Random Dionysian Fandom Chick

So, first off, I has a dragon egg!  Go clicky! 


Beyond that, I am about 3000 words behind on two separate novels, wanna know what I'm doing tonight?

Researching the hell out of the roots and origins of modern witchcraft (as well as the usage of the term(s)) because it has absolutely NOTHING to do with any of my stories.  Catching up on classes at Real Magic School now that they're back up and running again.  Watching The Road to El Dorado with the kids (we're babysitting this weekend while everyone else is at the Gathering Coordinator's meeting.) 

In other words?  Anything and everything to avoid my stories.

I'm actually not minding my HP story, and will probably work on it in a bit.  But my original story?  The one that's on my long-term NaNo account?  Is making me beyond crazy.  

One of the exercises given as a prelude to NaNoWriMo is writing your "Magna Cartas" - lists of (respectively) the things you love in books you read and the things you absolutely hate and despise.  The point is both to help give you ideas of a story you might like to write and spark brain storming, and also to give you a way to check yourself if you start writing stories that contain the very qualities you despise.  Which is a more common occurence than you might think, actually.

I'm not to the point of actively having elements of my second Magna Carta (the bad one) yet, but I am at the point of looking at the story thus far, and where I think it's going, and realizing it's going to be one that I wouldn't be particularly interested in reading if I were browsing a bookstore myself and ran across it.  Normally, this phenomenon is common in week 2... mine's hit rather early in week one.

Sigh.

So instead, I'm going to go finish up the lesson and test for the class I'm on, probably read another chapter or two in Bonewits's Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca (for the record, one of the best sources I've found thus far at discussing the "myths" verses the probably realities and research on both the definition(s) of the terms and the origins of the movement - it is not a "wicca 101" type of book),

That said, can Isaac Bonewits be my anthropologically-perceptive pagan-researcher boyfriend?  I'll take good care of him and keep him with Alton Brown (my kitchen-guru boyfriend).  

Please, no one keel over from shock.

You scored as Greek Pantheonic Pagan. One of the best well-known pantheons around is Greek, due to the popularity of the Greek myths. Pagans who fall into this catagory tend to follow the Mother and Father images of Zues and Hera, but it's not at all uncommon for their patron deities to be other Greek Gods or Heroes, such as Ares, Hades, Persephone, Apollo, Artemis, or Dionysis. Lusty and dramatic, the Greek Gods call to those who like epic tales and wild romance. You either already are a Greek Pantheon follower, or else you look to them often for insight. </td> Greek Pantheonic Pagan 100% Ecclectic Pagan 60% Roman Pantheonic Pagan 50% Catholic (Pagan?) 45% Egyptian Pantheonic Pagan 45% Shamanic Pagan 40% Zoroastrian Pagan 40% Eastern Pagan 20% Kabbalistic Pagan 20% Celtic Pantheonic Pagan 15% Norse Pantheonic Pagan (Asatru) 15% Sumerian, Babylonian, and Mesopotamian Pagans 5% What kind of Pagan are you? created with QuizFarm.com

In other news, I'm not dead, but my computer would like to be. We're trying to go through and defragment all our harddrives and see if that helps matters any. Since both physical drives are partitioned, that may take awhile. Hopefully it'll make the computer stop making the squeaky mouse/ill-piglet noises. Ugh. So I may not be around so very much for several days (is also why I haven't been around for several days previous to this post.

Yes, I'm still working on the fics I'm writing. Promise.

What is so compelling about Starbuck? Kara?

She... well, she "feels" right. There's a certain symmetry, not of character, but of emotion and expression that resonates with me, the way that Sarah McLachlan's older work used to resonate with me. (And how very disconcerting it was to realize that that didn't work anymore - to come to the painful conclusion that while beautiful and moving, The Freedom Sessions doesn't "match" me anymore. :( I'm nothing like Starbuck in most of the ways that count. I'm not athletic, I'm not driven, I'm not loudly rebellious or willing to take whatever shit I get when I do something wrong. I avoid doing something wrong or upsetting people all the time as much as I can, because I'm scared. But it's in the way she carries herself. The way that she moves, smiles, grins, fights, cries, and is scared, herself - she's an outward expression of my internal world. Which makes her an excellent subject for LJ artwork, as LJ is my internal world laid a little bit more bare.

I'm working (slowly - must talk to my Catholic cousin about the day-to-day "use" (for lack of a better word) of the saints) on a theory of my own spirituality and how it interconnects to fandom. Or artwork, rather. Fandom is the intense appreciation and experience of and for artwork. I like that definition, I think I'll keep it.

But religion. And spirituality. I'm a Dionysian. My god is Dionysus, and his mysteries are ecstasy, catharsis, theatre, and intoxication. They're all about the letting go of things. The allowing things to sweep over you and sweep you up. He is the god that possesses, not the physical body, like Zeus does, but the heart and mind. Stories possess our hearts and minds. Music possesses our hearts and minds. (It's in no way surprising that he and Apollo are flips of the coin, as Apollo is the god of the music, but Dionysus is the god of the rhythm, the effect the music *has*. The best possible example of a modern Dionysia would be a rave, Ecstasy and all, though I have no desire now, nor have I ever had, to take illegal drugs. Though I wouldn't mind going to a rave sans drug abuse. Pulsing light, flashing colors, pounding beats. (Need to re-watch that scene in the second Matrix movie - yummy.) This goes back to a previous ramble about fandom and fen. I see the whole-hearted-ly throwing myself into my life as a spiritual experience.

You see, I've been having a very cock-eyed sort of "dark night of the soul" (yes, I very nearly did write that "knight", why do you ask? ;) ). I haven't doubted the god/s (much - hardly at all, anyway). I've just doubted my path. And then the other day I realized something. I tried to think back over the most spiritual, emotional experiences I've had in my life. The ones I really remember, without putting the "these are the things that should be considered" filter on it. (i.e., I didn't just think of what would commonly be considered religious instances.)

On the list? Marching band in high school (numerous experiences), the first ScaperCon (in particular), the other ScaperCons (to a lesser degree), numerous episode moments, book passages, songs, and movie moments, sketching, any time I'm in the path of an approaching storm, certain vids, spring, a couple gatherings (especially fire dancing), reading The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, certain concerts, rain wet, impossibly green forests, certain images, the change of the seasons, and occasionally sex.

The things that I realized (and was kind of astonished) didn't make that immediate list? many of the outwardly religious activities that I've been doing the last several years, including my initiation.

(and part of the value of the list is the fact that I didn't over think it, just felt it)

What's the recurring theme, there, folks? Art. And by my earlier definition, fandom. Beauty. Movement. Storytelling. Love.

That's my spirituality. That's what I believe in. Art by turns concentrates, exposes, spotlights, purifies and exemplifies human experience. There is a frakking quote somewhere about how characters may live life more truly and fully than we do, perhaps it says more purely, and I can't remember where it is. (Possibly in Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey?)

Beyond that, we use stories. Our stories inform our decisions and our actions. As a thinking, reasoning species that is self-aware, we decide on right or wrong partly through imagining the consequences of either choice. And every story we hear, every story we tell influences that. So our characters are people we look up to (or down on), but whose actions and stories inform our own. They are our examples, both good and bad. (In the broad definition of story I'm using here, even true events, when related, are stories - history is as much that information as "fiction", a term which losses some or all meaning in that sudden rush because whether something happened in our physical world, the motivations, reactions, and feelings are true.)

And I've gone on a hell of a round-about here. (And this is just further proof that I'm a textual mimic - my writing style changes and shapes itself around whatever I'm currently reading. A couple excerpts from Kate Millet and lots of Roberto Calasso lead to the above.)

::resists urge not to post because she might be seen as a freak and just bloody well posts it anyway, open and out there. which is also why it's not lj-cut... sorry to the f-lists I've just gummed up.::

part the first:  VIRTUAL SCAPERCON.  You know who you are.  Now go there.

part the second:   black_magdalene, you need to read this.

part the third: Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme (of Sports Night and The West Wing, of course) have a new show on NBC this fall: Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip starring Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet, Steven Weber, Sarah Paulson, D.L. Hughley, Nathan Corddry, Evan Handler, Carlos Jacott, and Timothy Busfield.  SO SO SO much love already.  Must. Watch.