pop goes my brain

I have spent the last 20 hours debating with myself how, or even if, I might write about the last 20 hours. Words feel cumbersome and pointless; if you were here I'd hold a piece of the way I feel in my hands, let you touch it.

I feel confident that somehow you'd understand.

In lieu of that, I guess I will have to try at words.  I know this is probably really incoherent, but I also think it's important to write it down, for my sake if for no other reason.



After I'd written last night about how much I really didn't want to do any ritual work at all, I did it anyway. Yesterday's COTD was the Queen of Wands, and she is a lady who gets shit done.

I had a short list of tasks to accomplish - some minor prosperity work, ritual confirmation of the name I'd chosen for the year, and my monthly tarot, and a general intent to recharge and refocus myself.

In addition, I was curious to try an invocation out of DuQuette's Low Magick, which I read late last week. I then promptly loaned it out, so please forgive my lack of precise citations.

(DuQuette titles the chapter Pop Goes Ganesha, to which the title of this post is a reference.)

For complicated reasons not entirely relevant to this story, I decided to use Kwan Yin as a focus for this exercise.

I'd recount, or at least summarize, his description, but I don't think that's as important as describing what I actually did.

I visualized a small Kwan Yin in front of me. I breathed into the image, silently repeating her name, as she spiraled and spun out and away from me, counterclockwise. I breathed, she spun and spiraled and grew, larger.  She danced, and the world in her path didn't so much disappear as it did dance along with her, everything dancing, the walls and trees and air and cities as the entire thing grew in scale, around the country and the world and the galaxy.  Everything dancing, everything together, everything all pulsing and singing and humming at once. For one shining instant, once the spiral had pushed out past everything, and there was nowhere else to go, the entire empty fullness of the dancing held still.

And then it spun back, like a rubber band stretched and released, spinning and spiraling and dancing right into my chest. All of it.

I opened my eyes, tried to remember the rest of the things that I had intended to do. I was both puzzled and amused by the plans and schemes I'd made. I couldn't understand what the point of any of it was, felt quite convinced that if I wanted any of those things, I could just have them.

But I humored myself, or tried to. I did the naming the year thing, that was easy. The monthly reading was harder. I could not simply focus on the month ahead as I usually do. I had to carefully define what was meant by "month," and "ahead," and, most importantly, "me." Thinking in the first person was... strange. I finally phrased my inquiry in images and gestures. I'll post that reading tomorrow, hopefully.

The prosperity work... I did something? I don't remember it? I set an intention and lit a candle and can't tell you what that intention might have been. I do know that it was clear, but decidedly non-verbal. Yes, that is terrifying, why do you ask?

I shut down my circle and released, as much as I could, the energy that I had gathered, but I was still having a hard time with the concept of "I."

Going to bed I found myself intrigued and delighted by the concept of physical form. I thought, "How lucky it is to have a body!"

I swear I am not making this shit up, OK?

All through today, I have continued to find myself thinking "this," with an internal nod towards my body, instead of "I." "I" is far too complicated, and not the same thing at all. Strangers have had strange reactions to me (someone told me they loved me, randomly), and in turn I've decided all people are sad and beautiful and vulnerable and small. I continue to be impressed with the concept of physicality, with form and movement and touch.

Work was difficult, because the idea of sitting in a little building (not little, actually, by human building standards) in a little chair moving papers around or reading text on a screen seemed so desperately pointless. I was thrilled to get outside.

While at work I tried to ground into a piece of obsidian that sits on my desk, but instead I just spent some time exploring the way the obsidian felt, not actually doing any grounding. Things tasted different. (Diet soda tastes like water plus a bunch of chemicals, which is exactly what it is, but: I can taste the water, and, separately, the assorted chemicals.)

I decided that people getting upset with me is sort of beside the point, because anger and frustration are so transient, and that the issues will likely be resolved, and that from the perspective of most people, once it is resolved it will be as if it never happened.

I still feel as though the part of me that I normally think of in the first person has been smushed into 10% of my brain, and that the other 90% is something else entirely. Everytime I say "I" or "me" I am generally talking with that 10%.

I saw a sign on a church today that probably should have offended me and instead I thought it was kind of cute and sad.

I still don't feel normal.

I am going to go to sleep, though, because this needs sleep.