Thoughts from a supposedly foggy stroll
Apr. 22nd, 2010 06:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badstarSo tonight, I ventured over to the 24-hour Rite Aid, a short walk from the apartment. Before I left, I checked the weather to get the temperature. Weather Channel website said it was foggy. I went out and saw no fog. I call shenanigans. Very quickly though, I realized that, despite not being foggy, it *felt* foggy- you know how it feels when you go outside on a foggy night? Yeah, like that, except no fog in sight.
Initially, I was thinking about fog and foggy nights, which led me to remember some foggy evenings back in Lancaster, and wondering what happened to a small book of photos I had taken- many of them from a rainy, foggy night (including one that led just about everyone who saw it to make some comment about there needing to be a Bat Signal shining into the sky) and that led to me thinking of one of the few things that I actually miss about Lancaster being the random little alleys which often contain little shops or interesting corners and how there's nothing like that here in Baltimore...and somehow that made me think of one of the places that I really liked there, which I just won't find anywhere else- St James cemetery, which is this little cemetery in the middle of Lancaster, on the walled in grounds of an old Episcopal church (one of the oldest Episcopal churches in the country...a number of historical figures such as George Ross are buried on the grounds...sadly, there are no good pictures online to post.)
I don't know how my thoughts progressed from one to the other, really but it went from St James cemetery to thinking about the grove, and one of the things that I really miss about the grove. I was thinking about how I used to often sleep over at the grove, either the night before or the night after a ritual, and how, much as I am not a morning person, one thing I really liked doing there was waking up early and lighting all the candles, getting things ready before people showed up.
At the time, I thought of it more as a clergy-related thing, that I was doing this for the people who would later be there- and likely it was partially that. But now that I think of this, I really think it was more a matter of doing it for the various and assorted gods and spirits that were there. This was the one case, aside from rituals, where despite not really having a connection to most of them, I actually actively felt them around me, and felt that I was really doing something.
So now I'm thinking more about how to bring that to us here...we've had our own little temple room here in the apartment, but we just haven't been treating it so fully as a temple as we could. I think it will be easier to do after moving, if we really actively work on setting up the new place with this in mind, I think this could make a significant difference.
In other news, while at Rite Aid, I was accosted by another customer. She was trying to find something- I have no idea what she was talking about, she just kept talking about something called "shine". This particular Rite Aid is severely understaffed- no matter what time of day you go in, you can count on waiting 15-20 minutes in line and if I knew what she was talking about, I would have just told her if I knew. But I didn't, and I tried to tell her that I didn't work there and she started freaking out and threatening to get me fired. I thought for a minute that she was going to physically attack me. Thankfully, a security guard was nearby and told her that she had to calm down or he would call the cops. It took a few minutes, and I had to explain to him what had happened. I escaped a bit weirded out, but otherwise unscathed.
In yet other news, I've now got a dreamwidth account. Just in the "still checking it out" stage, what I use it for is yet to be determined but fear not, I'm not going to make my LJ readership subscribe to yet another service that they don't want to add to read my stuff.
Initially, I was thinking about fog and foggy nights, which led me to remember some foggy evenings back in Lancaster, and wondering what happened to a small book of photos I had taken- many of them from a rainy, foggy night (including one that led just about everyone who saw it to make some comment about there needing to be a Bat Signal shining into the sky) and that led to me thinking of one of the few things that I actually miss about Lancaster being the random little alleys which often contain little shops or interesting corners and how there's nothing like that here in Baltimore...and somehow that made me think of one of the places that I really liked there, which I just won't find anywhere else- St James cemetery, which is this little cemetery in the middle of Lancaster, on the walled in grounds of an old Episcopal church (one of the oldest Episcopal churches in the country...a number of historical figures such as George Ross are buried on the grounds...sadly, there are no good pictures online to post.)
I don't know how my thoughts progressed from one to the other, really but it went from St James cemetery to thinking about the grove, and one of the things that I really miss about the grove. I was thinking about how I used to often sleep over at the grove, either the night before or the night after a ritual, and how, much as I am not a morning person, one thing I really liked doing there was waking up early and lighting all the candles, getting things ready before people showed up.
At the time, I thought of it more as a clergy-related thing, that I was doing this for the people who would later be there- and likely it was partially that. But now that I think of this, I really think it was more a matter of doing it for the various and assorted gods and spirits that were there. This was the one case, aside from rituals, where despite not really having a connection to most of them, I actually actively felt them around me, and felt that I was really doing something.
So now I'm thinking more about how to bring that to us here...we've had our own little temple room here in the apartment, but we just haven't been treating it so fully as a temple as we could. I think it will be easier to do after moving, if we really actively work on setting up the new place with this in mind, I think this could make a significant difference.
In other news, while at Rite Aid, I was accosted by another customer. She was trying to find something- I have no idea what she was talking about, she just kept talking about something called "shine". This particular Rite Aid is severely understaffed- no matter what time of day you go in, you can count on waiting 15-20 minutes in line and if I knew what she was talking about, I would have just told her if I knew. But I didn't, and I tried to tell her that I didn't work there and she started freaking out and threatening to get me fired. I thought for a minute that she was going to physically attack me. Thankfully, a security guard was nearby and told her that she had to calm down or he would call the cops. It took a few minutes, and I had to explain to him what had happened. I escaped a bit weirded out, but otherwise unscathed.
In yet other news, I've now got a dreamwidth account. Just in the "still checking it out" stage, what I use it for is yet to be determined but fear not, I'm not going to make my LJ readership subscribe to yet another service that they don't want to add to read my stuff.
