Undiagnosed

There has been something the matter with me for years now.

"It's because you're tall," my mother would explain every time I would nearly faint upon rising. "It just takes the blood longer to get to your head."

Now I know that this phenomena is called "syncope," and that it has nothing to do with my being tall.

I have endured various unexplained symptoms since I was very young, at least in junior high, such as constant fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath, syncope and feeling faint upon standing, light hand tremors and muscle spasms, restless leg syndrome. Physical therapists have described me as "hyperflexible," which I took as a compliment--not everyone could serpentine their arms behind their back or touch palms to the floor with little effort. My skin is velvet-like and marble, according to others. But the pain of degenerative disc disease, strange twinges of discomfort throughout my body, and a tendency toward migraines kills the glow of any compliment about my physicality. I bruise easily, and those bruises sometimes do not heal for months. Sometimes, without warning, I feel incredibly delicate, like I will shatter from tapping my finger on a table.

And people have told me for years that this is all normal.

Recently I tested positive for orthostatic hypotension, which means that when I stand my blood pressure drops and I become very dizzy, lightheaded, and faint, with my vision usually becoming grey and fuzzy. Kind of like static on an old television. I first noticed that my dizziness was becoming worse (than the usual stand-up-and-spin scenario I've lived through for two decades) when I began a job two months ago that requires me to stand for nine hours a day. On April 15th, 2017, the day before my birthday, a friend had to pick me up from work early and drive me home because I was feeling so lightheaded. Two weeks later I drove myself to immediate care due to my symptoms becoming worse. And the week after that, my doctor's nurse, unable to get me in to the office, told me to go to the ER when I was so dizzy that I could barely stand and was having chest pains.

"Orthostatic hypotension," said the nurse. The doctor at Immediate Care mentioned POTS, or Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, which is a type of dysautonomia. The ER couldn't find anything common wrong with me and recommended a specialist. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome keeps popping up in my dig through symptom explanations.

I have known for years that something is not right about me. My twin sister and I were born two months premature, and while she suffered from weak kidneys, I had bradycardia. Liquid caffeine supposedly fixed my heart, but my sister has suffered from kidney problems her entire life and is now in the final stages of failure, preparing to go on dialysis and transplant lists at age 29. I didn't stop to think that perhaps my medical complications never simply vanished when I was finally brought home from the hospital a month after I was born.

I have tried to keep my complaints to a minimum, citing the excuse that I was too tall, that I just needed more sleep than other people, that I was a wimp and that was why I nearly fainted running a mile for a gym final my sophomore year. Normalizing my symptoms has become second-nature, so when a friend on Facebook mentioned that my experiences sounded a lot like POTS, which she has, my first reaction was, "No way." I couldn't have a chronic illness, I was far too privileged. I was supposed to be healthy and had no reason to complain, perhaps I should just exercise more...despite the fact that cardio causes me to become dangerously faint and lifting weights is painful.

Of course, I have been telling my PCP about my recurring symptoms for over two years now, about the length of time in which I have been her patient. "Stress," she would chirp, or glibly explain that I was having anxiety. I have been medicated for depression and anxiety since I was fifteen, and was diagnosed with ADD two years ago, so most doctors see that in my chart and make it their primary explanation for whatever physical symptoms I might be experiencing. "Somatic." All in my head. A side effect of medication. Nevermind that I have been enduring most of these symptoms for longer than I have been medicated, or that my depression only hit after I had been lightheaded and weak for several years. Co-morbidity is rarely something that a medical doctor looks for, in my personal experience. And heaven forbid that a young, conventionally attractive, healthy-looking woman have actual health problems! It is obvious that she is just histrionic, turning her psychological turmoil into physical complaint as a cry for attention. Despite my misgivings, I convinced myself, "This is my doctor. I trust her to advocate for my best health and care. Surely that trust is not misplaced."

I couldn't be more wrong.

Perusing articles from The Mighty on my phone during work breaks, I have skimmed through horror stories of young, supposedly healthy women being taken as fools by their doctors, being told that their complaints are psychosomatic, normalizing archaic notions about the correlations between femininity and pain, ignoring warning signs of legitimate illness because of their inherent gender bias. Not my doctor, I thought. As a woman, she must have experienced the same prejudice in her own dealings with medical professionals. I'm sure she will listen to me."

Determined to find answers, I had fought for three weeks to get an appointment with my increasingly difficult-to-contact doctor. Speaking with her nurse on several occasions, I knew that the office took my worries seriously, assuming that my doctor would back me, or at least be open to testing me, when I asked her if I might have POTS.

I didn't expect her to laugh at me.

"Is...is that funny?" I managed to spit out, while my cool-as-a-cucumber doctor chuckled dismissively.

"POTS is incredibly rare," she said, tone dripping with condescension.

"Then why do I know several people who have it? Why do studies show that at least three million Americans suffer from it?" I shot back, knowing now that the only person who was going to advocate for me was myself. She shut up. I demanded a referral and a release of information to the doctor of my choosing. The air changed when I took charge, and I am damned sure that the doctor knew right then that she would never see me again.

I am still standing for nine hours a day. I just tell myself to power through the dizzy spells and take at least two fifteen minute breaks in between opening, lunch, and closing so I can sit and gather myself. It usually doesn't work. Terrified of losing my job, I try not to call in unless I am going to the doctor, even if I am legitimately ill. I have even begun wondering what might have caused this mystery illness, and my sister's kidney failure, coming close to unnerving ideas that our illnesses may be related to my father's exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. I can't say for sure. But I am coming close to finally finding an answer.

It is also terrifying, knowing that my life may change drastically if I find that my condition really is disabling. I do much more than I physically should, pushing myself past the point of physical safety to try and keep up with everyone around me. Knowing that I am allowed to rest is somehow contrary to everything I have internalized about women in my family, who are extreme overachievers and refuse to concede defeat over being a little sick or tired. Would I rather continue to be considered "lazy" and normal, or would I be somewhat vindicated in the understanding that there is something legitimately wrong with my body that causes me to be constantly devoid of energy?

But no matter what the truth reveals itself to be, I beg you, all of you, any of you, just listen. To the person you know who thinks there is something wrong with their health. To the young woman who is being ignored by her doctors. To your own body when it does something you are not familiar with. As I type this I am groggy, my hands have been shaking for two hours, the muscles in my limbs keep spasming, and my head is swimming. I'm not going to quietly downplay what is going on with me or make concessions to people who think they know better than myself about my body.

A couple of weeks ago I let go of my significant other of half a year because he told me that he believed I was inventing my symptoms in a manipulative effort to get attention. I was devastated to learn that, because I didn't look sick, he automatically thought that I was faking it. And that this person I kept hoping would have my best interest at heart would continuously ignore me or impose his own, better explanations for what had going on with me physically for years before I ever met him. "You should just eat breakfast." Um, I do. Every day. I doubt missing breakfast once or twice would cause such symptoms of such severity that I would have to attend the ER (he never checked on me when I went to the hospital, only texting me to berate me about leaving work early).

Please, once again I am asking you to listen. Listen to the people in your life who are concerned for their physical and mental health. That pain in her chest that won't go away. His worries that he can't just "man up" and shake off his depression. Your own fear that there is something wrong. Advocate for yourself and help others who might otherwise be ignored to stand up for themselves as well. There are enough people telling us that our concerns don't matter without us sabotaging ourselves as well.

You have the right to be your own champion.

Undiagnosed

The scattering tremors, keeping my hands from complacence,

are simpler than the stutters in my chest, ineffective

at bringing blood to my crown.  A crickercrack haze erupting

before my eyes the way our old console would static itself awake

at a well-aimed kick from my twin, hoping for a replacement

- nobody believed us about the malfunction then, either.

Now her kidneys are shutting down and my heart is

frantic to make her grievance known. Posture has always been

my strong suit, and stoicism, and silence, so when I can barely stand

for fear of collapse—

The fog rolls in and the words are void in my skull.

I feel chlorine has washed my eyes in their cases, breath

doesn’t delve deep enough to sustain itself. And yet you said

I wanted attention. Yes, I could find no other way to garner heed

than to founder and crack and bend, brain aswirl, into a haze of pain.

Unhealed bruises from a year ago, the stretch of my blades and bones

is enough to convince me that my anomalous quirk, present from youth,

comes not from character deficit, nor desire for praise and paeans

to my frailty, no matter the slanders of the able and the cold.         

Since the discard you have not inquired of my shaking hands

and I am pure for the lack of you. Soon I will find a definition,

an ease of mind in place of an easy kind of submission, and you,

you, you will heel-rock back like the doctor who laughed

when I brandish the truth you would never expect—

You bastard, you were wrong about me.

Breaking Babbage: Excerpt 2

Okay, friends. It's November, and that means...NaNoWriMo! Or to those not in the know, National Novel Writing Month!

I had been doing a fuck ton of research for a story and decided to go ahead and use NaNoWriMo as an excuse/damn good reason to actually get shit written. Though I had already written a couple of pages before the month began, I just kept what I had written though it is not technically in line with the rules, but eh, fuck the rules, right? At least I'm writing.

So, in case you didn't read my previous bit of story from a few posts ago, here's the basic plot:

Genre: Historical fiction/ alternate history/ steampunk
Setting: Victorian London, 1895
Protagonist: Resh Nittercott, East End drug dealer.
Plot: Resh is going about her daily routine of drug dealing and other forms of illegal employment. She stops in at a pub to sober up and a dirty cop informs her which areas of town to avoid if she doesn't want to be arrested. She leaves to start work.

And here is a fun new sample of disgusting literature:

*****

She slumped her way through Whitechapel, hitching a ride on the back of a Black Maria somewhere around Wilton’s. Resh made a mental note to return to the music hall that evening to sell to a few boozy marks, deciding start the business day by making a few rounds at Temple Gardens. The chrysanthemums would be in full bloom, drawing out the usual crowds, and if Garrow was right, there would be a good number of obsequious aristos and lawyers with heavy purses and a taste for something a little less seasonal than flowers.

The cab clopped along Royal Mint and soon Tower Hill loomed like a grey brick above the chimney tops. The crowds were beginning to throng about and the cab horses slowed their pace accordingly. Hopping lightly from the cab, stumbling a bit from the momentum of jumping from a moving vehicle, Resh cringed as she landed arch-deep in horseshit.

“Godsfuck!” she swore, hopping to the sidewalk and scraping her boot against the concrete as a couple of passing women shot her dirty looks. The closest to the street, adorned in an obnoxious hat complete with mounted pheasant, muttered something about “Only filth excretes filth!”

“Yeah, and you’re as stuffy as your bird. Here’s some filth for you!” Resh kicked a loose chunk of dung from her boot and cackled as it smacked the woman right in the stomacher. Shrieking, standing paralyzed, the pheasant-hatted woman waved her arms like an agitated turkey, smacking her walking companion in the face as the latter attempted to placate her with a handkerchief. Resh punted a few more pieces of shit at the cawing women, quite enjoying her revenge.

She didn’t notice the policeman until he was on her.

“Oi, let me go, copper!” Resh tried to wriggle out of the arm lock, craning her neck to look behind and find out which officer she was dealing with today. The burly man, mustachioed and florid, held her tight.

“Was wondering when we’d find time to canoodle this week, Nithercott. Wednesday, sooner than expected. Looks like today’s menu includes aggravated assault and public blasphemy charges. You’re off to a fine start!” The man didn’t look surprised. Resh squirmed harder, trying to avoid the inevitable handcuffing.

“Flaxton! So sorry, didn’t see you there. Just giving these ladies a gift from my heart.” Flaxton snapped open a pair of iron cuffs and attempted to hold his charge still.

“I am sure it was something they could have lived without, you little urchin.”

“Well, I’m not averse to sharing,” she muttered, raising a foot behind her to smear shit on the officer’s uniform leg. The man swore loudly, then even louder when Resh stomped his instep with her filth-sodden boot. She broke away from Flaxton, who was now releasing a stream of profanities, and shoved the indignant women out of her way as she pounded along the sidewalk, weaving in and out of foot traffic. Judging by the thickness of the morning street throng, Resh estimated that she could lose the policeman with only a few corner turns.

“Get…back here…pant…you wench!” Flaxton sounded a good way off, but Resh didn’t dare turn to look for him. She bowled over a newspaper boy and squeezed past some portly businessmen before slipping down an alley.

“I ain’t a wench, what has Quickly been telling folks…” she wheezed, scampering along the damp cobbles. She skated along on fumes for a few more blocks past Savage Gardens before ducking behind an overgrown fence that framed the parish of St. Olave.

Her buggered lungs strained to suck in gulps of fetid air, and to aid in this endeavor, Resh dug around in her coat pocket for a fag. She produced a limp cigarette, once adequately rolled, and shoved it between her teeth, fingers trembling as she struck a match.

Drag, heave, wheeze.

“Thank Virginia for tobacco,” Resh exhaled, letting the back of her head rest against the rust-and-vine iron bars. The day was off to a quiet start, all things considered. She hadn’t been shivved or shot, nobody had tried mugging or raping her, and her stash was intact. Wait. She rummaged around in her kit, relieved to find that the vials remained uncracked. The aether she peddled was bloody good quality, worth at least a pound each, and if she lost any product her handler would strangle her. With her own garter, at that.

But honest work was honest work if you could find it. And to the waifs and sluts of the East End, honest work was anything that paid and didn’t require more than one murder a week. In return, the Morpheus Cartel made sure it kept its agents honest as well by murdering the ones who grew too conspicuous.

Resh was getting a little dishonest of late.

She hadn’t knifed anyone in the past eight days, which was a record, considering how pestiferous the constabulary was acting of late, but damn if she wasn’t drawing attention to herself with her antics. Last week’s wed-and-run in Belgravia nearly cost her an arm when the livid bride tried tearing off Resh’s tuxedo to expose her womanly charms to the congregation. The con-woman had to abandon the service before signing the marriage license and missed out on obtaining a decent dowry to tide her over for the next month.

She might as well consign herself to bachelorhood at this rate.

A rustling in the ivy caused Resh to start, and she ashed a thimbleful of cigarette soot on her mudspattered greatcoat while attempting to turn and face whomever was about to accost her. A slink of fur wriggled through the black rungs of the fence, and Hieronymous Bosch nuzzled against Resh’s elbow before biting her calloused fingers with needle teeth. Resh knew she should probably smack the ferret, who was being an ass as usual, but instead lifted him onto her raised knees and bopped him on the nose.

“Bad Bosch. Naughty mink. No cigarettes for you.” Bosch eyed her with beady, cynical orbs. He dooked audibly and pawed at Resh’s knee with his foreleg, swiveling his neck to bite at the tiny pack strapped to his posterior. Resh noticed the slight bulge in the canvas pocket and unbuttoned it to remove a folded slip of paper.

“Huh.” Resh squinted at the scrawled message. She chewed the butt of her fading cigarette. “The Viking has fresh product for us.” Ferg Olsson, the top chemist in the Morpheus hierarchy, was always experimenting with new compounds to produce a better, longer high. A practical man, he never tested his creations himself, instead relying on his superiors to supply him with living control groups. Resh had exhausted her usefulness in this regard, having begun to present a slew of adverse effects from three years of constant testing, and was now securely in a field position. She still got all the free samples she wanted, though.

Shoving the note down her cleavage, Resh latticed her fingers and gave her knuckles a crack, which sent Bosch hissing up her arm. He coiled his lithe body around his human’s neck, hitching a ride as Resh lurched to her feet, ejecting the spent fag from her chapped lips with a spat.

“C’mon, Boschie, let’s hop to it. Olsson’s not a mile off, shouldn’t take too long to make a pick up.”

Quickly’s remedy, combined with the adrenaline rush afforded by her early morning scamper from the coppers, had allowed Resh’s system to reset enough to fight off the night’s grog. She made the distance from Olave’s to the Mark Lane underground station, stopping for a moment at a public toilet to relieve herself. The usual traffic clotted the streets, pedestrians shouldering past one another, goods vendors hauling crates from the docks to the warehouses, shopkeepers sweeping the detritus of the previous night from their doorsteps, a disinfector cart parked before some vermin-ridden residence, and crushes of cab against cab sloughing through street soil. Resh, cowled in silence and wrapped in her greatcoat, melted into the public scene, another denizen of London town with a brisk step and a straightforward gaze.

Descending the stairs into the station, Resh shoved a dock worker into a sailor and used the ensuing commotion to discreetly jump the turnstile, saving herself a few pennies on the fare. As the electric carriage shot toward the Limehouse district, Resh sat squeezed between a sallow solicitor and a small Chinese woman, a seamstress by the look of her pinpricked fingers.

Resh leaned into the seamstress and whispered, “Say, mama-san, you got a line on my fortune?”

The woman pursed her lips and glared at the Englishwoman. “Go fuck yourself and fall in a ditch, that’s your fortune, you rancid limey bitch.” Resh nodded thoughtfully and filed the horoscope away for later reference. She decided it would be best to avoid ditches today.

Disembarking at Stepney, Resh trotted the distance to Nightingale Lane by way of Northey Street. The dock workers paid little attention to her and her ferret, accustomed as they were to the presence of wharfside doxies and strange animal imports. A good number of Nightingale denizens recognized Resh, but none addressed her or gave her a second glance as she shouldered past them.

Ferg Olsson made his laboratory in the fourth floor of a brown brick warehouse used for tobacco storage. Resh skipped the rickety wooden stairs two at a time, stopping outside of a heavy steel door studded with bolts. The edges were sealed so that not a crack could be discerned, and Resh was sure that the warehouse employees were grateful for the fact. Everyone knew what kind of business the Viking conducted and nobody had time for toxic inhalants.

Olsson had rigged a primitive doorbell on the wall next to the entry, and Resh pressed the black button with a callused finger. She heard it buzz on the other side, waited, tapped her toes against the baseboard, but her supplier didn’t appear, didn’t draw back the steel slat on the window that allowed him to spy upon whomever was bothering him. Resh buzzed about fifteen more times in quick succession, and finally grew impatient enough to dig her tools out of the kit harnessed at her waist. She knelt to the lock and as she pressed a pin to the frame, the door gave way.

The Viking never left the door unlocked.

Resh staggered to her feet, and without any trepidation or sense of self-preservation, pushed the door ajar. Bosch, coiled around her neck, hissed as they were hit with the smell of sulphur and formaldehyde, and, lurking more insidiously in their olfactory sinuses, a distinct iron tang.

Resh stood stock still, taking in the scene. Bosch scurried down his human’s shoulder and burrowed into one of the many pockets lining her greatcoat.

The thorough speckling of blood in all directions wasn’t even the worst part of the scene. That prize went to the chunks of flesh settled upon every surface, pink fillets of Ferg veined with gleaming ribbons of fat and sinew, blown apart at the seams. Broken glass and the contents of shattered bottles peppered the room. Wooden planks, those not covered with treated tarpaulin that could withstand acidity, still hissed and steamed from contact with splashes of corrosive liquid that was slowly eating away at their fibers. Some chunks of the Viking were coated with acid, and the stench of quickly corrupting flesh bit into Bosch’s sensitive ferret nose. Resh didn’t mind much, as the smell reminded her of her halcyon days working the streets as a whore in Spitalfields. The odd corpse in the gutter wasn’t uncommon on a busy night. Ah, nostalgia.

“Boschie, come!” Resh snapped her attention back into the present. Kicking the door shut behind her, she scanned the room for booby traps, then realized that it was a little late to do so and if there had been any traps her internal bits would be mingling with Ferg’s by now in a kind of guts trifle. So much for foresight.

Bosch poked his snout from out of his human’s coat. He dooked in trepidation. The last time they had encountered loose chemicals, the fur had been singed from his tail and Resh received a second degree burn to her skinny ass. But alas, he was under contract and had to do what his boss said.

Better pay me in fucking platinum food pellets, he grumbled, sneaking back out into the open. Resh tapped him on the head.

“Look around, see if we can salvage anything. The Duke won’t like it if we just leave this shit for the dock workers to pick through.” She and Bosch tip-toed gingerly around charred pieces of Ferg and puddles of liquid. Bosch screamed when he found Ferg’s head, nestled soundly in the wash basin. The Viking’s face was frozen in a rictus that registered either shock or constipation. Resh took a vial of cocaine from her waist kit and sprinkled it over the man’s ginger locks.

“Requiescat in pace, you weird fucker.” They resumed their search, collecting various and sundry uncracked jars and bottles of chemicals in a burlap bag they found hanging on a hook among some lab coats. Resh started on the bookshelf, stocked with chemistry books and a collection of Holywell rags, hoping that maybe the man had slipped some bank notes in the pages.

She found the plans hidden in between the pages of an illustrated copy of Lady Bumtickler’s Revels.

Like most chemists, Ferg Olsson liked his pornography classy. The page that Resh opened to was adorned with a detailed woodcut of a voluptuous woman practically doing yoga with a young man on a divan. Resh was so absorbed in figuring out the logistics behind the position of the two characters (and whether she could replicate it by herself) that she didn’t notice the folded paper slip from the pages and onto the sawdust floor. Bosch darted forward to catch it with his teeth before it made its way into an adjacent puddle of formaldehyde. He clawed his way up Resh and smashed the paper into her face.

“What the hell, pesky rodent?” she grumbled as she unfolded the paper. She had no idea what she was looking at. It looked as if Ferg had gotten into a box of discarded algebra and dumped it on the page. There was a pretty symbol that was scribbled into every equation, something like a mash up of Lucifer’s cross and a key, which Resh imagined would make a very nice tattoo to complement the one that the cartel had scrawled on her inner wrist with a rusty needle.

Bosch scanned the paper from her shoulder, squeaking when he spotted the cross glyph. He springboarded onto the bookshelf, running along the edge while skipping over clots of blood, and onto a table littered with smashed bottles and sodden sheets of formulae. Resh followed him to where he nuzzled a glass vial, corked, sealed, and filled with a bioluminescent blue liquid, in a rack alongside six other identical tubes. She carefully picked up the vial and turned it over in her hand, recognizing the odd cross inked onto the label.

“Well, looks like something survived,” she murmured, peeling the wax from the rim and allowing the liquid to breathe. She snapped off a strand of her greenish hair and dipped it cautiously into the vial. It didn’t sizzle or create any odd reaction. Probably past the settling phase. Resh pursed her lips and nodded, placing the uncorked tube back in the vial rack. Safe to consume, it seemed.

Brushing the detritus of the table onto the bloody floor, Resh hopped up to sit and rummaged through her kit after shrugging off her coat. She fished a clean handkerchief out of the bag and tipped a spoonful of the aether onto the fabric, causing Bosch to dook in disapproval, but it was her duty to test new batches of aether. Or so she told herself.

“Here’s to Queen Vicky and her bitches, may they be roundly outwitted by the foxes every time,” Resh toasted, raising the embroidered handkerchief high before shoving it in her face. Bosch decided to make himself comfortable on the seat of Olsson’s chair, mercifully spared from the blood spatter by its location behind the desk.

Resh had barely inhaled when it hit her like a hurling stick to the brain.

The initial blow was like the tense buildup to an orgasm, but about ten times more potent. She collapsed, convulsing, on the table, her body hardly registering external stimulus while her brain flooded with endorphins. Her pupils dilated and contracted, the room going in and out of focus, until the jolt hit its zenith. Resh screamed as her brain registered a climax, and instead of the usual melting response, she stayed there.

It was weird and pleasant and horrible and uniquely spiritual, in a Satanic sort of way.

Riding the high, she checked in on her body.

It turns out that when she collapsed, she experienced a forced shove away from her body. Slowly turning her head, she shrieked upon seeing herself, or rather her corporeal form, perched on the table behind her, half inside her astral form and half out. The whites of her upturned eyeballs gleamed like the drool seeping from her slackened lips, and with each breath her mannequin sucked in a strand of hair. She hovered a few inches above the blood-greased oak, a kind of astral projection amid an abattoir.

“Huh. So that’s what I look like full up to the knocker.” She reached out a spectral hand to brush away the hair, but, being non-corporeal, it did a shit amount of good. Spirit-Resh shrugged and turned her attention to the room.

Being a practical woman, Resh didn’t flinch at the sight of blood. She couldn’t understand how any woman could, seeing as its presence was a regular sight for most, but then again the mess in the laboratory was more than any amount of jelly rags could mop up. Trying out her ghostly feet, Resh glided across the floor. It reminded her of her one skating experience, except there was no falling through cracked ice and into the murky Thames and subsequent hypothermia. Just the silent sweep of consciousness across the floor.

She didn’t expect Ferg’s severed head to start talking, but being used to trips, it didn’t surprise her.

“Well, Nittercott, you picked a grand time to stop in.”

Ghosting over to the sink, Spirit-Resh regarded Ferg’s skull with mild interest.

“I was just thinking the day needed some spicing up, my friend. Thank you kindly for indulging me. Say,” she leaned her elbows on the porcelain basin, “what possessed you to blow yourself up? Concocting a new formula?”

Ferg hawked and spat at Spirit Resh. The ball of mucus passed through her right eye.

“If I knew the fecking brew was so damned unstable, maybe I wouldn’t be a splat o’ gristle on the floor, would I? ‘Sides,” he glowered, “wasn’t what you’d call mandated research, technically speaking. Just a bit of tinkering in my dwindling spare time. Morpheus likes to stick to the classics, don’t take any chances on new and interesting compounds.” Ferg relaxed his brow and sighed. “And now I see why.”

Spirit-Resh chucked her tongue against her teeth, still yellowing in their astral form. “Well, seems you succeeded somewhat and failed lotswhat. Tell me,” she tapped Ferg’s melon, “if you were to do it all again, what would you change about your process? You know. For posterity.”

The scowl spreading across Olsson’s lined face made him look like crotchety old Gladstone.

“You’re not thinkin’ of snitching my formula, Nittercott,” he warned. A trundling fly alighted upon his veinbroken nose.

Resh thought a moment, then shrugged. “Nah. Can’t say I’d have any way to replicate, you know I have no competency in chemical endeavors. I just imbibe the stuff.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “But for curiosity’s sake.”

Ferg thoughtfully chewed his cold lower lip. “S’ppose the first batch was a fluke. Nothing blew up in me face an’ I got a good handful of vials corked an’ sealed. Problem was with the second round. Tried to add me signature dash of lavender oil, ye know, the kind what the ladies like. Apparently this new aether has an affinity for combustion when the right catalyst is added. Fuck my life.”

Resh nodded and patted Olsson’s ginger head. “Yeah, you’re fucked, my friend. Welp,” she wiggled her fingers, feeling a bit more corporeal every moment. Seemed like the high was wearing down. 

“I’ve got to run, Fergie, lots of work to be done and I’m guessing it’s about lunchtime. I’ll make sure the Morpheus team comes by to clean up—”

Before she could complete her statement, Resh felt a violent tug, as if a hook had snagged her by the navel and yanked her backward. Her geist shot across the room, the blood and beakers and sooty brick walls swirling together in a kaleidoscopic puree. Slamming back into her prone corpse, Resh’s consciousness remained locked in place as her body began to come out of its stupor.

She could have done without the visuals. As her neural connections attempted to spark her mind-body coordination back into place, various bits of scenery began to fluctuate in size, their colors waxing evil and making her a bit frightened. She screamed in the prison of her cognizance as a flocculent behemoth reared its form above her, baring a maw of misericord teeth that parted to allow the dark tunnel of its throat to emit a terrifying—

Squeak!

A violent shock ran through Resh’s body as she snapped back into the present, causing her to start forward involuntarily so that she upset Bosch, perched upon her chest. The ferret dooked in concern, nuzzling his human as she pried herself off the table and picked off bits of glass that had pressed into her back. She blinked and willed her parched mouth to water, breathing deeply as she raised a corked vial to the light.

“Well. How’s that for a morning jog.”

The Ghost and Miss Cat, Part 2

It has been a couple of weeks since we booted the spectral squatter from Erin’s basement.

In the meantime, the house has returned to a state of quiet serenity (at least as far as spiritual entities are concerned) and I can walk into the mudroom and stand on the stairs to the basement without wanting to retch.

I’ve been attempting to recollect the exact chain of events that occurred when we fire-and-pitchforked into the Murder Room, and it is still kind of hazy. If Erin and Nate hadn’t been there, I might not be able to remember enough to type this post. Whatever was down there must have had an effect on me. While I was exorcising it, I was perfectly calm and collected. For a couple of weeks before cleansing the basement, I had been having awful dizzy spells, thanks to a combination of prescription medication that did weird things to my blood pressure. But in the Murder Room, faced with the entity, I was chill. No vertigo (I have a theory about that, which I mention near the end of this post).

A lot went down in the Murder Room, enough that it daunts me a bit to string together the episodes into story form. So here are the main bullet points, as accurate as we can piece together:

- Enter basement.

- Immediately, the area feels heavy, hot, wet, dark, gross.

- Nate finds a central spot where the energy feels really rough, I sage the shit out of it.

- Erin sees troughs of dirt along the upper foundation, and I sage the shit out of that, too.

- The back corner is the worst, where the only original part of the house remains – a brick chimney base.

- SAGE THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

- I set up my cauldron full of Morrigan incense (mixture courtesy of Silver Ravenwolf) and my statue of Santisima Muerte.

- Nate confined the entity to the corner by the chimney.

- We noticed that there were some odd markings in paint on the base stair, Nate and I realized they looked like the alchemical/shamanic signs for “earth” and what looked to be a cross between “sun” and “salt.” We decide to salt it, then throw salt in every corner.

- Nate drew the shamanic symbol for “fire” on the concrete floor and outlined it with matches, setting a candle in the middle of the symbol, and communicated with the ghost. Apparently it was really, REALLY pissed, especially at me.

- I had given Erin a bell, and she waved it enthusiastically in the direction of the spirit. Every time I invoked a deity or commanded the spirit to leave, Erin would dangle the bell, saying, “And I have a BELL!” She did a great job, for being an agnostic atheist.

- I thought that confronting the spirit with its own mortality would scare it into leaving. I set my statue of La Santa Muerte in front of it and tried talking to it. At one point I saw, in my mind’s eye, the face of a man, shorter than me, about 5’6”, who was glaring at me with a particular sense of loathing. I glared right back and it scoffed, turning and sitting down by the chimney. Apparently this guy was all bluster, ego, and mansplaining while alive. I toss salt in its face. Dean Winchester would be proud of me.

La Santa Muerte Blanca

Durga Maa

The Morrigan by ByTheOak via deviantART

- Nothing seemed to be working. I invoked Morrigan, La Santa, Durga, pick your badass feminine death deity; it just made the spirit angry.

And then I tried something different, on a whim. Not even thinking about it, I calmly began chanting the mantra to the bodhisattva Arya Tara, who has been my go-to girl since I met her at the local Kadampa Buddhist Center in 2011. It goes:

“Öm tare tuttare ture söha.” (“I prostrate to the Liberator, Mother of all the Victorious Ones.”)

((I have included links to a couple of websites that has a great explanation of the mantra, and how it serves to liberate beings from samsara.))

Here’s a description from the Kadampa tradition:

“‘Tara’ means ‘Rescuer’. She is so called because she rescues us from the eight outer fears (the fears of lions, elephants, fire, snakes, thieves, water, bondage, and evil spirits), and from the eight corresponding inner fears (the fears of pride, ignorance, anger, jealousy, wrong views, attachment, miserliness, and deluded doubts).

Temporarily Tara saves us from the dangers of rebirth in the three lower realms, and ultimately she saves us from the dangers of samsara and solitary peace.”

Dayum.

After reciting the mantra, I had calmed down enough to actually talk to the spirit instead of commanding it. I told it, resignedly, that it needed to leave because it would not find any happiness by staying in the house and harassing the occupants. Speaking gently but firmly, I advised it to try and pass on. I was exhausted, and I could feel the entity in the corner, no longer posturing or puffing itself up in defense, but pouting, as if it had been given an earful to digest and was deciding what to do.

“I don’t think I can do any more here,” I sighed, gathering my tools and walking upstairs with Erin. 

“I’ve exhausted my arsenal and there is only so much I can do as an officiant. It’s up to the spirit to make a decision. And dammit, I’m tired.”

Tea followed. Lots of tea. Followed by a booze or two. I went home and saged myself and my tools, took a spiritual bath, and conked out in my bed, Trixy attendant. I went back to the usual dizziness, which caused me to think that perhaps my deities or spirit guides were grounding me during the exorcism so I could focus and stay safe. I probably couldn’t have remained calm during the procedure if I was feeling all sorts of negative juju, and fear probably would have made it stronger.

I spoke to my therapist about the encounter the next day, and she mentioned that it made sense that the spirit responded to loving kindness and not threats or aggression. Tara is the Buddha that people go to for help. Her aspect of Green Tara is known as the Rescuer, or Liberator, and it shows in her posture: She sits upon a lotus, with one knee bent in contemplation and the other leg outstretched so that she can jump off of her throne at any time and hurry to our rescue (she is also a wind element, hence the speed!). In her puja, which is kind of like a Catholic liturgy, she is described as being the one whom “evil spirits, demons, smell-eaters, and givers of harm all offer praise.” Basically, girl is the OG and even nasty entities respect her, because she cares about every sentient being and wants to help them break free from the bondage of suffering.

According to the housemates, the spirit has not done anything since the exorcism. In fact, it has buggered off. Murder Room has gone back to being a basement. I recall, only now, that Nate had been communicating with the entity some time before the cleansing, and he said that it was the father of a family that had lived there in the past. There was also a mother and a child, but the only one causing problems was the dad. It made sense that he was harassing Erin, who is basically the house mother; perhaps she reminded him of his wife. He seemed some sort of misogynist jerk, so it’s interesting that a woman kicked his spectral ass.

Tara, you fucking rock, girl.

Arya Tara courtesy of Tharpa Publications

“Actually, we are also asking to be liberated from the misery of the mental delusions and negative emotions that blind us to true freedom, and to achieve the same enlightened body, speech and mind that Tara represents, not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of all sentient beings.”

Blessed be, cats and kits.

Helpful links:

http://kadampa.org/buddhism/tara-puja

https://www.yowangdu.com/tibetan-buddhism/green-tara-mantra.html

The Ghost and Miss Cat, Part 1

Only an asshole would squat in an occupied house, harass the occupants, and not pay a dime of the rent.

Sometimes you just need to bust out the sage and bells and evict a bitch.

My girl Erin recently moved into a cute lil’ 1920s bungalow with her fiancée and a couple of friends. I was offered a room, but as much as I love my friends, I hate people and need my own space to be an antisocial hermit crab.

So, my nerd squad had a few busy weeks of getting settled in, and as I was dealing with my own shit we had a three-week span of limited communication. I eventually got to check out the nest, and with Erin leading the way we toured the space. Hard wood floors, pocket doors, high windows—I got punched in the face with nostalgia for the house I had lived in until I was laid off from my job last December.

Erin broke through my reverie by opening the door between the kitchen and mudroom and exclaiming, “Now you get to see the Murder Room!”

Uh, what?

Apparently the basement has been lovingly nicknamed “Murder Room,” since it is totally the kind of place where a serial killer would dismember bodies in a horror movie. Concrete, a layer of grime over the foundation walls, a few dirt troughs near the water heater, and enough gossamer to make even Arachne want to break out a Swiffer duster.

I had barely planted one foot beyond the stair landing when the nastiest shudder passed through me. Not only was the basement butt-ugly, but I got hardcore heebie jeebies just being down there.

Beating a hasty retreat upstairs, I only calmed down after gulping a scorching mug of rooibos. Erin related to me the weird shit that had been occurring since shortly after the group had moved in. Most of the instances involved a shadow that creeped on Erin and tried to grab her a few times, though it took a particular dislike to her roommate, whom I will call Nate, an ordained African shaman who pissed off the entity by telling it to leave. Since Nate is a full-time college student, zie hadn’t had the time to do a proper exorcism and mentioned to Erin that I could help. It was obvious what was and what had to happen.

Some ghost motherfucker was in the house.

We had to get that motherfucker out.

I came back a few days later with my trusty Gladstone bag, stuffed full of supplies I would need to do the house cleansing. I decided to go all out, not knowing to what the thing in the basement would respond. I brought my statue of La Santa Muerte; sage and sweetgrass; a cauldron, black feather, and Morrigan incense; and a bell. Asshole ghosts hate bells. Though I had planned to promenade through every room of the house with sage later, I knew that, as with any mess, the source has to be mopped up before the detritus can be dealt with, otherwise you are just continually cleaning the secondary sludge.

I wasn’t comfortable having too many people in the room while doing my work, especially if they didn’t know what was going on, so we asked the other roomies, Mickie and Austin, to hang out and play video games upstairs. Nate joined us, having a knack for communicating with the entity and an entire arsenal of lore that complemented mine pretty well. I figured that since Erin was both the primary female target and the mother hen of the house, she should tag along, letting the spirit know that the matriarch didn’t approve of its presence. I gave her a china bell shaped like a tama cat, a gift from an air force brat buddy who had lived in Japan.

So, down to the Murder Room we go!

(William Blake, The Ghost of a Flea, 1819, Tate)

Breaking Babbage: An Excerpt

((Yeah, I write shitty fiction from time to time. This is an excerpt from a disgusting Steampunk story I am currently working on. The working title is "Breaking Babbage." The main character, Resh, is an aether dealer, and a hot mess. Setting is an alternate 1899 London.))


It wasn’t the first time Resh had awoken to a rat chewing on her toes.

She lay still a moment, not quite ready or alive enough to shake off the beast. Sometimes Harald would stop gnawing of his own accord. More often than not he wasn’t hungry, just lonely. His remaining teeth weren’t even sharp. But occasionally the rat, due to some rodent form of dementia, would forget what he was doing and Resh would have to punt him across the dingy garret.

Harald seemed to be in a fog today.

Joints cracking as she curled forward to rub her chafed toes, Resh ignored Harald’s aggravated squeaks and instead tried to focus on clearing her head of the night’s bats and booze. She crawled across the grimy sawdust floor and pried ajar a cracked windowpane. Scooping up a handful of rainwater from a bucket she had rigged on a line across the narrow alleyway, the gaunt woman slathered and slapped her face a few times.

Damned withdrawal.

Ignoring the siren call of her lumpy cot in the corner of the attic, Resh stumbled into a patched blouse and worn suede breeches before clipping a harness across her chest. She didn’t bother with the discarded corset, mumbling, “lacing requires hands that work,” and once she was shod in a stompy pair of boots she fought her way into an oversized trench coat. She fished Harald out of the coat’s pocket and replaced him with her kit before deciding she might need him later, but the rat had already scampered away with a squeak that sounded to her like “Piss off.”

The Byzantine lock system on the garret door kept Resh busy for a solid eight minutes, but the fuss was worth keeping scrowsy prigs away from her stash.

She stumbled out the door without bothering to lock it. She had her valuables on her and didn’t worry about someone trying to kidnap Harald. That rat bastard could take care of himself.

Resting a hand on the banister, Resh descended the worn, carpeted stairs, running her bare fingers along the greasy splintered wood in an effort to ground herself. It didn’t work, as the unfelt shard of oak in her index finger attested, but it usually took a full stomach to cope with coming down anyway.

Emerging onto the street like a hermit crab evacuating a shell stinking of opium, Resh blinked owlishly as her pupils adjusted to daylight. If the bit of hazy light blearing through London’s smoggy miasma could be called “daylight.” The stench of guttershit and fish from the nearby wharf played an expert assault upon Resh’s nostrils, and a lone inhale was enough to make her retch.

Holding back her greenish hair, spitting a bit of bile from between her teeth, Resh knelt in the gutter. She spotted a glimmer of metal amongst a filthy pile of linen strips and fished out a penny. It gleamed dully in her palm. Even covered in grime the queen was a classy dame.

“The gods of shit and needles want me to eat. Can’t disappoint them.”

It was a short walk to The Torn Sheet, Resh’s favorite pub (well, the only one that still allowed her patronage), but in her state it took twenty minutes to round the corner. She tripped directly into pedestrians twice.

A rush of warm air that smelled of ale and stale tobacco greeted Resh as she pulled open the door to The Torn Sheet, heavy and mangled by years of service and the odd burglary attempt. Resh slouched into a bar stool, shedding her fingerless gloves but keeping her trench coat on in spite of the heat afforded by a sooty hearth.

“You need to hire a sweep, Meggy.”

Meg Quickly slid a mug of lukewarm coffee beneath Resh’s red, cracked nose. Resh eyed the raw 

egg bobbing among the coffee’s head. She flinched when it eyed her back.

“Drink it, poppet, I ain’t havin’ you puke on my clean sawdust again,” Meg warned, flicking a dingy rag in Resh’s direction. The shivering woman fumbled with the mug, sloshing a bit of coffee on the counter. Sighing in exasperation, Mistress Quickly smacked her rag into the mug she was buffing and came around the counter to assist her fidgeting regular. It wasn’t unusual for Ereshkigal to fight off a bender in The Torn Sheet—Meg had rather her do it here than alone—but she was getting worried by the frequency of the pale young woman’s episodes.

“Hardly twenty-eight and less prospects than a poxy debtor,” the ruddy woman sighed, steadying Resh’s chin with one hand and tilting coffee into her mouth with the other. Resh nearly gagged on the egg but made it through with a hard swallow. Meg clapped her on the back with a wash-pruned hand before returning to her mug and rag on the opposite side of the bar counter. Resh, a bit steadier, tipped the dregs of coffee into her mouth, rinsing away the taste of egg and lingering bile.

“I’ll reimburse you for all those eggs one day,” Resh licked her teeth. Quickly rolled her eyes.

“On the house, I always tell you. Not everyone would do what ye did for my husband. I owe you.”

Resh shrugged, scraping between her teeth with her pinky nail. “Nah. Plenty as wanted to take care of him, I was just the only one with strychnine on hand.” She lowered her voice as the door at the end of the room was pried open, but it was only Garrow who came sauntering up to the bar. The bristly man in his patched uniform lit upon a stool a couple of seats down from Resh and hailed Mistress Quickly.

“A new day, a new offer, Margaret Quickly. Will ye accept it or do I have to try again tomorrow?”

Quickly tossed her damp rag full into the man’s graying face. “I ain’t marrying you, stop asking.”

Garrow peeled the limpid cloth from his face and leaned toward Resh conspiratorially.

“I think she’ll crack any day now.”

“More like crack your bones, my friend,” remarked Resh drily, digging her penny out of a deep pocket in her coat. She spat on it, buffed the grime away against her breast, then slid it across the sawdust to Mistress Quickly.

“Offal today, Margaret. The piss kind, Margaret. There’s a good hostess, Margaret.”

Quickly slapped the coin into her apron with a glare.

“Keep calling me Margaret and you’ll be chewing on your own guts, Ereshkigal Loup.”

The kidney was just as perfect as Resh had imagined it. She spooned the clotted blood from the willowpatterned dish and skewered the organ with a fork, grinning at the tang of ammonia that greeted her tastebuds. Garrow pretended not to register that his breakfast companion was devouring the inner organs of beasts and fowl with relish. He poured a bit of coffee into his porridge and soaked up the mixture with a slice of stale bread.

“So, Resh, any expectations for the business today?” he garbled through a mouthful of oats.

“Never any expectations but great ones, Constable Truppet. An’ you? Which streets should I avoid on this fine morning?”

Garrow slurped his lukewarm coffee. “Flaxton is patrolling between Fleet and Picadilly today, if you were wanting to hit up tourists you might want to lay off. I’d steer clear of Saint Clemens as well, thanks to that attempted arson by suffragists last week there is a bit o’ a presence there as well. Keep to the west an’ ye should make a killing near the farmers’ market.”

Resh stifled a belch with her gloved fist. Having some vittles in her gut was making her feel less like a corpse. “A killing. That’s what I like to hear. Well,” she shoved her empty, bloodied plate across the bar and swiveled off the stool, “time to do business with the public.” She clapped Garrow on the shoulder and tossed a wink to Meg, who waved her away with her dingy rag.

Daylight, that eye-piercing thing of evil, greeted Resh in a torrent as she heaved the pub door inward and crawled around it, disappearing into the mid-morning throng.

*****

((So, if you suffered through that, let me know what you think and whether or not you'd read more.))

It ain't easy witchin'.

Really, though. As much as I love my spirituality, it can be a massive source of anxiety for me as far as being "out" as a witch is concerned. There are so many negative connotations to the title, thanks to years of religious defamation and persecution, so of course it will take a long time for pagans to dismantle the stereotypes that have been piled upon their practice. But wow, it sucks.

I grew up a Catholic in the Bible Belt, which came with its own stresses, but this is a different bag of fun. Most people in the Midwest automatically assume that you are a Christian (I do consider myself Gnostic, but they wouldn't get that reference, Steve Rogers) and some can become horribly offended if you are not. In some pockets of Kansas, folks will try to "save" you and it gets annoying. Most Christians will leave you alone, but there just has to be that contingent of people who need to get all up in a stranger's business. Anyway, if you tell one of these nosy people you are a witch, they go "GET BEHIND ME, SATAN!" and all but try to exorcise you. Okay, so that's hyperbole, but most people do back up a step or two when you drop the "w" word.

What bothers me most is my family's reaction. I understand, to a degree. My mom is a second-wave feminist, Vietnam War protester, flower child type, and while my beliefs are still confusing to her, she does try to understand and ask me questions. She has told me about doing candle rituals and attempting peyote back in the early 70's and her interest in history and mythology lend an academic approach to how she questions me. I think she is interested in the idea of the Divine Feminine to a degree as well, but at her core she is solidly Christian and that's great.

The one who makes things really difficult is my dad.

I love my papa. He is my hero. He is Irish Catholic, a Marine, and stoic as all hell. But my mom recently divulged to me that my dad doesn't like me "doing that witchcraft shit." Thanks to his upbringing, my dad likens witchcraft and its attendant practices to devil worship. Never mind that his Catholic relatives in Ireland practice various forms of folk magic, as do most societies. I've tried explaining over and over that the word "witch" comes from the old English word "wicce," meaning "wise one." That the original witches were herbalists, healers, keepers of local history and wisdom. Doesn't matter. In his mind, my denouncing Catholicism - I suppose one would call it "apostasy" - is tantamount to a mortal sin. He knows I'm a kind person, but he thinks I'm mixed up in the wrong things. Kind of like when I was fifteen and started wearing black, and my dad said, "No daughter of mine is gonna be a Goth!"

What people don't seem to understand is, even though I'm kind of muddling around in a fog right now, I pretty much know what I'm doing. I'm not contacting primordial forces of darkness to kill my ex-boyfriend (though the thought is tempting). I'm not using Ouija or hexing people. Actually, more than anything else I'm approaching my practice from a scholarly point of view. Hell, a couple of posts ago I had a works cited section! I ground myself with white light, I call upon my spirit guides and guardian angel when I tap in, I cleanse the heck out of my space with sage and sweetgrass, I even pray to the saints on occasion (Anthony helps me track down my lost keys all the time). My confirmation saint, Hildegard von Bingen, was pretty damn close to being a witch. I guess what I'm trying to say is, whatever I practice, it is not even close to people's idea of dark magick. It is certainly not Satan worship, and by the way, Satanism isn't what you think it is, but that's a digression for another post.

And you know what? Even if I did worship Satan and sacrifice dust bunnies or whatever, as long as I am not hurting anyone, MY PRACTICES ARE NOBODY'S BUSINESS. Even if I tell people what I believe in, it is not an invitation to vivisect those beliefs. They are important to me, and to have someone try and cast aspersions upon them is tantamount to an attack on me as a person.

Actually, here's an idea. Don't judge people or denigrate their spirituality. It's a douchey thing to do. Unless they are causing physical or emotional harm, leave them alone and let them be happy with the way they jive with whatever deity or deities they consider paramount (or don't consider at all). We are, as humans, all just trying to answer the same questions. I think of different spiritual paths like this; we have different personalities, likes and dislikes, and so why should we all follow the same script? Some people like ritual, some people like solitary practices, some people like the idea of enlightenment as the supreme ideal, some people want comfort and community. Religion as a cultural entity also means that regional differences will inform a person's spiritual beliefs. I dunno, this all seems obvious to me, but I tend to ruminate on weird things.

So, I suppose I've gone and rambled on again. Know that I love you all. Signing off.

Blessed be, cats and kits.

First Impressions

(Dated August 24th, 2016)

Finally had a chat with Mama Hecate last night. I was pretty exhausted due to not having slept the night before, so I asked her not to expect too much of me.It took me a while to get my spiritual space set up, as my altar needed some MAJOR cleaning and dusting. I also had to do last-minute research on certain herbs and gemstones. I had totally forgotten if my black crystals were jet, onyx, obsidian, black tourmaline, or Apache's tear (turns out I had all but the Apache's tear!).

Also, I had a pot of tea brewing, a hodgepodge of Hekate's favorite herbs. Here's the recipe I concocted:

1 tbsp. jasmine flowers
1/2 tsp. spearmint
1 tsp. lavender flowers
1 inch cinnamon stick
1 tbsp. chamomile
1 tsp. lemon verbena

Additional herbs that are safe to use: mullein, vervain, mugwort.

Put ingredients in a French press and add hot water. You can also use your coffee maker or just make the tea loose leaf and then strain it. Add honey if you wish. I prefer mine neat. I filled a sake cup with the tea as a libation to place on my altar.

I'm still deciding on the final setup of my altar to Hekate, but here are the basics of what I did:

The altar is next to my bedroom door. I don't have a lot of space so I make do with what I have. In lieu of an altar cloth I laid a gauzy red scarf on my small, half-moon table. From left to right:incense and burner; abalone shell with sage and sweetgrass bundle; in the center, a mirror, in front of which I have three tea lights, and in front of that I placed my pentacle disc, and upon that I perched a black taper in a holder. To the right of all this I set a small vial of red wine, a black seven day candle, and my pendulum box. I had placed to tarot cards from the Connolly tarot deck on my altar as well, The High Priestess and The Hermit. I feel that these two cards most accurately describe the state in which I approach Hekate at this time.

To attain maximum witchy ambience, my next task was peppering the room with candles and turning out the lights. Poof! Instant underworld! Throw in some jasmine incense and you've got the perfect atmosphere for encountering the Lady of the Crossroads. Seated on a poofy ottoman, uncomfortably skyclad I had the A/C on), I had all of the trappings perfect.

Next came the hard part.

What exactly does one expect to happen when attempting to chat with a deity? I had no clue what I was doing. I decided to use my tool of choice, words, and introduced myself to Hekate Soteira. I made it pretty darn clear what my intentions were in contacting her, including making sure to note that she asked me to call. Being an empath, I can detect some level of energy fluctuation, but my stupid ADD makes meditating entering a state of trance almost impossible to accomplish. Most of the "phone call" was me undergoing introspection therapy, and through that rambling I realized that I really don't know what it is I want.

Happiness? Security? Communion with the Divine? What the hell, I don't know!

I had dressed a small black taper, carved with my magickal name, and waited until it burned out to tie things up. Trixy, my black cat and snuggly familiar, asked to enter the bedroom at one point, so I introduced her to Hekate as well.

I'm afraid that I don't have a spirit-altering encounter to record here. The ritual was pretty mundane in comparison to what I was hoping for. Not that it was a waste of time, far from that. I suppose I've been thinking that I could enter a different state of consciousness if I did everything right and maybe through that I could understand a little better what I am doing in the dark. But really, if you find what you are searching for within minutes of starting out, then you just weren't paying attention to begin with!

I expect there will be many more one-sided conversations between here and connection.

(8-24-16, 3:50 p.m.)