Category: Detritus

Eddi Reader apparently worked as arranger on the solo album of wunderkind Scottish fiddler John McCusker, whom I once met after a show when he was 18 and on his first tour with the Battlefield Band. We talked about our both having Claddagh rings (his mother was Irish) and joked around and he gave me his address and phone number in Scotland on a bar napkin. I kept it on my bulletin board in my room for years, but in the end I chickened out and never wrote. He kissed my hand in the rain and said goodbye and I was innocently star struck.

Thea Gilmore

Eddi Reader

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The Present:

Birch

A new beginning

You are in the midst of, or about to enter, a new start in the situation. While it is blessed with good luck, do be careful not to be rash or hasty! Expect change as a result, and prepare for it. The first of the Ogham trees, and traditionally the first to have Ogham carved upon it, birch symbolizes beginnings. As both a protector and a gateway to the Otherworld, it also indicates good fortune. There is some risk of hastiness and rashness as well; while good luck can compensate, foresight is also of benefit.

Color: White

Animal: Cow

Bird: Pheasant

The Present:

Ash

Linkages

The situation is a part of a wider whole, and your life is a part of a larger pattern. Remember that your actions are a part of a larger pattern, and affect all the others within it- make your decisions with this in mind.

Ash is a tree of great traditional magical significance. Yggdrasil, the World Tree, is an ash, and the ash is the fifth Ogham tree. Ash symbolizes the connection- and movement- between very different places and aspects of reality.

Color: Clear Green

Animal: Snake

Bird: Snipe

mythology

detritus

opinion

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…in that place and now it’s over. And so a new chapter begins. Or something like that. A heavy sigh of relief. A wave of disjointed nostalgia. A brief identity crisis. Then the wheel turns yet again…or whatever…

Myth of the Day:The Vegetable Lamb

The tale of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary comes from the Middle Ages, a traveler’s tale from the far east. It’s full name was ‘Planta Tartarica Barometz’ – ‘barometz’ is the Tartar word for ‘lamb’. The fruit of the Vegetable Lamb was cotton, but travelers from Europe knew nothing about cotton in those times. They reasoned that the material was wool – a fabric they did know. The figured that since wool came from sheep, and that the plant was some kind of animal/plant. They thought that the puffs of cotton were tiny sheep attached to the plant by their navel. It is said that the plant bent to let the sheep graze on the grass beneath it, and that when all the grass was gone, the sheep dropped from the plant and ran off, the tree dying.

The myth of the Vegetable Lamb dates back to the 11th century in the Middle and Far East. It is a species of fern. The ‘body’ of the Vegetable Lamb is the root of the plant.

…if that’s what you’re into…

They have hot shrimp in a bag! And cold salad! With cheese and croutons and cucumbers and stuff! Cherry tomatoes! Baby greens! It’s genius, I tell you! You can eat the shrimp separately! Or you can put it in the salad! The shrimp is in garlic sauce! It’s so good! There’s chicken ones too in case you’re Lizzie! Hooray for shrimp salads! And chicken salads! And exclamation points!

5:30 am on A Thursday morning and I’m up on purpose. It’s a thing that defies reason. Interesting typo: I just typed “deifies” reason instead. That’s a whole new subject in itself, atheism as the deification of reason? Whatever. But for now I am awake and alone. My babies are sleeping. No one’s written me in days, so it’s not as though there’s any email replying to be caught up on. The news is all evil and depressing. Listening to Air America radio online, which is on the one hand refreshingly liberal, but on the other hand just reitierates how screwed up and hopeless the world is right now. Sigh…

And in the end there is no one else,

sweet sixteen

alone in my hospital bed

having impact dreams

watching shadows on the ceiling

and deciding

to never ever be real again.

It was eaisier than I thought.