(no subject)

A good friend of mine who lives out in Arizona was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital five days ago. I have been worried about her for some time--grief and loss have dogged her for years, as has a sense of crushing responsibility for so much in her life. (More, I think, than is healthy for her, or than she should take on.) She is a very strong person, and very smart, and capable, and unfortunately she has an unbending spirit. She's been telling me for some time that she's feeling tired, washed out, depressed, and so forth, and last week I think she finally broke.

Happily, her strengths remain her strengths. She has rallied to accept where she is and why she is there, and to see this an opportunity to grow and recover from her pain. She was feeling and sounding better today than I have heard her sound in some time, which makes me very happy. I just hope that she doesn't have to stay in hospital for more than the required two weeks, so that she can be back with her son.

When I heard this on Thursday, I was really upset. I spoke with her fiance about this, and he seemed very sad and hard pressed. Friday, however, he sounded much more positive, I think in part because his beloved had decided that her life wasn't over, and that things might work out, but also because people from their church had rallied to the cause in numbers, and were giving him the support that he needed. I felt a lot better about that.

pilgrimage

Yesterday, I went to Otis, MA with Millari, Filthy Assistant, Sidneycat, and two friends from Amherst, where we rendevoused with Pope Jephe of the Infinite Spellings in one of the cemeteries there for the Annual Rite of Rhotus. Jefphe, you see, 'discovered' the 'faith' of Otis, a Sumerian deity about 15 years ago, and has invented more to go along with it as need and whimsy arose. Rhotus, the god of death, is apparently an obscure figure who mostly appears in myths stinking drunk and incoherent. The Feast of Rhotus is ostensibly an attempt to wake the dead and pay them back any money we owe them, but is mostly an excuse to wander in a neat graveyard and appreciate the various memorials people have left behind. Though I dead leave a quarter for one of the deceased.

Afterwards, we stopped for a meal, went back Sid's and watched a weird Swedish silent film from 1922 called Haxan (Witches) a history cum dramatization of European witch myths, legends and facts, which went from dry lecture to scathing docudrama on the irrationality and superstition and sexual repression of the catholic church to acting out various sensational accounts of witches and their activities. After which we saw some of Incubus, the infamously awful film in Esperanto starring William Shatner.

For me, the high point of the day came when the subject of Otisian titles came up. Everyone can have a sainthood or bishopric or something, more ridiculous and obscure, the better. I reminded Geffe that I already had a title: Popesicle. Then I leaned across and stage whispered "I'm meat flavored, you know." Poor Jeif just lost it. I love doing that.:)