I am not much for rituals.  Spontaneity is more my style, but I sometimes find myself sliding into a ritualistic mode at certain times of year, as the seasons shift.

This week’s Daykeeper Journal email reminded me that the current (just past but still obvious and in effect) full moon is the Snow Moon in the Northern Hemisphere.

Crystal Pomeroy writes:

From where I sit, Scorpio Sun is headed into Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and a dark frigid winter, which could be pretty scary if I were to allow myself to dwell on the danger.

Actually, this year the coming of winter isn’t scaring me as much as it once did.  Since I don’t think climate change has taken all the hazard out of Alaskan winters yet, I must assume that the major change is within me.  Hey, I survived last winter, when I could barely breathe for months, and for several days before Doug called 911 for me I couldn’t breathe and walk, talk, or keep my sphincters tight at the same time.

Friedrich Nietzsche is credited with saying, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”  Implicit in that, maybe, is the idea that the closer it comes to killing us, the greater its strengthening and encouraging effect.  For whatever reason, this winter I don’t think I need a courage boosting ritual or any prayers for strength.  I feel myself moving, growing and changing.  If you think you could use a boost, you can find one at Daykeeper.

When I told Greyfox I had been incubating a blog about divine madness, he responded that there had been plenty of it in the news lately, such as the brawl between Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.  That wasn’t quite what I had in mind, nor was the First Amendment case in the Supreme Court over the placement of a monument to Summum’s Seven Aphorisms in a city park where there is already a monument to the Ten Commandments.

The latter, however, does come closer to what I was thinking about although both incidents are, at their roots, merely territorial squabbles.  The monks in question represent large sects of a major religion and would therefore generally be considered sane.  Summum, on the other hand, is, “weird,” “goofy,” “oddball,” and “crazy-ass,” according to various sources I found today on the web.

You may recall my views on the concept of normality, especially if you are one of those with whom I have disagreed on that subject recently.  I am equally opinionated on the topic of sanity, but where I contend that norms are concrete, easily defined matters of statistics, sanity and mental health are fuzzier concepts, very much a matter of individual opinions and ephemeral fads.

I know that most people think a normal person is sane.  Most people, however, are nuts.  I mean, not only is mental illness the norm in this culture, but normal people are very much in denial about that fact, and denial is a symptom of a sort of mental illness.  Finding an adult American without, for example, at least one substance addiction, is relatively difficult.  The best place to look for them is among those who have undergone psychotherapy or drug treatment, and most people (normal people) consider the graduates of such programs aberrant by definition.

None of that bears directly on this topic that has been percolating through my gray matter this week.  It is just background, illustrating how difficult it is to discuss madness with any hope of being understood.  What I have had in my head is the social phenomenon of a person’s being “touched” by inspiration in such a way that normal beliefs, taboos, practices and habits become meaningless or abhorrent, and one steps out of the PC mode and into his or her own truth.

Naturally, when one does that, one encounters fearful reactions from others.  Those who love him fear for his mental health and his ability to work in society and make a living.  Those whose cherished beliefs his words and behavior challenge, fear these outré ideas he presents, and, finding him scarily unpredictable, fear him.

The word my mother most often used for “crazy” or “insane,” was, “touched.”  Coming from her, it was an insult, even though the usage descended from, “touched by God,” or, “touched by spirit.”  Some cultures revere their eccentrics.  My culture, which mistrusts nonconformity and fears abnormality, is truly crazy.  Inspired deviation from stagnant norms is the driving force behind cultural evolution.

Go nuts.

I watched the sunrise color fade as I moved through the yard and down the road toward an open space, but I caught some color.

 

I met this man through mutual friends.  We shared coffee and talked about politics, psychology, society and culture:  some of my favorite topics for casual conversation.  There was nothing amiss with him until he isolated me, and not at first even then.

On our way to someplace else, we stopped by his place, a garage apartment behind his landlord’s home, so he could show me an invention he was working on.  It was a “novelty” item, a pocket fish, supposed to give the impression of a fish flopping in someone’s shirt pocket.  He expressed frustration and dissatisfaction with his progress in achieving a realistic effect, and I commented on the presence of a nickel (5 cent coin) showing on the body of the fish through the fabric of the pocket.

Our conversation turned to other matters [EDIT: I said something about having gotten a good night's sleep with the help of a couple of ibuprofens, and he said he never got any sleep without powerful sedatives.] and I mentioned his birthday coming in May.  He corrected me and said he had been born on July 11, 1951.  Then, without any logical transition, he turned hostile and threatened me with a gun.

The next part of the action becomes confused and frantic.  In fleeing from him, I practically tripped over the landlord’s family sitting in lawn chairs in the yard.  I yell at them to call 911, and then there was a struggle, the cops arrived, and then leave with a man all trussed up — but it turns out not to have been the right man, so I ended up being chased by and struggling with the guy all over again.

Then I woke up.

The first of this winter’s distance races will run next month.  It is the Sheep Mountain 150, a mid-distance race, and one of the qualifying races for the long-distance Iditarod and Yukon Quest. 

The upper end of the Susitna Valley, where I live, is a popular place for sled dog training because it has lots of open space where dogs, their noise and smell are tolerated, snow usually comes early, and we are accessible by road and relatively close to some of the conveniences of civilization.  My front window overlooks a back road with very sparse traffic, an ideal place for dog training in warmer weather.  A month or so ago, before we’d had much snow, I watched at least three separate teams go by several times a day, at various times of day and night, pulling 4-wheel ATVs. 

Now, those same dogs are pulling sleds and are no longer confined to the road system, so I don’t see them unless I’m out in the car and catch sight of a team and musher running along the roadside ditch or on a frozen creek as I cross a bridge.  That is always a thrill for me.  As my regular readers know, I’m not generally a sports fan, but I’m a sled dog racing fanatic.  This passion is not something I really understand, but I suspect that it results from my lifelong love for dogs, and from being empathetic and so closely surrounded by many mushers and their dog yards — so close that I can hear the excited barking from several of them, in various directions, at feeding time.

I won’t be blogging daily about the sport until early in 2009, when the Yukon Quest and Iditarod are run.  Today, I wanted to share a story about one of the rookie mushers planning to run this year’s Sheep Mountain 150, Ashley Irmen (Image by Joseph Robertia from the Peninsula Clarion).  

Ashley Irmen’s team is composed of rescued dogs, in common with that of another young woman, Zoya Denure, who ran her first Iditarod last year with a team of shelter dogs.  Zoya is expecting her first baby, any moment now, and may not be racing this season.

Ashley’s Ruca Dog Kennel, named for the kennel’s first resident, includes many dogs rescued from shelters and a few others such as those she took in after their owner, Martina Delp, was killed when the tree she was felling hit a power line.

Ashley Irmen tells the kennel’s story herself here, with one of the cutest dog-and-human pictures I’ve ever seen, of Ashley in a recliner with a white husky on her lap.

It’s all connected, Odin to libraries and beyond.  We wouldn’t have had libraries without books, nor books without writing, nor writing without Odin Allfather hanging for nine days and nights in the Fogmoon, upon a leafless tree, for the gift of runes.

That’s really not the way I went from library to Odin (or other way ’round) today.  It started with an email from Daykeeper.  A feature article in the November issue, by librarian Nancy Humphries, compared the two systems of library organization, Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress, with Tarot and Runes.  That’s what got me started.  It was Google and my own capricious curiosity that kept me going.

Back when I discovered runes as a tool for divination, after having used Tarot that way for years, one of the differences I noticed was that the runic system was more open-ended, less constrained, than Tarot.  Ms. Humphries makes note of that in her article.  I had never been able to establish a time frame in a certain number of hours, days, months or years, with Tarot spreads, but it was easy as could be to establish, through runes, not only if something could or would happen, but when.  That use of runes was something I derived or discovered for myself.  If other seers in ancient or modern times used runes to tell time, nobody told me.

Runes also lend themselves to “maybe” answers more easily, I have found, than the more yes-or-no tarot cards.  They are also easier to use as charms and spells than Tarot is, and their designs are more easily adaptable into tattoos, too.  A page I found on runic tattoos displayed one of Odin’s symbols, the Valknut (below), and cautioned readers to try out any runic tattos as the temporary sort before making them permanent.  About the Valknut, the author said, “Odin’s followers have a tendency to die violently, so wear this symbol at your own risk!”

 

I would add that one should be especially careful about having it tattooed on one’s face.

I seldom resist the temptation for a free consultation with the Higher Ups, so I went for the free rune reading I was offered.  As I often do when a reading comes to me instead of my seeking it out, I asked the question, “What do I most need to know now?”  From the given menu, I chose a spread with which I’m not familiar, the “fork”.  I randomly drew (the software spit out) the following runes:

 

The top two, water (“vast, uncontrollable, ever-changing, and vital “) on the left and ice (“cold, stagnant, frozen, and unchanging”) on the right, symbolize the two possible outcomes.  The bottom rune, mankind, represents the critical factor that will decide which outcome will be:  “…although we must make much of our way in the world on our own, there is nevertheless an entire populace that shares similar experiences.”  I find nothing there with which I can argue.

I have been reading and writing runes since the 1970s.  It became especially handy when I joined the SCA.  It gave me an in with a crazy group of fighters who called themselves Trolls.  My ability to write runes, and my pregnancy with Doug at the time, impelled them to name me the Trollmother and to make me their first female Troll.

It also gave me something to etch or carve into the dishes and utensils I took to feasts so that I’d have a better chance of taking them home afterward:

, for Faianna ni Coinnach na Dunlioscairn.

Oddly enough, my Xanga nic doesn’t look much different in runes than it does in Roman script.

This is my entry for the current challenge from Kween of the Queens,

First, I am thankful for my sense of smell.  It has been “with me” again now for a few months, just about long enough for me to get used to smelling things and become blasé about it.  For most of my lifetime, I have spent more time in anosmia, without a sense of smell, than I have spent smelling things.  It is just another symptom, less annoying from moment to moment than some of the other sensorimotor deficits, but more dangerous and life-threatening than the various pains and twitches. 

When I can’t smell, I barely think about it unless I’m cooking, or unless someone asks, “Do you smell something funny?” or the house fills with smoke from an electrical fire I wish I’d noticed sooner.  There are actually some benefits in anosmia.  I’m the one the family relies on to do the nasty, smelly tasks nobody else wants to do.  I do them even if I can smell, but they are less distasteful in anosmia.

Now, I add a touch of vanilla to my pancakes, put more onion in the stew, and take the time to smash and mince a clove of garlic for the hash — things I might not bother to do if I couldn’t smell them, and therefore couldn’t taste the lack of them in the finished products.
 
Next on my list of three thankfuls is Tiny Ted, shown at left perched on top of a chunk of firewood in a warm spot next to the woodstove.  Ted is a runt, one of a long line of runty cats and dogs, bummer lambs, and orphaned younglings of various species that have captured my heart.  Ted is less than half the size of his two husky and hardy orange littermates.  He has the appearance of a six-week-old kitten and is about six months old.

Around here lately, Doug or I often speak the words, “There’s Ted!” with affectionate delight, or, “Have you seen Ted lately?” with tender concern.  He never liked joining in his brothers’ rough and tumble prey play.  He spends most of his time in his warm spot by the stove or cuddled with old Aunty Muffin in her favorite spot, with Val (who might be his father and/or brother) on a cushion in front of the stove, or with his older brother Count Spatula on that same cushion.  He likes the warm places, peace and quiet, just as I do.

I thought about listing my new woodstove as one of my three little things, but upon further consideration it is too big a thing to fit the criteria.  Heat here is a life or death necessity, and the old stove had become dangerous when an internal baffle warped free of its welds, separated, and fell loose into the firebox.  Removing the old stove and installing the new one was the biggest thing I did all summer.  No, that’s too big a thing for the three little ones, so I settled on…

…our new toilet seat.  You can see it behind Ted in the picture above, resting in its warm spot behind the woodstove, ready to be grabbed up as I head out the door to the outhouse at any time of any frigid day.  The old seat was very old.  It predated our residence here, and was cracked so that it tended to pinch tender parts of one’s anatomy at inopportune times.  I am ever so thankful for the pristine new seat.

“They keep voting for lizards, even though they hate them, because if they didn’t the wrong lizard might get elected.”
~~ Ford Prefect (Douglas Adams)

“It does not do to rely too much on silent majorities, Evey, for silence is a fragile thing… one loud noise and it’s gone.”
~~ V (Alan Moore)

“Our elections are free — it’s in the results where eventually we pay.”
~~ Bill Stern

“Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.”
~~ Will Rogers

“The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.”
~~ Edna O’Brien

“Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”
~~ George Bernard Shaw 

“I have just received the following wire from my generous Daddy. It says, ‘Dear Jack: Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide.’”
~~ John F. Kennedy

“Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.”
~~ Oscar Ameringer

“We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice.”
~~Woody Allen

Make-Believe Maverick, an article from Rolling Stone (and thanks to my new Xanga friend Carynn for the link)

Todd Palin, Alaska’s First Dood

Videos from The Wasilla Project