'everybody's got their edge...'
Have you seen the Moon tonight? It scared me. It startled me into an awareness I'd long ago forgotten. I froze in the middle of pulling out my cell-phone and twirling my keys when I suddenly saw it, froze light a deer caught in headlights, froze like a child seeing fire for the very first time. I slowly put my cell phone down.
I got in my car and drove the long way home.
On the way home, I started praying. The yellow moon watched from my peripheral vision. I spoke my prayers aloud, my own voice strange and unfamiliar to me, softly intense and feminine, breathy with hurt and exhaltation. It has been a long time since I heard myself pray out loud. There was a great distance inside me.
I spoke one name repeatedly. I said the words, "I invoke you." These are words that I never use except in the most intense of ritual, or perhaps in the context of magic that need not be written about on here. But invoke I did, and I was answered. I don't know how I knew, but I knew.
I came home to an empty house. I noticed my lighter on the grill and picked it up. I lit it once to see if the rain had broken it and saw that it had not; I stood there for a moment gazing at the flame until some part of me said, "Hey. You look like an arsonist." But I liked the way my own small fire mimicked that of the curiously golden moon, and so I paused a minute longer before putting it out and entering a dark house.
I walked straight to my altar and lit one candle. I put my lighter down and sank to the floor. I rose awkwardly immediately afterward, intending to pray face to face with my altar, or at least sit relatively eye-level on the comfy edge of my bed. But I knew I wasn't ready for that yet, and so I sank back down hugging my knees to my chest. My eyes were already full of tears. I did not resist as they began to fall.
"I have asked for enough apologies," I murmured. I prayed for a long time. And then, when I realized I wasn't making sense, that my words were confused and my brain was distracted, I simply talked to my deities instead, telling them of all the confusing thoughts about Batman and ferris wheels and supper in my head. I soon found myself giggling at my own ridiculousness, my own childish and unapologetically exuberant mortality. What must I have sounded like then, before my altar? What must Cernunnos or the noble Teutates have thought? As my gaze swept across the pictures on my altar, I felt the gaze of the Wolf and the Bear and the Stag, and I saw myself holding my hand up to hand-prints on stone in the deserts of Utah. I remembered things then that I'd long forgotten. Not words or faces, but feelings.
When I became too hungry to talk, I rose to my feet and went to blow out the candle. But I could not blow it, and so I leaned my forehead against the shelf of my altar and looked into the flame. I said more words then and at last blew it out, then walked to the kitchen for dinner.
As soon as I'd returned to my room with a bowful of cereal, I sat down on my computer chair ready to write. But then I realized I had nothing to say. I looked at my altar distractedly.
"What have I learned here?" I wondered.
And then I heard a moving, familiar voice in my mind.
"Everybody's got their own edge," he said. "Jump."
I am a rock-climber for a reason. I could fall forever and still come back.
Should I say "this one's for you," Kirk?
Of course not. This one's for me.
I got in my car and drove the long way home.
On the way home, I started praying. The yellow moon watched from my peripheral vision. I spoke my prayers aloud, my own voice strange and unfamiliar to me, softly intense and feminine, breathy with hurt and exhaltation. It has been a long time since I heard myself pray out loud. There was a great distance inside me.
I spoke one name repeatedly. I said the words, "I invoke you." These are words that I never use except in the most intense of ritual, or perhaps in the context of magic that need not be written about on here. But invoke I did, and I was answered. I don't know how I knew, but I knew.
I came home to an empty house. I noticed my lighter on the grill and picked it up. I lit it once to see if the rain had broken it and saw that it had not; I stood there for a moment gazing at the flame until some part of me said, "Hey. You look like an arsonist." But I liked the way my own small fire mimicked that of the curiously golden moon, and so I paused a minute longer before putting it out and entering a dark house.
I walked straight to my altar and lit one candle. I put my lighter down and sank to the floor. I rose awkwardly immediately afterward, intending to pray face to face with my altar, or at least sit relatively eye-level on the comfy edge of my bed. But I knew I wasn't ready for that yet, and so I sank back down hugging my knees to my chest. My eyes were already full of tears. I did not resist as they began to fall.
"I have asked for enough apologies," I murmured. I prayed for a long time. And then, when I realized I wasn't making sense, that my words were confused and my brain was distracted, I simply talked to my deities instead, telling them of all the confusing thoughts about Batman and ferris wheels and supper in my head. I soon found myself giggling at my own ridiculousness, my own childish and unapologetically exuberant mortality. What must I have sounded like then, before my altar? What must Cernunnos or the noble Teutates have thought? As my gaze swept across the pictures on my altar, I felt the gaze of the Wolf and the Bear and the Stag, and I saw myself holding my hand up to hand-prints on stone in the deserts of Utah. I remembered things then that I'd long forgotten. Not words or faces, but feelings.
When I became too hungry to talk, I rose to my feet and went to blow out the candle. But I could not blow it, and so I leaned my forehead against the shelf of my altar and looked into the flame. I said more words then and at last blew it out, then walked to the kitchen for dinner.
As soon as I'd returned to my room with a bowful of cereal, I sat down on my computer chair ready to write. But then I realized I had nothing to say. I looked at my altar distractedly.
"What have I learned here?" I wondered.
And then I heard a moving, familiar voice in my mind.
"Everybody's got their own edge," he said. "Jump."
I am a rock-climber for a reason. I could fall forever and still come back.
Should I say "this one's for you," Kirk?
Of course not. This one's for me.