Memories of Minerva

…there was a blog on a site called Minerva’s Hearth. Well, it wasn’t actually a blog because this was back in 1999 when I’d never heard the word blog. I’m not even 100% sure the word blog existed yet in 1999. Even if the cool kids knew the term, I sure-as-shit didn’t.

I called it an online journal instead. When I called it anything. For the most part I just wrote entries and posted them, on and off, between January 1st, 1999 and January 14, 2001. These entries chronicled a lot of the same boring day-by-day readers of Area 151 and D Cup should easily recognize—but there were also some tumultuous events, and some interesting portents of the shape my life has now taken.

And here’s the kicker: I recently discovered all these entries archived on an Imation SuperDisk.

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So, in honor of a key stretch of my life, in honor of the girl who used to write under a pseudonym, I’m going to be presenting “Memories of Minerva.” I would have loved to reclaim my old URL, but it is no longer available for registry. (For all I know I still own the damn sitename, but I can’t find any proof to that effect.)

If I get this right, this April 2007 post will stay at the top of the page, explaining to folks what in sam-hill is going on, while the remaining posts—-which I will update in dribs and drabs, much like how they were originally written—will be back-dated and appear in proper order as such.

I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to re-print the old posts with or without commentary. Most likely: some with, some without. Once I figure out how to mark the current-me’s comments in some way that is distinct from the former-me. Anyone know the HTML code for superscript footnoting numbers?

Today’s stats…¹

Reading: In the Meantime by Iyanla Vanzant and Chapter 2 of Artist’s Way: the next week of exercises starts tomorrow, so I might as well get a jump on it.
Stitching project: Linda Driskell’s “Whitework Sampler.” I have all these paranoid fears of mucking the thing up with dirt; the rate at which I’m washing my hands is beginning to look like textbook OCD.
Writing? Another meditation for the Simple Abundance mailing list. Go to onelist.com for details.²
Media consumption: Went to see Hurlyburly with a couple friends. Not great. I can see how it would have worked better on the stage, and I don’t think all the cast quite rose to the occasion. But Kevin Spacey was fabulous as always. Of course, he’s a stage actor, too.
Random life detail: I think the above is the first mention of other people in my life.³ Yes, I do have friends. I’ve simply been doing some massive cocooning since right after Christmas. Besides, this is mostly an interior landscape I’m charting, so that means a lot of individual navel-gazing stuff, just by definition.

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So today was the second week I wrote the Simple Abundance essay for this e-mail list I’m in.⁴ Seems as good a time as any to think about the book en toto.

You see, this journey I’m chronicling now has been brewing for some months. Thinking about shamanism in the spring. Doing yoga on and off. Starting to read Simple Abundance during the summer. Because I think at least part of what’s wrong in my life is the way I can brood, can really dwell on the bad stuff. And what I knew about this book was that it encouraged you to refocus yourself and take active notice of the good things in life. I figured I needed some of that in life.

But the main part of this book’s guidance are the ruminations on Authenticity. Finding ways to notice what unique things make you happy and content and comfortable. Finding ways to work those things into your life, rather than constantly ruling your life by someone else’s rules or all those internalized “shoulds” that spin me out with such regularity. Creating a balance between your responsibilities to the outside world and your responsibility to your own happiness.

Ultimately, I think it’s that aspect of the book that kept me reading. But the book is charted as a year’s journey with daily entries to read. Since I was in this list, I needed to be in sync with them (thus, with the actual date on the calendar). Since I was in sync with them, I felt sort of out-of-sync with the process; after all, I’d started at the halfway point, which can be a touch disorienting.

So, with the calendar’s turn back to January, I’m glad to start again at the beginning. And I think it’s good for me to write weekly meditations. Really forces me to examine how these issues play out in my life.

For example, today’s entry was about beginning to listen to that small voice inside you, that voice underneath all the layers of ought and should that instead points the way to what my truest wants and comforts are. And I could see, looking back, moments where I had heard that voice and listened to it. The year I first started dying my hair red.⁵ My decision, 18 months ago, to avoid wearing basic black at dressy occasions (that’s me over there in the rich hunter green or navy blue).⁶ Realizing that there were books I was keeping simply because I told myself an English major ought to have them, and also realizing that I could indeed give those books to charity.

I’m sorta kinda pleased with myself about this. I want to seize on it as a good sign. Maybe, when all is said and done, I am doing what I need to do to get my life back.⁷

I can’t entirely shake the doubt, though. In today’s essay, I tried to write all these encouraging things about being patient. “We can always remind ourselves,” I wrote, “that we are Right On Schedule, the unique schedule that is most fitting, most authentic, for each of us.” And yet I still feel my own flashes of impatience and despair. Wondering how much longer it’s going to take. Worrying I’ll never quite get it right. Worrying that my own doubts seep through my attempts at encouragement and will somehow bring negative things to the women on this list.

I borrow trouble sometimes. And I just try to let that paranoid voice foam on and keep plodding forward.⁸

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1: Original date: 5 January 1999. Re-posting date: 19 April 2007.

2: Onelist got absorbed by Yahoo groups, if I recall. I don’t remember if I’d quit the Simple Abundance group before or after that happened.

3: Oooh, how pretentiously meta of me!

4: When the list started, the organizer actually wrote a little daily meditation about the daily essy printed in the book. You can probably imagine how this took her into burn-out territory pretty damn quickly, so after that, a bunch of us teamed together—each taking a different day of the week and writing about those essays. This transition had happened not very long before I built the Hearth; I think I ended up with Tuesdays? (Yup, just generated a 1999 calendar online, and Jan. 5th, 1999 was a Tuesday. Why is so much of my brain-space wasted on pointless details like that?)

5: Yeah, there’s some inherent ridiculousness in talking about choosing a fake hair color as some kind of authenticity-driven choice. Just enjoy the irony: I know Alanis would.

6: Still happily maintaining that vow. Indeed, just earlier this week (2007 time), when I was asked to wear all black and “dressy” for an event, I had cause to observe that those two concepts were antithetical in my wardrobe. I ended up wearing all black and suit-y, which, with a good necklace and pair of earrings, worked out just fine.

7: In retrospect, I am astounded by this wording of getting my life “back”—in all shameful gut-wrenching honesty, I’m not sure my life had ever been enough mine prior to ‘99 to be able to talk about reclaiming it. More like a process of building it?

8: Although I’m a helluvalot better at controlling/ignoring this voice, I have come to accept that I may struggle with the pessimism-paranoia thing for the rest of my time on this earth….

Today’s stats¹:
Reading: Too many internet newsgroups; I must cut back and drastically. Also, some old collections of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons; having a nostalgic go-through before I pack them up for Books through Bars.²
Stitching project: Okay, I finished all the beading on the PFH (project from hell), which means I let it rest till after I get some advice. The crucial question: does it look sufficiently finished as is (in which case, that’s all she wrote), or does it still look like it needs something else (in which case, I add, but only the BARE MINIMUM). Till then, I get to pick something new. maniacal laughter
Writing? Artist’s Way stuff. Mostly, I’m working on this massive “universal to-do list.” Everything that’s on my mind so I can just look at it all, gibber for a bit from overwhelm, and then figure out how to prioritize and plan for all these beasties.
Media consumption: Too much TV. Had a gloomy soap-opera-watching couple of hours.³ I hate it when I do that.
Random life detail: Today was the third therapy session in a row that went calmly and felt kind of good, rather than making me more conscious of how bad I’m feeling. I am SO waiting for the other shoe to drop.

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Since one of my biggest current problems has to do with writer’s block, I’ve started working through Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. It’s a system that has been recommended to me from many corners as a way to pinpoint (and eventually eliminate) the specific anxieties and neuroses that keep people creatively blocked.⁴

Well, I feel like I’m way behind on the exercises for week one, and I will have to do some major woodshedding tonight to overcome that. But I’ve noticed a really interesting thing.

One of the first exercises you do is write out some of the negative messages you keep telling yourself, figure out exactly what that self-scolding consists of. Then, you refute those scoldings, come up with some sort of defense against it. Basically, you write an affirmation, a piece of positive self-talk to counteract the negative message.

Affirmations. Even saying the word gives me the shudders. I feel all embarrassed and apologetic, like I’ve turned into some meditating, candle-burning New Age cliché. Wait. I am a meditating, candle-burning New Age cliché.

Anyhow, one of the cornerstones of this system is the “morning pages”: first thing out of bed, you write three pages of journalling, just spew out everything that’s clogging up your brain. Maybe you’ll brainstorm a solution in those pages; at the very least, it’ll clear your mind. Well, that’s the theory, anyhow. We’ll see if it works.

Cameron suggests that you use a slice of these morning pages to write out some of these affirmations a few times. Try a positive self-image on for size, get used to saying kind things about your creativity rather than critical ones. Being the systematic git that I am, I’ve been doing those somewhere about the midpoint of the third and final page. But I’ve noticed myself straining towards that point. Somewhere on page two, I’m already looking forward thinking “is it time to write the affirmations yet?” Eager for them, as much as it shames me to say.

I don’t entirely believe these positive statements about myself. I have this ice-cold fear in me that they’re all lies. But I so powerfully crave to hear them, I want so much for them to be true. The power of this wanting almost stops my breath, it’s that strong.

And yet the weirdest thing about it might very well be how utterly embarrassed I am to admit this. This yearning to hear nice things about me and to have them be true–I am ashamed of it, ashamed to be admitting it in public.⁵ Very very odd.

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1: Original posting date: 4 January 1999. Re-posting date: 18 April 2007.

2: Didn’t happen. There are many other books I’ve offloaded in the years since this was written, but not my Calvin and Hobbes.

3: I’d almost forgotten I used to watch soap operas. Not that I’ve kicked the TV habit by any means. (The more things change, the more they stay the same…)

4: I still try to do morning pages. Not so much in the last couple weeks, but I’ll get back to ‘em.

5: I’m relieved to realize that I have a clearer understanding of this internal push-pull than I used to, and I’ve lessened it a little bit, too. Alas, it would take a Dostoyevsky-legth novel to explain what’s lessened, what hasn’t, and how the internal (il)logic works, and I don’t have that kind of energy.

Today’s stats…¹

Reading: Not much, actually. A couple magazines, but that’s about it.
Stitching project: Finished the backstitching on the endless carousel horses PFH (Project From Hades). Now I get to put beading on; will it never END?!
Writing? Mostly formatting all my reading journals² for the Hearth. And I’m halfway through making a template for the spiritquest journal; if you’re reading this that means I finally finished the job. Non-website writing for the day is limited to some of the Chapter 1 exercises for Artist’s Way.
Media consumption: Rented L. A. Confidential. I think I’d enjoy Kevin Spacey in anything. Next up: The Full Monty; haven’t decided if I’ll stay up late or watch it tomorrow morning.
Random life detail: Winter hits Philly and how. It’s the kind of weekend where I’d like to sit around in a flannel bathrobe drinking herbal tea and never leaving my cozy nest. Too bad I have to walk the dog thrice daily.

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The music section in this week’s EW³ is all about various TV and movie soundtracks; in their blurb about not liking the one for Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, the reviewer had this to say: “You can bet real witches don’t listen to the bubbly ephemera found here. Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync, Aqua, Five–all this wholesome cheer would be strictly taboo in even the most good-natured teen coven.”

Ahem. I will have you know that I own CDs by three of the five artists listed above (they are, admittedly, guilty pleasures, so I will refrain from listing which three).⁴

But am I a real witch? Ay, there’s the rub.

I first started thinking of myself as Wiccan back in 1992, insofar as I felt an innate rightness to that spirituality. First sort of spiritual worldview where there really felt like room for me. But it was a spirituality that I read about, claimed in my heart of hearts, but never actually practiced, in the sense of rituals or initiations. I felt so connected to the spirituality and so entirely DISconnected from the actual mechanics of being a witch.

I first started the path of self-initiation in October 1993. And again in October 1995, and AGAIN in October 1997. (Clearly, there’s something about October. I’ll ponder that another day.) I’d just begin to get my footing and then I’d get derailed by some new life crisis or trauma. I have felt such loss from this, such shame at my lack of discipline. The longer I go on, the more I fear I am a dilettante or a pretender. Very much a bad witch, of a sort. More importantly than that, I remember moments of feeling a spiritual center, and I want that feeling back. That centeredness. And I want it back to stay, this time.

This past spring (at least I got off that October kick) I was taking stock of the whole witchcraft thing and I realized part of the problem had to do with all the paraphernalia. I mean, really, I live in the middle of a city: where am I supposed to find a cauldron to burn things in since fireplaces and outdoor bonfires simply aren’t feasible?! Just at the right moment, I stumbled across a book about Celtic shamanism, a book which stresses minimal-prop kind of magick. It clicked, me and this approach to witchcraft. One of those absolutely instinctual “this is RIGHT!” kind of moments. Which, alas, did not keep me from getting derailed once again. (Some things never change. Well, I hope they do, but they haven’t changed yet.)

But I’m going to try again. At least this time, I’m bouncing back faster. At least this time, I feel more confident that this path to self-initiation is the right one for me.

So, there’s one of my guides: Francesca De Grandis and her book Be a Goddess!⁵ (Yes, the title embarrasses me a little. I’m over it.) And whatever else I look at along my eclectic Witchy trail. Blessed be.

But I’m not giving away the Backstreet Boys. Or the Spice Girls. So there!

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1. In the old layout, these daily reports appeared in a different text box than the main post and post title. I don’t really like inserting them between each title and its actual narrative, but I really don’t like putting them after the narrative piece. Oh well. (And yes, this is the first post where current-me—14 April 2007—stands in dialogue with former-me.)

2. Yeah, I found these too. I haven’t decided whether or how to interweave those pieces into the “diarizing” that took place at Minerva’s Hearth

3. Yup, subscribing and addicted all the way back then. There are real reasons I was chosen for the infamous EW Deprivation Study.

4. I halfway outed myself by then of the post, but anyone reading Victrola should know I am well past the age where I feel any real guilt about my guilty pleasures. So, for the record: in 1999, I owned CDs by the Spice Girls, backstreet Boys, and Aqua. Since then I have added one N’Sync CD to the collection. I still don’t know who Five are.

5. I still love this book. I’ve read it several times, even if I haven’t worked through all the exercises. So why the hell did I choose a different author for this year’s re-engagement in paganism? Maybe current-me oughta re-think that notion.

 

Today’s stats…

Reading: Sorting through some weeks’ accumulated magazines, mostly: seeing what’s worth reading before I toss them into the recycling bin.

Stitching project: The endless carousel horses project. Been consistently longer and slower than I could ever imagine.

Writing? It’s a holiday, I don’t have to worry about the dissertation.

 

Media consumption: End of the “Bitter Suite” episode of Xena. I’d intended to watch the whole thing, but I forgot about it. Oops.

Random life detail: Tried a new recipe today. Hoppin’ John with black-eyed peas; a friend from Arkansas says you’re supposed to eat them for luck on New Year’s day, and since she’s no longer in Philly to make them for the gang, I’m on my own. Turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

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So it’s the start of a new year. NOT the last year of the century/millennium, mind you: despite what all the idiot newscasters are saying on TV, those markers don’t turn until 1 Jan. 2001 which means we’ve got two full years to go. But I digress.

Another year. Trying not to make the same old resolutions I always do. I’ve got a few frivolous ones: play more with the dog, listen to all my CDs, keep up with the reading journal I started three weeks ago. In a less frivolous vein, there’s a resolution or aspiration that’s been brewing for a little while now.

I want my life back. There’s things I’ve lost touch with along the way—things like creativity, career confidence, a real centered sense of spirituality—and I want to rediscover them. I want to find out what I need in order to really start getting on with things, to stop carrying the burdens of the past. I want to start really moving forward with life. Just earlier today I was reminded of a line in a Madonna song: “Nothing takes away the past like the future.” Sounds good to me.

I feel myself at the start an inner journey to figure all these things out. I’ve started using the term “SpiritQuest” in my mind to describe it, because I imagine the path ahead of me will be similar to what the Shamans would call a “visionquest.” I also imagine that I will be questing in a way that is sufficiently quirky and eclectic that I would feel uncomfortable misusing the shamanistic term. Hence, my own adaptation.

So, it’s the start of a new year, a good time to make a beginning of it. Hand me my ruby slippers (perhaps I should say “golden slippers,” in honor of the Mummer’s Parade) and me ‘n Cinder (that’s my little dog, too) will move along. Over the next few days, I might ruminate a little bit about the different facets of the journey, or perhaps the sources of guidance I anticipate using. At the very least, I know that “ruby slippers” is not the last crazy (tacky?) pop-culture allusion I will be making. My brain works sideways sometimes.