morgandria

[morgandria]

The wind is absolutely roaring tonight. It’s hard to stay properly seated inside the human suit when it’s like this. I tend to vibrate at the same pitch as the wind, and it makes me kinda spaced out.

I dyed my hair tonight. It may be the last time I do. I’ve been going longer between colourings, and I quite like my increasing streaks of white hair. We’ll see if I have the patience for it to grow out all the way. I don’t have too much on top these days (I shave the undercut quite high) but what I do have is decently long and takes its’ time.

I did end up doing some altar alterations. (Say that three times fast.) I wasn’t keeping up with everything as well as I’d like, and it was getting to be a bit stagnant. I only have so much energy to work with these days - economy is the order of the day. I moved one shrine to a spot where that deity was happier to be, and said ‘hail and farewell’ to four others. No-one is upset by the parting, and the shrines that remain feel less cluttered, and flow better. I think I can maintain things properly now.

I should try to sleep but that wind… just eating my brain, making me restless. Spring weather is so fickle and fey. I guess I’ll drop off once I can get my eyeballs to stop vibrating in my skull.

#personal #windy af

[morgandria]

random.

Over the weekend I -finally- got the house cleaned to a standard where I'm pleased, and don't feel like I'm living in filth. I can keep it in this state pretty well, as long as I'm not running the migraine gauntlet. Now that I feel caught up, the mental runtime needing to clean was occupying can be devoted to other things I need to work on.

I need someone to smack me upside the head and remind me that I need to remember to cleanse on a regular basis as well. I tend to forget over the winter and leave it too long, and wow does it build up. But two days with all the windows open and copious amounts of incense have done wonders.

I thought the noise from the renos next door were bad before, but...they've been laying a new stone driveway for the last week and a bit. The noise and dust is something else. I discovered that they are literally breaking stone with a sledgehammer right behind my side of the bed, up against the wall. They started at 8:15 AM on Sunday. And broke rock for three hours. I realize they're just doing what they're paid for... but I wish they could appreciate how much restraint it takes me to not curse the shit out of them.

We were solid cloud and some spatters of rain today during the eclipse. It got dark, but we didn't actually see the sun at all. For whatever reason eclipse energy (lunar and solar) always seems to prompt me to think about my shrines, and to take any down that don't feel necessary anymore (always with appreciation and thanks, leaving the door open for any future returns). I think of it as making sure I'm staying within my energetic means and not overextending myself in a way that lessens my ability to offer proper hospitality.

Supposed to be quite warm tomorrow but also with thunderstorms. I've been feeling it on one side of my head since this afternoon - we had what I think were mammatus clouds pushing in behind a bow-shaped front line, quite distinct from the smooth clouds they were up against. I'm crossing my fingers my head doesn't blow up any more than it already has.

#personal #weather #eclipse #random

[morgandria]

I am hoping I have just passed through the last nasty messy storm of the season. I mean, it's Ontario, so likely not, but the associated migraine was -bad-. It's still going out there until sometime Friday but I've downgraded to just a sharp sinus headache, which I will tolerate. There's snow out there today, but it's likely the warmer days coming next week will have our ash tree starting to leaf out.

I was very much looking forward to Beltane this year, but it appears that we are not gathering again this year. I mean, them's the breaks... but I'm still a little put out. I feel like we've lost some serious momentum since the pandemic. I'll throw something together here for myself - it might be something a little different than my usual (but will still involve sexy goats).

I have to admit that I am relieved to have more time to paint some statuary I've been procrastinating about. I'm still poking away at my beading, so there'll be plenty of new stuff in the bead box for Summer Solstice.

I keep wondering if I should try to take some photos of some of the things I've made for myself lately. They don't get much engagement on here when I do, but I still like to show them off sometimes. Having some pictures to share on here breaks up all these personal posts where I type into the void.

How is it already April? The summer looms, suddenly. It's time to shove the anxiety down, make some devious plans and get sorted before it gets any closer. I hope I'm up to the task.

#personal

[morgandria]

Woke up this morning with a weird aura. Slept until the afternoon, but I have a stabby eye and thus I think I will probably get full-blown overnight. My feet have been arseholes all week so sleep hasn't been great, for the most part, but I think the headache is from the wind swinging around in opposite directions.

Discovered yesterday that the people who bought next door had brutally hacked the trees that overhang our backyard. Like...wrong time of year to trim at all, let alone cut the trees back by half. I haven't got the greatest hope that they'll do well. given that what they were cutting wasn't dead and what they were leaving mostly is. Nothing I can do because they're not my trees (not even sure they were their trees to cut either), but man. Land spirits are grumpy, and I don't blame them. I'm grumpy too.

The thing that really pisses me off is that the honeysuckle that grew along the fence and was hurting absolutely nothing, they clear-cut. If there's any root left on my side of the fence I'm hoping it will come back, but again, not the right time of year to be mowing down trees and expecting much good to come of it.

I'm hoping they finish whatever the hell they're doing next door soon. The construction noise has been constant for three weeks and a lot of it sounds like it's coming from inside my own bedroom walls, which is just joyous.

#personal

[morgandria]

I’m so tired of having a migraine. I've only had a few cycles like this, where it’s months at a time. It’s just a vast ocean of pain, and you al most wish to be at 5he bottom of it, where the currents are slower and saltwater isn’t slapping your face every five seconds. It’s literally been months I’ve been stuck in this. When they ebb it’s brilliant, but they feel almost unending right now. Days sometimes bleed together. Sometimes I feel it's much like how being tortured with wrenching (where they wrapped a rope tighter and tighter around your head) must have felt. Other times it’s like sticking your head in a particle accelerator. You can’t see what’s destroying you but your brain is coming apart. Yet other times you’re stuck between dimensions or planes of reality and you’re really not meant to exist where that intersection is. Nothing gets perceived correctly. And there’s only so much you can sleep, if you can get there at all.

Throw in auras, puking, vertigo, eyes trying to explode out of your head, sinuses trying to migrate, triggered tension headaches… hell no. I wouldn’t wish this on an enemy. I seriously wish I had a brain tumour instead. At least then I could point to something as a cause instead of waving my hand at the weather vaguely and sighing for the thousandth time. When I lived in the Ottawa valley my migraines were summer beasts, on the storms that blew up the river. When I lived in Peterborough, the winter was the worst. Here between two lakes, it’s just all year round. It’s been nearly 20 years since I moved here, so you’d think I would get used to it. Heh. Not really. Resigned, maybe.

This post comes to you courtesy of my tablet. I can’t sit at my desk long, but I can handle lying in bed with the iPad in dark mode and the brightness turned down for a while. I spend a lot of time listening to video on low volume with the screen covered, unless I can’t handle sound. Most of my migraines badly affect my language center, so any legibility here comes from the autocorrect function. (We won’t get into how that makes me feel as a former English major.)

I’ve had them since childhood, but I think that a nasty concussion in 2011 has made my migraines worse. I don’t bounce back from them so well anymore. I can still push through them and work when I have to, but it has to be very fucking important that I function that day, and it costs me more recovery time than it used to. So I’m only doing that shit 'at utmost need' anymore. I’m bad at resting, I have an overclocked, anxious mind and unfortunately it’s also a mind that never shuts up and is endlessly curious. I feel guilty when I’m not doing -something-. I dread being useless. But I don’t have much choice. I’m unsteady on my feet. I can’t focus on a task. So I sit, and rot, and get more and more frustrated. It’s hard not to go dark places.

Sometimes I say 'Fuck This' and I blast my brain with metal until I can’t stand it. It doesn’t help the headache, but it can improve my mood, and it gives me something to focus on, and through. But those days are rare.

TL;DR? Migraines are a level of vile I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I’m deep in the migraine mines and so tired of digging in the dark. Maybe the weather will stabilize soon and I can get back to relative normalcy.

#personal #migraines

[morgandria]

Fool's Spring is over here, just in time for Winter to return for the Spring Equinox.

I am apparently also hosting my 2nd annual cold from attending my 2nd annual Sean McCann concert on the same day (March 17th), so I died hard last night and have devoted the last 19 or so hours to sleeping and staying hydrated.

It's just as well I'm not up to much. I was going to do a bit of cleaning and do some altar cloth changes, but the white winter altar clothes can stay put today with all the snow coming down. Spring will sprung eventually.

#personal

[morgandria]

I had the magic of a good brain day yesterday, so the concert I attended last night was good. My body still found a way to be an asshole in the wee hours this morning, but it’s again not a migraine and I am so grateful for that. The reason, I surmise, is that it got cold overnight Saturday and it’s just been steady with the occasional flurry. Of course it means 10 cms of snow to welcome Spring tomorrow, but at least that’s normal for here.

This winter hasn’t been normal enough, by any means. What most people might consider spring weather doesn’t happen here with any regularity until May. But spring and autumn both are contracting into smaller lengths. Spring turns summer-hot and dry much earlier. Summer’s heat lingers on and on in autumn well into October. In both instances it’s an abrupt transition, not a gentle progression. Climate change has made my memories of seasons past feel like the beginning of a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel.

It’s a challenging thing, if your spiritual practice revolves around the agricultural cycle of the year. Sometimes the cognitive dissonance is stunning. You need to be creative and flexible in how you approach your rituals. I’m the sort of person who doesn’t have much use for the idea of tradition just for its' own sake. If something isn’t fit for purpose anymore, it evolves or it's gone. It’s a bit like having a recipe for a cake. The traditional way doesn’t mean much if you can’t get certain ingredients anymore. You either figure out some substitutions that mean you can make something that evokes the cake of the past, or you find a new cake entirely.

I think that some day Wiccans may have to untether certain aspects of the Wheel of the Year from the agrarian cycle. It will change the 'flavour' of Wicca, but if that’s what it takes to keep going, that’s what it takes.

#personal #Wicca

[morgandria]

Green Lung - Forest Church

#music #folk rock #Green Lung #Youtube

[morgandria]

I go slowly, but I go. Caught up some of the housework today, and I'm picking away at painting and beady things that need doing. Just nice to have a little less anxiety over the state of the house squatting in my brain. I will try to do another concentrated burst of cleaning and cleansing on the equinox.

I find myself looking at the equinox from the perspective of a shifting balance, rather than really feeling it as 'Spring'. Last year was the same and it's working for me so I'll stick with it for another year.

Of course, my asshole brain may make those plans moot. It does feel futile having things I want/need to do and just not being able to. I know I need to rest (pushing through just means I will pay for it later) but I'm pretty sick of being in pain I can't function through.

#personal

[morgandria]

A Bed - Colin Halyk

A song for the spring, from the Bard.

#music #folk pop #pagan #witchcraft #Spring #Youtube

[morgandria]

I got enough brain back yesterday to recover executive function and I washed 2 weeks of dishes, and unbury my desk from a sprawl of beady bric-a-brac. My kitchen is clean. I have a thousand other bits of cleaning to do, but it'll get there.

Tomorrow is going to be warm enough for open windows, as well as the next day. I've already had the nudge that the shrines need some work for the changing season (which is...very early, but I'm not going to be stubborn and ignore the hints certain parties are dropping). That's the only plan I'm making this week. If anything else on my rather extensive To-Do list happens it'll be a bonus.

Despite my frequently melting brain, I have been enjoying the last couple months as certain spiritual things have been falling into place, in a way that feels like both the closing of a loop, and deeply satisfyingly Right and Proper. I mean...that loop started when I was 7. I know I'm a slow learner, but that's a record even for me.

Hope everyone else is pottering along alright on their ends.

#personal

[morgandria]

I feel like I have run the gauntlet for the last couple weeks, with the swinging (10 or 20 degrees at a time) temperatures ensuring migraine doom. I had one blessedly clear day a while back, but since then it's just been unending days of non-functional brain and body. It makes me feel so useless.

If I'm lucky the weather will sit still for a few days and let me reset - but for today I admit defeat. (I've spilled a full glass of juice over my bead-covered desk and nearly dropped the cat's bowl full of lunch food on her twice in 20 seconds.)

I do not enjoy icy grey Spring seasons, which is usually what March brings us, but this year's supposed to be dryer and warmer. It's already been unusually warm a lot of the time. I'm just hoping we don't get any hard frosts after the point where everything has started blooming, because it dooms the fruit crops. Dry warm springs also usually mean droughts, and extended droughts mean more fires. :\ I treasure my deep connection to the land, but that love is painful when the land is suffering.

#personal #nnngh

[morgandria]

I have thinky-thoughts but I'm not wording well right now. The weather is going from -15°C last night to 2°C. tomorrow. My brain is toast. But I am sitting here with my recently-blessed Bratog Bríd on my head, which is surprisingly nice. It's calming, like a boundary between my aching head and all the stimuli that make it worse. (I don't know if it's really helping, but it doesn't hurt, at any rate.)

#personal #Bríd #bratog bríd

[morgandria]

I found my Bríd's cross. It....was on my desk. The desk that I tore apart first, before scouring the rest of the house for a week.

At least I found it.

#personal

[morgandria]

Bríd of the mantles, Bríd of the hearth-fire, Bríd of the twining hair, Bríd of the Auguries, Bríd of the fair face, Bríd of the calmness, Bríd of the strong hands, Bríd of the kine! Bríd, friend of women, Bríd, fire of magic, Bríd the foster mother, Bríd woman of wisdom! Bríd the daughter of Danu, Bríd of the triple flame, This day/this night, we call the flame of Bríd! That the power of shaping be within us, That the power of poetry be within us, That the power of healing be within us, In earth, sea, and sky, and among the kindreds! Kindle your flame in our heads, hearts, and loins, Bríd above us, Bríd below us, Bríd at every airt about us. Bríd in our truest heart!

#altar #shrine #Bríd #Imbolc #Brighid

[morgandria]

Today was beautiful and sunny and quite warm - an excellent day for Imbolc Eve. But -of course- the day I planned to unveil Bríd and welcome her return with the sun is the day my Bríd's cross goes missing from my jewelry box. -Of course-. I have been all through this house and cannot find it. I honestly suspect I may not find it, ever. I'm trying really hard not to be mad at myself, but dammit. I guess time will tell if it's a) the House Hobs fucking with me, b) I managed to lose it somehow, or c) Bríd is not impressed with me right now for some reason. That's what divination is for, I guess...or She'll just show up in my dreams and chew my ass out in person.

#personal #Bríd #ffs

[morgandria]

The current state of my working space and the Baphomet/Lucifer shrine. Lots of red and purple and black. I finally finished the watercolour paintings for behind that candle sconce. It doesn't line up perfectly, but all parties seem to be happy with it. The statuary is not in any kind of finished state - I will be painting them, but it has to wait until I have a space to prime them.

#altar #shrine #personal #witchcraft #Lucifer #Baphomet