Rededication

This evening I did a healing on my husband, which gave him instant relief and sent him off to sleep. Reflecting, I realized I had not done this in a very long time. My only excuse is my own excess of physical imbalances, which, as usual, all have very much mental and spiritual causes. None of which I seem able to single out, identify, and correct.

Like anyone else, I am so much better at dispensing advice than at taking it myself. Often I listen to others, when I should be listening to my inner self. And, like any Cancerian, at times I am resistant to change, any change, because of insecurities. Sometimes I make a half-change, a sort of compromise. Why, I don’t know, since it has almost invariably turned out to be to my detriment.

At the beginning of this year, I took a long look back at my financial success, or lack of such, with the many projects I have worked on since the year 2002. The year I was flat told by a temporary company that I was unemployable, and by a janitorial company that I was a security risk, and by the mirror that I’m too damn old and ugly to strip for a living. I’m too old for a cashier at Wal-mart, and too young to be a greeter. And too damn smart in either case. Apparently, taking two years off the workplace to care for a dying relative is obviously a bogus excuse in today’s employment competition.

Since then I’ve built websites, adult and mainstream, sold my art and collectibles on eBay, had a CafePress store, a Deviant Art page, written porn for pay, and articles for my blogs and other websites for free, created clipart and banners and now and then someone actually pays me for something. I’ve created a website chock full of information to carry Google Ads and had Google de-index it for no discernable reason. On the other hand, I am making more every month with Google ads on my graphics website – a use that Google says is always unprofitable.

After some extensive research and thought, I concluded that my best financial decision for the use of my talents would be to dedicate myself to my writing. However, for various reasons, I had left the porn for pay position some months earlier to concentrate on higher quality work.

Imagine my dismay to discover, after selling a couple of short stories and one novel, that the porn, I mean “romance”, genre of ebooks were largely of such dismal writing quality that I’m embarrassed to be associated with them. A much higher standard of writing was expected for the porn sites. (So if you have been buying “romances” for masturbation use, let me suggest that your money would be better spent joining a quality porn site that provides photos, videos, and higher quality fiction).

Yet, I continued to write porn, I mean, “romance”. It was what I am familiar with. (Well, sex is, this “romance” stuff I’ve never believed in, desired, or bothered with in real life or fiction) And as an ex-exotic dancer, I know that basic principle that makes the world go around.

Sex Sells.

Cancer that I am, I want to cling to the familiar, to the thing that has worked in the past to make money. I have a strong tendency to cling to the past, to obsess over the past, to a point that is unhealthy for me. I know this. Doesn’t always help me stop doing it though.

Financial insecurity is a strange and scary sensation for me. I have been the breadwinner for myself and one or more dependents since I was about fifteen years old. Even when I was in a relationship, often as not, I made more money than the other person(s) involved. It is alien to me to be dependant. It is alien to me to need more money for bare necessities, and not be able to make it by taking a second, or even third job, or some odd jobs. It is downright frightening to me that in the last five years or so, I seem to have become completely incapable of making enough to even support myself.

On top of that, I have been criticized a great deal, by everyone but my husband, for some of my decision making and prioritizing as far as spending what money we do have. He and I have different priorities from most of the people in this city. And no one here is too shy to tell you how stupid they think you are. Their idea of “success” and ours is not the same. Because they are many and we are two, the concept is that we are idiots. Since I make the decisions, I am the real idiot and he would be so much better off without me. Especially since I am “living off him”. The many years I supported him, or at least made a greater income than he, apparently count for nothing.

Need a shovel and wheelbarrow for that guilt?

I keep telling myself the discomfort is internal insecurities, caused by the abuse and ridicule I received the entire first half of my life. I tell myself it is just the pain of making a change. The time delay between writing a novel and receiving that first royalty check. But that isn’t all of the problem.

Knowing something was still not right in what I am doing, I’ve been divining, reading my tarot, reading my horoscope, and looking for signs. Most likely, I am looking so hard because I am refusing to see something in front of my face. I’m analyzing dreams, re-reading Edgar Cayce, Stuart Wilde, Sylvia Brown, Louise Hay, half way through my own reference library and buying new books. Seeking and not finding. More likely, seeking and refusing to see.

In the Pagan cycle of the year, dedication and re-dedication to the Lady is usually done in spring – along with a thorough spring-cleaning. Somehow, this spring, I could not get that thorough cleaning accomplished. I would start, and then something would draw me away. I couldn’t even focus on cleaning. I felt just overwhelmed with the mess, with the clutter, with not having enough money to do anything the way I wanted to. I gave up.

Last weekend, a number of not very nice things happened. What, in particular, is unimportant. They were just two exclamation marks at the end of a sentence that has been nothing but bad luck and struggle for six months. I believe life is not meant to be a struggle. I know something is wrong.

I gave myself a weeks vacation. I’ve played video games. I’ve spent hours every day at the pool, swimming and sunning. I’ve had long walks along the river. I’ve been kayaking. And each day, somehow, I would end up doing a major cleaning of one room of the house, until finally, a real spring cleaning has been accomplished.

So, tonight after doing a healing such as I had not done in probably a year, I thought to myself, if I’m going to go on doing that, I need to go gather up the energy that I can. It is Monday – Moonday – and a full moon. I donned my newly finished and favorite blue sparkly muumuu with the moons and stars, picked up a couple of items that seemed good to have along, and let myself outside into the moonlight.

Walking down the riverbank to a favorite perch, I made myself comfortable. I did a drawing down the moon ritual, bathing myself in Her purity and light. At her bidding I turned my back and watched the river as she poured her healing light down my back that has caused me so much trouble and pain, lately.

A beaver swam past me, unafraid and unaware of me. I realized I was upwind of him, by the breeze in my hair and softly brushing my muumuu. The beaver turned and swam back, nearly to the foot of the bank and then past again. A plant leaf brushed my calf, softly. I listened to the slap of the river, the frogs singing, a birdcall. I was thinking of something I overheard today, and some other things I have overheard, sitting by the river these past few years.

These sex novels, this porn, oh, I’m sorry, “romance” for stunted, deprived, sad little Suzy Suburbias who fantasize about the life that I got out and lived, are such a complete waste of my time. These are the women who sneer down their nose at me if they meet me and get to know me at all, who laugh at me behind my back, and who secretly hate me because they envy me for having gone out and lived the life they were too frightened to risk living. It is all shallow and worthless foolishness that serves no purpose in the world. It certainly does me no positive good to be hated and sneered at to my face, and envied in secret.

This is real. This river. This moon. That leaf soft on my calf. This hard rock under my ass. That beaver. The fox who dens across the river. The terns who nest on that sandbar. Not only are these things real, these things, my brothers and sisters in life, are in danger. They are in danger from pure ignorance. They are in danger because people can jog by with their heads in the air and their iPod in their ear and never see the beauty around them. (Then they go home and take their Prozac and think life is so horrible and ugly)

That is what I want to write about. I want to grab you and shake you and say, “Look, look at that fish. Do you know it is unchanged since the dinosaurs walked the earth? Look at that bird! He flies thousands of miles every year to nest on this sandbar, that tiny little bird. Look at that tree! Does it block your river view? It keeps the river from sucking off the bank and dragging your apartment away. Do you see that little feral cat? His life is hard. It is your fault. What? The river smells? It shouldn’t. It should smell clean and full of life. If it smells of sewage…then whose shit is that, and how did it wind up in our river? You should be mad, alright, but not at the river for being here, but at the city officials who think they can get away with dumping raw sewage in it because your only notice will be to say Ugh River Stinks. Oh, do those homeless people disturb your little suburban fantasy? Then why don’t you ask how they ended up that way, instead of asking your councilman to get them off your pristine streets by slapping them in jail?”

That is what I want to write about. These are the things I want to draw. These things are important. Maybe I’ll be able to get them published. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll end up selling them, or trying to, off Lulu.com (self publishing). Hell, maybe I’ll starve.

(I thought about a friend who, probably half jokingly said I should write children’s novels for a year to get away from porn. The Lady whispered in my ear that she would not have put him in my life right now if there weren’t a reason)

Maybe I’ll touch One Person and give them a reason to care. Maybe I’ll open One Person’s eyes to the beauty at their feet and they’ll toss their Prozac down the toilet and cancel their therapists’ appointment and buy a kayak instead. Maybe a kid will read something I wrote, and start spending their summer afternoons watching birds instead of watching violence and car chases on TV. Maybe one fake Pagan will stand under the full moon in a forest and really feel the power of the lady in the earth under their feet, the breeze on their skin, and feel the fellowship of the creatures hiding all around them and realize this world is not pretend, this world is for real.

And it isn’t all about sex.

Blessedbe