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Below are the 4 most recent journal entries recorded in
jessicamelusine's InsaneJournal:
| Friday, June 20th, 2008 | |
| 9:56 am | On the plus side, sunny day and hennaed hair is red gloriousness... |
| Thursday, March 20th, 2008 | |
| 1:52 pm | Sunnydale Bhakti, Or Why I Love Buffy The Vampire Slayer for Idiomagic since she asked the question you think you know who you are Learn first --- Oh thou who aspirest unto our ancient Order! --- that Equilibrium is the basis of the Work. If thou thyself hast not a sure foundation, whereon wilt thou stand to direct the forces of Nature?--Liber Librae you have a sacred birthright to protect mankind. Don’t stick out your elbow. I came late to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, starting in Season Four. My roommate in Boston asked me if I wanted to watch and Tuesdays became Buffy nights. I was captivated by the magic, the humor, the fierce love, the adventure, the idea of potential. I daydreamed about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When she moved along, I watched with friends. It was kind of hip. However, I didn’t say how much I connected with it, how much it resonated. I was trying not to care. I didn’t want to look like a nerd, or worse, a fan. I had met people who had action figures and droolingly talked about how hot the cast was, had action figures, every line memorized without actually thinking about it. I hadn’t been a fan long enough, couldn’t keep up. I learned that sometimes fans were just as bigoted and cruel as the outside world itself, especially in regard to alternative families or queer relationships. I watched the last episode with self-proclaimed fans who just complained while I tried to choke back tears because it meant something deep to me that I couldn’t even say. If liking Buffy was being like them, I could cut it off. I could live with the hurt. I thought it was ruined for me. Perhaps it was or perhaps it was just sleeping, like that tiny spark of Slayerness that quickens at the right time. Before and during this, I studied magick. Then I got sick. I spent a lot of time alone. I felt down and stuck in my own practice. It was then that Buffy came back, slowly working around my corners, reminding me like an old friend that you know, I’m still here. I put the first disc in the player and like the magic worms spilled by the peach tree in James and the Giant Peach, things began to happen and nothing would ever be the same. This show, seven years of it, is a living thing. Put it on your shelf and go to bed. It’ll whisper to you in your sleep. Joss Whedon, from the Buffy Chosen collection. what’s to come Thou then, who hast trials and troubles, rejoice because of them, for in them is Strength, and by their means is a pathway opened unto that Light--Liber Librae I watched again. This time I just let myself love and watch and enjoy. I not only was reunited with old friends, I saw echoes of my own work and new ideas that made my own enjoyment from before, richer, sweeter and more refined. I believe in the Great Work, about learning and mastery and knowing thyself. There are other things that get in the way and it’s part of The Work , trying to balance and connect, a dance that grows ever more complex with each year, yet perhaps easier. Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes me think about the work of becoming whole. Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes me think about deciding to do the work. Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes me think about initiation. The core group is all different people—gay, straight, human, non-human, doing the work of initiation, transformation and becoming whole. There is laughter and pain and the uncanny and most of all, passion—in love, in work, in anger and in suffering and all these are the alchemical fires of transformation. Look now. None of the Scoobies are the same as they were on that first day in a Southern California town that never was, yet always is and forever shall be. the hardest thing in this world is to live in it Is it but now that the Higher Life is beset with dangers and difficulties; hath it not ever been so with the Sages and Hierophants of the past?--Liber Librae Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes me think about living two, possibly more lives at once. It’s about having a calling and being aware while still living in the world. The Scoobies are outsiders, walkers between realms, having to balance the weight of the world and the mundane at once—there may be demons and rogue Slayers and monsters, but there are also tests that don’t make sense, dead end jobs, broken hearts and the frustration and loneliness that comes from seeing worlds that others can’t. By choosing to see beyond the confining structures we all have around us, there is great peril as well as great joy. It’s a reminder that as well as being great, sometimes the work is indeed work. Yet Buffy the Vampire Slayer does not deny the body and humanity and loves the physical world too. Being aware means understanding and appreciating—there are wonders that include simple things like mochas from the Espresso Pump, sex, donuts, Manchester United, people walking around like Happy Meals on Legs, … and a dance with someone beloved can literally sweep you off your feet in a glorious mix of the otherworldly and the perfectly earthly. While sitting on the ramparts of a castle, Buffy herself sits and daydreams about missing churros. It is that mix of the human and the epic that resonates for me so deeply and why I do care about Buffy and Xander and Willow and Tara and Spike and Anya and Giles and Angel and Dawn and Andrew. They are all involved in doing the work, all involved in integrating the selves that walk in strange worlds with what they are and all doing the work of transformation—all on different paths, but together. It makes me think of individual work and community and the powers therein. It’s part of this story that people make poor choices, get confused, power-hungry, aloof. It’s another part of it that they keep coming back, keep evolving, continue to refine themselves and keep becoming. The story does not end when you think it ends because the Work never does. Know then, that as man is born into this world amidst the Darkness of Matter, and the strife of contending forces; so must his first endeavour be to seek the Light through their reconciliation.--Liber Librae Buffy the Vampire Slayer is about that struggle towards refinement and perfection and how it is always intertwined with love, how the monstrous and the sensual and the sane and insane and the ordinary commingle. At times they even embrace and copulate in a frenzy of joy and awareness, the human, the superhuman and the demonic and all things beyond. This is not just transgressive. It’s apocalyptic. As a culture, we don’t embrace and transform our demons. We shove them away. We want to stay the same. This symbology breaks down the boundaries of angel and demon, between beast and human, even earthly and divine. This is the space where alchemy happens, where things become something else. By the end of the series, vampires are not always the enemy, pain and death are part of life but not the end, the end of all things does not demand self-sacrifice and the outcasts have changed the course of the world forever. So Buffy, what are you going to do now? Act passionately; think rationally; be Thyself.--Liber Librae you haven’t even begun True ritual is as much action as word; it is Will.-Liber Librae Even now, I still find new ways to read Buffy, new ways that I connect with it, consider it. Much like life itself, the story hasn’t ended, but after the apocalyptic battle that changes the world forever, the Scoobies are still going forth, moving on and trying to find their place in this new world. There’s an after past the epic battle and what’s appearing are revelations about power, about being heroes, the work that remains after any age struggles to be born and still, the balance, always the balance. I do not know what will happen next, but I’m glad I get to have them as companions, as ideas, as genii, as sparks to light understanding and awaken thought even now. That’s why I have a statue of Willow by my magick books, to the things I choose to study, as a monument to the work of creating myself. She is floating above a circle of candles, luminous, surrounded my books, in a moment of perfect balance. Since it’s Willow, she might fall, she might say oops and she may have to do it again—but for now she’s there, centered, barefoot and in a tiedyed shirt and there, Will made manifest. Buffy is there, in a poster by Jo Chen. She has her scythe over her shoulder and her eyes are closed and peaceful, yet she is balanced, centered and aware, a warrior and a person for a moment in perfect equilibrium. She may fall, but she’ll get back up. She’s died twice after all. For now, she’s here. So am I. Beyond Sunnydale and all over the world, the Great Work continues. I’m glad Buffy is there to inspire me. I’m happier still that I let her. Therefore, as hath already been said, Establish thyself firmly in the equilibrium of forces, in the centre of the Cross of the Elements, that Cross from whose centre the Creative Word issued in the birth of the Dawning Universe.-Liber Librae are you ready to be strong? Liber Librae: http://sacred-texts.com/oto/lib30.htmht |
| Monday, March 17th, 2008 | |
| 12:31 pm | How I Became Armless There was a picture.It's gone now, but I remember it. It was my second year of being officially homeschooled, there was me and a certificate and the duck I won, named Webster. I was five. It was a story about a cave girl. I won first prize. My first sister was still a baby. The cutoff for the Cricket magazine contest was twelve. I had years to go. I don't see my mother or my father. One of them must have been taking the picture. I remember the sun and the orange and yellow loungers on the deck that would squish out old rainwater when you pressed them. The picture was me and the duck and the blue ribbon certificate. That was the minute that I became valuable, quantifiable. That was when we--all my siblings and I--did, even though they weren't there. Lots of people have their narratives, their stories about telling stories and filling notebooks. I wish I had those. I remember telling myself stories in my head, the infinite loop of things that would happen, the things I would tell myself in the dark. I never wrote those down. Every month and before that my mother would sit down with Cricket magazine. We would write winners. I would write something. That's NOT ON TOPIC she'd say or she'd say That's too sophisticated or worse, she'd scream and cry. I'd write stories and I'd hate them. She'd say it was editing and I'd grit my teeth and copy the same story again and again onto lined paper to send until I was exhausted. Every month we would wait. We were known for winning. I had a wall in my bedroom full of certificates. When the month came around at least one of us would cry if someone else got a First Prize or a Second Prize and someone else got a honorable mention. If the new Cricket came out and I wasn't a winner, I'd throw it across the room or I'd cry. Don't you dare crumple that Honorable Mention my mother would say it needs to be framed. My parents loved the stack of prizes, the wall of certificates. I never wrote anything that they could see. I showed them poems. They said they were wonderful and wondered where I could submit them. My father still says I need to write the next DaVinci Code because I'm the best writer he's ever seen and you know, you could support the family! They were kooky alternative parents. I was A Credit and look at all the things Our Kids have won!, they loved showing us off. I hit twelve. The contest stopped for me. No prizes. No nothing. I was numb. I was a member of the high school literary magazine because I was expected to be and because it was the Thing That I Did. It looked good on a college application. They said I was going to be a writer, make money, but that they were disappointed in me, I could do lots more and why didn't I send things places to make money? It felt like they owned that part of me. I told them what they wanted to hear. I'm not proud. I still told myself stories. My mother screamed at me before I went to school don't you dare dedicate a book to me! My father always says I ought to dedicate one to him, since he encouraged me, that he takes credit for my success. I wanted things to be mine. I kept journals. My mother found them. She didn't like them. I remember the day before I was supposed to go back from school, I stayed up in my dorm room, shredding what I had, pushing it into an empty trashcan, pouring water on it so the ink liquefied, feeling numb. (I have said this before. It still haunts me.) I wrote poetry and won A Prize. It was what mattered. There was money. I was going to grad school. I still told myself stories. I don't write poetry any more. I wish I did. Now. I'm not a professor.I don't have a book. I'm a contract tech writer. I am not what they said I was going to be. Sometimes I don't quite know what I am. I still tell myself stories. It is like pulling teeth to write them down. I think in money, derivativeness, there's already someone like me, isn't that genre played, where do you want to be really, isn't that so 96? do you want to look like another con person, what's your place, what's your persona besides you're not in SF or NY anyway and you can't make a living and everyone else and... I can write here because it doesn't seem to be so heavy. No one is giving me money or not giving me money. I can tear out a story here or there. I want to write. It is hard. It makes me choke or I sit like I am clutching things to me. I feel like I have no hands, like they got taken away or I wore them down writing furiously until I was twelve or like I chopped them away after another sibling won and I didn't. It seems like such a small thing to cry about. I hug the stories in the dark to me. I still tell them to myself. Perhaps someday I'll grow fingers or I'll make them out of silver. They'll be mine. Perhaps then I'll be able to write them down. I want to. |
| Thursday, October 4th, 2007 | |
| 1:14 pm | Hello, this is Jessica Melusine. I have OpenId at http://jessicamelusine.livejournal.com/ |