Open Sorcery

Tag: on writing

  • (Ab)normalcy

    Hey, everyone. This is your trusty guide and sorcerer, Lazarus, once again. Today was very slow moving, as I woke up tired and I didn’t really recover much energy all day. I don’t think the weather helped much, nor did my anxiety about the upcoming presidential elections, but my pain wasn’t too bad, and I got most of the things done that I had wanted to do. This post is the last major thing that I wanted to do today, so even if I crash after writing it, I will have done plenty today. Both Zelda and Emerson are over here tonight on the off chance that things go to hell locally with the aforementioned elections. I find it ironic that the elections are being held on November 5, which is Guy Fawkes’ Day in the UK, but that’s neither here nor there.

    I’ve been meditating of late about how a lot of modern culture, especially in the United States, doesn’t prioritize rest and leisure in the slightest. We’re often conditioned from birth to be human doings rather than human beings, and it creates this enormous culture wide shame around things like rest and on a deeper level, disabilities and chronic ailments. Everyone is in a hurry, and many people are left behind if they can’t keep up for any reason and it kills them slowly.

    Practically from birth, I was one of those people who was constantly at risk of being left behind, even by my own family. Both of my parents were entrepreneurs, and my father, Xavier, had built his business into a smash success. My mother, Hera, would often say that she didn’t know what she wanted to do when she grew up, but she ran a photography business for most of my youth while simultaneously homeschooling my brother, Blue, and I.

    Both parents were basically allergic to what they considered to be “laziness”. I was disabled because I had survived heart failure and then a stroke in quick succession when I was a baby, and was very atypical in other ways as a child, both mentally and physically, so I had to push myself from an early age to keep up with the rest of my family. I had to undergo numerous operations as a result of the heart failure/stroke combination, which left me in severe pain the majority of the time, so it was a battle to keep up with my very athletic parents in any real way, and they gave me shit for not being very physically strong. I grew up thinking that everyone around me was in severe pain that they just…hid, and that being pain free was just more BS that companies said to try to sell you something. I didn’t learn that that was false until I was 24 or so.

    Mentally, I was different from nearly everyone I knew, as well. I could read by the time I was 18 months old, and was both blessed and cursed with an extremely accurate autobiographical memory, so I could remember nearly everything that had ever happened to me in excruciatingly accurate detail. I also had a heightened intuition and next to no sense of linear time, which only got stronger as I got older.

    Not only that, but because of the age when all of the things happened with the stroke and things, I didn’t attach in any meaningful way to most of my family members or..anyone, really. I sort of always knew that they were garbage. Pair that with the massive vocabulary that I got from being able to read so young and an almost complete lack of shame or regard for them, and I wasn’t shy about letting them know how I felt about the lot of them and their bullshit. This caused a lot of problems. I was very angry and lonely from an early age. I didn’t fit in anywhere, and I didn’t particularly want to. I felt like a stranger in my own family. By the time I was perhaps five or six, I wanted to be an adult so I leave and not come back.

    Nobody really knew how to handle me. Xavier did his best, but my mother, Hera, sort of gave up on getting to know me as I was and settled for trying to make me normal as she defined it. There was only one problem. I had survived so many things that should have objectively killed me that there was no fucking way I was going to walk away from any of that shit normal, even if I had been properly nurtured and met where I was. It didn’t really work and got very, very ugly.

    I came out of my childhood cripplingly anxious, perfectionistic, plural, and dripping with self hatred to such an extent that I was ashamed of my very being and pretty actively suicidal. Her definition of normalcy was nowhere close to normal, and certainly was nowhere close to how I functioned best.

    I was still in agonizing pain, both mentally and physically. I didn’t care about myself at all, and that translated to my relationships. I loved people, but had no idea how to show it. Because of how I was raised and my trauma history, I unconsciously thought at the time that the highest form of love was begrudgingly tolerating someone’s presence, and that I would be lucky to find a partner at all, much less one that actually valued me for who I was and treated me well. So my first partners were less than stellar.

    Over time, I started working through my trauma in greater depth and came to find out that much of my upbringing and therefore Hera’s definition of normal was very, very much not normal. Not even close. I think a better word to describe it would be unhinged. A major part of that examination has been looking at my anxiety around rest and productivity. That’s taken a lot.

    I have no internal sense of when I need to quit until I am so tired I can’t stand up or my hypermobile joints are dislocating, and that’s taken a great deal of work to unfuck in any real way. I don’t like doing nothing. I deeply enjoy being productive and keeping my mind and hands busy, especially since I have had to spend much of the last three years in bed and have this gnawing sense that I need to make up for lost time, so to speak. I’m almost constantly bored if I’m not actively engaged in something deeply, and I have a very hard time slowing down and relaxing.

    I know all of this is trauma talking, and I need to give myself more breaks and leisure time. But how? I’m still trying to figure that out. In a way, writing here is a nice balance, as it gives me a nice focal point for all of the chaos in my brain with no external algorithm to appease. I write here when I want to and am able and only really then. Granted, I still put a great deal of pressure on myself to write regularly, but I do that so that writing doesn’t get lost in the shuffle of the maelstrom that is my life. I actively want to write and deeply enjoy it when I do. I’ve always enjoyed writing.

    Additionally, I’ve been using writing on to give myself a mental pause button and time to sit and reflect on what I’ve been thinking about of late relatively free of distractions. It’s a challenge, but I love challenges. I love trying to articulate my meditations as clearly as I’m able, as that gives me a handy thing to refer back to, even if no one ever happens upon this blog later. I always feel lighter after I write, so this is in its own way a form of rest, I suppose.

    I’ve found myself completely out of energy at around three o clock in the afternoon consistently, as well, and I have done my best to stop fighting the fatigue and let myself drift gently into a nap. Apparently this isn’t my body being weird, nor is it a chronic fatigue thing, it’s just a human one. This was reassuring to learn, and may help me fight the fatigue even less. This is a fucking process for sure…

    Ah, well, I think that’s enough for today, y’all, as my brain is starting to get tired. Stay tuned for more magic, glorious entities near and far. I’ll be around.

    Your very sleepy bored cat of a sorcerer,

    Lazarus

    Subscribe to Blog via Email

    Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

  • A Journey To The Center Of Myself

    Well, hello, everyone. I was originally going to write about something a bit different – problem solving and Stoicism – but then I saw this prompt from the journaling app Day One and this feels a bit more meaningful:

    What does it mean to be a kid at heart?

    Truth be told, I have no idea, at least none that I’m aware of. I don’t think I was ever a child, really. In some ways, I didn’t really get to be a child, and in others, I chose not to be one, and in still others, simply…never was one. I was an odd kid who saw too much and asked far too many questions. I knew exactly what I wanted from a very young age, around three or four, and have spent my entire life to date working to get it, as the family and life I was born into was nothing like what I wanted.

    I was ruthlessly self aware and extremely critical of myself and even more so of others. I could read by eighteen months old and speak like an adult, and like many AuDHD kids, I had no concept of shame or embarrassment. I was told to be honest and was punished for lying, so when I was asked for my opinion, I gave people my honest opinion fluently. This pissed a lot of people off because it turns out they weren’t looking for an honest opinion and weren’t expecting a well thought out, passionate critique from a toddler in front of everyone they knew.

    So I grew up very afraid, confused, and angry. Why would people ask for my opinion and then get angry for me expressing my opinion?! This just pissed me off more, because as fluently as I could speak, I had no concept of social nuance or Southern politeness, and frankly I thought it was all bullshit. So I became a very lonely, angry kid. Nobody in my family expected me to know what I wanted, much less express it with ease and fluency, as they are very indecisive, so I was harshly punished for that, too. From the time I was perhaps five or six, my strongest desire was to be an adult so I could be an adult so I could finally leave all of those indecisive fuckers with their conflicting ideas about manners and the right thing to do in the dust, and I wasn’t shy about that, either. See why I have no idea what it even remotely means to be a kid at heart?

    Though, I suppose, imagining for a moment that my family had been made up of decent human beings more in line with the spirit of the question, and not the reality of what happened, I think I could come up with a better answer.

    Had my family let me lead the way and actually believed me when I said I knew precisely what I wanted (within reason, of course, with limits to keep me safe from harm), I could them allowing me to explore my myriad special interests and gently nudging me toward keeping an open mind to related areas, accepting me for who I was rather than who they were trying to shape me into, and celebrating my imagination rather than attempting to stifle it in the name of normalcy or propriety.

    I wish that my family had accepted and encouraged me in my entirety that way. However, the tragic reality is that they didn’t. That being said, a lot of the work I’ve been doing of late is accepting myself like that. It still feels really weird a lot of the time because I’m so used to suppressing aspects of myself or expecting those around me to ask me to “tone it down”, but nobody does anymore. That in and of itself is terrifying in a way, but deeply and immensely liberating.

    In the process, I’ve been able to release a lot of the anger I’ve been holding onto for 27 fucking years and replace it with curiosity, love, and something like wonder. I think this is more of what the prompt was driving at, and I like to think I’m living this.

    I couldn’t have done this without my beloved Emerson modeling being a kid at heart for me more or less. He’s never lost that wonder or that curiosity. He’s fucking adorable, passionate about everything, and it’s infectious. Loving him and watching him get fully in touch with his inner childlike wonder has helped me discover mine in many ways for the first time consciously. He has to often drag me out of my shell because anxiety is a fucking bitch, but I’m grateful for it every time he does. He has been helping me gently unfurl a great deal. I call him “baby man” affectionately because of that never ending sense of wonder and youthful rambunctiousness.

    Another partner of mine, Hawthorne, is another excellent model for this. They are essentially a tiny radiant goth crow baby darling in person form, and they are so fucking fascinated with so many different things with such great intensity that they cannot help get ME interested in a lot of the same shit effortlessly. In fact, I got started practicing magic in large part YEARS ago in earnest because of them. They opened my mind to so many different things simply by being so excited about them and I honestly don’t know what I would do without that sweet baby.

    And as I sit with the eternal question of “what the fuck do I do now” I posed in my post the other day, I’m finding that a lot of my interests are holdovers from when I was fucking pissed at everything, most of myself, and wanting to drink myself into a stupor. I picked many of them up to spite someone or other and they became the sole buffer between oblivion and me with time. Very few of them actually spark any kind of real passion or breathe any kind of real life into me, they’re more like “hey, I’m gonna do this thing as a last resort so I don’t do something worse or permanent because I feel like utter dog shit”. In that way they feel more like a chemical dependency than a real passion. But one of the things I keep coming back to is audio engineering.

    Songwriting is one of those chemical dependency things for me. It’s a great outlet when I feel like utter dog shit and have nowhere else to turn, hence why I have written 15 fucking albums. But it’s not the songwriting part of the process that lights me the fuck up. It’s the RECORDING portion. I love recording. It’s something that I love doing so much that even though I’ve produced and recorded fifteen fucking albums on my own, that part of the process never gets old and I love approaching it from different angles every time, trying to do it differently and better with the supplies I have on hand.

    Now, I’m someone who gets very bored very easily with things once I know how to do them. I want to move on, chart new territory once I’ve mastered something to my satisfaction. But no. Never with recording and engineering, and it’s been just about fifteen years since I first set foot in a professional recording studio in Dallas. My passion for it pales in comparison to even performing live, which is why I don’t really perform live or promote my music that often. I just really don’t enjoy songwriting or performing that much beyond a last resort outlet. As I heal, I find I would far rather be fucking around behind the controls, trying to capture shit live and seeing what I can do with those takes like Ken Nelson recording Parachutes with Coldplay. Or anything the late Steve Albini did at Electrical Audio in Chicago. That shit never gets old. And that, among other things, makes me feel like the bright eyed kid I never got to be.

    I think that gets the point across. Stay tuned for more magic, beautiful people. This has been Lazarus, your very feral, passionate, AuDHD gremlin sorcerer, signing off ✨

    Subscribe to Blog via Email

    Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Fediverse Reactions

  • A Decade of Hidden Longing

    Hey, everyone! This is Eight. I haven’t been out in a bit, as I’ve been taking a much needed rest, and it seems like our people and the blog have been fucking hopping! I love to see it!

    We’re at the Zelda System’s place again this week, and Sheik herself is cradling me and taking a day nap. She deserves the rest, sweet thing. She works extremely hard and deserves to rest and play as hard as she works, so I’m happy to be held while she sleeps. It feels like a sacred honor to be a soothing and protective presence while our lovely partner sleeps so she gets good rest.

    We often think quite deeply when we’re over here to the point that it becomes almost meditative. It’s deeply restful for us to be around her and the others in her system as much as it is for her to be around us. Sheik is so gentle and tender with Allēna that Allēna ends up deeply processing and working through her deepest fears due to Sheik’s mere empathetic presence. It’s scary because Allēna must face these fears head on in order to communicate them with Sheik, but Sheik has never shamed or judged her for her fears and often responds in such a way that sharing is easier for her by the day.

    We deeply fear vulnerability as a system, but Sheik and her current headmates’ kind presences have made them safe to share with. Something that came up today that Sheik responded extremely kindly to was Allēna feeling guilty for asking for a favor. In a moment that should be a fucking case study for top notch communication, Allēna noticed she was feeling guilty and anxious for asking Sheik for that favor, so she told Sheik outright what she was feeling and asked point blank for reassurance, which Sheik willingly gave.

    From there, this uncorked a second wave of emotion and memories as Allēna explored the root of why she felt so guilty and afraid of asking for help while Sheik stood as witness. This is what she found.

    As a child and young adult, we were abused and neglected into keeping our needs and desires invisible and only meet or attain them on our own. Our mother, Hera, was very emotionally withdrawn, and had little tolerance for our – at the time – enormous emotions we had no idea what to do with. So we were severely emotionally abused out of expressing them in a way most people could recognize. However, Allēna resisted.

    She is far more emotional than she lets on to most, and turned to art as a means to express herself and protest in the midst of a family who had, for all intents and purposes, abandoned her. She became a highly skilled multidisciplinary artist, creating an enormous volume of work most people, even people who have known our system for years, have never seen. For a decade, she kept a journal not unlike this blog which she, Castor, and occasionally myself wrote in almost daily. It reverberates with the full spectrum of human emotion, sadness, punctuated with joy, with deep currents of rage and willpower most people don’t attain until midlife. And that’s just the journals.

    She was also an accomplished visual artist, turning to a brush and canvas when words failed her. She created a series of paintings in which she documented her various emotional states. Anger, her most common emotion – and the most forbidden to express during the time we were under Hera’s thumb – was her favorite piece. Its very existence was an act of rebellion. Slashes of black paint against large swaths of white space, which she knew Hera hated.

    Anger (unknown year) by Allēna

    The longer we work on our communication with like minded friends and partners, the more we unpick the years of trauma that kept the mountain of exquisite longing beneath the surface. We are very logical, yes, but we also have a treasure trove of emotion often stored in the body. The more we’re able to safely communicate it with people who can hold it with respect, the deeper we’re able to process and feel it. It’s deeply healing and freeing, and we’re eternally grateful to those who witness us. Thank you.

    As always, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Eight

  • AJ Rose – In Conversation

    Hello! My name is Siege, and I’m a newer addition to the Ashley system. We recently asked one of our friends, the author, lyricist, and creator AJ Rose, to do an interview with us here on Open Sorcery. I don’t want to keep you all waiting with my rambling, so without further ado, here is our conversation with the brilliant AJ!

    Introductions Are In Order

    Hey. My name is AJ Rose and I am an independent author/lyricist. My pronouns are he/they. I am openly transmasc and focus my writing toward being inclusive of the LGBTQIA+ community. If you’d like to follow me on Facebook for updates, memes, shitposting, and/or an all around good time I welcome you.

    The Interview

    1. You’ve told me several things about what you’re working on over the course of our friendship thus far – a novel series with accompanying concept albums. What do you want readers to know about the series?

    My series focuses on the right to love who you love and goes over several different concepts while being centered as a paranormal romance (heavy on the romance). It is meant to show how there are many different forms of romantic love in the world while also highlighting challenges faced for being who you are.

    1. Where do you find your inspiration? Why does that spark creativity for you?

    I find inspiration from a lot of other authors. Deborah Harknesses All Souls Series is what initially inspired me to get back into writing. I love her series and it helped me formulate my story in the way I want it to be presented.

    I also draw inspiration from music. I heavily focus on metal style music. Motionless In White sparks a lot of lyrical creativity for me and the reason is mostly because their music is usually about real world issues, relationships, and how horrible the American system is.

    1. You’ve spoken a fair bit to my system about being plural yourself as well as being bigender. Do either of those facets of your identity influence your characters or stories at all?

    Yes and no. I find it is easier for me to create characters because I am a plural person. I can give them a voice in my head. I can visualize who I want them to be. I can make the characters talk to one another and play out the scene for myself while I’m writing.

    Being part of the LGBTQIA+ community influences my characters overall. My novel series features straight, gay, bisexual, lesbian, and poly relationships.

    I have also dropped considering myself bigender and embraced that I am actually transgender. Transmasc just helps encompass my ENBY self as well.

    1. You’re writing a series about a metal band. What got you into metal?

    The series isn’t about the metal band. They are just a part of the novel. A character in the novel fronts the band. I apologize if I didn’t clear that up during our discussions.

    In terms of what got me into metal, my parents were heavy rock music lovers. My dad was a huge Metallica fan when I was growing up which is considered metal. As I got older, my sister would show me their music and it was heavier metal. Pretty much, I grew up on it and it’s the genre that speaks the most to me.

    1. On the musical side of things, if you could work with anyone, living or dead, to bring your concept albums to life, who would you have play on these records? Who would you have produce?

    This will be no surprise to the people who know me but Motionless In White. I am a huge fan of their work and Chris Motionless has an amazing voice. He would do my songs well. Production wise, I’m unsure. I’ve never really looked into producers.

    1. Have there been any challenges so far in writing novels about musicians? How have you overcome them so far?

    When it comes up for the character it can be challenging to wrap the concept of how hard musicians have it versus the character himself as he has gone through some awful things in his past. In overcoming that challenge, I try to keep it as realistic as possible. I write the songs as if I were him bleeding his innermost thoughts on paper.

    1. Has anything surprised you about the writing process? Have you learned anything about yourself or your system through this project?

    It hasn’t really surprised me as I’ve known my whole life that writing is hard. It’s something I’m super passionate about. I have learned that my system is very helpful in untangling thoughts for me. If I feel particularly stuck, I can usually work it out with my alter by bouncing it around in my head.

    1. Do you have any musicians or authors that you look up to, of any genre?

    …well here we go again lol Motionless In White is my biggest musical one. Then it’s Bad Omens. Authors, I really aspire to have the ability to write like Deborah Harkness. She’s actually a historian and her novel series is very well written in the historical parts. There are historical parts in my series.

    1. Are there any songs, albums, or novels that helped you learn more about your system and the different facets of who you are, or that got you through a very hard time?

    Headache by Motionless In White perfectly sums up my head. That’s really all I can say there.

    1. What advice would you give to a young author or musician just starting out, especially if they’re plural or queer?

    Just do it. Be you and do what you love. If people don’t like it, that’s on them. The love will vastly outweigh the hate.

    1. When can we expect the first installment in your series to be published?

    I’m not sure. I’m still working on editing. My best advice is to follow me on Facebook or TikTok @WitchySerious.

    Closing Thoughts

    I hope you enjoyed this conversation! I personally can’t wait to see more of AJ Rose and his work. I think they have some great advice and really wonderful experience to pull from.

    It has been a Day, so I’m going to wander off now. However, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Siege

  • “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!

  • 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

    Wait, before you go! We’ve been WebFingered (ha) and have joined the Fediverse. Give us a follow?

    hosting_admin
    hosting_admin
    @hosting_admin@opensorceryy.co
    9 posts
    0 followers