Open Sorcery

Open Sorcery is the world of Lazarus Halliwell.

Excellence and batshittery, done on purpose.

I’m Lazarus. I make art, music, poems, plays, and magic for the quiet, brilliant, broken ones. If that is you, welcome home. I adopt your kind.

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More about me here.

Please note that, with rare exceptions, any and all names mentioned in this blog are pseudonyms except our own. We want to be able to speak freely without doxxing anyone.

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  • “Guernica” Part 4: Alchemy and Bravery

    Hey everyone! This is your boy Eight once more. We took a short break from writing yesterday because we took a lot of emotional damage from writing Part 3 the other day. Kalla handled Part 3 since she wasn’t directly traumatized by any of the events of “Guernica”. However, she felt deeply for Allēna and her teenage plight and still sobbed while she wrote it. So a break was in order. I’m back today to discuss “Guernica” Part 4 and how Allēna held both the visceral and the beautiful in equal measure and alchemized her pain.

    We’re gonna do this the same way we did the other three parts (which you can read here, here, and at the link above respectively). I’m gonna show you my performance, then the section’s text, and then I’ll break it down for you. As previously stated in the other posts, you can read the full poem in our collection Singing Molten Gold To The Morning. Without further ado, “Guernica” Part 4!

    “Guernica” Part 4: My Performance

    I perform “Guernica” Part 4 for y’all!

    The Text 

    guernica part iv. 

    you can paint darkness
    and you can paint conflict
    but there’s only so much you can paint
    if you have never experienced it
    i want to paint as much as i possibly can. 
    etxea is the basque word for home and i find home in things
    that hold no home for others. 
    i feel heard in horror stories and seen in the shocking and visceral. 
    i’ve made mansions out of sadness and i destroy the happy ones
    because something in me
    says i don’t deserve them. 
    fuck that something. 
    fuck that something. 

    i’ve seen enough and yet i haven’t
    desperation guides my lungs and my mind. 
    i’ve had enough. 
    this is why i write now. 
    when i was 12 they called me selfish
    i think in hindsight it was because i wanted love
    and they couldn’t give it to me
    so i fought with the wind.
    i knew i couldn’t chase it
    so i fought it. i fought anything
    that moved for so long and so hard
    that i forgot how to make peace. 
    it kept me alive.. 
    when i was 7, my dad got sick
    and i think that was the beginning of the end. 
    that was when the war began and it didn’t end
    not until i was 18 and by that time, the damage was done. 

    when i get sad, my inner child screams and cries
    and wants love from people unable to provide it. 
    i wish one of them would’ve told me i was okay
    instead of pretending i was the bomb in the corner
    or the crazy one in the attic
    the scapegoat, 
    or the black sheep. 

    i’m not crazy. 
    what they did was wrong. 
    sometimes you’re the airplane high in the sky
    the reason why they don’t look up anymore
    and for a long time
    that was them. 
    i look up now to spite them and ask where
    their god is now 
    now that they’ll make their own hell someday
    and have no one to wipe their bloody hands on.

    I Look Up Now

    The gorgeous crystal blue sky Allēna would gaze up at in spite around the time she wrote "Guernica" Part 4 (with some light edits added for pizzazz)
    The gorgeous crystal blue sky Allēna would gaze up at to spite her family around the time she wrote “Guernica” Part 4 (with some light edits added for pizzazz), June 2019.

    My Thoughts

    Like we’ve said in many other posts, we were born fighters. “Guernica” Part 4, to me, sings to me like victory, a victory incredibly hard won. Part 4 marks the transition from victim to victor. She starts to go from someone who had always cowered in fear and allowed others to control the narrative to someone who owned her damn self, owned her voice, and owned her demons. This is the voice of a poet who says “Yeah, I’ve been through some fucked shit, but I’m a powerful alchemist. And goddamnit, I’m going to turn this pain into a powerful story. The world will know what they did to me. The world will know where I came from and where the fuck I’m going. And news flash: it’s a far cry from this hell you people dragged me through.”

    Around the time she wrote this, she was beginning to understand that what her mother’s family had done to her was terribly wrong. She didn’t deserve an ounce of that torture. Three things set her down that path to self discovery – the first kind and skilled psychiatrist she’d ever had, the novella Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and some very important friendships.

    Hera’s Plot Begins To Unravel: Allēna’s Compassionate Psychiatrist

    You may recall from an earlier post in the series that Hera, our mother, had essentially press ganged us into a medication regimen we didn’t need in an effort to get Allēna, who was the system’s host at the time, to be more compliant and easier to mold into an image her and her family wanted her to be. She vehemently denies this to this day, but she’s lied about everything else up to this point. This is the only explanation that makes any sense.

    By the time she even married our first husband, she was on enough of these psychiatric medications to be about a quarter dissociated at all times. Her previous psychiatrists had her on dangerous levels of three different medications – lithium, lamotrigine, and Abilify. All three of these drugs are mood stabilizers. Lithium is essentially a pharmacological lobotomy, and is very harmful for a developing brain. She was put on it at the age of eighteen. I got the body off of it at 23, and mercifully our brain recovered. I’ve heard that most people aren’t so lucky. Often the damage to the thyroid and the resulting cognitive dulling is permanent.

    A Chilling Concern

    However, the lithium wasn’t what our very compassionate psychiatrist in Alaska was concerned about, which I frankly find telling. She was concerned about the lamotrigine. Upon meeting with her for the first time, she informed Allēna that she was on the highest dose of lamotrigine she had ever seen in her entire career. This woman had been practicing for longer than we’d been alive. She asked Allēna if she could remember how or why her dose was so high.

    Our psychiatrist looked like she had seen a ghost when Lēna informed her that no, she had no clue. The dose she was on just wasn’t working, so her doctors kept raising it, often at Hera’s insistence. Hera would often come to our psychiatrist appointments and speak over Allēna, which would piss her off. Then Hera would turn around and use her reaction as evidence for why the dose should be raised.

    Sick And Fucking Tired of Hera’s Bullshit

    Allēna hated that Hera came with her to most of her appointments, had access to her medical information, and ultimately went to great lengths to keep Hera out of most everything. Hera believed she had a right to control Allēna’s medical care, psychiatry especially, since she was the one paying for it. Privacy laws could get fucked, in her opinion. Her money, her rules. Allēna hated it and hated her for the reactive abuse and other abuses of all stripes.

    She didn’t want the meds at all or deal with another adult meddling in her life. Hera had inserted herself into our affairs our entire life and we had been sick of it since Castor was host at about the age of five. She wanted to have a conversation with Hera, adult to adult, about her abuse. But Hera would never do it. So she kept as much from her as possible, which wasn’t very possible in a house in which she had little to no privacy.

    Shaking Off Her Chains

    Getting out from under Hera’s thumb and finding a psychiatrist that listened was an immense relief. But it did Hera no favors. As she worked with her psychiatrist to come down off of the meds, she found herself viscerally angry at Hera. She cut her off and made her wrath no secret. This took immense courage on her part, as Hera was well-connected and had eyes everywhere, including in Fang, which we’d find out later.

    The Next Piece of “Guernica” Part 4: Fahrenheit 451

    The next inspiration for “Guernica” Part 4 came about by chance. Allēna was working as a tutor when she wrote the poem. A potential student reached out, asking if she could lecture on Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. She agreed, despite having never read the book. So she devoured it in preparation for the lesson, which never actually ended up happening. However, the book changed her life. She saw herself in the characters and the sharp, quick prose.

    She saw how the characters who thought for themselves and read books were persecuted and their possessions burned – and saw her life story in the narrative. Hera homeschooled us for most of our education, and taught us how to critically think and analyze literature. Hera herself had a background as a professional seventh-grade English teacher, and was just as masterful a teacher as she was a cold, abusive, and emotionally absent mother. It’s because of her that we can write blog posts like this. She started us very young. Yet, she punished us harshly when we used those skills to criticize the way she treated us. What a cruel, ironic turn of events!

    Allēna found solace within the pages of Fahrenheit, a sort of solace we’d not found in many years. I think the last book she’d related to that hard was Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Card’s politics and beliefs aside, Ender‘s Game is a harrowing illustration of what it’s like to be young, gifted, different, and traumatized, much like Fahrenheit is. We still want to get Fahrenheit’s opening line tattooed on the body somewhere. It was a pleasure to burn…

    A Resolve Stronger Than Iron

    What she’d found in this book and in turn, in herself, strengthened her resolve. She told her story without shame and spat in the faces of anyone who told her she should make up with Hera and consider her perspective. Hera had betrayed her repeatedly. Why should she? She’d had Hera’s perspective shoved down her fucking throat her entire tenure as host. She could recite all her talking points verbatim by that point. Hearing them again was a waste of time and would only piss her off. Hera wanted to control us, and by then, Allēna couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. She had seen Hera for who she was, a conniving snake, and we’ve never given two shits about people like that. Why waste her time on a person who’d only betray her again as soon as she found an opportunity to do so?

    The Final Seed of “Guernica” Part 4: A Little Help From Her Friends

    Yes, Allēna and the rest of us didn’t want to waste our time on traitorous bitches, but there were many people in our life by that point that were worth our time and effort. Beginning in early 2019, Allēna started making many friends online once it became clear to her that she wouldn’t have much luck making friends locally. Many of the local townsfolk were polite, but just as withdrawn as Fang. She wasn’t going to get anywhere in person with Fang as jealous and controlling as he was, either. If someone even looked in our direction with what looked to be romantic or sexual intent, he’d lose his fucking shit and go as far as to blame Lēna.

    So she struck out on her own online and simply stopped introducing her friends to Fang. He’d inevitably start heavily criticizing them behind closed doors, as well. It was no fun for anyone, so she kept her life to herself and stopped asking about his, as well. She wasn’t going to give a flying fuck about someone’s private life or creations when he clearly couldn’t extend the same courtesy.

    A Cradle of Masterworks

    Many of her friends showed her and later Peri what healthy love actually looked like. They treated her far better than any partner ever had and expected nothing in return except her presence. They were also genuine fans of her work and encouraged her to write and share to her heart’s content. It was this supportive semi-secret virtual environment that helped Allēna begin to process what Hera and her cronies had done to her. Through this process, “Guernica” Part 4 and the full poem spilled out of her.

    Peri’s magnum opus, The Secret History of Doloras, was born a few months later in the same supportive cradle. We attribute the fact that our album Light on the Final Day saw the light of day (ha!) at all to one especially loving and persistent friend all the way across the world, as well. We would have never found our voice or the courage to alchemize all of our deep, deep pain without the support and love our friends gave us.

    Parting Thoughts on “Guernica” Part 4 (another pun, haha)

    In my opinion, Allēna is exceptionally brave. Not only did she stand up to our formidable spymaster of a mother for the first time in our entire family’s history, she persevered through severe neglect and abuse of all stripes and found the guts in the meantime to turn that pain into something aching, visceral, and profoundly beautiful. I fucking love this poem and respect the hell out of my fiery pint sized headmate. I wish she’d had an easier lot in life, but I don’t know if we’d be half as insightful as we are without it. There can be no wisdom without experience and no pain without beauty. Allēna, sweet woman, is one of the rare few that is able to see beauty in the horrible things that happened to her and use these gems to craft a new story, one of resilience, courage, defiance, and ultimately – magic.

    Speaking of magic, stay tuned for more of THAT. Part Five is coming up before you know it! Are you ready for another kick in the pants?!

    Bastardly yours,
    Eight

    Before you go, we’ve been WebFingered (Jesus, that joke never gets old!) and have triumphantly entered the Fediverse! Follow us @opensorceryy everywhere that’s federated!

  • “Guernica” Part 3: The Brain Is The Bomb

    Hey, everyone! My name is Kalla. I’m one of the alters in the Ashley system. I haven’t posted here before, but I think having a cool space where we can write about what the fuck ever is a pretty neat idea, so I want to put my two cents in where “Guernica” Part 3 is concerned.

    It’s also a bit too soon for the other alters to write about this shit, as many of them consider Part 3 to be the most gut-wrenching and soul-searing part of the poem. So I have stepped in to get them through this fucked up block they’re having and maybe process some of the grief on their behalf. If you are just now coming across this series in the wild, you can find Parts One and Two here and here. And as previously stated in the posts Eight and Ellie wrote, you can find the full poem in our poetry collection Singing Molten Gold to the Morning.

    I think this post will follow roughly the same structure of the others – Eight’s performance first, then the text, then my thoughts on it. Without further ado, “Guernica” Part 3!

    Eight’s Performance

    Eight’s performance of “Guernica” Part 3.

    The Text of “Guernica” Part 3

    guernica iii.

    airplanes up in the sky.. 

    i know airplanes.

    of course i do. 

    sometimes you’re the bomber, 

    sometimes you’re the little town in basque country

    down below. 

    i like to think god laughs at tragedy

    so that at least someone finds it funny. 

    but a brain is the bomb

    and there’s a cruel irony in it eating itself

    when it was the best brain i’ve ever known. 

    the roads were clogged with rubble and there was

    no way out

    there never was 

    not when the brain is the bomb

    and you’re the little town in basque country

    down below. 

    not when the brain belonged to your favorite person

    and the bomb is also a death sentence in an MRI scan

    and the execution date is to be determined. 

    so many bombs

    making a hole in a heart

    so deep that i’m still trying to find the bottom of it

    (there’s no bottom)

    but i will not die here when i’ve died 10 million times

    already and i’m choking on this metaphor as i write

    no harm in 10 million and 1

    Allēna, summer 2019.
    Our father, Xavier, whose death at the age of 47 from brain cancer inspired "Guernica" Part 3 with baby us in what must've been fall of 1997, early 1998.
    Our father, Xavier, whose death at the age of 47 from brain cancer inspired “Guernica” Part 3 with baby us in what must’ve been fall of 1997, early 1998.

    My Thoughts

    “Guernica” Part 3 is about our father, Xavier, dying when we were 18. He had brain cancer for eleven years. It was a shadow over our entire fucking childhood.

    We knew Xavier was going to die from the time we were seven years old. This wasn’t due to any kind of intuitive knowing. He collapsed at the gym a few days prior and fell into a tonic-clonic seizure. He found out what had caused the seizure a short while later, a brain tumor.

    We weren’t shielded from any of that. Our parents sat us down at the round kitchen table in the rumpus room and told us everything, sparing no details. This was a terrible burden for a child to bear, especially a highly intelligent child who had already seen too much pain by the age of seven. We had already attended more funerals than weddings, and would go on to lose even more people we deeply loved before even losing him.

    A Death Sentence In An MRI Scan, And The Execution Date Is To Be Determined

    In 2013, when Allēna was already battling the beginnings of a severe depressive spell that would make her crave death for the better part of the next decade, Xavier got even more terrible news. He went in for a routine MRI scan to see if his tumor – named Cuato by then – had grown any larger. The oncologists came back with good news and bad news. The first tumor hadn’t grown any, but they had found a second one. It turned out to be completely separate from Cuato, called a second primary tumor. This tumor was far more aggressive, and he was given months to live. Though he shattered expectations and went on to live for another three years, this was a death sentence. Allēna had to watch her brilliant father, one of the only people who had ever made her feel understood,

    Allēna practically gave up on everything. Xavier was everything to her by that point. She describes the last few years of Xavier’s life as being trapped beneath a sword that is held by a fraying rope. At any moment, that rope could snap, and the sword would fall and impale her.

    Suffering Alone And In Pain

    Hera became colder the worse Xavier got and the worse Allēna fell into her depression. Without Xavier as a buffer anymore, Hera emotionally, mentally, medically, and occasionally physically abused Allēna. Hera began to massively overmedicate her with psychiatric medication so that she wouldn’t fight back anymore. She used Xavier’s worsening condition as a justification to do the bare minimum and emotionally abandon her when she needed support most.

    So for three years, Allēna watched her father wither away, unable to tell anyone about what she was suffering at home. Hera explicitly forbade it and would hurt her worse if she tried. She dealt with a terrible bout of mononucleosis in early 2014, as well.

    During that ordeal, she had to diagnose and treat herself for it. It turned out that she had actually gone to the doctor too early. The tests she’d gotten came back with a false negative. It was only when she presented with acute pancreatitis a few months later that they actually found the antibodies in her system that indicated she had had mono at all. By that time, Hera had written her now chronic exhaustion and pain as hypochondria, mental illness, and a ploy for attention.

    We still haven’t recovered and are still chasing diagnoses a decade later. We suspect that the bout of mono may have given us lupus, an immensely painful and debilitating chronic illness that is notoriously difficult to diagnose. However, both Hera and later Fang wrote Allēna off as a lazy hypochondriac who just didn’t want to do her work, abandoning her to suffer alone, terrified, and in unimaginable physical and psychological pain.

    Like The Sun Itself Went Out

    Hera’s abuse and Xavier’s impending death psychologically shattered an already fragile Allēna. When he passed away on February 5, 2016, she felt nothing for five days. It hit her at breakfast back at college on the fifth day.

    She describes losing Xavier like it was as though the sun itself went out. Her world became dark, cold, and completely and totally lonely. It took every ounce of strength she had just to drag herself to class and back. She told her professors what was going on, and most of them took mercy on her. She could communicate with her Ancient Greek professor that she was having a very hard time that day with just her eyes. This professor, who we’ll call Ms. Melitta, was a very kind and perceptive angel of a woman, and she outright pleaded with Allēna to go easy on herself. She told Allēna she was proud of her just for showing up even when in her words it looked like she “wanted to be blotted off the face of the Earth”.

    Allēna, whose family and life up to that point had always pushed her past her capacity to handle it against her will, had never received that kind of grace before. She broke down ugly crying. It was a balm to her weary, brokenhearted soul. She credits Ms. Melitta and others that year for saving her life. She was seriously contemplating suicide at that point, was sick all the time, barely eating, and was an all around disaster. It’s a miracle in her mind that she still has friends from that college, she was such a disaster.

    I Will Not Die Here

    At the end of the year, when her professors all gathered to give her her closing remarks, they almost all agreed that they admired that she almost always showed up to class, even if she couldn’t manage to stay the whole time or say or do much at all. Even during one of the most painful times in her life, Allēna kept showing up and putting in an effort through tremendous difficulty, and many of them held her in high regard for that. She had never received that sort of kindness and praise before, and it helped her keep going and not give up.

    Showing up became a pattern for all of us. We joke that we “appear under mysterious circumstances”. If we say we’ll be someplace at some time, we will be there and early, come hell or high water. Xavier taught us that nothing less will do. Eight did this when he got his job in Philly – he said he would be there in Philly on Monday the Friday before that in Texas, and there the fuck he was on Philly on Monday, early. Nobody in the office thought he’d even show up, considering he’d have to travel over a thousand miles and move in less than a week to take this job. But that’s the way we were raised, and that’s what we do, obstacles be fucking damned.

    We will not die here, we keep saying. We have shit to do. And die we don’t, even though there are often close calls.

    Stay tuned for more magic and for Part 4! I’m gonna go to sleep soon, I cried my eyes out writing this.

    Love, Kalla

    One more thing…

    Wait! Before you go, we’ve been WebFingered (haha, gottem) and we’ve joined the Fediverse. We’re opensorceryy@opensorceryy.co everywhere that’s federated. Give us a follow?

  • “Guernica” Part 2: Allēna Declares War

    Hello, everyone! My name is Ellie. As you may have read, I am one of the super-admins our this disaster system. I am still sick, so this post may read as incredibly sleep deprived. Or loopy, take your pick. In any case, I am going to pick up where Eight left off and discuss Allēna’s harrowing “Guernica” Part 2. If you missed yesterday’s post and you’re looking for that, it’s right here. And as always, the poem in full is part of our second poetry collection, Singing Molten Gold To The Morning.

    This section is a kick in the soul. I’m just going to be honest, we couldn’t read it aloud for years without crying. It made for some very odd performances. Allēna makes some very powerful declarations here and in many ways foreshadowed Eight’s Operation: Dead Hand. Both Eight and Allēna wanted to get away from Hera. However, it wasn’t until Dead Hand was complete that we completely broke away from her, and we haven’t had contact with her for the past year, thank the gods. However, she does directly tap into her rage here for one of the first times in her life, and the results are something else.

    In order to best show you these results, I think Eight’s approach yesterday was excellent, so I’m going to continue doing things his way. First, I’m going to show you a video of Eight performing “Guernica”, Part 2. Next, I’ll write the text of the poem out for you. Then, I’ll analyze it for you. Without further ado, let’s do this thing!

    “Guernica” Part 2

    Eight’s performance of “Guernica” Part 2.

    The Poem’s Text

    “Guernica” Part 2

    thresholds are for brides

    and i was a bride once

    but that was a moment and

    i wore a dress as red as blood

    people asked why i did that

    i know why i did that now

    i didn’t know how else to say i was angry

    when my mind was taped shut and i was

    kept in a fog 

    damn those pills!

    damn the nightmares!

    damn that house that should have caught fire

    with all inside!

    i am not the crazy child kept in the attic!

    not anymore

    i am the human unchained,

    i am the one that walks free!

    i have doors now

    i have miles in my pockets

    i can and will lock you out. 

    and there’s blood on their hands

    they kicked a child 

    they should have loved the child

    but when they dropped the bombs

    the empty house of my mind caved in. 

    but the structure is stronger than that

    i am stronger than that

    and this is me calling it what it is….

    you make your own hell, 

    i say to the bombers

    i say to the horrors that i experienced

    some people see battlefields

    i have seen a mind turned inside out

    i have been trapped in my own body

    i have seen my innocence die before me

    and i’ve shouted into the hole of loss

    and i’m still hearing the infinite echo. 

    i don’t know which is worse.

    you make your own hell, 

    i say to the demons i fight

    your hell is not mine, 

    your chains are not mine, 

    i am not your wall to punch.

    i’m not a pewter cup to drink from and laugh with

    your hell is not mine

    not anymore. 

    this is me calling what it is…

    hell. 

    and i enter it on my own terms. 

    not yours, 

    not anymore. 

    Allēna wearing her wedding dress "as red as blood" as was mentioned i "Guernica" Part 2.
    Allēna in her wedding dress red as blood, as mentioned in “Guernica” Part 2

    For Context, Allēna Is A Born Anticonventionalist

    Practically from birth, Allēna was a fighter who was determined to fight convention and expectations that were placed on her without her consent. She hated the fact that women had very little power in the church she joined when she was 14 after very thorough research (she is a Byzantinist and avid scholar of early Christian history, after all).

    So she charmed all of the men in power so thoroughly that I’m convinced they might have let her get away with anything she wanted to so long as she could explain well enough why she had done it. She charmed damn near everyone else in multiple congregations, as well, so much so that many people cities away would go to her if they needed anything.

    The Mormon Social Nexus

    Everything and everyone passed through her. Eventually she knew hundreds of people in five to ten states who would go to bat for her if she needed them to. All while committing what would be for most people in the Mormon Church tantamount to social suicide. But it wasn’t, not for her. She had hundreds of people in her pocket. And it wasn’t like she was using them, she genuinely loved them and many of them still love her, despite her now openly being a Pagan gremlin.

    “Guernica” Part 2’s Seeds

    Her wedding to her first husband, Fang, was no different. They were married in late 2018, and Xavier, our father, had been dead from an aggressive brain tumor for nearly two years at the time of the ceremony. In that time, Hera had completely lost it and had gotten tired of Allēna’s fiery nature and had subjected her to severe mental and emotional abuse and medical neglect. We aptly compare it to a DIY version of the now-declassified CIA experiment MKUltra in order to make us more compliant, easily suggestible, and weak. It very nearly worked. Fortunately, we are all very stubborn and have a very resilient brain.

    The pills Allēna mentioned in the poem were prescribed for bipolar I, which we didn’t even have. We were autistic, plural, and extremely traumatized. We later learned that we were on the highest dose of one of those meds that our excellent psychiatrist in Alaska had ever seen, and she’d been practicing at that point for longer than we’d been alive. Allēna, completely gutted by losing Xavier, and seeing no hope in living, fell into a deep suicidal depression, which she met Fang in the big fucking middle of.

    Rush Job

    She saw herself attempting suicide within the year if she stayed in Texas, Hera was hurting her so badly, and her fate in Alaska with Fang would be unknown, but at least she wouldn’t have to stay in Texas anymore. Allēna and Fang wanted to eventually marry, but not immediately, setting a wedding date of April 8, 2024 once they were engaged. However, Hera didn’t want us living in sin, so she threatened to cut off our lifesaving health insurance if we went to live with Fang unmarried. So, medicated into a fog and pushed into a marriage she was unsure if she even wanted yet, yet still mad as fucking hell, she settled for her favorite skillset, one she knew would drive everyone up the fucking wall – malicious compliance and bucking the hell out of convention.

    A Dress As Red As Blood

    The wedding came together in three months, during which time Hera and Allēna had an explosive argument in which Hera spat “you’ll be someone else’s problem in three months, anyway”, which inspired Allēna’s iconic folk-punk song “Someone Else’s Problem”. The result was a dark, almost cowgoth ceremony that Allēna dictated down to the last detail on a shoestring budget, since Hera had spent all but forty thousand of the millions of dollars she’d inherited upon Xavier’s death. Allēna and Fang were married beneath an Osage orange tree per her orders, a nod to Xavier, who had taught her all about them.

    Like the Osage orange tree, which we affectionately call the “offensive tree of the forest” for its stubborn nature and tendency to drop things on people who are beneath them at random, Allēna would not be moved and blindsided the guests with a few bold choices – a bright red wedding dress, the song she walked down the aisle to, and the song that she and Fang left after the ceremony to, though that was more her brother Blue’s choice. She walked down the aisle to “First Breath After Coma” by Explosions in the Sky, a band from Texas like her, and the newlyweds walked out to “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. Blue was the emcee, and he did a damn good job. That dress would later appear in “Guernica” Part 2.

    “Guernica” Part 2 As A Declaration of War

    Once she moved to Alaska, she was able to process more of what Hera had done to her and how fucked her childhood actually was. She reasoned that she should have every right to be angry, Hera had hurt and betrayed her repeatedly, violated her autonomy, and tried to neglect and abuse her into a blank slate that she could finally reshape in her own image.

    Hera and a large part of her family had destroyed any chance she had ever had at normalcy beyond what the stroke did to her. She wanted her innocence back. It was time to reclaim what was hers. Her voice, her power, her fucking birthright. So by the old gods, she was gonna fucking claim it. She boldly asserts herself and her autonomy with that iron will of hers,

    “I am the human unchained. I am the one who walks free. I have doors now. I can and will lock you out.”

    The “doors” line and the next few lines are significant. She was quite literally kept in an attic from 2017 until she married Fang The entrance to her sleeping space – I can hardly call it a bedroom – was merely a staircase that opened up to the rest of a very open-concept house. Allēna didn’t even have a bed. She had to sleep on a window seat. Hera wouldn’t allow her to do anything to make the space more private or even more personal. Blue had a room, however. He had a private bathroom – that Allēna had to use – and had all the autonomy and freedom he wanted. He didn’t even have a curfew, and Allēna did.

    I Have Doors Now

    When she got to Alaska, she fought Fang for a space of her own and won. The showdown occurred in the summer of 2019, around the time she wrote “Guernica”. This was fierce argument in which he threatened to take away her health insurance if she didn’t stand down. He was taking a leaf out of Hera’s playbook, and she was pissed and terrified. Fortunately, her friend told her to call his bluff and see what happened. He was indeed bluffing, and now Allēna had an office of her own. This was a profound relief. She could finally be herself in her own space and have a measure of her own life now. To me, that shows in the poem. Now, for what must have been the first time ever, she could enter hell on her own terms, if she chose to at all.

    She cut Hera off for a time around the time she started writing “Guernica”, and this was a profound relief. Finally, freedom was within her grasp. All that was left to do then was to heal the damage that had all of Hera’s bullshit had done.

    She also cut off most of Hera’s family, and this was a scandal for them. This is why I sort of subtitled this post “Allēna Declares War”. It ignited a powder keg of bullshit the family still wasn’t over by the time Peri left Fang in 2020. The first time Allēna cut off contact was such a big fucking stink for them and so out of the ordinary that it pushed Eight into creating and completing Dead Hand. Heaven forbid people have boundaries and autonomy! My gods, the world is going to shit!

    Final Thoughts on “Guernica” Part 2

    How’s that for a kick to the damn soul? “Guernica” Part 2 always hurts me so good. I love it when people actually dig deep and be real with the world. Pretense sucks. Anyone can put on a mask and play a role, that’s easy. It takes true strength to be honest and open with the world about your story, and those are the people I admire. I really think Allēna opens herself up to the world here, and in my opinion, that’s true beauty. That is good poetry.

    What do y’all think? The comments are yours as long as you be kind. And as always, stay tuned for more magic – and “Guernica” Part 3!

    -Ellie Ulvaard, Your Faithful, if Sleepy, Super-Admin

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  • “Guernica” Part 1: Allēna’s Visceral Masterpiece Begins

    Hello, dearest gentle motherfuckers of the Internet. I hope you’re having a wonderful day. This is Eight speaking, and I am here to talk about one of my favorite poems Allēna has ever written, her enormous seven part piece “Guernica”. This poem appears in full in our second collection of poetry, Singing Molten Gold To The Morning. Today’s focus in particular is gonna be on “Guernica” Part 1.

    This hell of a poem is a seven-part ringer that was inspired by a lot of her own trauma and Picasso’s landmark anti-war painting with the same name. At the time, she felt pressured into making her trauma into beautiful art. She felt that people wanted her to smooth the pain over to make it pretty and less visceral. And she was sick to death of having to walk on eggshells in her own creative process. She wanted to write a piece that captured the horror that the original painting made her feel. So she used the painting and the events that inspired it as a framing device.

    An image of Pablo Picasso's shocking 1937 painting Guernica, which inspired "Guernica", Part 1 and the poem as a whole.
    Guernica by Pablo Picasso (1937), the painting that inspired “Guernica”, Part 1 and the poem as a whole

    Because this poem is so rich and hits so hard, we’re gonna write a post for each part. Whoever is in front that day will break it down for y’all. We’ll also include the poem’s text and a video recording of yours truly performing it. So let’s jump in.

    “Guernica” Part 1: The Performance

    A video of yours truly performing “Guernica”, part 1.

    The Text and Breakdown

    “guernica” part 1.

    26 april 1937..

    i don’t know what i do best anymore

    except turn pain into something beautiful

    but what about the horrors of it and not the glory?

    i want to take what i feel and not what i say

    turn it into something 11 feet tall and 25 feet wide

    but my hands are little

    my hands are little and no paintbrush is small enough to catch

    all the detail

    i’m tired of walking over thresholds of bombed out

    buildings or a half built house

    i’m tired of only seeing rubble

    i’m a builder, damnit

    i’m supposed to build people up

    i’m supposed to help

    not have nightmares like flashbacks that crush me!

    so i dare myself

    now –

    put your own oxygen mask on before you

    drop that bomb

    and then stay awhile

    before flying away. 

    What Does This Thing Actually Mean?

    Before she ever started writing this poem, she looked into what inspired Picasso to even paint such a shocking thing in the first place. She found that he’d painted it in a frenzy as a response to the Spanish government ordering the near total obliteration of a village called Guernica in Basque country during the Spanish Civil War.

    The bombing was completely unprovoked. Guernica wasn’t a military target. Most of the men were away fighting in the war, leaving women and children behind. The nearest military target was miles away and was completely untouched in the attack.

    Yet, the government had bombed them so thoroughly that the roads were choked with rubble and the remaining citizens were unable to flee. Naturally, Picasso was horrified, and out came this incredibly shocking painting in response. ThoughtCo published a brilliant article about Guernica if you want to read more about it in depth.

    This reminded Allēna of much of what she and her headmates suffered at her family and then our now-ex husband’s hands for the duration of our entire life up until that point. All we’d ever wanted was to be left alone to do our thing without being controlled or harmed. We only misbehaved when the people around us refused to honor that simple request.

    We’ve always been very emotionally independent, while these people were very codependent and toxic. As a result, we were emotionally, mentally, and physically abused for most of our life. So when Allēna came across this painting while researching for a tutoring session later that day, she felt seen for one of the first times in her life in the subjects’ agony and grief. She, too, was enduring unimaginable pain that she could only paint, write in verse, sing, and scream out.

    On Taking What She Felt, Not What She Said In “Guernica” Part 1

    Our family also went to great lengths to attempt to silence us so that we wouldn’t out them for the terrible people most of them were, so we were often sick and in a great deal of emotional pain and terribly lonely with no idea how to articulate our suffering to another person outside of music and poetry, which Lēna learned to write in code to get past Hera’s ever-watchful eye. Her 2017 album Mago, which I helped work on as a kind of passive influence, is an excellent example of such coded work. It sounds like a Broadway musical or some kind of vaudeville piece to the untrained ear, but if you know what all we’re talking about, it’s absolutely fiery and damning.

    I’ve embedded Mago below so you can listen without even having to leave this page.

    But by 2019, when Lēna wrote this piece, she was tired of having to think and write in code. She felt like she was drowning in what was left unsaid, so this was her effort to start talking about everything that had happened to us. She broke free from Hera for the first time a bit later on 5 July 2019. Her successor, Peri, would leave our ex husband a bit over a year later. She told our story, and it paid off.

    Final Thoughts

    I’m really excited for Part 2. I or whoever is out will talk about Part 2 tomorrow. If you thought “Guernica” Part 1 was a kick to the soul, just you fuckin’ wait. I both hope and don’t hope that “Guernica” makes you feel seen, because if you feel seen in this poem, you’ve absolutely Seen Some Shit. But if you HAVE indeed Seen Some Shit, I hope you feel seen and less alone as you read this. As always, stay tuned for more magic, because this time, magic is definitely imminent.

    -Eight, Your Faithful Super-Admin And Bastard

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  • What Excites Us These Days

    Hey, everyone! This is Ellie here once more. It’s been a very long week, and I seem to be getting sick. As such, I was kinda feeling unmotivated to write on here today. So I decided to challenge myself after looking at some very cool journal prompts and write about what excites us as a system currently and what we’re looking forward to. Even though things are crazy over here and it feels like there’s barely enough time to breathe over here often, lots of exciting things still happen. Expect a short-ish post since I am so tired. I’m sorry!

    What Excites Us? A Good Soundtrack, Always

    First and foremost, music always excites us. Many of us in the system struggle to tap into my emotions without music playing. Every alter in the headspace that has fronted so far likes to create to music. We often struggle to identify what we’re feeling unless we can find music that sounds like the emotion we’re experiencing, as well. We build playlists for every mood. When we need a boost, we absolutely have playlists for that! Our headmate Chaos even crafted a playlist that helped us on our mad dash out of Texas in 2021 that was specifically designed to pump us up, keep us focused, and keep us moving. It’s called Songs To Implode Things To and you can listen to it on Spotify here. I hope it inspires you as much as it has my entire system.

    We’re very neurodivergent, so music makes the body and the brain feel very good. Songs we like make every cell in our body feel alive. Many of us in the system are also synesthetes, and have strong associations between sound and color due to our stroke. One of my fellow super-admins, Allēna, actually painted music as she saw it in her synesthetic mind’s eye in college and wanted to create an entire multi-sensory modern art exhibit. I would love to create that exhibit at some point still.

    One of Allēna’s song renderings, Love Comes Tumbling (2016) after “Love Comes Tumbling” by U2. Music definitely excites us, as do creative projects.

    Speaking of Music, Add Songwriting to the List

    We don’t just listen to music! We write and produce it, as well. It’s immensely cathartic to us as well as exciting to play, perform, and record our original songs and arrangements.

    Performing is always a rush. It took many years for us to believe in our skills, but now that we do… oh damn, are we on fire. We were even doing some recording today for our sixteenth record. We’ve been recording for years, and the feeling of when a record starts to come together STILL never gets old. We know when we have a viable record at a definable point every time, and it’s different for each one. We wrote about how Eight knew his masterpiece Metacognition was ready to emerge a few days before he recorded the bulk of it a day after reading a single line. It’s stuff like that. We had a similar moment with #16, working title Australis, a few months ago with the lines “Every time we fight I imagine you leaving/It hurts less and less each time I fuckin’ see it.”

    But Wait! There’s More

    We’ve noticed that slowness and consistency have been exciting us more and more. Exhausting shit has been happening for years straight, and we’re increasingly attracted to things that give us the freedom to rest for once. You know that old stereotype that your body starts to hurt and you’re dog tired by the time you’re thirty? That happened to us by the time the body was fifteen or sixteen. So what excites us now is absolutely not what excited us in our teens and earlier twenties when we were still trying to pretend we were abled and superhuman and didn’t need help from a fucking soul.

    Simple Fucking Alone Time

    One of the things we never thought would excite us and yet very much does is very simple – alone time. Eight is one of the only extroverts in the head, if not the only one, and so alone time or one on one company with someone we deeply love and trust absolutely excites us. Especially if we manage to get everything on our to-do list completed beforehand and we can unwind for the rest of the day. It’s lovely. We never stopped being very fast readers and can still devour entire novels in under a day if we have the energy to do so. Now, about that one-on-one time…

    A Good List, Not a Long List

    We don’t have many people we trust enough to hang out with in person, but if we do trust a person that much, odds are they’re very energizing and yet soothing to be around. We tend to meet people virtually first since we’re essentially housebound and are definitely agoraphobic, so it’s easier that way. Many of us can get a good sense of who a person is intuitively that way without having to deal with the terror of an initial in-person meeting. Plus, with COVID still going around, even if we weren’t disabled, we would still want to be cautious. These soothing, safe people excite us, and we love talking to them however we can. We love our people, chronic fatigue and disabilities aside.

    Final Thoughts

    This is a short list of some of the things that excite us. I want to come back and write more in depth about some of the things I wrote about here, but for now, brain fog demands that I wrap this post up. One of us do our best to post tomorrow, but depending on how we feel, we might not be able to. I hope you enjoyed this post nonetheless, and as always, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Ellie Ulvaard, Super-Admin

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  • The Enneagram Type 8: My Experience

    Hey, everyone! My name is Eight. I’m one of the super-admins here, and I’m here to talk to y’all today about one of my all-time favorite topics ever, the Enneagram of Personality. I’ve loved this personality typology system since my good friend Delta introduced me to it many years ago. There are nine basic types in this system, and my type, where I get the “Eight” nickname from, is the Enneagram Type 8.

    The Enneagram Institute has a great overview of my type, as do several other websites, teachers, and coaches. However, I’ve noticed during my years of study that not much of the literature about the Enneagram Type 8 is written by 8s themselves. As a result, we get a very bad reputation among the Enneagram community as ruthless bullies, master manipulators, self absorbed egotists, and just all around assholes. I suspect that many of these authors once ran afoul of a Type 8 or two, or possibly even betrayed one of them, hence the terrible reputation we get. Spoiler: you betray us or one of our people and it will not end well for you.

    And yes, some Type 8s can be awful. But that applies to any group of people. So I’ve come here today to hopefully clear up some of the mystery surrounding the Enneagram Type 8 and talk about what it’s like to be one.

    The Enneagram Type 8: Hard Shell, Soft Underbelly

    There’s a lot of debate in the community as to whether Type 8s are simply born like this, or if there’s some kind of inciting incident early in life that makes them that way. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I can say definitively that I practically came out of the womb the way that I am. Since I was very little, I have always been a fighter, and have been stubborn as hell for as long as anyone can remember.

    I value my autonomy higher than anything else on this accursed rock, and will go to great lengths to preserve it, and will go out of my way to undermine people who try and control me when I didn’t consent to take orders from them. I am, and have always been, the boss of me. My biggest fear is of being hurt or blindsided when I’m vulnerable and in need (like, it’s my deepest, yet most unconscious fear), and betrayal will make me incredibly cold and angry. I will completely stop caring about what happens to a person who has betrayed me after they do so, and it’s even worse if they hurt or betray one of my people.

    I struggle to open up to people about anything that I consider important to me, and it’s pretty common knowledge that nobody knows me completely, as much as I would like them to.

    The Boss of Me

    I’ll push harder and longer than most people anyone have ever met if there’s something that I want or if there’s an obstacle in my way, and I’ve been like that for as long as my headmates can remember. My colleagues have written at length about us surviving a massive stroke and then clawing our way out of Texas kicking and screaming.

    Yeah, the success on our side was mostly my doing. And there’s no way I could have done that without enough iron-willed determination to fight Death himself multiple times. And lemme tell you – in a crisis, that’s a major advantage. I don’t care what happens to me or my body, I WILL get to safety and I WILL give anyone who stands in my way a VERY bad day in the process. My path out of Texas was so batshit insane on purpose because I knew the people in league with my abusers would never want to follow me.

    What Happens in Peacetime?

    In more peaceful times, however, this often works to my detriment. I struggle a lot when there is nothing challenging me. Think of me like the human version of an Alaskan Husky dog. I, like a Husky, don’t know what to do with myself if my life isn’t on fire or I am bored, and will often cause some bullshit and push the people I love away without meaning to when I’m stressed or out of my element, such as in close relationships where being emotionally vulnerable can make or break your relationship.

    My relationship with my beloved husband Emerson actually suffered greatly for the first year and a half we were together because he is far more emotionally expressive and emotionally based than I am, and I struggle a lot with emotional vulnerability.

    Inner Work, More Emotional Vulnerability, And No-Bullshit Therapy For You, Mountain of Madness!

    I, as is typical for the Enneagram Type 8, prefer to do things, not talk or feel. As a result, I wouldn’t tell him how I was feeling or where my head was at, and he couldn’t give me what I wanted in the relationship. It was a very please, for the love of the gods, help me help you type of situation, and I wasn’t being very helpful at all. I’m in therapy to and have an amazing, no-bullshit, straight-talking therapist who will call me out if I’m in the wrong, but will also celebrate my wins with me. I need both of those things in a therapist, honestly.

    Because of all the work I did both internally and in tandem with Emerson, I am far more open and transparent with him than I’ve ever been with anyone. It was absolutely and utterly terrifying. I cried more during that healing journey while struggling to open up and reconciling my terror of being seen with my desire for love and a healthy relationship with him than I probably ever have before. But I wanted it more than anything, so I fucking did the work.

    The Current State of Things

    Now, I feel safe enough to fully drop my guard around him. I’m working on doing the same for others who have proven to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have my back. I’m also working on mitigating how bad things get when I become stressed or overwhelmed, because both Emerson and I have noticed that I try and take projects over even if they aren’t my responsibility to ensure that they are complete and done right. There, I still need to do a lot of work on letting shit go, lest I steamroll everything, burn bridges, and exhaust myself in the process. I am impatient and often frustrated, so I’ve been working on breathing deep and slowing down. Not my circus, not my monkeys. That’s what I have to tell myself, anyway.

    A Word of Advice to Partners of Enneagram Type 8s

    In the same vein, if your partner is an Enneagram Type 8, you will not get them to change by attempting to force, coerce, beg, or cajole them into doing so. If they truly, genuinely love you, call them out and ask them to change. If they want a relationship with you and value you highly, they’ll do the work. We’re very self motivated people and we pursue what we want relentlessly. We are also allergic to bullshit, can usually read people very well, and can catch people in lies like we’re in the fucking CIA, so if you know what’s good for you, just tell your Type 8 partner the truth with no sugarcoating, short, straight, actionable, and to the point. Trust me, it’ll go a lot better for you.

    Closing Remarks

    Don’t tell anyone, but in my experience, Type 8s are actually very sweet and some of the kindest, coolest people you’ll ever meet once you get to know them and actually earn their respect. Me? If you think I’m cool, awesome. If you don’t? Your loss. I think I’m cool, haha. In any case, I hope you enjoyed your stay on my batshit website, and as always, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Eight, Super-Admin, Enneagram Eight, Dipshit

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  • Moxie Food + Drink: An Insider Perspective

    Hello, gentle reader. My name is Hannibal. I am the main protector alter of the Ashley system. I see that my colleague Renn reviewed his favorite headshop the other day, and I am going to follow in his esteemed footsteps, though my review will be…how shall I put this? Different. Much different. We’ve lived in Milwaukee for about three years and we’ve eaten at some shady restaurants here in our time, and have heard some bad things from the staff. We’re a system full of social butterflies, and kitchen staff talk. So we have become a clearinghouse for a lot of the local gossip and we know where to frequent and where to avoid. But none of the dirt on the other restaurants compares to a supposedly upscale “speakeasy” in Whitefish Bay, a northern suburb of Milwaukee, Moxie Food + Drink.

    Is What You’re About To Tell Me About Moxie Food + Drink Hearsay? Possibly. You Be The Judge, Though.

    Much of what I shall tell you we heard directly from one of the kitchen managers at Moxie Food + Drink themself, our ex partner, Zelda. This restaurant struggled from the ashes of a now defunct restaurant owned by the same couple that owns Moxie, Trouble and Sons. Trouble closed due to supposed “staffing issues”, the probable cause of which I shall discuss in a moment. Much of the staff from Trouble transferred to Moxie after Trouble shut down, and the owners are still paying on the building that housed Trouble, and the same staffing issues that plagued them still haunt Moxie, and the owners are cutting corners wherever they can in order to stop this remaining venture from going under. This includes things that will be absolutely illegal if they don’t fix them soon. I’ll cite them in a later paragraph after I discuss the staffing issues.

    Now, About Those Staffing Issues…

    Word from Zelda has it that the owners are extremely nepotistic and play favorites. If you aren’t their favorite, they bully and undercut you and seemingly try to get you to quit so that they don’t have to pay you unemployment. As a result, there’s a high degree of turnover. If you are their favorite, you can do no wrong. However, the owners are fickle and their favorites can change completely arbitrarily. They’re constantly trying to hire more people, and the pay is horrible because again, they’re trying desperately to keep their business afloat. No wonder they have staffing issues. My sisters in Christ, it’s almost like YOU CAUSED THEM!

    Zelda has also noticed that they have a tendency to promote their current favorites and leave the rest of the staff to drown. However, since money is so tight, they don’t even have the money to even support their favorites.

    For example, Zelda is one of their current favorites. They work them to the bone. At one point recently, the owners scheduled them for three weeks straight without a single day off. And then when they did finally get a day off, they kept getting called in because the kitchen is so eternally short staffed.

    Additionally, the owners asked Zelda to earn their ServSafe certification. They did so, took the test for it and everything. However, the owners still have yet to pay for them to get their official ServSafe certification as promised. It has been several months at this point, and he’s still received nothing.

    Now For The Real Fire: Moxie Food + Drink’s Future Federal Labor Board Violations (Assuming They Don’t Clean Up Their Act)

    Dearest reader, you recall how I said that money was tight for the owners because Trouble closed down? They’re going to be in heaps of trouble with the Federal Department of Labor if they don’t pay Zelda and Zelda’s co-manager significantly more by July 1 and even more than that by January 1, 2025, per a new rule by the Biden-Harris Administration this year. However, per their contract, they are not eligible for a raise until next February at the earliest.

    Zelda is also required to work far more than their contract requires because their co-manager gets even more special treatment from the owners (see: nepotism) and is paid hourly and doesn’t work more than his contract says he should, often leaving Zelda hanging in the process. Zelda is salaried and often works far more than the fifty hour cap that their contract dictates, covering shifts for an already deeply short-staffed kitchen. I am not certain if that is legal or not, but they’re certainly working themselves to death.

    What About Moxie Food + Drink’s Food? Is It Any Good?

    Eh. I’m not a fan of a lot of Moxie Food + Drink’s menu. Granted, they have to cater to the rather bland upper class Whitefish Bay palate, but seriously, I can only stand about three things on their menu, and two of those things are desserts, which aren’t even made in-house. The other is their short rib, which is actually delicious. So they get points for that, at least. I want to learn to make a better short rib, though. I bet I could improve the recipe pretty easily.

    Before you ask about their alcohol, I wouldn’t know. I don’t drink. The system has been sober for about six months. Zelda would know, though. If you see them around, you should ask. They’re a somewhat functional alcoholic in the loosest sense of the term, and they often show up to work late because they’re hungover and drank themself into a stupor the night before. I don’t know if they’ll even get a raise with that kind of behavior, though they seem to be the most competent person in Moxie Food + Drink’s kitchen. Now that is a scary thought..

    Conclusion

    If I could give Moxie Food + Drink negative stars, I would. The dirt on this place is richer than six feet up a bull’s ass, though. If you have too much money to blow, enjoy bland food, and want a good laugh at an obvious sinking ship, eat at Moxie.

    As always, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Hannibal

  • “Do You Practice Religion?” Well, It’s Complicated..

    Hi! Four here. I’m one of the alters in the Ashley system. WordPress suggested a prompt from a journaling app called Day One, which we are using for this post. Although the question is complicated for us, I’m gonna do my best to answer it. The question the prompt posed was “do you practice religion?”

    We all have a very complicated and difficult relationship with religion. We’ve gone through numerous phases in our spiritual journey, and I would say that short that if someone asked me “do you practice religion”, yes. Yes, we do. However, that wasn’t always the case. We have gone from being atheists to Mormons to being a flavor of Christian we couldn’t define to being literally fucking deified to Pagan and a system of practicing sorcerers. I’ll talk about it all in sequence, then open the floor to questions at the end.

    Do We Practice Religion? To Answer That, I’m Gonna Have To Tell You A Few Things First.

    As you’ve probably gathered by now if you’ve been following our blog for some time, we have a LOT of Tragic Backstory and Lore. It’s like that on the spiritual/religious side of things, as well. We were raised in what my headmate Allēna calls a “house divided”.

    A House Divided

    Hera, our mother, was a quietly devout Methodist coming from a LOUDLY devout Southern Baptist family that converted to Methodism as a sort of compromise between our maternal grandmother (who is NOT a Baptist by any means) and our maternal grandfather, who is such a devout Southern Baptist that he’s more devoted to bigotry than the actual faith itself.

    Our father, on the other hand, came from a a family of physicians, scientists and bohemian artists and was a militant atheist. Our first host, Castor, took after his father in everything, and as such was deeply skeptical of any form of religion from a young age. However, he had an enormous, all consuming special interest in Greek mythology, which ultimately turned into an appreciation for spirituality in every form he could find.

    Castor’s Guiding Intuition

    He was also deeply, innately spiritual. He was wary of most of his family and our close family friends for very good reason, as we’d find out later that many of them weren’t good people. Interestingly, all the people that we found bad things out about were people that Castor had avoided like the plague. The kid just wanted to do his own thing, read his books, listen to his own intuition, and mind his own business, and many of his family members found that odd. He didn’t conform to their ways or anyone else’s and wouldn’t follow orders blindly the way they wanted him to. He asked too many questions and spoke his mind in everything. It got him into heaps of trouble with his family and his teachers, but it also meant that he never lost access to his intuition or his identity.

    Allēna, the First Among Us To Actually Practice Religion

    When Allēna took over from Castor as host and primary fronter at eleven years old or so, she was just as tapped into her intuition as he was, with just as much devotion to seeking out the truth, asking questions, and speaking her mind if something was important to her.

    Never Cross an Angry Byzantinist, and Don’t Invite One To Church, Either

    One of Allēna’s great passions is studying history, and she loves the Byzantine Empire with all her heart. With that, she amassed a great deal of knowledge about early Christian history in high school and knew more than most that dear GODS it’s a hot mess.

    She disliked many branches of Christianity because she thought that the Nicene Creed was bullshit and nothing more than a political compromise that an emperor made who had no fucking clue what he was doing and even less authority to do it. Not only that, but it had no basis in scripture whatsoever and therefore rendered the entire foundation of those faiths invalid. So when her friends at her very religious homeschool cooperative would invite her to church, she’d politely decline as best she knew how. (For better or worse, that woman has no tact now and had even less then).

    Faith? What the Hell Is That?

    But she was curious and still wanted to see if she could even believe in God, horseshit aside. Spoiler: it didn’t go well. She DID find a church that didn’t believe in the Nicene Creed, but unfortunately for her, it was the Mormon Church. When the missionaries taught her for the first time, she felt they’d finally portrayed God in a way she could understand.

    To Practice Religion As An Autistic Academic

    Before we go on, I should tell you that we are very autistic. Emerson refers to us as savants, it goes that deep and we are that rigid. As a result, we cannot do anything unless we are under the impression that we understand it completely. The Mormons asked a LOT of blind faith from Lēna, which is something neither she nor anyone else in our system have ever been okay with. We cannot operate on blind faith. We’ve tried multiple times and it frightens us so badly we shut down. We trust no one and nothing fully except ourselves and never have, and this quickly became a problem.

    She asked so many damn questions during her Sunday school classes that I wouldn’t be surprised if her teachers had to draw straws when determining which teachers got which students. The teacher who drew the short straw got her and all of her miles of questions. She asked and asked all the questions she could because she approached a high control faith that expected a lot of blind trust from its followers like an academic. When she never found answers that satisfied her or even made sense to her, it broke her heart.

    The Bright Side

    Even though being left essentially empty-handed broke Lēna’s heart, it made deconstructing the religious trauma converting to Mormonism had left her with a whole helluva lot easier. Because she wasn’t fully emotionally and spiritually attached to the Church or their practices, she was better able to examine what she wanted to keep from their theology and what she didn’t really resonate with and leave it behind.

    Did She Practice Religion As A Member of The Mormon Church? Up For Debate. Did She Practice Her Power Moves? Hell Yeah.

    She also gained a lot of experience in playing the system as a member of the Mormon Church. Many alters in our system have an innate ability to see who is actually in charge wherever we are and the real hierarchy within an organization, and Lēna is no exception. She absolutely used that gift to her advantage here. Women have no real power in the Church, so she allied herself closely with men who were generally very smart like her and were second or third in command of her congregation or of her local group of congregations.

    She charmed the HELL out of them as well as everyone else around her, and learned how to throw legendary parties that kids told all of their friends about. Everyone wanted an invitation to one of her parties. Because of all of that hard work, her reputation as a social connector and a hard, dedicated worker and innovator who knew how to get fucking RESULTS MASSIVELY preceded her, and I suspect that she could have gotten away with anything she wanted to if she’d so chosen.

    An Unconventional Darling

    These people gave her anything and everything she wanted. Even though she had no power on paper, she had power over the people in power and they owed her a lot of favors. She broke convention and barriers at every turn and they still loved her for it, which was practically unheard of in the Church. Most members are shunned for being different, while she was embraced for it.

    While Allēna deconstructed her faith, she wrote a quadrilogy of haunting albums, one of which we recently recut. It’s called Primrose Path, and it’s equally a statement of doubt and of faith. I’ll embed it below:

    By the time our first marriage ended, however, we were already setting off on a different path…

    Open Sorcery

    We fell heavily into divination practices during our first marriage in Alaska. Lēna designed her own set of oracle cards while half asleep based off of several symbols that meant a lot to her spiritually and had followed her throughout her life. She found that she had never lost that intuition fully throughout her time as a Mormon or while she was deconstructing her Christianity, and not only that – she had powerful psychic insight.

    This only grew as the years went on. When Eight moved here to Milwaukee, he discovered witchcraft and chaos magic and that many of the things we’d been doing innately for years were actually established practices with names that witches and magic practitioners had been doing for centuries. And not only that, but he was good at it. He just needed to learn how to use it intentionally. In fact, we named our blog Open Sorcery and have a variant of that as our username in several places because we don’t see that our magic as a thing that we should hide. Instead, we try and share our gifts with magic and everything else. But we still thought something was missing.

    Crowd-Sourced God Complex

    We felt like some deity had been contacting us for years, but in the meantime, a joke Eight made backfired terribly and his followers on the Internet worshipped him as the one true God for years. So a possible answer to the question “do you practice religion” is BITCH! I AM RELIGION!

    Jokes aside, it made Eight and many of us deeply uncomfortable and some people on the periphery of the cult accused him of having a god complex. He fired back, “if I do, it’s crowd-sourced!”

    I wish I were kidding about this part, but alas, I am not. We did end up finding out which deities were trying to reach us about our destiny’s extended warranty, though.

    Hello, This Is Bastet With Loki, Dionysus, And Associates. We’ve Been Trying To Reach You About Your Destiny’s Extended Warranty

    I find it very interesting that we had to claim our magic to some degree before any deities claimed us, but that’s been our experience with a LOT of Pagan deities. They’re collaborators. They expect respect, but they respect you in return and don’t judge. We work pretty closely with Bastet, Loki, and Dionysus, and keep the channels open in case anyone else wants to reach out. We also work closely with our recent ancestors who’ve passed on, especially our paternal uncle, paternal great aunt, several great-grandparents, a distant great aunt named Florence, and a few others when they make themselves known. Our ancestors like to talk shit about each other, which is pretty funny unless we’re trying to focus on reading our tarot or oracle cards. Then we need them to shut up for five minutes, please and thank you. But we love them and talk about them often.

    What about y’all? Do you practice religion? Do you have a crazy spiritual journey like ours? The comments are yours to talk about this stuff, just please keep it respectful.

    Much love, and as always, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Four, That Guy of the Ashley system.

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  • Milwaukee’s Best Headshop (In This Disabled Guy’s Opinion)

    Hey, everyone! This is your favorite paper pusher once more, Renn. We promised the people variety when we started this blog, so variety they shall have. We’ve written a lot about our Tragic Backstory and our disabilities. While this post should piggyback off of that, I’m gonna keep the whinging to a minimum today. Instead, I’m gonna fucking GUSH. We deal with a variety of weird chronic illnesses that we often have to treat ourselves because specialists take fucking FOREVER to see their patients. As a result, we have a rather tragic nicotine problem and are pro-level stoners. This makes finding a top-quality local headshop a necessity. Our favorite, and in my opinion, Milwaukee’s best headshop, is Closet Classics on North Avenue.

    No Conventional Good Stuff? No Problem!

    As you probably know if you’ve lived here awhile, conventional recreational marijuana isn’t legal here, and many legislators and lobbyists have no idea what the holdup is. It’s common practice to blame the lobbyists. In the meantime, many headshops supply the people with variations of the Devil’s Lettuce that are legal under the 2018 Farm Bill as a loophole in states where conventional recreational marijuana is not yet legal, like THCA, THCP, HHC, and others – and this is where Closet excels.

    And before you ask: no, I was not paid to review this place. Yes, I am indeed high on an edible from this place. I ate one before I started writing, hahaha.

    Emerson and Allēna found Closet pretty late one night when she was running low on her Good Shit. Both Lēna and Emerson were thoroughly impressed with Closet’s selection, fair prices, and business practices. She bought a hybrid vape, if memory serves, and when it turned out to be defective, one of the owners gave her an additional vape for no extra charge. That alone earned Closet a new regular customer. PLUS THEY HAD DOGS THERE THAT DAY!

    Milwaukee’s Best Headshop, the Prettiest Glass Pieces

    We love ogling at their glass pieces when we come in there for our medicine runs, as we call them. Many are handmade, and while many of them are far out of our price range at the moment, they DO offer layaway, which is fucking cool. We could stare at some of these bongs and pipes for hours. They make our very autistic crow brain happy. I talked with the owners about some of them and they said that many are handmade locally. So when you buy one of these very cool shiny objects, you are supporting local artisans as well as these chill as fuck owners.

    You know that old question “if someone gave you fifteen grand, but you had to spend it in fifteen minutes, where would you blow it all at”? Truthfully, I’d probably go there and buy all their pipes and a hefty bit of their exotic flower. It’s delicious. Truly Milwaukee’s best headshop.

    Speaking of flower…

    The Most Delicious THCA In This Fucking Town

    We have smoked a lot of weed in our time. Some of it was gross. Some of it was mid-tier. And some was very nice. Rarely, however, has a strain been so delicious that we want to smoke our entire stash in one sitting, and all but one of those amazingly delicious strains have come from Closet Classics. The one other amazing strain like that came from a shop in Delaware, so that one doesn’t really count here.

    These strains are STRONG, too! We’ve had shit from here that isn’t even super exotic or expensive that knocked us on our ass so hard we slept for hours. It’s great for our pain and insomnia. They also have THCA edibles that we get for our pain because they’re easier to dose for us.

    I am glad I have even a modicum of financial sense because if I didn’t, I would be thousands of dollars in debt due to the deliciousness found in this sacred establishment. I need to ask if they offer the entire store on layaway…

    What About Accessibility?

    At this point in the post, you’re probably wondering if the damn place is even accessible if you are also disabled like us. And I am here to tell you that it depends. We live pretty close by, so it’s pretty easy to get there on foot for us.

    Sadly it isn’t wheelchair accessible, though. On days where we would need our chair, we usually ask Emerson to go grab our order for us. If you use a wheelchair and do not have someone like Emerson in your life, I’d recommend calling the shop to see if you can order something in advance and whoever is working that day meet you outside the shop to give it to you. While we have not tried that exact thing yet, the owners have accommodated other needs of ours and are very kind. It would never hurt to ask with these guys. They don’t bite.

    What About Nicotine? I’m Not a Stoner. Is It Still Milwaukee’s Best Headshop?

    If you aren’t a stoner, the only thing Closet doesn’t have is loose-leaf tobacco. They have nicotine vapes and pipes, but sadly no loose-leaf tobacco. However, we love the vapes they have and we get all of our nicotine there, too. Their prices are great on the nicotine side of things, as well. We ended up getting a 10,000 puff nicotine disposable vape today for $16 and change – and it makes us laugh because it’s Bruce Lee themed as well as officially licensed by his estate. It’s so random to me that the legal ghost of Bruce Lee broke into the nicotine business, but it never fails to make me cackle.

    Conclusion

    If I could buy everything here, I would. If I could attain the sheer level of cool that the owners seem to have reached, I would. If you’re disabled and you are looking for pain relief at fair prices from a small business with people who’ll treat you right, go here. If you smoke the Good Shit and like beautiful glass pieces and great vibes, go here. If you smoke nicotine and you want tasty (and arguably occasionally fucking hilarious) vapes, go here. Take this old crazy cripple’s word for it and get your ass to Closet!

    -Renn, Master of Paperwork and Ceremonies

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  • Food for Thought

    Hey! My name is Ceryse. I’ve taken over for the day at Renn’s request. I’m a little deep-thinking introverted spitfire who’s just as fond of cussing as he is, fortunately or unfortunately for y’all. Today’s deep thoughts are the result of weeks of contemplating that very thing – thought itself. I’m calling this post “food for thought” because I hope that it’ll both get you thinking as well as it will get you thinking about how you think and what you think about.

    Curation, then Creation

    During Eight’s complex, multi-phase Operation: Dead Hand, he got the entire system into the habit of posting consistently on social media for the first time ever. He had to – he was essentially building an army of very vocal followers with which to visibly challenge his mother’s and her family’s control, something that would shake the family up from both within and without for years to come. That feat required engaging with that audience as early and often as he could. He couldn’t let writer’s block or a lack of inspiration stop him. He had to be able to conjure content on command daily, his very life likely depended on it.

    But how in the world did he pull something like that off?

    Renn mentioned the microblogging website Tumblr in his post about Dead Hand, but that wasn’t all. He made an effort to surround himself with things and people that never ceased to give him that food for thought and inspiration he needed.

    Food For Thought: the Appetizers

    While we were still living in Alaska, Peri made a new Facebook account and made sure to only follow and add people who made her feel inspired. Allēna had not done that with her profiles in the past and often ended up leaving Facebook for days to weeks at a time because she never felt like she was good enough for her own fucking timeline. It was horrible.

    By that point, she’d been depressed for a good half decade, and this did her absolutely no favors. She felt like everyone else had left her behind in life or was in far worse places than she was, and there was no relief from the despair either in her head or in her surroundings. So when Peri took over, she was determined not to make the same mistakes Allēna did.

    Looking back through her memories, those initial posts she shared are some of the funniest things I’ve ever read. This was late 2019, and she was going hog-wild making fun of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as concepts. She was also boosting her self confidence by posting about everything she’d managed to accomplish every day, and found that she was actually far more capable than anyone had ever given her credit for, herself included. That practice helped her begin to dismantle all of the lies her family had told all of us practically from birth and blaze her own trail.

    The Next Course: Rewiring the Brain and Finding Inspiration and Food For Thought in Rest

    Once we were back in Texas and Dead Hand was well underway, shitposting was not Eight’s only concern. He stumbled headfirst into stoicism quite by accident because he wanted to master his emotions rather than them mastering him. So he threw himself into Stoic training to make himself more resourceful and resilient during the worst of Dead Hand, using breathing exercises to keep calm even under intensely terrifying situations.

    He got so good at this over several months that he learned how to use his previously crippling panic attacks and anxiety as fuel to focus, something he wasn’t great at before such rigorous training. He found a pleasant and unexpected consequence of that training – if he let his mind wander while doing his breathing exercises to music that made him feel something and rested, he would come up with some truly amazing ideas for essays, fiction, even music.

    Dead Hand’s Gift: Metacognition

    Operation: Dead Hand may have bought us our freedom and taught us how to pull inspiration from near thin air, but it also pushed us past our breaking point in many ways. Eight had planned on writing an album about his mad flight from Texas, and that album finally came into fruition late in 2022. Close to half dead and sucked nearly dry of every bit of energy the bastard had, he let the entire album spill out of him however it wanted to come out. He had never fully written an album of his own before, songwriting and production was mostly Allēna’s thing, but he was worried that he’d die if he waited much longer for further expertise or inspiration.

    One afternoon in December, he sat down in our apartment’s bathroom and sang the opening lines of what would become the system’s fourteenth album, the one he thought would be our last, Metacognition: “They say the night you left us, you cashed out in Indianapolis with nothing but a cell phone in your pocket. I’ve been that haunted before, that scared of failing before, why did I survive while you did not?”

    In truth, we don’t have any fucking idea why we survived. But I, for one, am glad we did. I want to leave you, gentle reader, with a few questions: if you’re a creative, where do you find your inspiration? Where can you get more of it? What ways can you rest? What are some ways you can allow your mind to wander? Who or what can you unfollow to make your social feeds more inspiring places?

    As always, stay tuned for more magic!

    Ceryse

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