Some Military Stuff

Detail from my latest painting, Amazonia Reborn.
It's a shame that serving in the Armed Forces isn't
more like being a legendary warrior instead of being
shit on every day by everyone who outranks you.

So you know how I rarely talk about my career on here? Well, this post is pretty much Army-centric, so skip it if you're only interested in the more Pagan-minded of my posts.

So I may be deploying right away once I get to my unit. I finally found out why no one has contacted me from the unit I’m joining in Texas, and it’s because they’re not IN Texas right now. They’re downrange, fighting the good fight, making the world safe for Democracy and all that jazz. So. I could either fall in with Rear Det…or I could disappear for half a year and see what happens. I’m glad I haven’t signed any papers on an apartment lease yet. On the up side, deployments = good career experience, saving the world, an opportunity to actually serve and fulfill my commitment to the Constitution as well as my personal ideals, etc, and then at least I found out *now* as opposed to after I show up and say, “Hey! I’m here! …Just kidding. Won’t bother to unpack.”

Then again, this is something that it would’ve been nice to know, say, when they left. But whatevs. No re-writing the past, eh?

I guess we’ll see what happens. I hate this uncertainty. I know that the majority of my unit is gone right now, but since they still have a lot of people state-side, it’s like 40/60 chance whether I’m staying/going. It all depends where they need me, and that’s not something I can find out until I do show up and say, “Hey! I’m here!”

I just wish I KNEW what I’d be doing! It changes my settling in vs. just getting a hotel for a week plan completely. It's times like these that I really wish I were just a Firebird.

One more week, just one more week, and then I’m out of this miserable state…at least until I hit O-3, that is.

Have I mentioned how much I hate Missouri?

Below is the full-size version of my latest painting. Enjoy. Since it's my work, please link back if you copy it. Thanks.

Seriously, This Time I Mean It.

Apparently she's a real-estate agent in Dreamland,
or at least she was the other night. Pic from here.

We had our last class on Thursday, so now all that’s left is to pack, outprocess, and head to Texas. I should be settling in by the end of the month with my new unit, apartment, and all that jazz. I’m excited, but a little anxious, which I’ve been able to tell by all the random dreams I’ve been having about the move. Last night I dreamt that I was driving to Texas and kept getting lost, and all I wanted to find was a hotel I could stay at for the night before I went apartment shopping. The night before that I dreamt that Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black’s character from Farscape) was my real estate agent, and she was showing me around a huge apartment, all painted white, complete with ten floating microwaves based on “an early Peacekeeper design.”

Really, I don’t know where my subconscious comes up with these things sometimes.

Other than that, I’ve finished writing the dialogue sketch of the final chapter in Aorea: The Spinner’s Journey, which puts me one step closer to actually finishing my first novel, woohoo! Before I write a chapter of my book(s), I always write out the barebones of each conversation that takes place in that chapter, like a screenplay or a script. It’s just character name: what they say. I’ve found it makes the actual writing process when the chapter comes around much simpler, as I’m just fleshing out the bones. It’s a process that works for me. For those of you who also write, what process do you use?

Now I’ll leave you with the lyrics of my latest song, composed during the final day of class, expressing (as usual) my pent-up frustrations. I’ve titled it “Seriously, This Time I Mean It.” Enjoy!

Standing in the rain,
wanting to see your face,
if only to hit you. I want to hurt you,
     to make you feel this way.
You’re really an ass, you know.
A class-A jerk off. No, no, no…
I think I changed my mind.
I’d rather not hit you, I just
     want to leave you behind.
I hate this open sky;
I hate this damn denial.
I can’t wait to get out of this state
     and re-start my life.


Five years from now,
     I will not know your name.
I will not remember why I
wanted you in the first place.
And ten years ahead,
     you won’t even exist
to me. You’ll be just a dream
     that faded before it lived.


Filling up my car
with boxes in the dark,
so I don’t have to see the mess
I’m leaving, not thinking about
     where you are.
I guess I’ll miss my friends,
but hey now, in the end,
the ones I want to see, I’ll see.
As for you? We better
     never meet again.


CHORUS


Before I leave I want you to know
with every mile I put between us,
     I’ll be happier.
And when I arrive to my new desert home,
You won’t cross my mind, not once.
     I’m done. It’s over.


CHORUS

God/ess Statues

So I’m back in the (not so great) state of Missouri. The Bad News: I’m here. The Good News: I’m only here for three more weeks, roughly. Anywho, I’ve been a busy little (Pagan) artist in the past week. I don’t have an oven in my apartment, so while I was at my parent’s house in Virginia I decided to make use of their baking capabilities to get back into my sculpting. For quite some time I have been wanting little statues of my m/patron deities, but as an artist I always have a hard time buying anything that I could make myself. Furthermore, I believe that things we create with our own hands have more power than things someone else—or especially a machine—creates. Thus, I bought a pack of polymer clay and I went to work.

I couldn’t complete the statues in Virginia because I’d left my paints at my apartment, so I had to wait until I drove back here to add color. Anywho, the way I have chosen to represent my deities may not be the way they’re usually represented, but it’s to the best of my modest abilities I have fashioned god/ess statues as I see them. I took some pictures of the finished products, posted below. Enjoy!

Diana:
In her many incarnations throughout the centuries, Diana has been the virgin goddess of the moon and the hunt. However, she existed prior to the Roman mythologized version (linked with Artemis after the Greek influence), and that’s the version I follow. I honor Diana at the Full Moon.

The Morrighan:
Irish goddess of war and (somewhat) sex. She flies over battlefields in the form of a Raven and mates with the Daghda at Beltaine. Pretty badass. I honor the Morrighan at the New Moon.

Cernunnos:
A Celtic god, Lord of the Forest, Lord of the Animals. I associate him with the Green Man, and although he’s usually depicted with the antlers of a Stag, but in a dream once he looked more like a satyr, only without the goat legs. Although I do not work with him as often as I do Diana and the Morrighan, but now and then he pops up in my meditations.