Should I Evolve?

The week leading up to the Mysteries was cold and warm. Sunlight would sweep prettily through the red, orange, and yellow leaves still on the trees. Some mornings, the fog was so thick that I was waiting for giant insects from an alternative dimension to crash into my car. It was warm enough to feel like the last hurrah.

The night before the Mysteries began, a storm came blowing through. There was thunder and lightning; the rain pounded down heavy and cold. The wind was so much that the window insulation we have to put up in the winter came loose. The storm was quick and brutal. I thought big branches might come down again but everything stayed up.

The morning of the Mysteries dawned bright and cold. My weather app told me it was 28° when I went outside to cuss out the squirrel on Osiris’s outside altar. He had knocked three candles off and I had to rescue the soaked, leaf-covered things from the chattering squirrel trying to hide something between the remaining candles. The squirrel and I had words (no, sir; not up there for play or hiding) and then I took a good, hard look around at the chilled world around me. It will only be a matter of time before snow covers everything in a blanket.

By My Admission, Nothing Grows

The last two years have been very shitty. When I look back, they’re shades of gray. A dark, steel gray like a metal part for a plane or space shuttle but less shiny, more dingy. I’ve been lonely. I’ve been depressed. I’ve been unhealthy. I’ve been a negative bitch. I’ve been trying to kindle hope inside me this whole time, but the flame has kind of gone out. “Just go to therapy, Sat,” someone’s bound to say. Yeah, let me just pull the money for copays and the energy to find one in my network accepting new patients out of my ass.

My gods, my ancestors, and the few people who know me are aware. They’ve watched and tried to help as best as a group of people watching the train wreck coming can. Words of encouragement are nice at least. It helps that I know I am just one of millions feeling the same way in this shitty fucking hellscape. Weird to say that, but it’s true. Meat space are all suffering and while the gods and ancestors watch on, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one. We all have hard rows to hoe or some shit; and I’m tired of being alone.

It started with Osiris in… August, I think. Around the full moon. He popped in for a quick hello at The River™ and told me that the stuff he let me off on doing last year because I was in shock and distress needs to actually be done this year. I made sure to flip him off a few times but the tone was set. Fucking shadow work. … Fuck.

My ancestors got in on this in October. We were barreling forward to the time change and Osiris and colder nights and shorter days and The Mysteries. And they all said the same thing. They’re working in conjunction with Big O, I guess. What makes me angry with him, makes me defeated and malleable with my ancestors. 🤷‍♀️ But the loudest has been my dad and for fuck’s sake, he is kicking my ass with all these very pointed comments. Osiris stopped in around mid-October and said my physical health is shit so it’s time to Talk About That too. For fuck’s fuck. Shit.

I feel inundated from all quarters with this ☆~☆Healthy Living☆~☆ bullshit and it’s not like they’re not saying anything that’s a lie. I know I’m a slug. But all I got going for me is the unpalatable mucus that slugs excrete to discourage predators. I can’t even turn myself into a tiny fucking ball to hide from them.

The Finest River the Ravens Tend

I was thinking about The River™ and how it has always been shades of gray for me. Gray water. Gray sand. Gray rocks. This either has something to do with me being the carrier of the color blind gene (just red/green – it’s kind of a joke) or has something to do with the fact that the last few years has been Gray. It could also just be a coincidence but Osiris snickers a little when I ruminate on it too much.

The purpose of The River™ isn’t to drown. Sometimes that’s a mighty fine idea though. The purpose of The River™ is a heady mix of growth, potential, baptism, birth and rebirth. We’ve talked about it often enough now that I don’t blink at all of these lofty claims anymore. The thing with all the potential in the slate gray waters is that to access it, a Big Bang of sorts needs to take place. Only maybe it’s more like a Little Bang because growth has already begun.

When I first showed up, it was d-e-d. It was just gray and water. But I’ve seen life there recently. Big black birds (ravens or crows) to eat the carrion of life-shedding and small gray birds that might represent the cardinal in my personal lexicon that maybe are shitting out something to grow new life around the water. They might make sounds but I’ve never heard it. They weren’t there before this year that I recall. It’s both mysterious and suspicious. A call I guess of the changes to come.

My Life Made No Sound

I often wonder what would have happened if I had any sort of willingness to put in the work when I was 18. I had options (maybe). But I’ve been kind of drifting around instead of you know like doing something. I can admit that the most work I’ve put into things since I became An Adult has been tumbling around in the wind. No, that’s a lie. If I want something badly enough, I’ll put in the work. For years even. But it’s comfortable drifting on the wind because then nothing’s my fault. When shit turns to even grosser shit, I can say it wasn’t my fault.

All of these fucking conversations in my head about ☆~☆Healthy Living☆~☆ have gotten me thinking hard though. Osiris and the ancestors and maybe Ra if he was around still are pushing me. And when I pop in to see Ptah or HW, they’re smirking at me like they see a future I can’t fathom. Dicks. The future is just… gray, right? More gray and more gray until it streams together into an all-encompassing blackness. Probably. But that fucking smirk makes me wonder.

I started talking about this healthy bullshit with myself a couple weeks ago. There’s a tentative plan about it but like, hoo boy, did you know being healthy requires money? Yeah. That’s an issue but I think I can pull it off. Osiris has his own little smirk thing when I mention it – tentatively – which makes me suspect that I’m headed in the right direction but it might also just be his way of being inscrutable.

I woke up today, the First Day of the Mysteries, snuggled warm in blankets and wrapped around my very old dog. She was happy being blanket bound and I was okay because there’s *vague hand wave* a plan of sorts in place.

Shit is going to hurt this month. Hurt in the months ahead of me too. It’s going to hurt so badly at times that I am probably going to get discouraged in 2022 and tell Osiris to go fuck off. I do that a lot actually. But he’s hinted that he’s recruited a certain section of spirits (the ancestors, if that’s not clear) to push me along because he’s learned that I am a fucking self-sabotaging asshole, so.

When I was listening to Shameful Metaphors, I got stuck on the question lyric about my life making no sound. I have been unremarkable as I let the tumbleweed that is me just blow on the wind. I don’t think I want that anymore. I’m pretty sure that at 38, I am fucking sick to death of this fucking horse shit and want better. Or I’m lying to myself. I don’t know. But I’d like my life to have made a single sound, even if it’s just a whisper.