Phantasmagoria

The whole re-editing and print approval process is going well. I need to boot up my old machine to get at my older shots, but I should be placing my first set of orders tomorrow.

I'm also looking into getting a street merchant's license for the greater Los Angeles County area. From what I hear tell it's cheap--and that most police precincts don't give people crap if they just put in word ahead of time. But what you hear and what's in the county law book are entirely different things.

I've done sales in a general public setting before. God knows it will not be pretty, but it could be lucrative with all the tourists coming through...

* * *

So far as I go, though, I've lately been thinking "what the hell am I doing with my life?". I keep repeating to myself that I'm technically now a graduate student, but that hasn't quite sunk in yet.

And if you'll permit me to hijack your eyeballs and get brooding, it goes beyond that.

See, I love photography and writing; I love my D-Land chat people; and yeah, in this age of therapy and over-the-top family circuses, I love Ma and Scott. I appreciate all of these things, not the least of which being that those two don't mind me being unemployed until September.

But when I really think about it, there's this 'missing' sort of quality. Not that "I'm religiously hollow, maybe these Mormons have a point" sortof a missing...but more a sense of being unfulfilled and lacking purpose. Before you smack the candy-red 'pretentious flush' button, though, I already know: my problems are pretty damned trivial. I'm not arguing that point, or the one that I've got it a hell of alot better than some. Some people are balls-to-the-wall ecstatic with less.

But that doesn't take away from the fact that I think something is missing. I've been thinking about it for awhile, and I decided that it's time for another vision quest. This is something more typical from my American Indian roots, something my Gran and especially Ma used to do when they had more time and not as many obligations.

Now, I don't really talk about my faith in here, seeing as how it largely seems to be a private affair for most people I know. That and, really, even if I've been called a Shaman, the only work I do is counseling and tending to the distraught or dying; it's what I do, regardless of a label.

Still, I've never needed to do more traditional (i.e. "weird") stuff like spirit walking, working with the dead, dealing with elementals, etc. In a hyper-rationalist world, it almost seems like a faus pax to bring such things up, which is too bad since--speaking as a scientist--not everything can be measured, quantified, and catalogued.

All of that brings me to a decision.

That is, for whatever reason, I feel this pull to go up to Santa Cruz, park my car, and spend about half a week in the wilderness. Mostly I'd jot down my thoughts, if I saw any animals (particularly my totems, like Owl or Spider), and occasionally photograph. I'd wondered if the latter one would break with the whole spiritual tradition, but Mom said she used to whip out a sketchpad--so she thinks it's not a big stretch. I'm in-shape enough for it and I've done this sort of thing before.

If anything, I think the journey will help me gain some focus. It's been a long time since I had a weird sub-conscious nudging...and the nudging moves more toward being a sledgehammer until I look to see what it wants.

But mostly, I wonder if I will see what I have been seeing in my dreams and visions. Either literal or symbolic, thinking about those balls of light taps into a switchback trail in my mind; it taps into this sense of completeness that is associated with several different scenes, smells, things that would be hard to describe to you. I'll try to some other time.

Suffice it to say, all of that seems like the best direction to go toward.

I may be enjoying myself here, after all, but I need some answers--and the tug is getting more insistent.

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