women keening and wailing, throwing their pots to lie smashed and shattered in the streets below, tearing their hair and garments. how surreal.
i went out to the orchard, in sight of the persephone shrine with its solar light bright in the moonlight, and near the aphrodite plum tree, and laid on the altar the wilted roses from the aphrodisia last week, and the perfect body of a butterfly that i found earlier today. i lit a stick of myrrh incense, and set the offerings of food and the last of the plum brandy i made a few years ago on the ground by the altar. then i sat in the grass in the moonlight for a while. the fireflies are dwindling. they peak between the solstice and july 4th, and by the end of july they're pretty much done. i'll find a few glowing weakly in the grass when the first frosts come, but they won't keep me company on my starlit swims much longer.
lots of summer left. lots of hot days and warm precious nights, long sweet evenings and swimming and sunbathing and fresh good food and being outside every second i can. but the days are getting shorter. it's not really perceptible yet, but it's there.
there are a lot of death and rebirth myths and rituals and festivals. and a good few that focus on gods loving and losing humans, and how love never really dies, it's transformed. but the simple joy of the first experience is truly gone, so the loss is as real as the love. the message might be the same in the myths of hyakinthos and iason and adonis, but the nuances are different and importantly so (or we wouldn't have different myths, would we?)
i'm looking forward to exploring these nuances over the years.
i've decided to institute a new festival of my own, the iasonia, which will be held on the 9th day of the 9th month (elaphabolion) and will commemorate demeter's union with iason in the thrice-plowed field.
hm. i'm thinking i won't get to the ironing tonight. isn't that a pity?
khairete
suz

england doesn't mince words when it comes to privy matters. there are no coy euphemisms like 'bathroom' (what, you're taking a bath in the middle of dinner?) or 'restrooms' (who rests?) or 'powder rooms' (cocaine is so passe), 'comfort stations' (some are truly not), not even the 'loo' or 'water closet' (which is what i grew up using, but are apparently considered precious these days.) if you need to widdle, make water, go number two or evacuate your bowels, you must simply ask directions to the 'toilet', and 'toilet' is what's on all the signs.
my friend ross (rolph as he'll always be to me) pokes gentle fun at americans, who have coarsened discourse to the point of having obscenities as entertainment, but are too tender of sensibilities to refer to the appliance in question by its name.
there is something so very in-your-face about it. ladies DO sometimes retire simply to powder their noses or comb their tresses, but i suppose since the TOILET (can't we just refer to it as a commode???) is in there, it must be plopped into the conversation. saying 'excuse me, i'll be back in a sec, must go to the toilet' sounds to me as if i'm giving WAYYYY more info than anyone wants. along the lines of 'hey, got to pass some explosive gas and then maybe drop a gigantic dump, probably piss while i'm at it, see if the waitress will bring around the dessert tray, willya?'
i was saying it by the end of two weeks, out of self-defense. it was bad enough being a clearly american tourist, with all the baggage THAT entails, but to have the locals look at me blankly when i asked directions to the restrooms got old quickly. 'ladies' room' and 'men's room' seemed to work better, but even then the pragmatic english attitude seemed to be 'why on earth don't you just ask for what you want? you want to whizz, right?'
what really threw me, though, was that as i was still absorbing the whole 'toilet' thing and getting acclimated to looking for the right signs, in london i was also peppered with TO LET signs (for rental properties, gentle american readers) and i kept wondering what happened to the missing I.
:) khairete
suz