Saturday, July 28, 2012

40 (Life, the Universe, but not quite Everything)

I know, I haven’t been around in a while, what kinda blogger am I… Funnily enough, this absence hasn’t been because I have nothing to say, it’s because I’ve been distracted! You know how it is- you find this awesome person you have a lot in common with and can spend all your time just chilling with them… and then they graduate tech school and leave in 2 months because like everybody else, he’s a poptart ><. I do miss him horribly, and I can’t even be mad at him for leaving (he has a bunch of shit at home he needs to take care of before moving on to his next base), but… I’ve noticed that I kinda like having all this free time now that I’m not spending it on him XD. Yes, that is my fault- I’m very much a friend-oriented person, I’ll let a friend do anything and do anything for a friend (up to a point of course, but that point is pretty high), but still, I don’t have any true friends left here (hell, even most of my aquaintances are gone or about to leave), so… I obviously need to find things to do with this time XD. I actually have a few things in mind (writing more, actually practicing my roller blading, learning German), and of course when I get tired of being by myself I can always wander down to the smoke pit and find somebody to tag along with for an adventure like I’ve been doing for most of my time here, so… I should be good.

It’s funny, I’ve had this blog for a whole year now, and I still don’t know what I want to do with it XD. But, let’s see… Blogs are generally for people to talk about what’s important to them, so I suppose that’s a good direction. Only problem is, I’ve always been very terrible at figuring out what’s important to me that I can talk about; of course friends are very important to me, but I don’t want to compromise their privacy on this blog, even with changed names or other protective measures. What a person does, and who they are, is very identifiable after all, and since they’re showing me sides to themselves they don’t share with the world at large, it would be very unfair of me to display those sides of them to the world at large and I won’t do it. So… I don’t actually do a lot by myself, actually. That’s fixing to change, since I want to explore solitude and see if I enjoy it. Apparently I’m an introvert- I love socializing and hanging out, but I do find it exhausting, and since generally all I do to recharge is sleep, that makes me a very uninteresting person, and I don’t think I like that. After all, people are generally attracted to people with some sort of passion, and since I don’t have a lot of passion… I’m surprised I have as many friends as I do XD. Though I am a good listener and can tell them what they need to hear, so that makes sense.

But what I do on my own… I scribble (especially during class when the instructor decides they don’t wanna teach that hour), which is mostly journaling random thoughts or some issue I need to think through and organize, with the occasional doodle, I design tattoos for myself (it’s a slow process, since I would love to cover my body in ink but obviously right now I can’t quite do that, and since I insist on designing all my tattoos myself and having loads of meaning behind them it takes a while to think of ideas, design them, make sure all the meanings behind them are harmonious with myself; plus I have to think about money, since tattoos get expensive and since right now I’m saving for my trip to Oregon after tech school to be with my sister for a couple of weeks I’m not going to be able to get it done until after I reach Ramstein at least, longer if I decide to save for a motorcycle before getting more tattoos…), I read (lately it’s been non-fiction; apparently I’m starved for something to learn that’s actually interesting XD)… and that’s about it, actually. Right now I’m studying the tarot, Wicca, and anthropology.

With the tarot, I’m nowhere near the point where I’d be comfortable giving readings to others, but I have the basic meanings of all the cards down; right now I’m at the point where I’m cross-referencing the different directions different decks will take the meanings of the cards and studying the subtleties. I have one deck that I learned the basics from and I’ve had forever, but it isn’t quite right for me and now I don’t know what to do with it; another deck that’s a Steampunk novelty deck, I would use it as a public deck and read people with it if I ever go in that direction; and then I’ve finally found MY deck, one that clicks with me very well, I use it on myself, let it help sort out the chaos in my head. Most people think of reading the future when they hear “tarot”, but what it actually does is analyze your life as it stands, and the past patterns within your life, and then takes that path and shows you what the next step along that path is. How it does this… basically, while you shuffle the cards, you’re letting them sample your energy and “see” you, and then when they’re dealt out the cards will have arranged to have the right ones show where they need to in the reading. As a witch, I talk of this process in terms of energy, but if you don’t follow that path an atheist buddy said that he thought they were able to do what they do because when you shuffle them, you introduce randomness, and then when they’re dealt they’ll come up correctly because you will have shuffled them in a way that’s peculiar to you and thus have arranged those cards relative to you instinctively. Either way, the cards are a very useful analytical tool; you can use them to see how you’re going about your life (so you can use that information to decide if you like that path), make a choice (basically by making a divided spread, with the two halves representing the two choices and the consequences of those choices), take a deeper look at the relationships within your life (see the underlying dynamics between you and whoever you need to examine; your parents, siblings, friends, lovers, teachers, etc), analyze your past (if you’re confused by what really happened during some vivid event, or just to see what sort of patterns you’ve been raised in), etc etc. If you’re a witch, you could also to determine your future (arrange the cards into a spread showing your life as it is now and what you want your future to look like, then leave them in that configuration and marinate them in power), though personally I don’t like to; I trust Life to lead me where I need to go, and since I basically see life as an adventure and something to explore, trying to carve out a definite path seems rather silly to me.

With Wicca… I’ve talked about my issue with calling myself Wiccan in an earlier post, and since then I’ve figured “well, why not actually study Wicca, see where the fine lines are between different flavors of Wicca and beliefs that are actually outside Wicca, and then see where I fit”, so I’ve found a few books on the subject from a few different people, and been going through them (slowly, I admit, mostly because I’m finding I don’t like ritual very much, and since most of Wicca revolves around ritual… yeah). What I’ve come to so far is that Wicca is about a person’s connection to Life (most wiccans call it God and Goddess, or Lord and Lady; still deciding if I want to go that route. Basically, God and Goddess are about duality, opposite ends of the spectrum of Life; day and night, height and depth, air and fire, earth and water, etc etc; and how these aspects of Life interact. Interestingly enough, Good and Evil are never mentioned; it’s always understood that neither God and Goddess are “better” than the other, just different. Haven’t found a Wiccan explaination for evil yet, actually…) and the various rituals one can do to affirm that connection. You have probably figured this out by now, but I’m a free spirit, and ritual just doesn’t make sense to me; you’re going to celebrate Nature by setting up a little altar and praying? You’re going to preform a spell by setting up a ton of focuses, rather than just willing what you need to happen and moving the energies needed for that yourself? You’re going to talk to the Goddess and God, rather than the universe itself, or the specific aspect you want to talk to (ocean, sun, etc)? The whole system just frustrates me… but I can put a lot of what I do into Wiccan language (energies, spells, etc; though my definitions probably differ than the classic Wiccan definitions. For example, my spells are simply me moving energy to make something happen, no ritual necessary. Or, I often think of music as a spell, since it’s energy will make me respond and harmonize with that energy. It doesn’t mean I can calm myself down with peaceful music when I’m anxious, though- it will simply fail to harmonize with me and I have to turn it off. Mostly I use music to amplify what I’m feeling already; say, if I wish to call up a storm, I may put on Nightwish. And of course there are times when my energies are confused enough that I can’t bear to listen to any type of music, which means it’s time for me to go withdraw or talk to the sky or a tree, let them sort me out), so… Yeah, still debating that one XD.

And I’m studying anthropology as my “frivolous” subject; not that anthropology is frivolous, but I find it easy to read and read and read, and besides it’s fascinating. Learning the underlying mechanisms for why and how cultures are formed and maintained and developed, why cultures collapse, how cultures shape people, the different values different cultures have and how much people tend to take those values to heart… I believe I have mentioned that I’m rather introspective, and anthropology is another tool for me to use to analyze myself; besides, I like to challenge my assumptions, and how better to do that than learn what assumptions I was raised under (even if I was raised unconventionally, I will still have several American assumptions), why my culture makes those assumptions, and contrast those assumptions with the assumptions other cultures make?

Anyways, that’s all that’s going on at the moment. Hopefully you enjoy that rare meaty post XD.

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