high_priestess tender_square i was parking a car in the lot of the church i grew up attending, carefully aligning myself inside the white stripes that dictated where i should place my body, my drive. i was volunteering for the church. my role was to be an usher, to stand at the doors and open them when the service was complete, or to let latecomers in. i left my post as the choir sang; i didn’t think there was anything for me to do. i entered the parsonage and went into, what i perceived to be, the priest’s bedroom. i had belongings spread out on the bed: my copy of the norton anthology of poems and some other books, a bag of crystals, and the contents of my purse, makeup. i was packing. the bedroom looked like a hotel from the eighties. the bed frame was a black semi-circle, a first-quarter moon; the vanity a full moon mirror above black drawers. on the bed were a pair of pillows in print: black fabric with neon-colored triangles, rectangles, swirls and dots, like a geometric galaxy. as i arranged my personal effects inside of black bags, i accidentally dropped my clear quartz on the ground and couldn’t see it against the carpet. i got down on my hands and knees to find that it had slipped beneath the bed. when i looked below the hem of the comforter, i saw a second pair of pillows on the ground, directly below where the ones on top of the bed were situated—an underground sleeping arrangement. the door to the bedroom was open, and beyond, an older woman stood watch, her back to me, as i worked. the bedroom was on a raised platform, like an altar on a second story, and i saw the woman stand at the lip of it, without railings, conversing with people on the ground below as though nothing was out of the ordinary. she was unafraid. i was fearful of how close the woman stood at the edge and i didn’t want to take her place because i knew i wouldn’t be able to stare down that height without the swirl of vertigo—surely, i would slip. and i was scared to descend the stairs with bags when the time came, lest i fall. in the dream, i was still packing. in the dream, i was still waiting in the silence to be told what i was preparing for. 220110 ... unhinged before jesus it was the women that guarded and shared the sacred rites i utter the ancient syllables that draw her near i whisper in her ear and she blesses me a kiss on the forehead standing in a cleansing waterfall i am wise through her she is exalted by me the morphic_resonance of a more ancient ritual vibrates telemeres in deep places powerful insight rises better choices are made past wrongs are purified in this year of the tiger my shambalian tiger meek and perky moving with purpose supporting the wrathful deities as they reveal reality to the ignorant in this year of the tiger i claim my hard earned fierceness and tie it to the high purpose of lessening the suffering of the world one personal interaction at a time 220110 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I love dreams with detailed buildings in them (that's an oddly specific thing to love, isn't it?) and I came back to the verses for encouragement. 220111 ... e_o_i "verses" - that sounds like a sacred text. On theme, perhaps! In my stories, religious-leader types like to have names that start with "M", apparently. Blame Miriam, Moses, Muhammad... Mri, the high priestess from my "Norvika" fantasy stories, takes after them a bit, although the religion that her group develops is an offshoot of Hinduism with some linguistic/cultural drift, especially as the original settlers from India settle in what's basically Nunavut and mix with the early Inuit culture there some 4,000 years ago. Mri is one of the leaders of a group of Norvikans (although maybe they weren't Norvikans yet; and I didn't get that word from any Inuit or Sanskrit root, it was from when I was younger and I just settled on something that sounded like "north") who are escaping persecution in the Indian Empire. The leadership doesn't like their recasting of Brahma as Vramat, a sky deity...though maybe the linguistic drift would come later, as a consequence of contact with a language that doesn't have a "b" sound? In this world, there's an Indian Empire, also called the Raj, that's about 4,000 years old. Kelta Kera (the British isles) have only gained independence from them fairly recently. Anyway, Mri exists before the break of the Vramati into the Sun/Moon/Star factions but after the break between the Earth God and the Sky God people. The Earth God people are the ones who murder her, although she's 81 years old by this point. That's the legend, anyway! And then in one story, a Norvikan woman named Pri gets (magically?) transported to the "real" world in the body of someone with Christian parents, and is upset that she can't find the Sun People of the Sky God. Looking at flags, she concludes that the Moon and Star people are represented in this universe as Muslims and Jews, but none of the flags that feature suns seem to have a corresponding religion. To be Christian, though? Impossible! Too much like the Earth God people, and they killed Hypatia_of_Alexandria...er, Mri the High Priestess. ...Anyway, this is the kind of stuff that runs through my head sometimes. 220111 what's it to you? who go blather from