If you were to ask me, what's it going to be then, Art or Majik? i couldn't answer you. Because i'm not at all sure i can distinguish, any more. i'm not at all certain that any pure, true artist (define as you will) is free of the taint of shamanism; no moreso than i could find something shamanic that bears no stamp of the artistic.

i've noted before that preparing a piece of artwork is like preparing to entheogenically journey is like preparing to cast a spell. There's no difference, is there, Mr. BBC? In fact there is so little that i'm not entirely sure i could even disentangle by referencing the final outcome. With the first, there is assuredly something tangible, but the other two may produce tangible results as well. The second is the least likely, but then again what one brings back from journeys beyond thee Veil might well feed inspiration for the first; the creation of which involves the third.

i walk a razor's edge between the three, always have. Is this the line i walk?


i see no difference between that and a journey into Faerie; my Otherworld is equally at home and likely to appear under blacklights and strobes as by firelight 'gainst the trees. Most of my favourite bands would transport you straight into another realm, a shamanic, participatory event that Boujeloud himself would recognize.

These are the rituals of thee Kali yuga, mad Shaivites smearing themselves with cremation ashes - all is one, all is one, all is one.

And so if i write that i received email sent from beyond the grave last night, it is only of a piece, yes? i've known precious few shamen who were Conscious enou that i'd credit them the ability to work such a piece of majik. One, i believe, spent himself in a last final effect of simply staying alive - those who know me know that story. Another - well, might once have had that power, but chose to forego it, at least from my perspective. The third - must there be three for such things? - the third has pulled it off i do so solemnly swear. Here, have an example of art becoming majik in his hands:


Now, before anyone texts this in to the National Enquirer.. the email is 'only' from an autoresponder. That it bears a crowbird's stamp as apparent sender is merely a fluke of how he set it up. That it comes from a message board that was never, ever active, long months after i might have thought it shut down is explainable, if unusual. That the very next message in my inbox queue *has his name as subject line* - well, an accident of fate, innit? Particularly if the message notification was just a pointer to the same poem the second email carried.

It isn't. The friend who sent the poem doesn't even know the dreamland board exists.

Each year i seem to lose several friends. A drawback to aging i suppose; moreso because walking a razor's edge is a path few can navigate well. i was going to say, successfully, but i'm far from certain 'success' is a term one can apply to such a pursuit. This last year saw three losses of people whose impact on the community they left behind was much greater than they likely ever knew in life. One was simply a Good Person, a spirit everyone liked and no one thought could leave so soon. One was that and an artist/activist/focalizer besides, whose impact here echoed tho she moved from the area two decades before. The third - its triangles, triangles, triangles all the way down - all i can say is, whether he's got a tin shack in the mountains of Bulgaria or spends most of his days in crow form winging about the piney woods above Mabon, he came back to town this weekend. And he sent me an email to say hello.

Gifts and Gratuituous Gnomes

Hokay. Well. i established this blog a while back to be my For Public Consumption one - yes, there are others. No, i am not going to tell you where. Having gotten that far, i've proceeded to flounder. Whatinole do i write about, if it *isn't* teh Excruciating Personal, eh? This is an ongoing challenge, and scrolling back will give you different answers for different days. (Also, as of this writing, it will give you different answers all on the SAME day, today. As i've yet to figure out how to fix that particular java error).

Well, today's installment shall be about ~me~, i guess, minus the waahngst. Which is rather silly, given all six of you who read this :::checks follower list::: - nine! Whoa welcome new people! - i think most of you know me one way or another anyway. But for the sheer fuggovit..

Pleased to meet you, i don't believe we've met. My name's Ian, and.. oh wait no. My name, well that's a variable thing too. i've had a lot of them over the years. a LOT. sade has been the most constant, and that's not 'shar-day', that's like the Manson chick if you were wonderin'. Some days i am also the Fabulous Sascha Peppercorn, which is a play within a play if all the world's a stage. And yes, theatre - acting - thank you - is a major part of my life.

No wait, back up - *performance* is my life. Sometimes that happens in a theater. Most times it does not. i am but an actor chappie who often plays the role of Judith (hopefully never Quaisoir) playing the role of sade playing Sascha. Got me? i am a living ongoing work of performance art. Not to the point of pointing a camera at myself 24/7, tho i guess i might now be capable of just that. Consider everything you see me do in that frame, tho, and we'll get on fine.

Camera. Ah. Yes. That was where i started. Despite having spent part of my college years in broadcasting classes, i am not a camera person. Photography is ~ok~, but i've never been immersed or fascinated by it the way so many are. In a sense, i don't *get it* - to me, a camera is, and has always been, a tool for two purposes and two only: record a snapshot of a moment or event; record a visual impression for later use in making Real Art. (There - that should piss off any photog friends who accidentally stumble across this ;-) i even dropped photography in college because the Process of it was just needless BS complication to me. i don't care about chemicals and exposures and silver papers and all that; i just want a PICTURE, for use as a later tool.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Over this past Yule, i happened to be gifted with two fabulously swell new tools: my little, as-yet-unnamed netbook, and a sweet Nikon CoolPix camera. It was much easier for me to begin using the first; i KNOW what to do with a computer. The second, tho, i had to poke and prod and sniff at a while. i am still finding out things about it (oh shit! that's recording video!! no no stopstopstop) - like, say, how to get pictures off of it and onto the laptop.

i has solved that problem. Behold:

That one's purely gratuitous. There was no reason to take it, except maybe when i don't live here anymore i can look back and Remember. But now that i have Little Toy One and Little Toy Two, i'm thinking that i can put them together here. Not so much in this post, tho that was my first intention (see previous post for Teh Art). But as a way of documenting this whatever-it-is i do, the things my muse demands of me.

i am, my life is, an ongoing experiment in art and magick. "We set out to change the world and only wound up changing ourselves". People who know me as the Celestial Mother or some goofy old hippie lady don't know that i am a *very* determined and driven fishie. My persistence is subtle.. i've been known to say i'm too dumb to know when i'm beaten and should fall down, so i just keep on pressing forward. i think this is the major reason i'm still standing, still somehow not dead, somehow not permanently screwed. Tho i go with Daevid Allen on that one: You Never Blow Your Trip Forever. Or to use a completely unrelated quote, Nothing is *very* bad.

This blog, then, careens wildly in all directions. It may be about art, it may be about magick, it may be about the hedgebear as winter king having a shadow because he is still mortal and must battle winter another six weeks. It may be about the vortex tribe or my gnome collection

(except for the little one holding a pole that used to be a rake, those aren't the GOOD gnomes. They're stuck in storage limbo) or the little guys in my china cabinet who aren't gnomes but are certainly their friends

or how it is i can be a big fan of Charles DeLint but am finding War For The Oaks rather twee. All of which are about the *same* thing, really, but its a game of Spot Your Lucky Warts to figure out what it is.

And if you do, would you please tell me? I'd kinda really like to know..

Picture pages, picture pages, start your day with picture pages, lots of fun with cameras and with pixels!

Yesterday, Saturday, i went over to the theater to help prep the season brochure mailer. Fortunately, we had an accidentally-collated box of mailers, so we didn't have to do that. But we DID have to affix return-address labels, mailing labels, and stamps to over 1,000 envelopes.. stuff them with mailers.. add inserts about the upcoming benefit (Vegas Royale Spectaculare, Feb 20th, Lounge Kitty and Martini Five-Oh baby, yeah).. seal the envelopes and put them in a box. My work area looked like this:

Note the Rome to Milano trivet in the background, a souvenir from last year's season closer, Ouroborous. That took most of my afternoon.

When i left, i decided to head down to Steelyard, see if i could get some things i needed at Deal$. On my way down the drive, i was struck by the lovely view over the remaining bit of actual steelyard industry. AND i remembered i now have this spiffy camera (see the post before, or maybe after, this one). i couldn't take a pic while driving, so i parked over by the T-Mobile store, got out, and hiked back up to Quigley - i think that's Quigley. It was pretty effing crisp out. i had to put my hoodie up to keep my ears from freezing. My boots were not made for winter hiking. It was awesome. And here's the pic i took:


When i got home, i made dinner. Tai Pei frozen garlic shrimp with extra vegetables added by me. Half of what the carryout Chinese cost the night before, healthier, equally as tasty. i am, however, not yet so pathetic as to take a picture of my augmented frozen dinner, so you have to imagine that part. After dinner, i fiddled and putzed and doo-dah-ed around the house for the rest of the night. Those who follow my twitter stream know that i'm trying to make myself paint again - yes, this is an undertaking. i've got Things in the way of doing that, but i am trying to clear them out and get back to it.

Naturally, because it is me and i am Complex, the piece that has gotten past my internal logjam is demanding to be Complex too. i *want* (i think?) to be doing simpler pop-art pieces. i have at least one in mind with a self-imposed deadline on it. i have Ideas for half a dozen pieces. This is what's on the board.


You'll note no actual paint is involved here. And its on a shitty cheap canvas board from AG thats been in storage for twenty years. Trust me, if i decided No, i Must Stretch Real Canvas, NOTHING would ever move forward here again. i have this stuff coz my dad used to work for them (er - make that *thirty* years in storage??). i am not Saving it for anything. What is my excuse?

Last night i also decided to randomly google for a recipe for vegan corned beef. i found one. i found out i have all (well, almost all) the ingredients. i also have everything i need for a New England boiled dinner, aka corned beef and cabbage, which is so much a favorite i ask my mom to make it for my birthday and indulge once a year in actual corned beef (despite popular belief, i have not been a vegetarian for well over a decade. But i was for so long before that its really all i know how to cook). So round about 2 am i decided to start making this. It also did not get a picture taken of it, because an uncooked gluten loaf is not the most visually appealing thing on earth, let's say, and i pay attention to CakeWrecks. Don't you?

Today i got up and decided to finish the boiled dinner in the crock pot. Only my auxiliary kitchen counter has reverted to its secret identity as drafting table. What to do? Well, here's the solution.


See the crockpot? See the steam that is not rising out of it? For the past two hours i've been checking and poking it and wondering if its finally bought the farm because it was Not Getting Hot.

Then i plugged it in.

And with that, dear cats and kittens, i must away. i have an Event to manage in an hour; it might be a good idea to prepare, ya think? Love ya. Truly. Mwaah.

Space Mother tribe

Not long enough slow Sunday. i have to perform tonight - Audio-Visual Baptism 12, at Now That's Class - and i know, *know*, i'm not prepared. Of course i've done the glasswalking enough times i can about do it in my sleep; that part doesn't really worry me. Maybe it should; tho my feet are always tough, the depths of winter don't quite condition them properly (for those who don't know, glasswalking consists of me walking a six-foot tray of broken beer bottles and then jumping off a stepladder into it for a finale).

But i'm more concerned about the rest of the act - do i add some accordion, if so what; not having touched the thing in months until a day or two ago. Never having any songs really *learned* and certainly none rehearsed. And of course, the crisis nearest a costumer's heart: What to Wear?? Normally i LIVE in tights in winter, but i need to be able to get barefoot quickly, so those are out. i don't have to wear anything special at all, of course, but it is sort of part of the whole routine. And if i put together An Outfit, will that also require painting my face? That sounds like so much work. But i am kind of fond of some modified commedia facial art. Probably won't decide til i'm there.



Of course, the reason i don't feel like doing any of this today is that last night was a night out w/my wild grrlz. Women (womyn, wimmin) 40 and above, with roots in the punk scene, colorful pasts and *still* colorful present.S. Right now we are a small tribe but could easily double and triple in size, as each of us could potentially bring in three or four more who 'really should' be there. For right now, tho, we're a small tribe of fierce wimmin who go out terrorizing the locals, or at least hijacking random karaoke bars. Naturally, this requires the consumption of a certain amount of alcohol.. while i amazingly do NOT feel particularly hungover today - the quantum effects of proximity to so much coolness? - i still do not feel at the top of my game.

Which is why i'm sitting here in my bathrobe writing this instead of getting my act together for someplace i have to be in an hour. Dear me. Someone shall have to spank me. And on that note..

To-Done list

Yesterday was a good day, a high energie day. Yesterday i:

put in a job application at a place i have a good feeling about;

picked up a friend's pupster who needed puppy-sat for the day;

took the pupster to my water brother's house; we were trading off (sharing?) puppy custody;

got coffee at Civilizations and used their wi-fi;

worked at the Free Clinic;

met my water brother at Edison's, where i had some difficulty persuading him pupster needed to go home;

wound up hanging out at said bro's house for a while, eating dinosaur-shaped chickn nuggets and watching Popaganda: the Art Crimes of Ron English;

finally took the tired pupster back to his momma;

had a nice long conversation w/puppy-momma about creativity and other good stuff.

Today was not yesterday.

i did:

take down and put away my Yule tree;

clean up my worktable almost all the way;

sweep the kitchen;

knock a couple smaller things off my to-do list;

spend too much time on Facebook;

pick up the accordion for a minute and depress myself with how out of practice i am;

drag myself out to Dollar(and twenny-nine cent) Paradise, where i at least got grapefruit juice, yum;

stop at Pat Catan's for some fairy lights and teeny silk roses to make up for the Yule lights being down;

lose my leopard gloves :-( ;

pick a really bad time to stop by the bookstore;

but still make arrangements to hold an initial discussion group for the workshops i plan to give;

have the gremlin cat suddenly locate a belt i've been looking for for months;

listen to all the Coil i own;

answer a difficult email;

do some laundry;

get some things written that i needed to get said;

fail at getting to bed before 4 a.m.
which may sound like a lot but still feels very unproductive. Tomorrow i will try to do better, or at least feel better about what i do.

The End.

Village Witcheries

Y helo thar blogspot. We has not spoked at each other in a while. No point now in trying to say why; Now is the only thing that's Real, as Uncle Chuck would remind me. Where's now?

Now is two years away from 2012. Now is a world in which half the people i know don't have jobs and half of those who do are underemployed or hate what they're doing. Now is a world in which our national resources have been and are being squandered by the fistful in pursuit of the dead dreams of cold-war kids grown to treacherously myopic adulthood. Now the robber barons grow fat and gluttonous on our despair. Now is a moment - THE moment - in which we can, we must make a change.

Now, viewed through one set of lenses, is pretty effing grim - but i don't wear those glasses. What is reality? A peacock on a darkened winter lawn? Perhaps. The edges of reality seem to me to fray and tatter the closer we look. Of course there are those, those same selfish aging children, who prefer we never get close enough to the worn and ravelled bits to notice. They dangle an endless parade of Shiny Bits and String, luring us back to the cable corrals constructed to keep the sheeple penned and hemmed. Is there any safe thing we can stream from the idiot box? i wonder. i fail to trust anything too mass produced, taking the Smiley Face Principal as my guide: the more pieces there are of a thing, the more its energies are dissipated. Ov course a symbol can also be a 'physical' repository for emotional charging, so no matter how many swastikas there are, for instance, they're unlikely to ever become as trite as the Golden Arches.

But Now, another set of lenses are at hand. While the world is no more likely to end Dec 21, 2012 than at Y2K or Oct. 22, 1844, the potential for it to *change* is strongly at hand - if for no other reason than people expect it to. Whether enough people expect this strongly enough to create any true and lasting change is very much open to speculation - but for the sake of argument, i am going to proceed As If it were possible.

"Once - Majik was real, and thee Veil between the worlds was thin. And our people of the shadow worlds, the dream realms and fantasy dimensions dwelled in the woodlands, oceans, and ancient ruins of this world. They called us angels, faeries, demons or fair folke. We gave inspiration to the humans so that they may be creative: we are the dream-makers, the shadow weavers, the myth-catchers.

Now, as the natural world dies and humans lose their faith in magic, we are retrating back to our home worlds or shifting for a short time into changelines. For we see that humans no longer believe. And when magic dies, the Dreaming dies; and when the Dreaming dies, so does all the beauty of this world both dark and light. When magic goes out of this world, we go with it - and while you may not notice our passing, you shall know that we are gone by the greyness, the drab sameness of your world in our absence.

We do not wish to leave this world to its tears, its greyness. We therefore invite you to join us in a short yet sacred ritual containing magic both beautiful and ghastly. It matters not whether what you see are illusions or of the supernatural. Only Belief is important. Only Belief can keep the Dreaming alive."

Is this story Real? Is a thought of a unicorn a Real thought? (And what *about* those colorless green ideas, hm?) The fact is, as we discovered on the train, man, tomorrow never really happens. Its all the same fucking day, man. Yeah i lifted that too, but its an early version (to me) of the same truth. Who is the artist that makes the grass green? And what color is an orange, really?

It is in pursuit of the answers to these and other questions that i follow the flickering will-o-the-wisp that dares to call itself my destiny. i have stepped off a cliff, in perfect love and graveyard dust, in trust a cartoon cloud would rise beneath my feet. As long as i *believe* myself to be walking on solid ground, i am able to cross thee abyss. Is this True? Does it matter? Tho five minutes from now i may fall to lose it all, right now, just for today, this minute, this instant that shall never come again - i am in thee air.

At Samhain i wove a spell. Short and small, i did not complete all the parts that suggested themselves to me for fear of binding. But the shrine i honored and the prayer i spoke seem to have led to subtle yet definite variations - i am more and more certain i no longer inhabit the 'same' universe as this time last year. Of course one could argue that every breath creates a new world; but this is the far side of the butterfly effect. eXistenZ is not paused, but i have left a game within a game within. i need not name here thee energies i have invoked; one may look at me and judge, or ask me in the heart of the vortex. Suffice to say i feel thee dark hand ov chance steering me towards a stranger, truer, more active path than i have walked before.

i choose and guide as ever by signs and portents. A strong one - too strong, perhaps? - fell literally a week before the Solstice; an omen i've yet to fully interpret. i know only that i am Called ever more strongly: manifest-manifest-manifest. That my absurd and lunatic optimism must carry me every furthur on - and so, somehow, it does. At every turn, fall of near-crisis, something comes through and i am granted one more cloud, travel that much closer to thee far side ov this abyss. Only Belief is important, and the more i allow mySELF to believe, the more Belief itself is - sufficient.

My way now weaves a path i have not yet walked. It runs not so beside the track i walked before, tho' that still lies near (only two days away). i do not Know already where this path may lead; it is unlike thee other, unlike any other i've danced - but dance it i must. i could shy and hie me away, back to the safety of the known - but i would lose the cloud that carries me forward. My fingers know this better than i. By making this choice with eyes as open as i can, i seem also to have accessed something new. Something true. Thee ability to make things happen on a scale i've not dared touch - and perhaps beyond that, to a scale i don't yet dare perceive (but have, in sleepless dream). Time was - time is - time shall be no more.

i don't believe that has anything to do with this post directly, other than i'm listening to Current 93, Coil, Zoviet France as i write. Then again - perhaps it does. Perhaps as i step off, and step off, and step off into ever-deeper (yet narrower) abysses, to fall more slowly and less far each time; perhaps time is turning in to space.

i am become the Village Witch. For a particular village and a particular tribe; tho i've allegiances with other tribes and from time to time i have obligations to fulfill with them as well. This holiday season tested and proved both those things: as is ever the case, my presence was requested more places than i could manage to be. Well, that's social gadfly normal; but this year it seemed that i was tending to, and celebrating with, my flock at every turn.

Claiming this title feels arrogant to me; o right. What makes *me* thee old wise womyn - after all, its not like i'm the only pagan in the neighborhood. Certainly not the most initiated. And how do i even KNOW i am; just cause i've not encountered another? i don't, quite honestly. In fact, to my eyes there are unsuspected sages more places than you'd think; but they're unsuspected. Whereas i'm Out There, and the more i state this for the record, the more the universe/my tribe seems to be taking me up on it.

And so the road goes ever on. i lead a life of music, dance, spirit, theater and art, in thee absurd belief that i SHOULD be able to do so; that this is Just and Right and will somehow fall into place because. In the Now of wolf-thought, i have let go and let God/dess, and this is where S/He has brought me. One foot extended in the snake dance.

grr. still cant log in to FB from my phone. i got a confirmation code, but can't put it in from here cuz of Technical Issues. Maybe just as well.. or not!!