26 September 2011

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Forbidden, for a valid reason, but you know
     that’s never stopped me before.
Yet I’m no good at keeping secrets…
     maybe it’s time I finally learn.
You could be the answer to
     the question I never knew
          how to ask.
If you are, it’s worth the risk, but
     I want something real, something I can
          put my hands on.
I’m trying to wrap my head around this,
     trying to fit a name to what I have
     (as well as what I lack), and I am
Trying to give the best that I can,
     trying to escape this place home free,
     and I hope that you will escape with me.

You better believe that this is destiny
     we’re messing with…
(I’ve got a mission that I can’t quit).
This is your only warning:
     I will not be broken in.
I will live and die untamed by any man.

Forbidden, you’re a poisoned apple
     and a hidden gem;
I wish I could take the rose
     without pricking my hand.
Even as I hide behind the dark,
     I want to show you all my scars.
Let you take my hand, so I can
     lead you into the night:
Sure as shadows--sure as winter
     follows autumn--you will
          follow me,
And it’s deadly how much
     I want you to succeed.

You better believe that this is destiny
     we’re messing with…
(I’ve got a mission that I can’t quit).
This is your only warning:
     I will not be broken in.
I will live and die untamed by any man.
I will live and die untamed by any man.

18 September 2011

I Have The Weirdest Dreams. Srsly.

Picture of stars & nebula from here.
The things my subconscious produces at night really concern me sometimes.

I may or may not have mentioned this on my blog in the year that I’ve been a blogger, but I have a lot of apocalyptic dreams. I dreamt once that nuclear bombs were dropped on every major (and some not-so-major) city in the United States, and in that dream I went back in time to save my family. I couldn’t save my father. I’ve had at least a dozen dreams in which I was battling zombies, usually with a sword. Once was on a hill in Scotland, once was in a cave in China, once was at my university. Several more, the locations didn’t matter, they were just generically dark and depressing post-apocalyptic cities. I dreamt once that vampires had overrun the world, and there were just a handful of us surviving humans who fought them from the underground. I’ve dreamed twice of an alien invasion. The first time was two Sundays ago. The aliens were some strange, floating, legless but vaguely humanoid creatures with long tentacles for hair and thin, ethereal arms. They were all gray and blue and white, and to an extent, reminded me of the Wraith in the Stargate: Atlantis series. I encountered them in a military setting; they came out of the woods during a training exercise and burned the legs off of one of my comrades. It was a disturbing dream, although I wouldn’t exactly call it a nightmare. I’ve only ever had three of those my entire life, and they’re the only dreams I won’t talk about. With anyone. Ever.

The second time I dreamt an apocalypse via alien invasion was last night, and parts of that dream take my breath away just to remember. I have a vivid imagination, and my dreams have always been realistic in sensation if not exactly realistic in situation, but last night…it was something else entirely. I remember carrying a large man on my shoulders up a hill, running as fast as I could with his weight pressing on my back and straining my quads. I remember running over stone and crumbling pavement as the shifting earth gave way beneath me, deafening gunfire, bullets ricocheting off of concrete and splintering wood. I remember seeing an army of men, led by a small, elegant women in a black dress. I remember, down to ever word, every coy smile, my conversation with her. I remember trying to kill her, only to discover that her skin healed over faster than I could cut with my little knife. She was laughing at me the whole time.

But I knew—even as she laughed at me, as she told me not to call her an immortal, but simply to accept that I couldn’t kill her—that I could do it. I could put an end to the invasion by taking her out, and I knew how. I took out her general. I remember exactly how that felt.

And it was all just another post-apocalyptic dream. Again: sometimes my subconscious produces the darnedest things. I’ve never even come close to doing some of the things that I did as easily as breathing in last night’s dream. I’ve hiked up a slew of mountains and hills, with various amounts of weight on my back, but never a full-grown man weighing me down. I’ve fought men and women of varying sizes in combatives classes, but never been in an actual fight. I’ve only heard gunfire in a controlled setting, at a range, and with hearing protection muffling the sounds. Yet this dream was as true and real feeling as if I had done all of those things, as if I lived another life in another reality in which a spaceship, painted to mimic the night sky, hovered over America like a writhing, twisting, spinning thing. It was gorgeous, but it was dangerous, and I knew both things simultaneously as soon as I saw it.

And then I woke up, and the dream was over, and I’ll never know how the story ends. It was all in my head; I was the heroine, the leader, humanity’s last great hope, and I will never know if in that version of the apocalypse I lived or died, failed or succeeded. I woke up mid-sentence in my conversation with the aliens’ leader, her annoyingly perfect smile lingering before my eyes, the memories of the dream teasing my ears and nose and all-too-realistically aching shoulders.

I normally like my dreams. I'm prone to dreaming adventures, and journeys, and complicated story lines with a peppering of action, romance, and comedy. I've dreamed of finding love in a forest from another time, and I've dreamed a message from an ancient goddess. My dreams of battling zombies are always fun, although the dank, dark settings are generally depressing. My alien invasion dreams? I'm not enjoying them quite as much as I'd've hoped. I miss dreaming about the Forest Lord. He can wander back in my subconscious any night and I'll be just pleased as peaches.

Queen Mab, have you been visiting my bedside? Perhaps I need to make a bigger dreamcatcher and slip some lavender under my pillow. I smell another tarot reading in my future.

15 September 2011

Bone-Knowledge

Earth Goddess Moonshine by avewa-je-me
It occurred to me today after I finally got online long enough to catch up on the blogs I follow and check the (nearly pitiful) traffic stats for my (pathetically un-updated) blog that the one-year-birthday of my blog came and went without any note. So. Consider it now noted: my blog is one year old, plus a little change. Happy birthday, World Between The Trees!

Now that that’s out of the way, on to what I’ve been doing lately that’s kept me so busy and away from my laptop. We’ve had a shitton of training, mostly shooting and qualifying and hitting up various ranges, not to mention a pile of briefings. The shooting was the fun stuff. For the record, targets. Just targets.

Other than that, I’ve felt closer to the Earth for some reason. Maybe it’s the approaching autumn or being up so early every morning (usually around 4) that I can still see all the stars—including my beloved Orion—but regardless, it’s there, that feeling. I closed my eyes when I was out on the range this morning, just listening to the wind sweep across the grass and feeling my roots dig into ground beneath me, and knew. I knew I was a child of the Goddess, in all her incarnations. I knew my life had a purpose, and that purpose is what brought me to my current location and with this specific group of people. I knew that I was meant to lead. In what capacity and for how long and where I’ll be in a decade are still evading me, but there was still the simple knowing, the gut-knowledge, bone-knowledge, that I was where and when and how and with whom I’m meant to be.

It’s a good feeling.

08 September 2011

Three Perfect Seasons

Picture from here.
I went through a lot of my old poetry and song lyrics about a month ago, and I came across some interesting things. I wrote this set of lyrics several years ago--I think right around winter of my freshman year of college--and, like most of my stuff, I find it thematically resonates with me now even more than it did when I originally wrote it. I also like the imagery in this one, but of course, I could be biased. Hope you enjoy it! And please don't judge me too harshly; I was young. Hells, I still am, and if you haven't noticed, I have a thing for overly dramatic imagery surrounding the relationship between seasons, especially autumn. Title: "Three Perfect Seasons" (yes, just like the title of this entry, if you're one of those observant types).

He looks like the wintertime;
You remind me of a summer, long gone by.
Now everything is quite alright:
I have frost at my fingertips, poetry by candlelight, 
     dark hair, and darker eyes.
Almost a year has passed since I
Threw it all away, my summer sky,
     on a song and in a night. 
Now everything is turning out just fine: 
Winter brushing autumn lips, chocolate and fireside, 
     cold hands and colder lies.


We’re almost alright now, and I’ve almost forgiven you,
And we’re almost alive now, and you’re almost telling me the truth.


So let’s hear it for the earth who moves around the sun, 
Making sure that we end up exactly where we had begun. 
We’re on speaking terms again; 
You’re asking me your questions, 
     and it takes all I am not to give in. 
He is still my winter present; 
You are still my summer past, the memory of that
     which should never end.


We’re almost alright now, and I’ve almost forgiven you, 
And we’re almost alive now, and you’re almost telling me the truth. 


Now let’s hear it for the moon who moves around the earth, 
Counting months as they pass
     and fail to heal the hurt.
Now everything is quite alright:
I have icy windowpanes, winter snow that still remains,
     glistening in the starlight,
My star-bright.


We’re almost alright now, and I’ve almost forgiven you,
And we’re almost alive now, and you’re almost telling me the truth.


I’ll make a wish upon a star, shooting across the November sky.
Kick my seasons out of order; make my planets align.
Keep the winter from entering so fall and summer can collide.


We’re almost alright now, and I’ve almost forgiven you,
And we’re almost alive now, and you’re almost telling me the truth. 
We’re almost alright now, and I’ve almost forgotten you, 
And we’ve said goodbye now, but we’ve never told the truth. 
We’re almost just fine now, and I’ve fallen again for you, 
And we’re almost perfect now: isn’t that the beautiful, perfect truth?

03 September 2011

Being An Adult

It’s funny how little energy I have these days for any sort of writing. I’ve been creative in other ways—I made a new painting, and eventually I’ll post pictures of it, once the original has made its way to the person for whom I made it—but I’ve had nothing to blog say blog-wise. Anywho, my apologies for the my long blogging absence. Truth be told, I haven’t even been keeping up with the bazillion blogs I follow as of late. I’ve re-read some old favorite books (Wolfskin, Foxmask, The Sorceress and the Cygnet) and I’ve been re-watching all of my Buffy and Angel DVDs concurrently…but I just haven’t been active in the blogosphere. Regardless, I’m back.

To celebrate my return to (relatively) regular blogging, a list of things that make me feel like an adult:


  1. Doing my own dishes. I don’t have a dishwasher in my apartment, so my roommate and I take turns washing everything by hand. As much as I despised and avoided this activity while living with my parents, I now find it strangely soothing, much like folding laundry.
  2. On that note, doing my own laundry. While I’ve done this for several years now, it never ceases to make me feel that much more of a real, live adult every time I transfer my (unsorted) bundle of clothes from washer to drier.
  3. Having friends who are married, friends who have children, and friends who are married with children. I’ll admit most of my friends are single, but an increasing percentage of the people I socialize, work, and work out with are engaged, married, parents, etc. Of course, my now having *peers* whose ages range from 21 to 38 probably has something to do with that, too.
  4. Using a water filter. For some reason, every time I change the filter on my little Brita water dispenser, I get a pleasant twinge of adulthood-feelings. Just changed it this morning, so next time due is in November!
  5. Having my own set of wine glasses. Albeit these were a gift from Little Brother, they’re so pretty, and seeing them makes me smile and feel all adult-like. He’s the bestest little brother ever in the whole history of little brotherhood. Just don’t tell Littlest Brother I said that. I love them both equally. ☺
  6. Taking road trips to visit extended family members all by my lonesome. Taking roadtrips in general, come to think of it. I really like driving, blaring my music from my ipod, and singing along with every word. Perhaps that’s still the I wish I was a teenage with no responsibility whatsoever lingering in me, but roadtrips themselves—stopping for gas, hitting up whatever Starbucks I feel so inclined to hit up, using my GPS that I bought with my own money—definitely increases the I feel like an adult factor.
  7. And, finally, and perhaps the thing that makes me feel most like a member of the working, adult-society: buying eggs. Like in so many other areas, it’s the little things. I so love the feeling of going to the grocery store and picking out my very own carton of organic, free-range eggs.
Oh the magic of everyday life.