Fine, More on the Woo-Woo Crap

Okay, well, for starters, Mack cleared me off a great spot out back behind his little cabin.  I had four candles–one in each direction–and just some stuff I thought I’d need, maybe.  I spent a lot of time collecting herbs to burn to induce visions but I couldn’t get them lit, so it was just me and the white sage.

I marked off a circle with flour I’d infused with red clover, rosehips, and lavender.  Then I smudged the circle with sage and went in and sat down.

For me, the experience is like trying to tune in a distant radio station.  Sometimes, it comes in so clearly that it’s all you can hear.  Sometimes you can barely hear it above the static.  And sometimes you can’t get the radio station you normally listen to to stop bleeding through.

Last night, like I said, was both really weird and very ordinary.  I didn’t feel like I was able to get over there very easily and the things I saw when I was over there were not easy for me to put meaning to.  I saw a cow.  I saw over and over again clear paths.  And I kept seeing Nashville at dusk, as if I were standing at right about Trinity Lane, but high in the air.  Over and over I saw that, the city to the south spread out before me.  And I couldn’t get the song “High Hopes” out of my head.

The other thing I felt was that the woods was full of Klansmen.  Old, dead Klansmen, but there they were, watching from the woods, with mild interest in what I was doing and a grudging respect for the man working the land now.

I don’t know if they were literally Klansmen, obviously.  It’s hard to know how literally to take those kinds of feelings.  But I felt like they were, in general, not inclined to like the man who lived there and wouldn’t have liked him under other circumstances, but his working the land commanded their respect.

I also felt like Mack was watching me, sitting on the metal couch outside the circle, just watching.  Or someone with an energy like his.

I left amber as an offering to my folks.  I meant to toss it into the creek, but I forgot, so it’s just in the yard.  I left nine pennies on the doorframe as an offering to the folks associated with Mack.

I think I told y’all how I’ve been trying to remember to drop pennies when I feel like my luck has been especially good, as a way of acknowledging and spreading my good fortune?

I wanted to do that for that place.

I have to say that the table in the kitchen of the cabin is so unbelievable.  I can’t even begin to express to you how good it feels to sit at that table.  I want to get some chicks together–Newscoma, Lynnster, Coble, Rachel, the Playwright, the Recovering Baptist, NM, Ivy, etc.,– anyone who wants to make the trip and I want to set them at that table, with food and beverages and just see what happens.

It is the kind of table made for women to sit around and eat and laugh and talk.  It’s incredible.  I should have asked Mack where it came from.

I will ask him tomorrow.

That’s a table that must have a hell of a story.

Shorter Nathan Moore

“Come on, gals.  If I really could discriminate against you, of course I would.”

Mrs. Wigglebottom Loves Tamales, Too

I wish y’all could see her wagging her tail and licking my plate and sniffing around on my lap to see if there’s any more for her to eat.

Sitting Out Outside

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect space to sit out than in the back yard of Mack’s little cabin.  He and his family stayed up on top of the mountain and left me to my own devices down in the holler.

I was next to a creek and the moon and the stars peeked through the bare trees.

It’s hard for me to talk about all this woo-woo stuff without feeling silly and self-conscious, so I won’t except to say that it was both incredibly ordinary and mysteriously amazing.

I would do it outside all the time, if I could.

Make Me a Promise, Beloved Readers

If Mack kills me, I will make every effort to haunt him for the rest of his natural life and then I will follow him around the afterlife glaring at him.

But let’s assume that there is no afterlife or that I’m busy making sweet love to Alfred the Great or Ethlred the Unready or whoever; dear reader, I beseach you–please haunt his ass.

Every time he posts anything on his blog, you just comment, “How nice, Aunt B. killer.” or “Wow, look, even people who kill Aunt B. can make reasonable points.  Interesting.”

Really, I see no other way to ensure my safety when I’m with him.  Yesterday, he strapped me to a machine as large and angry as a wild boar and set me off uncontrollably down a giant mountain filled with pot holes, jagged bear traps, and broken glass shards while he laughed maniacly and sped around me in ever tightening circles, threatening, at any second, to ram into me and send me in a giant, crying, frightened blob of terror into the raging river that runs through his estate where I would drown until I was dead.

And then, once we got to the bottom of the almost sheer cliff, he heckled and mocked me until I was forced to drive the four-wheeler back up the mountain where he then let his kids laugh at me.

I honestly cannot believe people do that for fun.  Well, I get that making fun of me can be good fun.  But riding four-wheelers around?

Nope.

I don’t understand it.

It was so scary I think I screamed the whole time and kept shutting my eyes, which, really, is a terrible, terrible idea when you’re the one driving a giant piece of machinery around some dude’s lawn.

I was on the four-wheeler for probably five minutes and yet, I think I aged twenty five years.

On the other hand, Mack fed me tamales, which I had never had before, which were awesome and yummy and I liked them.  Though, it was difficult to eat them as I was still shaking with fear and crying.