Month: January 2016

Brigid oil blend in the Etsy shop!

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

2016-01-15 18.59.34

Brigid oil blend

A mix of essential oils, heather tips, and blackberry in a jojoba base. Available in 1 and 2 dram sizes.

Brigid – the lady of fires: hearth, head, and heart. She is associated with smith crafting, word crafting, and the healing arts. Uses: to wear as a perfume or invoking oil, to dress candles for spellwork, to infuse incense (a drop or two on the cone, stick, or loose herbs will do it), to pay tribute in an oil warmer, and for prayer and meditation.

(Oil is pictured here with water from one of Brigid’s well, and with Brigid’s fire, passed from person to person over the years. Water and fire not included with purchase.)

Love can break you open, if you let it

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

Anyone who doesn’t believe Love is an actual Force, and can be a catalyst for swift change hasn’t been paying attention. For me, I started a long lonely climb out of the place I had been with the turn of the new year. It felt like an ascent in mud. Then the despair in me broke open. It happened shortly before this past weekend and it occurred via Love. For you-know-who-you-are, I am grateful.

This is the me I always am in my head. I haven’t been the me in my head on the outside of me recently, either in dress, or in what I let loose to the world. Today I returned to dressing the part – the part called Me. Today I let loose the new-old me again. These fabulous pants (I ordered 5 different pair recently from http://www.harempants.com/ ) are so comfortable!

(I tell myself someday I’ll master the Art of Selfie™ w/o a mirror. Some lies are okay to believe.)

2016-01-19 12.24.48

Let Love break you open!

*twinkles* ssssss

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

The Journey

“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

Mary Oliver

Impact and obliviousness

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)5 Comments

It’s been an interesting 24 hours. I have spent decades underestimating my impact in various spheres of my life. I never fail to “dog head” when my oblivion is brought to my attention. Like, wut?

It has now hit the level of embarrassing. In efforts to keep my ego in check I have put on blinders, and as beloveds shifted away, I thought I spoke into a vacuum. What and how I expressed myself mattered little, I surmised, ignoring that all of us have impact larger than our awareness.

I have been purposely removing those blinders and paying attention in my offline life for about 4 months and with a concerted effort starting 2 1/2 months ago. (Yes, I know the exact date I moved from “things take time” to “START NOW”.) It hasn’t yet bled over to my online life.

In the last 24 hours I’ve been having front-and-center plus behind-the-scenes conversations with a number of folks ~ their impressions of how I present myself online consist of a gamut of viewpoints, covering a great range, but a couple of core things overlap.  It has been fascinating, in the best sense of that word.

What I do know is that my online self used to be a really close match to my offline self, and the chasm between the two has grown. (There are a hundred reasons for it, but none matter to the point I’m writing about.) I started righting that with the magical turn of the calendar page, but it is a slow process, with backslides. Time is the only proof that will show it, so you’ll just have to trust me. Or not. Your choice.

Here on this blog is mostly Boneweaver, keeper of the Dead, chronicler of the learnings and foibles of walking my spiritual path. Other venues have seen SJ PJ, *rawr*ing up a storm. Neither of those is all of me. Both of those are not all of me. (Never will *all* of me be out there. C’mon, I’m pretty open, but I keep more than half of me to myself.)

I desire to pull the edges of that chasm closer together. I don’t wish to eliminate the chasm – the abyss in the center is where the Mystery lies – but I wish to move back to where when I met someone offline who had known me only online they would say, “You’re just as I thought! Except nicer.” (What can I say, text reflects me harshly. I try not to use too many extra words. *looks at length of post* I have really edited this down from what’s in my head – I swear!)

I wish to reflect more of me in all of my online spaces. Compartmentalization of me has not been good for me, and as I have impact with what I choose to put out in the world, it has not been good for others, either.

One thing that I am just getting brave enough to put out here is the art I do. I don’t often see myself as courageous, but with my art, every post is a steeled-nerve act of bravery. I’m taking lessons from someone who has been refining her skill for decades. They are donation-gratefully-accepted-free lessons through Facebook. You can find the first lesson HERE. It is my gift to myself, conquering the fear and rewriting the old story that I can only art in abstract because the skill of realism died with my father.

And now it’s your turn — what would you like to see more of from me? I really am interested to know.

(And I’m going to hit publish before I chicken out, so read through the typos, please.)

For A Veteran, For “KISS”, For Yellow Funereal Ribbons

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

Reblogging for Labrys

Sub-Rosa

2014-12-03 Day 46 Flame and Shadows2As I said on my more (ever slightly) active blogs at Herlander Walking and Steel Kachinas….I have a grim week ahead. I am even being forced into flying for the first time in over a decade.

A veteran as dear to me as my sons, Lincoln Marston, is dying at Duke University Medical School. Just after New Year’s he suffered the rupture of an aneurysm in his brain and almost a dozen catastrophic strokes. His wife, Amy, also an Air Force veteran who served with him in Afghanistan has no income whatsoever at this time.  They have two young children who are just becoming terrified they will have to say farewell to their father.

It is time to support the troops, any of you who call me friend!  There is a site to help raise money….for everything from medical bills to funeral costs.  I take flight this weekend, with my…

View original post 49 more words

It’s funny what a nap does

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)4 Comments

I was having a pretty stellar end to my day yesterday. I finished up a charcoal drawing and was very stoked with how it came out. I had readied for shipping a new oil blend.

Then I caught up in places on Facebook after I said I wouldn’t. I know me well enough to know better. I really do. And yet …. so I put some movie on Netflix and settled in, determined to coast into someone else’s plot for a bit. I drifted to sleep about a half hour to 45 minutes in, awoke 30 minutes later and had missed a bunch of important things in the plot.

Bugger that. My mind drifted back to why I’d put the movie on in the first place. I noticed that once again a nap had cleared and focused a truth for me. None of this stuff matters. Who cares what I think? Who cares what anyone thinks? I realized, about 30 years late, that I don’t idolize celebrities. Or, whatever word belongs in here that causes people to feel really badly when an actor or musician, or other super famous person dies.

I have zero understanding of deep mourning for a famous person you didn’t know intimately in the flesh. I do not have a frame of reference for the sorrow for another that one has known only through their marketed self and products of their career.

I get a brief pang of sadness, a swig of sympathy for their beloveds, and a bit of wistfulness. Then I move on. And I mean move on to the next subject and have nearly forgotten already the death.

For my personal beloveds I mourn deeply. For famous folks, nope.

No intense mourning for: Elvis, Princess Diana, Robin Williams, Joe Cocker, Geta Garbo, Leonard Bernstein….. I could go on, but it would require more Googling because after the first three I was done. Stab of sadness, moved on – for all of them.

I also realized that whatever it is that makes this so, also makes me an outsider in my hometown sports network. Back when I was still following the local football team I would cheer and avidly watch the games, but if we lost I was over it when the game was over. I moved on. I stared oddly at those around me who stayed in a funk over a loss. “Why?”, I would ask. “They blew their job, but it is not *our* job”, I would say. People looked back at me just as oddly.

This disconnect with the public mourning means I have a grand lack of connection to other humans. It also means I should stay far away from tribute and mourning conversations, probably entirely, going forward. With the way this year is starting, I’m going to be spending little time reading Facebook. This is likely a good thing.

I have decided that in the grand scheme of my life, what matters is that I make more art and I make more oils.

There’s only a statute of limitations for the perp

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)4 Comments
I’m severely limiting my Facebook time until the shiny idol is buried. I hope it is soon. All humans are flawed, but celebrities get the tarnish polished off over and over again by their fans.

“Things were different 40 years ago” (when rape was not rape, I guess). My 14 y/o body was raped 40 years ago by a 28 y/o neighbour, but hey – things were different in the 70’s! Statute of limitations is UP!

He wasn’t *all bad*, so what he did doesn’t count. Not “is balanced against the good”, but cannot be spoken of.  Once you’re dead the tarnish is unfair. (Ignore that when alive it didn’t count, either, because money and power and patriarchy kept the silence.) 40 years, man, just let it go. He matured. He learned better. Men will be men …. what were you wearing? Did you look older? Are *you* perfect?

(I can assure you I am not perfect. I can also assure you I have never committed sexual assault.)

Either all humans are nuanced, or they are not. Insisting we applaud the shiny while denying the tarnish serves only the perpetrators in this society. But you can’t fight the deity of celebrity. The similar deities of time and memory serve those with power, too. Serving those who historically have had and will continue to hold the power, until we dismantle the patriarchal system.

When someone’s gifts only flourished because we buried their flaws under the bodies of young women, is that balanced? Is that our willing trade off? Apparently our answer is “yes”.

There is no  statute of limitations on being victim shamed and blamed. Thank gods we’re post rape culture. I can feel the difference from 40 years ago ….

And Now We Begin!

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

The world returns to routine today, the Monday after the holiday. Even if you work retail or health care where the places never close, energy moves underneath on the first workday back. Even for me, stretching through retirement.

I have PLANS for this year! I have repurposed a journal, I have committed to a thing, and an other thing. I have a loose list of more other things (because tight makes me procrastinate). Already, in day four, I feel the lightness in my body of returning to Joy.

I’m not going to write all of my plans. I’m keeping ego in check and not seeking outside affirmation, therefore I am not listing All The Things in one public post. Because when I listened to the impulse to do so, it was all about ego and not about accountability. Other folks will hold themselves accountable by public proclamations – my history suggests it doesn’t work that way for me. Heh.

Depending on where we are connected, you will see evidence of the things. If we’re deeply connected, you will know of all of the things. If we’re not deeply connected I am guessing it is safe to say you don’t give a hoot about all of my things and that is a-ok and as it should be.

Next topic:

Winter came today. I am not a fan. I get cold easily. Even with the hot flashes – irony to the 10th power, as bodies are weird and live on a scale of “1 to neener-neener” – I get very chilled. And yet!! When I saw the snow lying on the ground and felt the snap of cold air as I let the dog out this morning, something in me shifted and sighed “at last”. Having lived my life thus far in a place with 4 very distinct seasons, my soul has arranged itself to know things according these seasonal shifts.

I arose 1-2 hours earlier than I have for the last month. This is good. This is how I want it to be. I want my days to stretch with possibilities. I desire length to linger in them.

Hail winter! Welcome back.