Something is missing. I fear my heart is simply not in it this year. Nevertheless lá Fhéile Pádraig! Enjoy your celebrations and remember to drink a tall glass of water before sleeping them off!

I've been trying to watch Remus play the Sims 2. It looks like a fun game; my Sim decided to kiss August's Sim without August or Remus telling him to. He then spent most of the night cuddling out on the lawn with August's Sim watching the stars. August took him along for one of the Asian-themed vacations and he got struck by lightning while using one of the hot springs. I couldn't see the result, but I could imagine it well enough. Remus told me my Sim was blackened and looked as though he'd taken a roll in a soot heap. Help me include a picture Remus?

( A screencap. )

Sadly I think my shoulder-leaning and attempts to see the game by partially fronting have given Remus his headache. :(

Vlad has kindly introduced me to the wonder of a Culver's mint Oreo ice cream shake. I believe I've found an entirely new type of love!

I'm having a very difficult time putting my thoughts to words here at the front. Forgive me? I'll do my best to work through this.

My journal tags are very unoriginal, aren't they? I appear to be using the same basic tags as August and Analah! I need new ones, like ghost in the machine and daily shenanigans. I even like the sound of this post is boring as a tag! If only I'd noticed this yesterday when I was copying everything from my LiveJournal account. :(

I seem to have acquired pierced ears. Kalli also has a new set of piercings. It's quite exciting really, I can't help reaching up to turn them! August has enough for another set on his leftover Wal*Mart gift card and plans to use it fairly soon.

Oh and we've got a job! We're hired! Everyone is excited, of course. I am too. It looks like a nice enough place to work.

The Flight
by Sara Teasdale

Look back with longing eyes and know that I will follow,
Lift me up in your love as a light wind lifts a swallow,
Let our flight be far in sun or blowing rain --
*But what if I heard my first love calling me again?*

Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam,
Take me far away to the hills that hide your home;
Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door --
*But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?*

August Dalamar and Bara created a corn field today. I went along at August's request with one stipulation; I had to wear a pair of large sunglasses to protect my eyes. I have the unfortunate luck of getting sunburns on my eyes because I cannot see the sun; I can only feel the warmth of it against my cheeks.

In but a single day, I've heard two magi and one sorcerer create a field, a system of irrigation, and finish a full planting. Dalamar doesn't give himself enough credit for his ability to paint pictures with words. He stood by my side on two occasions and carefully described what was happening, what was (hopefully) going to happen, and the anticipated results. A few brief hangups occurred, but the overall venture was a success. August told me he'd leave the field in the hands of myself and Dalamar, with the implication that the younger sorts would be expected to lend us a hand if and when we should need it.

Spending a day outside and away from the tower felt very nice. I hadn't realised how long I'd been cooped up inside the place! The last time I left was to go out and help Evan. For those of you who are new or may not remember, that was the day people wanted to touch Dalamar's ears because of how realistic they appeared. :) Ah, non-magical society. Quirky quirky. I do miss you so, at times. Curiosity lives and breathes in the world yet!

Sunlight was softer in England. I always felt that way after making the crossing from its shores to those of America. When I lived in England I never burned beneath the sun, not once. My first sunburn was acquired while I made one of many attempts to maintain a jobs I wasn't physically capable of doing. I have no great arm for lifting crates from river barges, or moving much of anything if it's more than a quarter of my body weight. Never mind that, though.

I came out on the train ride out of London and into Sussex. For the trip I sat across from Emily eating Jelly Beans and watching the urban sprawl melt away to forests and later fields where ramblers kept their sheep and cows. Further still and we entered the hills of Sussex, the chalk quarries and downs you look at from a distance and think running up one would be no difficult task when, indeed, it would be. The sunlight came through the train as though filtered through a faint fog, and believe me it had nothing to do with my eyesight. I was (and am) home. I hope that one day we might visit Wales.

For now, London is enough. I walked with Emily through the central portion of the city and looked up at the buildings that sprang to life years after I was alive, long after my family disowned me and I made a home in Louisiana. It's a new city, but still the old one I knew so well.

Memories do so love to tumble about in my mind. I found a photograph in Lexi's files today, one she saved for me when she was browsing her image sites. Hardly a second passed before I could feel restless wind against my face, the cool April air before spring sweeps over England. We were on holiday and I was young, newly minted with my rosary and license to preach and to grant marriage rites. I had forgotten it was the weekend my family always went to the beach, forgotten until my father arrived by carriage to collect me and scold me until we arrived. My clothes were rumpled and my mother fussed over my tired eyes, telling me I mustn't remain awake through the night so frequently. I calmed her worries, kissed her cheek and told her I was well, simply inundated in my studies. She released me in favour of some small cousins to exclaim over.

I wandered off down the beach with the laughter of my family behind me. There was something about the sound of the surf that day, a note in the cries of the gulls overhead. It felt as though I lived in déjà vu. I didn't know it would be the last time I was together with my whole family. Nothing save peace touched that day; I was the learned second son and my brother had earned himself a title in a competition. I remember falling asleep on a blanket spread on the sand, too weary to remain awake.

Memory fails me for the return trip, my father must have lifted me (he was always strong enough to do so, I was a thin creature) and held me for the carriage ride home. I woke in my bed, wondering if I had truly ever gone to the beach. The sand in my boots was the only evidence left of the day. It was one of the last times he called me son, that day. I do miss him, and my mother. I daresay I even miss my brother despite his exuberance and constantly aggressive nature.

Less than four months later I was sailing across the Atlantic, cast from my family and my country, stripped of my licenses given to me as a member of the church. I fancy to think my life didn't truly begin until I landed in New York with nothing more than my violin and a single change of clothing.

"It always seemed to me that those who claim to know that others are going to hell must already be very familiar with the way to get there."
--Mark Landers

I don't believe I need to say anything else.

Voodoo was alive and flourishing during the years I resided in New Orleans. The sister of my dearest friend was the Voodoo Queen; it only made sense that I should be exposed to the method and form of the religion, plural in versions though it was. Of what I could derive from Olympe (January's sister), the religion evolved in the tribes of West Africa, a mesh of ancestor worship and reverence for the deities of nature. The over-arching figure of the religion was the loa or lwa, believed to be a single spirit that worked through all things. It was the loa these people called upon when slavery found their tribes and trapped them, chained them, tearing them away from field and home to America.

Among these people were herbalists, priests, midwives, all carrying the gods of their homeland. They also retained the knowledge of how to petition the loa thousands of miles from their native homes. Such knowledge was a treasure to them, closely held to breast as the very last strength and connection they had to the society they once knew. The strength of this religion showed through music and dance, in healing and other forms of charms and invocation. Not all slave owners enforced Christianity upon their workers; the belief did not get stamped out as many other things did. Spelling was, regretfully, one of the aspects that the creole French and the English of the time swept beneath the rug. Most researchers fall to researching the Haiti practices. I couldn't begin to give what terms I knew to Lexi, French or any language ends up getting filtered out of my vocabulary when I front and she's never been exposed to/immersed in them.

What encounters I had with voodoo were almost fully accidental, save for one. I took to flirting with this fellow's lady friend and he discovered, eventually, and bought a curse from his sister or cousin. Olympe later informed me I was damned to a life of loneliness and despair, my fertility lost to me. I didn't pay mind to it at the time, though now I wonder if there was any truth to the curse. If so, it rises only in those dark hours of the night when nary another soul lies awake but myself and my thoughts. Remus thinks his insomnia a curse all on its own, and I sadly must admit to selfishness. I was happy to have someone to talk to in those small hours before the dawn, for those are indeed the loneliest hours of the day.

A meme taken from exogenic - I adore psychology.

Psychoanalyze Yourself. Answer the following questions with the first thought that comes to mind, and then read which each answer means. (No cheating!)

( Questions. )

( Answers to the above questions! )

I'm also a bat in social situations and a fox for the rest.

Regardless of what post I make, if you reply with something along the lines of "I can relate because", I will not make a snack of your head. Reading between the text to find questions of do you really understand, though? is not something I'm going to worry myself over. Perhaps I give people too much benefit of the doubt, though something tells me this isn't so. Believe me, if you say you understand? I'll believe you unless given ample reason to think otherwise. I'm not going to psychoanalyse you for my own personal glory.

Now turn that coin over.

I enjoy being able to relate to people. My imagination is in working order, for all I know it's on overdrive. Making connections is something I do all day, every day. I group things, I list things, I maintain categories of families and measures. Call this a side effect of being a musician and a herbalist, if you will. Give me a stanza and I'll be able to improvise upon it, re: this does not mean I physically understand whatever you throw at me but it does mean I'll be able to draw a line between myself and what you're talking about. It means I will try to understand. I do this because I care, I enjoy thinking, and people are capable of being lovely beings when I'm not terrified to talk to them.

Honestly, stop reading so far into things that you come across nonsense that isn't there, nor intended.

Sadly, those whom I address may never have a chance to read this. I've sequestered myself over in this little niche to avoid it!

Oh my, I've been had the better of. Anxiety came creeping out of nowhere to set my fingers tapping and my mind to fuzz. Will I ever meet the day where little things cease to worry me? It was not the conversation, hardly that. I have no obvious memories of brainwashing, nothing beyond what you subconsciously get from simply living in human society. My mother had me of the belief that rules were set to stone until I entered school, that is all. Rules indeed. What then, if those rules are unjust, and who decides? Ah well, too much for this cookie on this night. I'm going to bed!

( A mermaid? ) I won't pretend to be as innocent as I look, but I think deadly might be giving me too much credit!

I got my peanut butter and apple jelly sandwich!

Work was not always easy to come by in the 1800's. I think I'm lucky I was a musician; parties were always being held, barn reels were common, bonfires on the season's fallow field always needed a fiddler. I walked an even line on that fence of employment; my hand knew both the country reels and the allegros the well-to-do wanted to hear.

It's hard to find the type of music I played back then. I asked Mao, she was my best bet (being a fellow violinist) for finding something. No surprise, she turned up this piece and the whole album as follow-up.

I sounded just like that. :)

Now to join a whole bunch of Celtic groups on last.fm in order to get more names to track down.

A song helped me get through 2000. My entire life had been turned upside down, I was free and living with another person whom I thought very much of. I was slow in getting used to being able to go down to the shop with happy anonymity, that sweet lady behind the counter must have thought I was flirting with her. Oh no, I was flirting with that store and being able to walk to it all on my own whenever I wanted with no upturned noses or cold stares. My life underwent so many changes in that year.

Remus gave me a room with two windowed walls. At first, but just at first, I was afraid to go back to gardening. I had gardened for six years with no real break to speak of, it had categorized itself as lonely work in my mind. Homesickness found me in those first few weeks of setting up that room with the stone-tile floor and humidifiers. I set out seed trays and prayed they wouldn't regrow my loneliness into something I'd be unable to handle. One day I was sitting in there, on a stool, planting, and he brought me a radio. I had previously owned one that had needed some repairing, a small one that only worked if I kept the volume low. Now I had a new radio to play with.

As per typical me, I left it to sit there on its shelf for a full two weeks before turning it on. The dial slid and I found a blend of non-magical and magical stations alike. I wanted to try something new, my search didn't drive me to find a station for classical instrumentals. I stopped when it fixed on a station that came in well and left it. I went back to my planting.

"If I fall along the way
pick me up and dust me off
if I get too tired to make it
be my breath so I can walk

If I need some other love, then
give me more than I can stand
when my smile gets old and faded
wait around I'll smile again"

I heard this song four or five times before it finally occurred to me to write it down. The style was distanced from what I normally enjoy, I'm sure the lyrics imply something entirely different from the meaning I took.

"Can you help me
I'm bent
I'm so scared that I'll never
Get put back together"

One song helped me through all the changes I had to accept. My life was my own again, I had to work through seeing myself as something broken to something that could be fixed. I started singing along with this song when it came on in that grocery with the friendly lady behind the counter. She smiled at me and I know she thought I was mental but I was happy. My broken life was getting repaired and I wasn't doing it alone, someone was helping me.

Last night was brilliant. Lexi and Jack were laughing so much; it's a pity I drifted off or I would have taken part. My own past was tragic enough, and I'm not so serious that I can't laugh at it. I'll admit it's sometimes painful laughter, laughter that comes in the middle of the night... At least daylight washes that away. It's a comfort that each day is a new one, a step away from the one before.

A foot of new snow is on the ground. I may slide into August's skis and go take pictures when it's a little brighter outside. August and I might be the only people lurking around with Lexi for a few days; Remus never wants to see snow again. He's a summer person when you get down to it. I don't mind the winter half so much as I used to, there was a time when it'd make me ache. Now I can look and see how beautiful it is without worrying about a long walk down to a village followed by a longer walk back up. It's outside the window, and I'm warm indoors. I like being awake before the plow comes along and turns the road brown and muddy.

Faintly, I remember waking up long enough to hear hail. Hail! Spring's on the way. :)