Esoterica

I have no idea what I'm going to write here. Some of it will probably have to do with Coyote, beyond that you'll just have to wait and see.

22 Haikus

I've been posting these Haikus and Senryus on Twitter for a while. It's fun to whip off a little poem that fits in a single tweet. Rather than inundate everyone with one-post-per-poem, I've separated them out by category into General, BDSM and Obscure.

General

Coyote howling
Waiting to hear an answer
Loneliness to end.

Father sleeps alone
Incontinent and afraid
Alzheimer's new child.

Windshield wipers slap
Car wheels stream with steady hiss
Warm fire awaits me.

Rain on the skylight
brings dreams of home and childhood
Good night and sleep well.

Reality's guilt
Surfaces in my dreaming
A dolphin of angst 

Fall's contest begins
with trees reaching for glory
then baring their souls.

Fall touches my skin,
chill despite the noon day sun,
as…

Kilgarra Mountain

One of the first songs I learned on the guitar from my father, and one we often used to sing on long car trips.

Listen!

MP3 Version

Speciality of the House
(Apple Cheesecake)

My mother invented this recipe. Credit it to P.S.H.
Serves 12 (hah!)

CrustTopping
1 cup W. Wheat Pastry Flour ½ cup Buttermilk
¾ cup Flaked Oats 6 oz. Cream Cheese
½ cup Butter, Melted 2 Eggs  (or 1 Duck Egg!)
1 tsp Cinnamon 2 tbsp Honey
½ cup Maple Syrup 2 tbsp Maple Syrup
4 med Apples ½ tsp Vanilla
some Nutmeg 1 pinch Sea Salt

Directions:

Crust: Mix well and squish into pie plate. Peel and thinly slice 4 medium apples into crust. Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon and more lightly with nutmeg.

Topping: Mix well with egg beater and pour over apple filling. Sprinkle pinch of sea salt over the top and pop in a wood stove betwixt hot and very hot for approximately 1 hour.

High Energy Music

Today's completely random post. This is my "high-energy" playlist. The one I play when I want a boost in energy. This may jump from Rock to Classical to Celtic to Nerdcore, but they are all upbeat. Links will open a new window on Lala.com with a search for the song. Lala has a pretty good selection and will usually let you play the entire song once if it has it. If it can't find the song, try the artist, sometimes song title searches don't match exactly. Enjoy!

The table headers should be sortable once the page loads completely, your mileage may vary.

Playlist: High Energy 1647 songs, 4.5 days total time, 7.7 GB

TitleArtistAlbumGenreRating

Take on Me

A-HA

The Best of '80s Pop: Party Songs

Pop

✭✭✭✭✭

Super Trouper

A*Teens

The Abba Generation

Timeskip

Dreams Underfoot

Charles de Lint

Sometimes When the Moon is High

Nightingale

Evergreen

Becky Tracy

I'd promised @badbadgirlx that I'd record a bedtime story for her. I'm not certain if this is what she expected, but it was fun to do. It's one of my favorite short stories by Charles de Lint. It's sad, but very sweet. Like most of his stories, there is magic it in, both traditional and emotional, and music weaves through the story (de Lint himself is a fiddle player). So after I recorded it, I felt it needed a soundtrack of sorts. I was in a hurry and didn't do the best job I could have (I usually use SoundTrack Pro, and I couldn't seem to find how to fade individual pieces in GarageBand, but hopefully it captured some of the mood I was looking for).

The story is called Timeskip. It's from a wonderful collection of stories called Dreams…

Drawing Happiness from Within

This is a reply, of sorts, to @SingleGal's post called "The Struggle." Like much in Charles de Lint's books, this describes a way to look things which has made me much more comfortable with myself and the world around me. I'm glad her article led me to this again. I should come back to it more often.

“I don't envy the music others hear anymore; I'm too filled with my own now, the strains that connect me to [the] people I love in my life. I'm not saying my world's suddenly become perfect. I've still got my ups and downs.…But whenever things get bad, all I do is slow down. I stop and listen to the music and then I can't help but appreciate what I do have.

It's funny what a difference a positive attitude can have. When you go out of your way…

Artist Thought for the Day—Vision and Beauty

“Having a vision [cultural perspective] is a powereful thing.  Creating art is imitating the gods. In that respect, everything you do has to be done in great reverence. You don’t do it casually. It’s not to be flagrantly marketed. I sometimes have a ceremony to acknowledge that vision. It’s like having your resume checked by the gods.

"For me, beauty is anything that stirs the soul, the emotion, whether it be grief, anger, joy, or melancholia.  In Navajo, we say iina’ya’ hool zhho’. It means ‘an easing of the vision.’  Anything you see, your eyes ease into that, and your mind arranges it. We say nizhonigoo bil iina, the beauty that you live with, the beauty that you live by, the beauty upon which you base your life.

Shonto Begay (Navajo)

Modern Coyote

When we think of myths, we tend to think of things that are old (or primitive). But we still carry myths with us, and we create new ones all the time. We tell each other "urban myths", we pass on stories that we think have moral value, or that we just think are humorous. Some become part of our cultural lexicon, others disappear. Sometimes we think they are true, sometimes we think they are not, but often it doesn't matter. It's the story that matters, and the emotions that it engenders.

There's a tendency to think that this ability to identify our stories as "fact" or "fiction" is an attribute of modern culture; something that sets us apart from our superstitious ancestors. They didn't realize that these were "just" stories. But the fact…

Notes

Jan 25, 2009
On the off chance that you want to subscribe to all of the sections of this site, you're probably feeling a bit annoyed right now. I share your annoyance, but it was a question of starting to write, or waiting until I had the site perfect, so for now, this is how things are. When they change, I'll update the notes.  Thanks for your patience.