Happy Solstice, my lovelies!! I'm in surprisingly better spirits, most likely because of the holiday and my impending trip to Palm Springs; impromptu girls' nights with Rachel and Tina (Friday) and Kim and Siviy (Saturday), both of which ended up at the Eat & Park by the mall at end of the night like when we were young, bored, and not-yet-legal; making $56 in tips at work last night; finishing "The Waters and the Wild;" black sandalwood incense and angels and mint tea and getting bits of myself back after a week of stressing with job searching/future plans and my issues coming up dark and fast (swimsuit shopping with my 100 lb mother=hellishly depressing).
Mistakenly thinking that Friday night, rather than last night, was Midsummer Eve, I left food out for the faeries--an Indian mango sandwich cookie under a bush and a tiny bit of bottled Kahlua White Russian in a little garden statuette my mom bought which looks roughly like this:

(ours is a simpler design and looks more angelic than fae-like, but still. I put the drink in the petal cup).
There was a huge sudden rainstorm later that night night; there's been many in this area recently, including one on Wednesday night that brought torrential rains and funnel clouds. So the Kahlua may have gotten washed out of the flower before the faeries got to it. But worse, we've been having a nasty ant infestation near and in our house, and when I checked the next morning to see if the food was gone, the cookie was there, soggy as hell from the rain, and crawling all over with ants. I figure that whether or not the fae get the stuff I leave out or the wild animals do, at least
something in nature gets fed, but really, ANTS?? They've since built a hill around where the cookie was. Ughhh, epic fail for the FaerieGirl :P
This kind of stuff makes me think about how Francesca's always talking about climate change and the world's fuckedupness affecting the elementals, and that passage from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (which FLB quotes in "The Waters and the Wild") where Titania talks about how she and Oberon rule over nature and because of their quarrel, the natural balance has been thrown out of whack, the seasons alter, the weather changes, etc. I can still hear Judi's lilting voice in my head reciting it from the Pentameters' production, though it's a long monologue and we cut it considerably for that show. (full text here:
http://www.mirroruptonature.com/shakespeare-monologues/female/amnd-2-1-81-titania.pdf). It also makes me think of this lovely poem FLB posted on her MySpace a couple years ago:
( A Late Autumn Night's Dream )</div>
And I wonder if all this extreme weather is freaking out the faeries, preventing them from collecting offerings, making them hide underground from the shit going on in the world. Or if they're braving it like they
shouldn't have had to have always braved man's abuse of their territory. Yeah, I guess it's kinda silly where my mind goes sometimes, and I've been daydreaming too much lately, reading too much FLB and urban magical realist stuff and imagining worlds beyond the surface of ours, worlds in which some of us might feel more at home. I should probably be more concerned with what climate change is doing to us and to the ozone and the polar bears and more tangible parts of nature, and to be fair, that bugs me too, but I guess it being Midsummer and all I wonder how the rest of the elemental kingdom is dealing with this, and if things will change for the world in time. And in the midst of all this I want to create a haven or at least a network for urban fae changeling girls, like the ones who read this little blog or who created the Facebook group "society of faeries" for FLB fans, who feel lost among the concrete and screaming neon but simultaneously enchanted by this world in its own weird way, who really just need each other if we're to survive in this changing world and maybe to bring about a better one, if only in the little pockets of radiance we create.
Blah blah O Hai I'm romanticizing the whole oddball angst thing :P But finding other people who believe in the magic of the everyday and see more than meets the eye seems so important now, especially after graduating and leaving NoHo and trying to make the most of being stuck in the Rust Belt for the next few months. Anyway I'd better shut up and go do my ritual
and a "make lotsa money and find a good job in SF!!!1!" spell. Much love from the weirdo FaerieGirl and many transcendent dreams on this Midsummer Night. <33