who only by moving can balance

Words are the piecemeal sacrifice I make
upon the altar of humanity:
I'm half-convinced that if I merely take
sufficient care in choosing them, there'll be
some minor miracle. I'll burst awake
from dreaming myself lost and, lossless, free.
This could be all. What else is there to say?
Well, everything, of course -- unless I mean
to halt. A truth: I've learned the only way
to changelessness is death; to be unseen,
ignored, unmade. Fear craves silent decay
of self. Of hope. Of all we might have been.
So we'll know loneliness; we will know grief.
Now: here begins the hard work of belief.

Write your dreams upon me.
Carve them bone-deep, filigree
and fretwork of my flesh:
I'll bear your weight. I'll bear
the wait. Here, hear
as my heart beats. For all that's wrong,
for all I cannot do, this,
at least, is steady, sure.
You're not the first. I am a beast
of burden. I am strong.
Beloved, if you'd only dare to ask
you'll find me more than able for this task.

One of the things I did this week was rearrange the top of my chest of drawers. It's now laid out with my Lioness jewelry (and a few bits and pieces on the wall above); the ridiculous aloe vera; the tiny sun; and a few rocks. There's art up behind it. I've just bought another piece of art - a small print of the waxing Moon - and that's going to get propped up against the base of the lamp.

I've been feeling pretty drawn to the concept of Hecate for the past week, presumably in part because of the research I did for the fic where she's a major character (in which in my headcanon Hecate's an expert in infosec and also lesbian...). But actually, also - it's been talking about muses, and reading alexconall's poetry, and discussing zir workspace, and all of the poetry I've been writing...

... because Hecate is of crossroads and thresholds. She is represented as three-in-one and one-in-three, as the maiden-mother-and-crone and as waxing, waning and full Moon.

I'm pulling a lot from her at the moment: about legibility of identity, about being many things at once and choosing which to show, about turning one's face always in perfect time to watch the viewer with direct and level gaze. And more: about not only having choices but making them, and about holding oneself poised perpetually the better to choose gracefully.

This is not something I do. It is, however, something I increasingly aspire to.

It ties in to my gradual realisation this year that of course in addition to "if you eat this you will die", religion has codified ways of conceptualising the self and about society. I was delighted to be given exegesis of the idea of Unbeing-With-Potential (and of course Unbeing-Without-Potential) from someone in a tradition that's been thinking about this for rather longer than I have; in turn I note that I am drawn once more to the idea of trinity, of holding multiple distinct selves intact, and that I am not the first and surely won't be the last.

I'm finding it a little disconcerting that I'm finding meaning in these places again; but on the other hand, of course I am, this is what they are for; and on the gripping hand these feels like a calmer and more reflective approach, one in which I am seeking with patience what has been left out in plain sight; as though I am finding focus; and most of all as though I am using history as a mirror the better to understand myself.