Beltane and other bits

Happy Beltane for those of you who do such things. I’m reckoning it starts as of dusk, if it seems odd for me to say such things on April 30th (the start of a Celtic day was at dusk, not at midnight). No one is looking for me to play the role of the Horned God that I know of, so I doubt there will be any dancing and frolicking around bonfires for me tonight. For some reason, I suspect I’m not quite the catch anyone had in mind.

Things have settled down a bit here, now that there have been a few days since the discharge of a handgun at my daughter’s school by a kid who took it (already loaded, how sweet) from his father’s bedside stand. No clarity or closure, and honestly — I feel like they are going to totally sweep this under the rug. I’m at a loss at what to do, aside from screaming my fool head off at the administration and the district folks, and that might only serve to get me blocked — not sure what to do about it. However, it would have been nice if they had said that the kid had an older brother who was in the same area when this happened. Because it was minors, I can see why this only came out when a parent brought it up at a Zoom meeting that did not appear to go as planned — the school seemed surprised at the outrage that this happened and I’ll let the other parents vent their displeasure so I don’t close off any avenues of communication I might still have with people who seem hell bent on move on without changing anything about their approach to things like this in the future. We did good, was the message until several vocal parents pointed to very specific failures on the school’s part. Shock! But we just told you we did good! Cognitive dissonance is amazing stuff, folks.

And it turned into even more of a clown show when the adults waited outside of the school for the kids’ return yesterday to wave banners and cheer loudly for the returning students. My daughter said she was embarrassed for the revelers, as each teenage kid put their head down and tried to get in the building as quickly as possible to escape the artificial joy on parade. I made her laugh when I told her that, had it happened to me, I probably would have gotten back on the bus, sat down, crossed my arms and loudly said, “Nope,” if I had seen such a thing. I can’t believe adults who work with teens on a regular basis thought that would be received at all well. I don’t know how you could get more tone deaf.

I’m actually pretty glad my tattoo thing fell through and I had to find someone else to do one. While I really liked the raven concept, I’m starting to lean more early bronze age with the designs that appeal to me. I wish I could find something really pictish-looking with elements of what you might see Heilung wear on stage (above picture of Maria Franz is a decent feel for what I want to capture, except with more stylized symbolic elements) — a stag-person, Cernunnos-like, with one or more of: a z-rod, v-rod, or pictish shield; maybe with some raven design too. If I could have Joolz Denby (artist who does New Model Army album covers) design something, I am pretty certain she’d know what I was trying to get at, but it seems unlikely many other artists would have the right background for something like that. I’m no artist, so I’d have to cobble up ideas. But, anyway, not actively looking to get one done because I was frustrated with the last search that fell apart. I’m not up to repeating that and I have more important stuff to think about.

As for those “other things”, I am doing some hardcore digging still and just finished my first “circuit” of internal tasks for some spirit alchemy. There are many more to come, I’m sure, but I overall feel good about some of the stuff I’ve been doing. It’s been illuminating, if nothing else, and I can see a path in the mists and fog — although not clearly. It would take multiple cups of coffee over several session to try and explain, so I won’t torture you with the details. But, I will say that I’m getting comfortable with where the path is heading. I wasn’t always so (mostly because of how others treated these things), and that was some of the problem. Now that I’m following my inner guide, things seem to be going much smoother.

I’ve also been playing a few games these past few weeks when I need to escape from these thoughts (school shootings, alchemy, work, etc.), and have been enjoying the remaster of NieR: Replicant, the precursor to Automata. I was reminded of quirks I disliked, and those I had forgotten I loved about the game. I didn’t even make it half-way when I played the original version, so I’m starting to get into new territory already. When I want to think even less than that game makes me think, I have been playing Persona 5 Strikers, the unsequel. It’s fun, but I play mostly for the banter and less for the gameplay. The game follows more of an extended Rock, Paper, Scissors of weaknesses and buffs, and the battles get a little repetitive at times as a result.

Other than that, I think I need to do yard work this weekend, something that’s lost its allure the past few years. I really should clear out the leaves and branches from the autumn that fell into the gutters over winter (one tree never loses its leaves until after the snow flies), but I’ll just have to do it again next month when the maple seeds fill up the gutters again. I really want to try and get rid of the lawn elements, but our city frowns upon forest and prairie reclamation (Weeds! as if Kentucky Bluegrass isn’t a weed). I may try to do something more “polished” this year, but I’m afraid they’ll ding me for it if I do.

Anyway, enough with the update. Have a great holiday and weekend.