Real Talk (+ Beltane inspirations) (05/02/2021)
This Sunday's journeys: Real Talk | The WayBack Machine | The Holy Mountain | Harry Hay and the Radical Faeries | Reset Week
High Five, and Happy Beltane! It’s Sunday.
Grab a warm drink, turn on the speaker, and settle in, we’re going on a stroll.
🔊 Zone In: Sylvan Wandering’s Music for Beltane
01 - Real Talk
Things haven't been going so smoothly out here. I’ve told before the story of how this opportunity to spend 5 months out in a beautiful log house in Texas came about, and that our end of the deal was to do a couple of renovation projects in the house.
We really wanted to get it all done with on the early side, so we'll get to relax and focus on other stuff for the rest of our time here. It didn't quite work out this way. The design part with the homeowners took longer than expected, and then the infamous Texas storm happened. It took another month before we could get a plumber and electrician out here, and we needed both to do prep work before we could get started with our part.
A couple of weeks ago we were finally able to move the renovation projects into high gear. We've been working around the clock, looking forward to completing the main project before our planned trip to Big Bend (which was the highest on our must-see list out here in Texas), but things took longer than expected. We packed our bags the morning of our trip and got on the road - exhausted and frustrated.
Big Bend was beautiful. The weather was in our favor, the desert was in its peak short blooming period, and our food and accommodations were great. I wish we could have enjoyed all of this more, but we were too stressed and anxious about what's waiting at home and our time starting to run out.
By the time we got back home, I had a cold sore popping out. This past week ended up being a race to catch up on everything that accumulated while we were away. I feel like I've been slowly losing grip on my self-care practices over the past few weeks, and it's time to get back on track if I don't want things to get worse. It's our last month here, there’s still a lot to day, and I don’t want to leave here completely wiped out.
What I do in times like this is a "reset week": a physical and mental balancing program. It's kind of like one of these retreats you have to fly out to for a week, I just do it at home, spending a lot less money and staying connected to whatever is happening in my life.
The last time I did one of these was last fall, and Bryan decided to join me. It made the whole thing feel much more doable, knowing that someone else is going through this rigorous schedule and program and being able to check in on each other. So I decided to offer others to join me this time too: If you feel like you could use a reset, a plan to get back on track, take a look and see if this program could be what you need.
What do you usually do when things feel "off"? How do you get back on track?
Until next week,
- Disco
02 - The WayBack Machine on Internet Archive
Last week someone mentioned to me that some of the articles I post are locked behind a paywall so they couldn’t read them. I recently found a bypass to that: use the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine. They’ve been cataloging (almost) every webpage on the internet, so you can use to to view pages that are either gone, their previous versions - and also some of these that are behind a paywall.
03 - Alejandro Jodorowski’s The Holy Mountain
Beltane was yesterday, but it’s been raining non-stop here for days, so I couldn’t spend it outdoors like I usually do. Instead, we opted for an eclectic movie marathon: The Matrix, Holy Mountain and The Wicker Man (1973). It’s the 4th time I’ve watched The Holy Mountain, and the first time that I could make sense of it… The visuals are psychedelic, the storyline convoluted and ultra-symbolic, and it’s dense and rich in details. Whichever lens you choose to watch it thorough, it’s a journey. Highly recommended (and the above Internet Archive hosts it for free streaming!)
04 - Harry Hay and the Radical Faeries
My first introduction to Beltane was through the Radical Faeries: a community and movement that has as many descriptions and definitions as the number of its members (and “faerie adacents”): “loosely affiliated gay spiritual movement” is the Wikipedia description in Harry Hay’s article, the founder of this movement - who’s story is fascinating and inspiring
Read more here (skip to “Later Life” section for the Radical Faeries part)
🌳 That's all for today.