My grandmother, just before they burned her, said this to my mother: the only difference between them and us is they don’t know they have it. She gestured with her chin at the bonneted, jostling women, who far out numbered the men in the seething crowd around the stake. Her own unbound hair snapped in the wind as they lit her.
Afterwards my mother fled to this secret, wooded place that welcomes our kind. The curse they call a power spills like gentle sunlight upon the bears and other wild things that feed from our hands. The beasts of the forest are kin to us.
I had no father. She grew me, all on her own she liked to say. I never asked her for the truth. I knew he’d met the same terrible fate as all the others, the ones who came after.
We never knew how they found her here. They would just appear between the trees, squinting and searching, as if sucked from the great open spaces by a hungry wind. Raking her fingers through that thick, viney hair, she would sigh so deeply you could feel the cottage tremble. I trembled too. For them and for her. Go away, she would whisper. Not again, I would pray.
The gods did not answer. The men did not hear.
She tried to warn them. I’ll hurt you, she’d cry. Leave while you can. They never believed her. Princes and farmers, hunters and noblemen, even the friar thought he could save her. They never said from what.
Save yourself! she would shriek. They only chased her more.
She looked safe enough. Layers of violet gauze robes hung from a tall, fragile frame, concealing tiny breasts and skin so pale it seemed as if she might vanish at any moment. They must have thought they were chasing a fairy. How could they know what she was?
What they hunted, hell-bent, was their own annihilation. They would forget to eat and drink, or wash, or even sleep, and laugh in delight when she called it to their attention. See what you do to me, crooned the hunter to his prey. See what you do.
And each would whisper his dream of wholeness and nothingness, the dream we’ve been hearing since time began, the one that sends them from their churches and wives’ beds and into our damnation.
Did she love them? Almost, always almost, she once said. But as soon as I can smell the fear in them the feeling is replaced by something else, something I can’t name.
Sooner or later she would grow tired from the hunt. How long can you run from water when your throat is parched? But she never succumbed, not at once anyway. Breathless and laughing, she would toss the suitor her robes and the promise of tomorrow, disappearing into the cottage and bolting the door.
Witch! they would shout at her naked, fleeing form, angry yet smiling in a way I did not understand. Burn her! Burn her! the wives left behind cried out in their dreams.
In the morning, still naked, she would unbolt the door and open it wide, her dark hair coiling and writhing, lifting toward the sun. I could feel her heat from where I lay in my small bed. She would not close her eyes when she made what they called love . They liked that at first ( ah… spirit! ) arched triumphantly over her like bows and staring into the depths of what they fancied to be their souls. They always got to the point, of course, where they needed to close their eyes on what they saw. But by then it was too late.
We keep a little piece of them. Not because we are evil but because it is our nature. What we take are their shadows, their dark, howling secrets. If you’ve ever seen a squirrel skinned alive then you know what it is like.
They live through it. They go home to their wives, their hearths and their children. But a man without his shadow is never sure he’s really there. He looks at the ground and sees nothing beneath his feet.
The witch hunts come cyclically, just like the seasons. We know it is time long before we hear the pounding of hooves, the blood-thirsty cries.
The man who led the hunt for my mother was probably the most enamored of all her lovers. And the most tormented. He brought his wife, a small, plain woman with flat brown eyes. She’d known, of course. They always know. He’d offered her first torch when they found the witch.
There must have been forty men. You could smell the lust in the air when they stripped her. I sure would like a taste of this one before we cook her, one of them said as he grabbed at her breast.
Don’t touch her! I’ll kill the lot of you! screamed my mother’s lover, aiming his musket at all of them. The wife paled at his outburst. She swayed on her feet like a sapling in a winter wind. My mother reached out a hand to steady her.
A look passed between witch and wife that can hardly be described.. It flickered brighter than the torchlight in the air between them, a fusion of forces human shaped and witch radiant, so brilliant, so strong, that the men had to turn their faces from it.
She passed her torch to my mother, then gently wrapped her cloak around my mother’s bare shoulders. Piece by piece she flung the rest of her garments at the men, laughing and spinning herself into the frenzy that is older than time.
The men dared not say a word. The husband could not.
Embracing the stake like a lover, she wrapped her naked arms and legs around it as my mother lit the pyre. Not a hand was lifted to stop it.
Afterwards he carried my mother home, belly down on his horse. He married her and got his shadow back. It was said, for a time, that he’d never looked better. My mother, of course, died the death the wife had chosen for her. It was slow, and a terrible thing to see. First they bound her hair, then they put bonnets on her, and in time when he looked into her eyes he saw nothing. Nothing at all.
A witch without her magic is like a man without his shadow: useless both of them, and damned anyway.
I wanted to write once again to let you know why I’ve been missing in action.
For one, I have really been pursuing my photography – learning and shooting and playing with software. I also have a craft show coming up this summer for which I am madly making jewelry so I have enough stock to display. That being said, it doesn’t leave much time for me to blog right now since I’m also working. However I will be lurking and be back again later on this summer, and also continue to post my photos as I have already started to do.
As Simon Cowell reiterated throughout Season 8, this is a talent competition. Yet the American public has all sorts of reasons for voting for their candidate, often having nothing to do with talent. The judges are professionals who recognize it when they see it, yet their professional opinions are not factored into the voting results. This is not fair to the contestants.
For the first time in Season 8 we saw the show give the judges a little more clout in the results by giving them a “save” to use one time to help a losing contestant, Matt Giraud, who they deemed to have promise. Whey not give them more influence on the results, to balance politics vs a true talent search?
These professional judges should be part of the voting process. They would have to unanimously agree on their candidate, just like they did with the pass. Then a formula should be created where their vote factors in with the public vote…Say 50%?
This would at least help to prevent travesties such as we witnessed in the Lambert/Allen fiasco.
I have never understood the emotional investment people have about their favorite sports teams. I don’t know which team is in which league and I don’t care who wins. People behave as if their team is their family. Better not say anything bad about the team, and don’t go near the fans the day after the team loses. You might lose your head, or at least your hearing, about the unfairness of it all.
Now, tonight, I get it. As an ardent American Idol viewer, I’ve been wowed by Lambert since his first performance. He’s been the team I’ve been cheering for. I mean really cheering. He took the stage by storm with a range of notes I’ve never even heard and he did it consistently, week after week. He had charisma that I think has not been seen since Elvis Presley. He had confidence, presence, amazing good looks, polish, professionalism, and sex appeal. He does not have talent. He has a gift. He made all the other contestants, including the winner, look like amateurs.
And he didn’t win. I feel as sad as my son would feel if the NY Yankees lost. I felt so sick about it I had to turn off the TV while the winner sang his song.
And so I wonder…why didn’t he win? I did not know until I fell upon it by chance today that he may be gay. That apparently there was a photo circulating the web showing him kissing another guy. When asked he said, “I am what I am.” I so respect him for that. Yet also circulating the web were speculations that his questionable sexual orientation would bring him down in the end. Bad boy vs right wing boy next door. If that’s why he lost, I’m not sad. I’m angry. So angry. As Cowell reiterated throughout the season, its supposed to be a talent show.
As I get older, I’m becoming more and more of a loner. That is to say, I prefer my own company to the company of others. Given the choice of a visit with a friend, or reading or writing or creating, I will always choose the latter. I’m going to say what is true for me, even though it sounds awful. After about a half hour visit, I get bored. Yes. I get bored. Because my mind drifts away to my interior landscape from which my creativity springs, and I want to get back to it. To whatever medium I’m working in. I don’t want to listen very long to somebody’s daily travails or about their their kids or daily lives. I feel trapped, a captive audience. Phone calls are the same for me. Maybe even worse. Because they have to be returned if I want to have any friends at all.
So why do I want them, you may be asking yourself. Well…because I love them! And I care about them. And when the chips are down, they’re there for me and I’m there for them. I think maybe its just that in this fifth decade of my life, my identity is morphing into an artist and I have no patience for daily minutiae.
Also, the more I think about it, a man would never even write this post or have these thoughts. Men don’t chat about their daily lives. Most of the ones I know are very much bottom line kinds of people. Phone calls serve a function, as in : where are we going and what time are we meeting? Men do things together. Women seem to talk about things more. …A cultural thing, I guess.
How could Psychscribe admit to such mean thoughts? Because it is my truth. Does this sound really awful?
Well aren’t you so glad that you didn’t get to Psychscribe’s site only to hear more of the same…after a while I bet you started to feel itchy yourself!
Well I’m cheerful today because I feel good and its a gorgeous day here where I live. Green, green everywhere and glorious sun already at 9 am, after a week of rain. And our rhodies are beginning to bloom.
2. I have this whole week off to recuperate, which I will do by making my jewelry and learning Photoshop elements.
3. I have discovered the joys of Polymer Clay.
4. My daughter is starting her 6th month of pregnancy.
5. Less than 3 months till my son’s wedding.
6. I joined Twitter just to see what it was all about (not much!) but now I have this whole list to add just to SAY something. Depth is discouraged on Twitter by limiting the amount of lines you can write. It IS supposed to be a good marketing tool though, which I want to use once I get my business with my sister up and running.
7. Life is once again interesting now that I’m able to look beyond the confines of my body.
8. Umm…that’s good enough, yes? I was actually sitting here for a moment trying to think of two more things to make an even 10…why I have no idea. Too many memes.
Well, finally no more itch, just extreme fatigue. I’m taking this week to recuperate and catch up on all the sleep I lost… I’ll be back, thanks for all the support, everyone….zzzzzzzzz
My previous post was tongue in cheek…but now, this is living hell…the constant itching is actually painful…dr has increased my antihistamine to the point that it knocks me out…when i wake up there is a 1 hour window (now) before i can take my next dose…i have to choose what feels like induced coma, or suffering…the lupus is making me suffer, exacerbating and extending the allergic reaction
4:00 a.m. – A lupus story because its about my severe allergic reaction to a lupus drug, said reaction being amplified because the lupus has joined with the evil allergy forces to destroy the effects of a drug intended to help me.
This has been the most miserable week of my life-..i have not been able to do anything but lie in bed with ice packs on me to relieve the itching – every itch inch of my body- I wake up every 1.5 hours bz of the itch – i’m on steroids and antihistamines- my face is puffed up into a balloon – my ankle is just fractured but still a pain the in ass, i have to wear a brace with sneakers- i only stayed in the hospital overnight because the doctors said they really couldn’t do anymore for me and it would take 2-3 weeks to clear up! they warned that the rash would get worse before getting better, but they did NOT warn that the itch would apparently do the same – it feels like tiny little ants crawling around beneath the surface of my skin, occasionally nibbling at my blood vessels -so at 8 am this morning Alph and i will be parked on the dermatologist’s doorstep, the doctor who saw me in the hospital, for a re-evaluation – no appointment, just begging and if that doesn’t work demanding to be seen.
Alph has been wonderful through all this. Poor man. We have a health crisis every year. Truly. But this was the firat time he had to call 911 for me. I was commiserating with how awful that must have been to hear me fall to the floor and then come running in to find me unconscious , staring blankly up at him as he tried to rouse me. He replied in his best John Wayne voice, but seriously, “A man does what he has to do.” For you kids too young to have ever heard of John Wayne, he was a tough guy movie cowboy, but a gentleman on the inside with a heart of gold.
He has never left my side. John Wayne bringing tea and cookies and pasta and comfort food and infinite patience..all with the swagger of his youth. Always making me feel nurtured and protected, even from a barrage of disease bullets. God I love this man.
1:00 pm – Well what’s wrong with me other than the madness factor that I expected to be refused to be seen? The office staff was very nice and so was the doctor, who none-the-less said he couldn’t do anything for me. It will take another week and a half to slowly improve and I’ve gotta gut it out. Oh, and the ice packs I’ve been doing have made the symptoms worse due to a rebound effect.
The worst part of it all, the absolute worst, was that Alph was in the examining room and I had to put a gown on and I felt so objectified, ugly, helpless, and embarrassed in front of my own husband when the doctor needed me to stand and take it down so he could see what was going on.
Why should I care, you ask?
Would you want your Hero Prince Charming to get a fast forward of your naked self under flourecent lights, which everyone knows age a woman’s body by about 20 years in the best of circumstances? Red spots bursting out of the pink blotches on your already sagging, steroid water weight skin? What if he was traumatized by the sight? What if….you know….?
How cool that after 20 years I still feel this way about him…
Its Mother’s Day here in the USA. I’m a mother home very sick with a lupus complicated drug reaction. Since this is Lupus Awareness Month, I hope to blog something every day about lupus in order to increase awareness. If you want to help me, please share the info and links on your blogs. If you are a woman, or love someone who is, you really need to know more about the effects of this devastating disease:
You’re not alone
Together we stand
I’ll be by your side
You know I’ll take your hand
When it gets cold
And it feels like the end
There’s no place to go
You know I won’t give in
no I won’t give in
Keep holdin’ on
‘Cause you know we’ll make it through
We’ll make it through
Just, stay strong
‘Cause you know I’m here for you
I’m here for you
There’s nothing you can say (nothin’ you can say)
Nothing you can do (nothin’ you can do)
there’s no other way when it comes to the truth
So, keep holding on
‘Cause you know we’ll make it through
We’ll make it through
So far away
I wish you were here
Before it’s too late
This could all disappear
Before the doors close
And it comes to an end
With you by my side
I will fight and defend (ah ah)
I’ll fight and defend (ah ah) yeah yeah
Keep holdin’ on
‘Cause you know we’ll make it through
We’ll make it through
Just, stay strong
‘Cause you know I’m here for you
I’m here for you
There’s nothing you can say
Nothing you can say
Nothing you can do
nothing you can do
There’s no other way when it comes to the truth
So, keep holding on
‘Cause you know we’ll make it through
[Keep Holding On lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com%5D
We’ll make it through
Hear me when I say
When I say I believe
Nothing’s gonna change
Nothing’s gonna destiny
Whatever’s meant to be
Will work out perfectly
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah….
La da da da, la da da da da
La da da da da da da da da
Keep holdin’ on
‘Cause you know we’ll make it through
We’ll make it through
Just stay strong
‘Cause you know I’m here for you
I’m here for you
There’s nothing you can say
nothing you can say
Nothing you can do
nothing you can do
There’s no other way when it comes to the truth
So, keep holding on
‘Cause you know we’ll make it through
We’ll make it through
Ahh, ahh
Ahh, ahh
Keep holdin’ on
Ahh, ahh
Ahh, ahh
Keep holdin’ on
There’s nothing you could say
Nothing you could say
nothin you could do
nothing you could do
There’s no other way when it comes to the truth
So, keep holding on
‘Cause you know we’ll make it through
We’ll make it through
First, this picture is not me. I found it on google images. I WISH i looked this good…
Not good, people. Not good. I was given the drug Plaquenil to add to my autoimmune disorder arsenal by my doctor a few weeks ago with the goal of weaning me off the prednisone. I am now covered in a rash from hell over 75 percent of my body. EVERYWHERE you can think of and don’t WANT to think of. And the non specific lupus type disorder I have is gleefully helping the reaction to reach its fullest potential.
Long story short, the morning that my slowly developing rash blew into a full blown stage 3-4 allergic reaction, I also fainted and broke my ankle. So I spent the day in the ER, and was admitted. They were more worried about the fainting in case it signified something serious. It didn’t. AFter mega dollars in testing the fainting was attributed to an episode of low blood pressure.
I look like a monster. I feel like a monster. I have red, elephant ears. You can barely see any skin beneath the eruptions. My face is masked with them…Does anyone have any recommendations for excriating itching? I”m taking steroids and antihistamine but topically nothing is offering much relief except ice packs. Oatmeal bath – so so.. Coritsone cream the same…. wahhhhhh!!!! 😦
True intimacy is achieved when you feel safe enough to be emotionally naked with your partner. You know your partner will not try to talk you out of your authentic feelings, will not say you’re “over-reacting”, will not try to fix it, and will not ignore you. You know you will be supported and validated no matter what you’re feeling and sharing, verbally or otherwise. You know you will receive empathy.This is love, pure and simple…
My grandmother, just before they burned her, said this to my mother: the only difference between them and us is they don’t know they have it. She gestured with her chin at the bonneted, jostling women, who far out numbered the men in the seething crowd around the stake. Her own unbound hair snapped in the wind as they lit her.
Afterwards my mother fled to this secret, wooded place that welcomes our kind. The curse they call a power spills like gentle sunlight upon the bears and other wild things that feed from our hands. The beasts of the forest are kin to us.
I had no father. She grew me, all on her own she liked to say. I never asked her for the truth. I knew he’d met the same terrible fate as all the others, the ones who came after.
We never knew how they found her here. They would just appear between the trees, squinting and searching, as if sucked from the great open spaces by a hungry wind. Raking her fingers through that thick, viney hair, she would sigh so deeply you could feel the cottage tremble. I trembled too. For them and for her. Go away, she would whisper. Not again, I would pray.
The gods did not answer. The men did not hear.
She tried to warn them. I’ll hurt you, she’d cry. Leave while you can. They never believed her. Princes and farmers, hunters and noblemen, even the friar thought he could save her. They never said from what.
Save yourself! she would shriek. They only chased her more.
She looked safe enough. Layers of violet gauze robes hung from a tall, fragile frame, concealing tiny breasts and skin so pale it seemed as if she might vanish at any moment. They must have thought they were chasing a fairy. How could they know what she was?
What they hunted, hell-bent, was their own annihilation. They would forget to eat and drink, or wash, or even sleep, and laugh in delight when she called it to their attention. See what you do to me, crooned the hunter to his prey. See what you do.
And each would whisper his dream of wholeness and nothingness, the dream we’ve been hearing since time began, the one that sends them from their churches and wives’ beds and into our damnation.
Did she love them? Almost, always almost, she once said. But as soon as I can smell the fear in them the feeling is replaced by something else, something I can’t name.
Sooner or later she would grow tired from the hunt. How long can you run from water when your throat is parched? But she never succumbed, not at once anyway. Breathless and laughing, she would toss the suitor her robes and the promise of tomorrow, disappearing into the cottage and bolting the door.
Witch! they would shout at her naked, fleeing form, angry yet smiling in a way I did not understand. Burn her! Burn her! the wives left behind cried out in their dreams.
In the morning, still naked, she would unbolt the door and open it wide, her dark hair coiling and writhing, lifting toward the sun. I could feel her heat from where I lay in my small bed. She would not close her eyes when she made what they called love . They liked that at first ( ah… spirit! ) arched triumphantly over her like bows and staring into the depths of what they fancied to be their souls. They always got to the point, of course, where they needed to close their eyes on what they saw. But by then it was too late.
We keep a little piece of them. Not because we are evil but because it is our nature. What we take are their shadows, their dark, howling secrets. If you’ve ever seen a squirrel skinned alive then you know what it is like.
They live through it. They go home to their wives, their hearths and their children. But a man without his shadow is never sure he’s really there. He looks at the ground and sees nothing beneath his feet.
The witch hunts come cyclically, just like the seasons. We know it is time long before we hear the pounding of hooves, the blood-thirsty cries.
The man who led the hunt for my mother was probably the most enamored of all her lovers. And the most tormented. He brought his wife, a small, plain woman with flat brown eyes. She’d known, of course. They always know. He’d offered her first torch when they found the witch.
There must have been forty men. You could smell the lust in the air when they stripped her. I sure would like a taste of this one before we cook her, one of them said as he grabbed at her breast.
Don’t touch her! I’ll kill the lot of you! screamed my mother’s lover, aiming his musket at all of them. The wife paled at his outburst. She swayed on her feet like a sapling in a winter wind. My mother reached out a hand to steady her.
A look passed between witch and wife that can hardly be described.. It flickered brighter than the torchlight in the air between them, a fusion of forces human shaped and witch radiant, so brilliant, so strong, that the men had to turn their faces from it.
She passed her torch to my mother, then gently wrapped her cloak around my mother’s bare shoulders. Piece by piece she flung the rest of her garments at the men, laughing and spinning herself into the frenzy that is older than time.
The men dared not say a word. The husband could not.
Embracing the stake like a lover, she wrapped her naked arms and legs around it as my mother lit the pyre. Not a hand was lifted to stop it.
Afterwards he carried my mother home, belly down on his horse. He married her and got his shadow back. It was said, for a time, that he’d never looked better. My mother, of course, died the death the wife had chosen for her. It was slow, and a terrible thing to see. First they bound her hair, then they put bonnets on her, and in time when he looked into her eyes he saw nothing. Nothing at all.
A witch without her magic is like a man without his shadow: useless both of them, and damned anyway.
First, I had not seen the Susan Boyle performance. I saw it on my friend Sanity Found’s blog today. I was so blown away and moved that I had to go and look up the lyrics so I could savor every one of them. I was not disappointed. The song comes from Les Miserables:
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came
And still I dream he’ll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
Well, I saw my rheumatologist today. He said my blood work indicates not systemic lupus, but mixed connective tissue disease. He was quite cheery because he said it does not attack the organs like systemic lupus, so this is great news and I should be relieved. But me being me (and most of you being you) I researched it online.
“Mixed connective tissue disease, as first described in 1972, is “classically” considered as an “overlap” of three diseases, systemic lupus erythematosus, scleroderma, and polymyositis. Patients with this pattern illness have features of each of these three diseases. They also typically have very high quantities of antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) and antibodies to ribonucleoprotein (anti-RNP) detectable in their blood. The symptoms of many of these patients eventually evolve to become dominated by features of one of three component illnesses, most commonly scleroderma.
It is now known that overlap syndromes can occur that involve any combination of the connective tissue diseases. Therefore, for example, patients can have a combination of rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus (hence, the coined name “rhupus”).”
Disclaimer: This site is a creative outlet for the author and is not intended for individual, professional advice. The author can take no responsibility for people in crisis. If you need immediate help, please call the suicide hotline
1-800-273-TALK (8255), call 911, or go to your nearest hospital emergency room.
© 2009 Psychscribe
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