The glass.

My day began with a hateful skinhead shouting at me, telling me that I was a nigger. My day ended with two arrogant black women shouting at me, telling me that I was a racist. There was stress, near-accidents, selfish drivers, surly people, and screaming children in between. My evening included the garage mechanic telling me that my lovely car was beyond repair, and my girlfriend being unhappy because it's been too long since we've been able to see each other. I ruined a pair of pants. Some rain ruined a floormat. My tax refund is mostly gone with me having virtually nothing to show for it yet.

But I found a great stained glass studio that's offering classes very soon. Carbs be damned, but I treated myself to pancakes this morning. I also found a new pub with really good food. Some people congratulated me for how I handled some extreme situations under extreme duress. My girlfriend reminded me that she loves me. My cats are snuggly. The house is clean.

So I suppose my glass is still half-full, at least.

Being now.

There is always an available moment, or a place, or a face, or a happily walked dog with a swinging tail, to remind one that beauty remains everywhere. In taking a breath and collecting oneself back into the moment, often a subtle gift is right before our eyes that helps us stave off the downward spiral.

The past lurks in the dark.

For me, Earth Hour wasn't especially eventful. I cheated a little too. I didn't attend the party I was invited to, which I'm sure I'll regret.

Maybe that's because I'm a cynic. Having participated in a massive public ritual in Boston Common for the Harmonic Convergence, the Hands Across America demonstration, an orgy to wield power against AIDS, and Gods know how many other Workings, maybe I'm just a tired old fool who's lost a lot of faith in the human condition. Or maybe it's because I have to be awake by 3:30am.

Or maybe it's because I became distracted by my past... again. I miss the Dragonfly. I miss the rituals and the celebrations and the gathering in Maryland. I miss a house full of loving, laughing, eating, chanting people.

I called the Pixiegrrl, whom I miss deeply too, before she headed out for the night. I love her guffaws, and I hope to see her soon.

I predict that an aftermath of Earth Hour 2008 will be a rush of new births by December.

One's own agency.

Sometimes I need to remind myself that it's ok for me to have fun too. That is, to think about my own fun as being equally important when I'm attempting to have fun with others.

Maybe it's part of my astrology. Maybe it's just some weird slice of codependent bullshit that's grown in my breast over the past few years, some echo of some abandonment issue that still being exorcised. But there are times when I have to tell myself to remember that it isn't all about me playing the entertainer for others, that I'm important to... and that, sometimes, I'll be with someone else and not enjoying it and that's ok. Doesn't mean that I'm fucked up. Doesn't mean that I'm not capable of having fun with others.

To deny this in myself is to give away my own power, to deny myself my own agency unto my own happiness. That would mean making my fun dependent on whether or not the person I was with was having fun... which also means if they stopped having fun, then I'd be "required" to stop too.

Eeuw.

This is probably obvious to many people. But like most simple things that appear to be obvious, I see something profound in remembering this, and in remembering this during the current slice of my life. I like it because it reminds me that being whole unto myself means simply embracing enjoyment for its own sake, like laughter, like art.

I scream.

Adaptation is often about forward-thinking. Often, it requires one to step outside of oneself, to pause in the middle of an unenviable moment and try to envision what is possible. Remembering that attachment often yields to suffering helps in this process. Doing that, when one has managed to step beyond the need for the attachment, the imagination can observe a wider, objective point of view. This can, in turn, allow one to accept options that might not have seemed available when one was fighting for one's way. What may have seemed the most undesirable thing in the world might then show itself as the path toward something wonderful and previously unperceived.

Overcoming is often about present-thinking. Often, it's the place within the self that gets reached when one's patience, tested by all that openness and adaptation, reaches its subjective limit and the time becomes right for resistance and struggle. Many schools of spirituality demand the ascetic, yielding way that results in pure adaptation, but what of the power of the self that bursts forward in times of outrage and distress? Can this not also be a path toward empowerment and positive change? Can we not also be the actors, the escorts of change, as well as its passive recipients? In the maxim Do as thou wilt, the verb is about action and effort and struggle.

Perhaps balance in living lies in determining, within the self, where each approach suits best. Reed or oak? Light or fire?

And then there are those moments when the way to proceed becomes clouded, and one's disappointment and annoyance might stand in the way of healthy movement. Those are the moments for ice cream.

Clean slate, clean plate.

She wept as she told me, two years ago, that I would have enjoyed the restaurant she and our friend had had lunch in. She was still preparing to leave the city, and the emotions were still raw. I remember feeling glad that she wept. I was neither being mean nor gloating, but it did show me that she was in pain too.

I found myself dining there for the first time today. I wondered where she and our friend had been sitting. With the whiteness, the bare plate before me, I meditated on the cleaner slate my world is in.

Rearranging, redecorating, relocating, remembering, reawakening all day today. A new, healthy, more personal purpose has found itself in the temple room, where my rituals may hae more to do with keyboards and dreaming than wands and chanting for a while. It's still ritual to me, for me. Rituals for new creation, new expression, new goals to be achieved. The spirits are not offended. They, like I, embrace the change.

Papers to purge, place, put aside. Memories and testimonials. Letters from lovers. Lovers pledging their devotion. Devotions that are absent now. The power of this now brings me closer to the fruition of my own Self.

I dined by my Self, so I did not dine alone. I feast on the green shoots of spring.

The last of ice.

Like a seed clinging to the frozen, dense earth, my spirit was full of promise. My unfurled stem remained coiled about me rather than extend into the sun. Fear can grip the heart in that way after so much distress.

My own will, coupled with the shaking of my foundations (thanks to a thief), brings me back into consciousness. Necessary tasks found themselves achieved, intimidating and stalled goals surmounted, matters resolved. I am thawing. I'm reminded of spring rites past, the circling dancers chanting the workings to eschew the ice and embrace renewal. The last of ice as I become renewed.

I accept an invitation that distresses me, recognizing what I've believed to be my role and responsibility to people and things that otherwise cause me pain, but I somehow still refuse to disavow. I'm trying to stand up without standing arrogant.

I begin seeing my ex-wife again. She's moved to my neighbourhood, and the feelings are mixed. I realize that nurturing kindness and friendship is a healthy act in itself, and that if I make designs about possible outcomes, I've already set myself up for disappointment. What's important is that I show the better person that I am, and for me, not for her. I can't change the past, but I can undermine the past from undermining me, with and for myself.

It's all growth and greenery from there, no matter who or what enters the new garden.

In the green wick.

There is a place within the self that can emerge through the shadow. It comes after many quiet nights, when the memory of family and friends, now absent, is a silence following the tumult. It's the movement of perseverance, the drawing of happenstances unsought but embraced, the acceptance and the desire to take another step forward.

When everything valuable and loved and desired and dreamt-for is lost, when the laughter of kith and kin echoes in the pained yearnings for yesterday, what remains? The click of boots on pavement beside the melting snow, the pounding of the heart superceding inner voices that summon the self into despair and pathetic, unrequited redemption.

The Green shoots through the cracks. It bespeaks of the promise unspoken, the hint of possibility and creation, the living wick remaining within the tired self. The Green is present in spite of winter's folly and anguish. Brighid is alive and pumping the billows. Demeter holds the seed. From within the core of being, feral life and resonant wonder can yet be nurtured into presence. From within the core of being, the chance for redemption of the self, neither pathetic nor unrequited, can be embraced into a fullness. There can yet be renewal.

It's a journey. It's a path. It's a step into and beyond personal initiation. Its scars are runes of melodious wisdom, and the answers from its oracle are woven in the Green. Hope remains after blemishes are seen as the blemishes that they have been. Life is.