FYI, I now have a writing journal @ http://feralwords.livejournal.com/profile

Friend, don't friend. Up to you.

I'm going friends only from now on. I'll leave up the public posts from before, but after this point it's all under lock and key. Kind of.

I'll add most everyone who asks to be added, of course.

I really don't post here enough.

This will change.

*sweeps out cobwebs*

Today I sat outside on the porch railing and watched the sun set. I'd been beating myself up for not doing anything for Solstice, but I realized that I've been thinking about the sun all day.

This morning when I went to work I was cold, and grateful for any bit of warmth that made it through the damp chill.

When I came out after work I was boiling hot in my long sleeves, avoiding the sun, feeling it burn my face and hands as I smoked and read and waited for the bus.

Walking on Commercial with the girl, I watched the quiet gold, enjoyed the subtle warmth, held her hand and told her how much I love summer evenings.

Solstice. Midsummer. Litha. My second-favorite of every holiday I celebrate. Last summer I went out into the watershed with a picnic lunch and ate it in the middle of high grass. After I finished I read The Stolen Child out loud and left pretty rocks and honey behind.

This year was different, but I still celebrated it in my way.

1. I'm trying to figure out a way to organize what books I'm reading. I can read several at once, obviously, but several of the books I'm reading (Be a Goddess and Twelve Wild Swans are two of them) are workbooks. Be a Goddess I'm working through mostly as an experiment; it's not what I want, and a lot of it just kind of turns me off, but there are also pieces that I think I could use. Twelve Wild Swans, on the other hand, is something I've been wanting to work through for a long time; I've been waiting for a time when it felt right to work through, and I think I'm there now. I can't work through them both at once, and I've kind of got a 'save the best for last' mindset going on. I think what I'll end up doing is trying some things from Be a Goddess but not doing the proper week-by-week workthrough. Maybe I'll do that eventually, but not now.

2. I really want to get working on both my playlist oracle and my quote oracle. I'm really excited about both of them.

I'm doing the Gratefulness challenge again; every day for twenty days I'm going to list one or more things that I'm grateful for. I might continue after the 'challenge' is over - in fact, I'm pretty sure that I will.

Today I am grateful for having the money to pay off a bill, and having an amazing, huge public library available to me.

I'm back, after nearly a year away. *sighs and looks around* Well, there's some dusting to be done, but all in all it's not looking too bad.

Missed everyone!

Things that've happened!:
- Dating Jen again, back together after two years. (She's the one with the silver allergies.) Am incredibly happy with that; I feel safe and normal for the first time in a long while.
- Was just hired as a 'wellness coach' at Saje, an aromatherapy/essential oil store in Metrotown.
- Am (hopefully) graduating at the end of the month.

The moon was hard to make out tonight, but it was beautiful. I had misjudged the bus schedule, so the hour-long wait gave me good time to watch it - it was that and my music to keep me company, and it was good company after all. I'm seventeen, and grappling my way through my religion, slowly learning what I know and how far I still have to travel. It's good work, and work I always seem to come back to in the autumn - something about the smell of leaves, and the way I can see the moon through my office window starting in September. I'm a city girl learning how to be a green woman; a green woman reveling in the organic pulse of my city.

I love Vancouver like I would any first love - unabashedly, blindly, and reverently. Today I spent an hour in Bonjangles, listing the people I saw pass by. Can I drink in my city, and if I did, what would it taste like? Lime tea in Enfuze, chai in Bojangles, bubble tea from the store on the corner? Breathe in through my mouth, and I can taste cheap pizza. I love it.

I am a green woman, and find religion downtown. English Bay purifies me, and the lights of Vancouver inspire me - drunk on September air and 99 cent pizza, I dream of horned gods.

There are moments in your life when you believe in something you previously only went through the motions of believing. These moments are not big. They are do not announce themselves with trumpets or bells; they come silently but do not leave, except to leave you changed. The change itself is a small thing, but it twists it's ivy into the limbs of your life and slowly brings you closer to it.

Funny, that.