We look forward to seeing each other and missing each other is a delicious sort of foreplay that makes smiles brighter and kisses all the sweeter. We sing and dance again, flirt and play. We talk and relish the time we spend together rather than take it for granted or let it slip by unnoticed.

The second biggest change for me was having outside employment for the better part of the last year. I got the chance to learn a bit more about Terese and to grow a little. I still hated working for someone besides me, but managed to make the best of it and remain reasonably happy, if not fulfilled. The job ended last month under less than satisfactory circumstances beyond my control and although it put me back into no small amount of financial insecurity it was also an immense relief and a gift.

Cetandi & Bear

I have housemates here at the ranch for the first time in long and long and am finding it pleasant and helpful after my 8 months of solitude here. They actually live in a small trailer out back with “house privileges” so I still have enough private time and personal space to be content.

The sweat lodge is built and we’ve been using it since January. Being able to sweat and pray has been good for my soul.

And I’m both writing and crafting again. These things are incredibly good for my spirit, and I hope they will prove again to be good for my physical life as well. With Tammy’s support (and while I’m yet working part time outside of my home), I’ve decided to get back to the business of making my living with my art. I am 107K words into my novel and hoping that another 50K or so will bring my story to a close. I began writing a bit on it agin in late September to prep for the insane 50K word rush of November and am committed to finishing and submitting it for publication.

Assemblage Bird Shrine

I did some serious soul searching around whatever blockage keeps me from completing and submitting at least one of my 3 novels in process and learned a few things. The first may be broken. I’m not sure if I still need to tell that story, I’ve lost the tale, I’m afraid. The second, entitled “The Space Between” that I wrote in the immediate wake of the death of our Lil Pharaoh, has been too painful to revisit even to edit until recently, but will be my next task after completing the novel I began in 2008, (working title “The Coming”). This is the story I want to tell. It’s a good story. I think I’m a good and engaging writer. So why haven’t I finished and submitted? In October I came down to only two possibilities and they are both a little embarrassing, but what the hell, “tell the truth and shame the devil” as my Grama would say. What it boils down to is one of these two things, either:

What a bunch of happy horseshit. Whichever it is, I’m done with it. I’m going to finish this novel. I’m going to work on it until it’s done. Then I’m going to revise and edit it enough for submission. Then I’m going to send it off and brave rejection while praying for acceptance.

In the meantime, I’m going to craft and tattoo and find my way back to art from those things. Here I come, 2012.

Yesterday my lil Pharoah would have been 2 years old had we not lost him to SIDS on October 18, 2007.

When I spoke with my friend Shelly on the phone yesterday morning we chatted about this and that until finally, just as we were saying goodbye, I blurted out that it was Bishop’s birthday and I was having some trouble finding any good to write about for Only the Good Friday. That lovely woman and wonderful friend ordered me to forget about OtGF. In fact, she told me to shut of my computer and grieve. All it took was the concern and empathy in her voice to open the floodgates in me and once my tears began I thought they would never stop.

I took her advice and shut off my Mac for the day and spent the day with my loss, with my pain and grief.

As I decorated my Ancestor Altar, my altar dedicated to my beloved dead, to celebrate the day of his birth I sobbed and screamed and couldn’t seem to stop thinking that I should have been filling the house with balloons and streamers and making sure there was film and batteries in the camera while his birthday cake baked. That I should have been putting the final touches on numerous gaily wrapped presents bought by his doting grandmas with the sole intent of his delight.

Instead I was cleaning and anointing this altar; my altar of the dead. I was scouring the house for 13 candles, placing the tiny silver cup with water and the small plate of salt. I was burning the sacred kyphi incense- “Isis” and “Horus” blends that my friend Carolina sent me, little knowing (yet knowing, all the same), how perfect her gift, how appropriate an offering for my Lil Pharaoh.

I grieved my own loss, and I grieved my precious daughter’s loss. I grieved for the death of babies. I grieved with a raw depth that my numbing depression last year seemed to have covered in a muffling layer of cotton batting. I grieved and gave my grief a voice that I never allowed it to have out of love and respect for my daughter’s grief. I grieved the loss of my daughter’s innocence, and perhaps the loss of her faith.

And as I grieved- as I cried and sobbed, as I screamed and cursed the Gods I began to connect with some small good that could come out of my grief.

Last week for Only the Good Fridays, Candid Karina wrote about a couple of events that she is participating in and one of them is a March of Dimes Walk, March for Babies. The March of Dimes uses 77 cents of every dollar raised in March for Babies to support research and programs that help moms have full-term pregnancies and babies begin healthy lives and to bring comfort and information to families whose baby was born too soon, or sick. Karina’s sponsorship goal is a modest one, only $150. She’s only gotten $20 so far and I offered $10 of that. I’d love to help her make her goal, so if you can find it in your hearts and pockets, why not head over and sponsor her for a dollar or two? If you can’t contribute, why not go to Karina’s and tweet her post or give her a shout out on your own blog?

First Candle is an organization that promotes education and research of SIDS as well as grief and loss support of parents, grandparents and family members. They even have information for friends and family on how to help; what to say and not to say for folks who are unsure of how to best express their condolences in the face of such an heartrending tragedy as the loss of a baby.

I turned to First Candle often in the early stages of my grief. Their information on the “double grief” that Grandparents experiece; not only the loss of your Grandbaby, but the overwhelming powerlessness of not being able to make it all better for your own child- helped me to understand the scope of my grief and reminded me that no matter how it felt, I wasn’t really alone. First Candle is another incredible organization that can use your support in whatever way you can offer it, but in the very least bookmark it. I hope from the bottom of my heart you will never need it yourselves, any of you reading this, but do have it saved to share with anyone who does need it.

And finally my grief yesterday brought me to one more small good. It reminded me that I have decided that Thorne’s World is a place of honesty and reality. That although I would love to suppliment my income with my blog, my first and formost desire and goal is to speak to you from my heart and to be true to my life, philosophy and beliefs.

Perhaps some lost sojourner on the interwebz will find this when she needs to know she is not alone.

So be it.

Peace, out.

Blog Against Theocracy!!!

Day 2 begins with a few of my personal favorites from Day 1 of the Blog Against Theocracy Blogswarm.

This first one is a lighthearted graphic look at our topic. Too much fun!
Wee Mousie’s Cinema Blogspot

Next we have a short and sweet personal message from a person of faith:
Sprawling Ramshackle Compound

The Progressive Puppy writes a story of an all too possible future…

I’ve included some of the lighter takes on the theme of the separation of church and state, above.

It’s true, the rant has been knocked out of your favorite desert witch.  As passionate as I am about this topic (and many, many others), I just don’t seem to be able to generate the energy to get too riled up these days.  I should say that it’s not because I’ve “given up” or worse, because I don’t care.  Perhaps it’s because I care too much.  Many of you know that the events, both worldwide and more relevantly in my own personal life, of 2007 pretty much knocked me for a loop (to put it mildy). When I saw that it was time for BAT again I was excited.  I though to myself, “self, you can always get good n riled on this topic!“

Wrong. My message again today and for the duration of this year’s BAT is simply love .  Love that the government has no right to legislate.  Period.

Here in California, in the wake of Prop 8, many of us are still reeling. My partner, the GirlyBoi, and I almost made it in under the wire but our license was pulled at the last minute as the county clerks buckled to the pressure of a proposition of hate, that had not (at the time) even been ratified into California Law yet.

Now it seems that those who managed to marry in the tiny window of legality shall stay married (good for them) while the rest of us are shit out of luck.

I would have NEVER in a million years thought that this would happen in California, the “fruits & nuts” state. If hundreds of thousands of gay couples aren’t argument enough for the separation of church and state, I don’t know what is.

Here are a few of my favorite protest signs for the cause:

So again I say simply:

Don’t be frightened. It’s only love.

Peace, out!

Artist: Hedwig and the Angry Inch the Musical
Title: The Origin of Love

When the earth was still flat
And the clouds made of fire
And mountains stretched up to the sky
Sometimes higher
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs
They had two sets of arms
They had two sets of legs
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked while they read
And they never knew nothing of love
It was before…
The origin of love
The origin of love

And there were three sexes then
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back
Called the children of the sun
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth
They looked like
Two girls rolled up in one
And the children of the moon
Was like a fork shoved on a spoon
They were part sun, part earth
Part daughter, part son

The origin of love

Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said,
“I’m gonna kill them all
With my hammer,
Like I killed the giants.”
And Zeus said, “No,
You better let me
Use my lightening, like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off the whales
And dinosaurs into lizards.”
Then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh,
Said, “I’ll split them right down the middle.
Gonna cut them right up in half.”
And then storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire

And then fire shot down
From the sky in bolts
Like shining blades
Of a knife.
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun
And the moon
And the earth.
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole,
Pulled it round to our belly
To remind us of the price we pay.
And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don’t behave
They’ll cut us down again
And we’ll be hopping round on one foot
And looking through one eye.

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That’s the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It’s the story of
The origin of love.
That’s the origin of love.

Wow. See how long religion has been messing things up? This post is for Blog Against Theocracy 2009.

Peace, out!

So welcome new home of Thursday Thirteen. Got a list? 13 ideas? 13 photos or links or crazy thoughts? Join us for a bit of fun and as we get to know each other a little! Don’t forget to leave your link at the site and leave a comment here. Thorne loves TT-ers!

13 Gay Ally Graphics Yes, that’s you.  If you know and love someone who is gay, if you believe that we gays are people just like you, deserving of the same rights, you are an “Ally”.  Grab a graphic.

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That’s my TT.

Well… okay.  One more because I simply can’t resist:

Thanks for stopping by!   I’m off to visit now!