JamesLindenschmidt.com

Well, I was thrown a bone of concreteness today. We got the apartment in Portland, we’ll be moving on the 31st. This is good. I’m eager to return to Portland, in a place that I won’t have to move away from in a few months.

I had a good long conversation this morning with one of my best friends in the world. It was good. He and I have been there for each other in ways that are beyond measure. And it always seems to help us when we process in this way. One thing, through the past several weeks, my friends and my community have been solid as a rock, an anchor in the storm, etc etc. Words fail, but gratitude does not.

In other news, our dear friend JG is back in the hospital with abdominal issues again. Keep her in your prayers. She is a strong bird, and she’s literally scrapped and clawed, crawling back literally from death’s door, but this is clearly a setback. So send JG some good healing abdominal energy, as well as the people closest to her who have been through enough anguish over the past year and a half.

The world feels somehow lighter today. This is good.

I have been told — recently, though I’ve been told before — that I must be “swimming in energy” all the time. That’s sort of true, particularly over the past year. By this, I mean that I am sensitive to all sorts of subtle energies around me, this includes being an empath, sensitivity to emotions around me, as well as sensitivity to Ki/Qi/Chi that I’ve written about here before. This is kind of funny to me in a way; I remember being told by some hardcore feminist separatist witchlet many years ago when I was first getting into paganism that I was headblind, a term that means something close to “utterly oblivious to energy.”

Anyway, this is not necessarily the best condition to be in after the past 2 weeks. There have been lots of emotions, lots of negativity, lots of suffering within myself and all around me, most of it caused directly and indirectly by me. I’m still working my way through this emotional space. The overwhelming negative emotion for me is sadness, with tinges of anger under it, though the anger seems to be subsiding much more quickly and easily than the sadness. And I’m still not quite sure what to do with it. I’m trying very hard not to plunge headfirst into a sea of depression with this; I sometimes feel like I’m on autopilot, moving through the day-to-day tasks of my reality in some anhedonious haze. Swimming in anti-energy, almost.

Yet, I know there is so much joy to experience in living. And I just want to be able to experience this joy again without feeling bogged down by this depressive weight. I think it will take time to let these emotions move through me.

I keep trying to tell myself that everything happens for a reason, and I’m trying to cling to the vision that when I emerge from this dark forest, the light will be bright and beautiful. I just don’t want to fall asleep under some gloomy yet somehow inviting tree trunk.

Clearly, I need to find my inner Tom Bombadil, to tell off Old Man Willow and rescue my inner hobbit from the clutches of this situation:

Tom sprang away, and breaking off a hanging branch smote the side of the willow with it. ‘You let them out again, Old Man Willow!’ he said. ‘What be you a-thinking of? You should not be waking. Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep! Bombadil is talking!’ He then seized Merry’s feet and drew him out of the suddenly widening crack.
–Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

So the search for Merry continues…

Looks like the new Vatican administration is choosing as wisely as one could expect for it’s new “church enforcer.” It is the American archbishop William Levada of the San Francisco archdiocese who will head up the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” which is what used to be called the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The same post that Ratzinger held before he became pope.

Now, this says a lot, mostly within the context of the pedophile priest crisis in the US. Levada was one of the key figures in the American Catholic Church’s response to the sex abuse; he was widely praised for “deftly handling” the church’s evasion of responsibility or accountability for this tragedy.

And now, this guy has the highest Vatican post ever by an American. It would have been easy for the new Vatican administration to show how it feels about this situation; it is hardly the case that an American would be an obvious choice for such a high post. Indeed, this post is unprecedented for an American.

So in the wake of this pedophilia scandal, this just reinforces how distant the Vatican — and by extension the Catholic church — is from the cold, brutal, psychologically and spiritually damaged reality of priesthood in the US.

…happened to me today.

1. We found a new place to live. See previous post.
2. I got the new album, Deadwing by Porcupine Tree. Great album.
3. Freakwitch got a gig. We’ll be opening the Guitar Therapy Tour with The Mike Keneally Band and The Alex Skolnick Trio at The Asylum in Portland on Wednesday, June 15th. We’ll be playing early, at around 7pm, probably a brief set, like 30minutes. Very cool, but I have no hope at outplaying any of these guys on guitar. Good thing I believe in our songs.

There was also a fourth thing, but time will tell if it was good or not.

Well, it would appear that we are destined to return to Portland. We found a decent apartment within our price range in Portland, on Munjoy Hill near the Eastern Prom. It has off-street parking, a cool yard, and is in walking distance from a lot. I miss walking in Portland. This will give me a chance to walk in different parts of it.

Indeed, it is time for some Urban Ranger to go with the Shovelglove and the No-S Diet…

It’s been light on the blogging front here on JWL.Freakwitch.net. It’s been one of the most intense 10 days of my life. I won’t go into details here, but suffice to say my attention has certainly been elsewhere recently.

But the immediacy of that situation is now behind me. For now. So it’s a matter of recovery, re-entry into my life, into my created reality, with new lessons learned and a new resoluteness. One thing that has become clear to me is that my own happiness must take a higher priority. My immediate goal, apart from just grounding all the various (like all-over-the-map, the full spectrum) emotions of the past week, is to cultivate opportunities for me to be happy. And this resoluteness extends to all facets of my life. One thing this time has shown me is just how important parts of my life are.

So for now, I will try to throw myself back into the things that need my attention: my body (shovelglove and NoS are going very well, btw), my family and my music.

Speaking of music, for those readers who want to hear a closer idea of what the Freakwitch album will sound like, I present a rough mix of Sway. This still isn’t finished, but it’s the closest thing to finished that we have at the moment. There are several tracks on the heels of this one. Watch this space.

“Why so hard?” the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. “After all, are we not close kin?”

Why so soft? O my brothers, thus I ask you: are you not after all my brothers?

Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?

And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how can you one day triumph with me?

And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut through, how can you one day create with me?

For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness to you to impress your hand on millennia as on wax.

Blessedness to write on the will of millennia as on bronze — harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether hard.

This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: Become hard!

— Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

After my recent rants against the new pope, I ran across a new article by Matthew Fox, a mystic, writer, and scholar whom I’ve long admired. What he says is right on the money, particularly this paragraph:

The silver lining in the election of this, the first Grand Inquisitor as Pope, is this: Now people of conscience the world over have a clear choice between Religion and Spirituality; Fundamentalism and Wisdom; A Punitive Father God and the Mother-Father Creator of Justice and Compassion; Fascism and Control vs. Letting the Spirit Work; between a preferential option for the rich and powerful (cf. Opus Dei) and a preferential option for the poor (as in liberation theology).

Now all people–and Catholics in particular–are called to find their consciences and take a stand about the Punitive Father God of Fundamentalism and the Divine Wisdom of Justice and Compassion and against idolatry including religious idolatry and papalolatry and the television cult of personality, and between lies and truth.

These are important questions and observations. It is interesting to consider how the Catholic Church will react to this new pope.

It’s been raining steadily for 48 hours, a deep, consistent rain, one that is not cold. It’s not a winter rain, definitely a spring rain that nourishes rather than freezes. This rain awakens, gently rousing life from its wintry slumber.

The next sunny day, life is going to explode in new greenery. I look forward to watching that.

And yes, this post contains at least one primary metaphor.

Yes, I’m an old D&D geek; I’ve played off and on since I was in 7th grade … mostly off for the past 15 years. But I still use its metaphors on a somewhat regular basis: “make the X roll,” “alignment,” etc etc etc. Those of you who play know what I mean, those who don’t, well, there’s always google.

Anyway, Freakwitch (actually Matt and I as a duo) played an open mic last week. It was our first time playing in front of an audience in way too long. It was fun; we did 4 songs and got a decent reception.

But by far the highlight of the evening was during the opening guitar riff of Seems Like, the ambient conversation in the club dropped instantly and noticeably.

I made my “mass charm” roll! Yeah!

Seriously, this is why I play music. Those moments where I can connect with complete strangers through the sounds I am making on my instrument, those moments where my attention commingles with everyone else’s, that is what it’s all about.