There is another word meme going around, and being bored and looking for something quick to write about, I got some words from siggy_gfs  and witchy_abriel  . Yes, it was two days ago, but I've been distracted with other things and not on LJ much, but better late than never. Here goes:

/>*I apologize for not cutting this. I've tried to post this twice and both times the cut did not take and fucked the entry up in different ways. I don't know what the problem is, only that I'm not in the mood to fight with it.*
 
They both gave me

Hermes

My divine boss and center of my life in every way. I've belonged to him possibly my whole life (I've been able to trace his influence back as far as my mid teens, but he has told other people that he's always been with me, I can very easily believe that even if I don't understand why), but I officially met him in my early twenties, standing at the end of a long path of spiritual exploration that started with finding a book on Wicca that propelled me out of my life time of agnosticism and into a search for the right religion for me. My relationship with him began slowly, because my childhood left me with almost no ability to trust and had he come on as strong as he wanted to and tried to claim me outright and drag me off kicking and screaming the end result would likely not have been good. Instead, he was more careful than that, inching closer and closer with his arm stretched out until I felt safe enough to let him in. I have made several life times vows to him, allowed him to remake my dismantled life, and have started following him down a mostly uncharted spiritual path. He is such a part of my life I can't discuss myself without bringing him up, I can't imagine me without him any longer. I can, and do, talk about him endlessly.

Baltimore

The city where I currently live, been here for almost three years now. I moved here because I very desperately needed to move away from my family, Hermes needed me to move away from my family and this is what he arranged for me. Renee, whom I had chatted with online every now and then, needed a room mate because one of hers disappeared, only about a week after Hermes and I had that conversation about needing to leave, if that isn't a clear sign I don't know what is. Since I didn't know anybody at the time, had limited resources and probably no other way to get myself as far away as I very much needed to be, I decided it was a risk worth taking. So I moved to a city I'd never visited, with no job and about $500 savings, to live with people I had never met before. All in all, I'd say it worked out well. Two of the three people I lived with initially I don't speak with anymore, it took a long time for me to find a job and when I did it was detrimental to my health physically and emotionally (but I tried and I learned, I guess that's the important thing) and I spent an unpleasant year living in one of the seedier sections of the city (and Baltimore has plenty of those, let me tell you). Right now I'm in a decent apartment, only with the girlfriend, in a safe and central part of the city, and I'm not finding myself crawling the walls to get the fuck out of here as much as I was last year.

I am still looking to leave, for a lot of reasons. There are a lot of things that I don't like about living here, most of which seems to come back to the people living here, who don't have much in the way of common decency and consideration for others. Too many people act like they are the only ones here, and everyone else just doesn't give a shit about anything, and that gets under my skin. I don't like that I have to avoid certain restaurants I otherwise enjoy eating at because every time there is that party of four at a table that are having a conversation and they're so loud about it they make it so no one else can have a conversation of their own; I hate having to ride the bus with people that are breaking just about every rule that are posted on the wall right above their fucking heads while the driver just sits there on his ass and does nothing about it; I hate push to talk phones (everyone here has one) and clumps of hair on the sidewalk (that is a special kind of disgusting there); I hate that if you try and talk to someone about their noise level suddenly you're a racist (seriously, this happened to Renee). My misanthropy has gotten worse and my ability to tolerate other people has gone down since living here, its definitely time for me to go somewhere where people are a little less abrasive than this.


siggy_gfs   gave me

horror films

I have loved horror my whole life. Seriously, I started reading kiddie horror in kindergarten and hung around the horror movie section in the video rental store wishing I could watch those movies but couldn't, being the oldest my parents were determined that there would be no R rated movies for me until I was seventeen, they stopped caring when I was ten but still that seemed like a long time then. I don't know where my love comes from, nothing in my environment would have contributed to it; my father hates anything weird, my mother is a huge violence weenie, she can't stand watching one guy punch another and I have movies where people get tortured very graphically. *shrug* who knows, but it was always there.

The pain about loving horror and violence as much as I do, is there often isn't a lot of quality in that genre. While I can enjoy brainless hack and slash (as long as it isn't too brainless, and it too often is) I actually do like good writing and acting and a story where I don't see everything coming, or at the very least where I have to stop and think about it a little more carefully (I think being a some time writer helps me pick up on cues that a lot of other people seem to miss, a story will almost always tell you where its going if you pay close enough attention; I'm not surprised very often). But unfortunately people like to place some perceived value on one form of entertainment over another, this genre is for more intelligent people as opposed to this one over here, and horror just about always ends up on the bottom of the stack. Is there actually anything to this, no there is not a damn thing about watching art house cinema or listening to opera or anything that will make you a better person than anyone else; still though, it almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, you keep saying there is no quality in a genre, then nobody expects it, creative minds go elsewhere and we're stuck with people that clearly put no effort into the movies they make. Could it be better? Yes. I think I've found a few examples of real quality in horror movies, and the people I've shared my finds with generally agree with me. :-)

noncomformity

I am a non conformist in the sense that I just don't fit in with most people, my personality and preferences and desires and goals and everything don't fall in line with the cultural norms. This as opposed to those that deliberately set themselves up in opposition to the mainstream (and are typically far more about conformity than they would like to believe) because they see something romantic about being fringe and will probably get over themselves in a couple years and move on with life. I'm realistic about what rejecting culture and community means, and if I should happen to agree with the larger population about something it would bother me terribly much less cause me to change my mind, that just doesn't seem to happen all that often. I know I've been accused before of deliberately trying to make myself different (by people that seem to feel the height of being an outsider is having lots of tattoos and piercings, hahahaha, uh, no, though I am greatly impressed by how sheltered you are), but this has been going on with me since kindergarten and I have the paperwork to prove it; five year olds aren't trying to be different they don't even know there is a norm for them to differ from. As hard and often violently as people tried to correct my "undesirable" personality it never took, being a natural loner seems to make me immune to things like peer pressure and violent tactics aren't going to endear me to your cause. When the choice was spelled out for me in more blunt terms, I decided I'd rather be myself and alone than be someone I'm not and have lots of friends that wouldn't like me if they really knew me.

I think everyone in general would benefit from learning to think for themselves rather than succuming to sheep mentality. I think everyone should think carefully about who they really are and what they really want out of life instead of letting others dictate that to you. I grew up surrounded by people that did what was expected of them and lived just like everyone else does and I've seen how miserable that can make you if it isn't what you want; I have to live within certain restrictions because of the choices I've made, but I'd still rather deal with those than anything else, I'm still doing what I want with my life and it makes me happier for it. I think people should take the time to find the group or community that is actually right for them rather than conforming themselves to fit the community they're currently stuck with, however bad a fit it may be. And for those of us who find that community is not for them, people who don't fit in that much, are free to be left alone without any grief from others. It doesn't mean everyone will end up like me (in fact, most probably won't), but blind conformity doesn't do anyone any good.

liminalty

My spiritual focus, and a long time recurring theme in my life. I never quite fit in, I smell foreign to most people and that either repels people away or attracts them up to a point (they always remain at a safe distance). I thrive in a more chaotic environment than most people do, I have a highly adaptable nature, I'm gender neutral, I could go on. Hell I even have a circadian rhythm disorder that makes it impossible for me to exist on the same schedule nearly everyone else does because my body doesn't seem to recognize time correctly (good one, nature *shakes fist*). So it probably shouldn't be a surprise that I'm owned by a liminal god and find myself surrounded exclusively by liminal figures and trickster deities, though it took me an embarrassingly long time to put all those pieces together. In the last year or so there are have been a lot of changes to my spiritual life, one of which was my accepting my place in the world and shifting my focus away from established culture and toward those shifting gray areas in between. I'm still working out what this all means for me, trying to put the only existence I've ever known into words for others to understand. Should be interesting.

witchy_abriel  gave me


girlfriend

Renee (fuego  on LJ for the curious), the other most important being in my life next to Hermes. I met her on one of the ADF email lists, we were both of the few people there interested in Hellenic gods. We chatted on instant messenger for about a year or so when one of her room mates disappeared around the same time that I was looking for somewhere else to live, and so I moved in with her. Our relationship formed gradually, and we were for all intents and purposes dating long before we realized it; we rarely went anywhere without the other, spent almost every waking minute together. People made jokes about us, and Renee said at some point she started thinking of me as her platonic wife.

Of course, I believe now Hermes intended for this to happen from the start. I had initially thought about moving to a different location, but it was made pretty clear to me, while I would get there eventually, I had to stop in Baltimore first. He was very involved in getting the two of us together, though more from her end since he helped her to see the light first, then started pressuring her to be honest with me when she didn't want to. He pushed us into an argument when nothing else would work, and all this came out. We've been happy ever since.

I've not ever had an easy time with other people, I'm enough of a weirdo and have so many issues with relationships and trust, my experiences with the gay community have not been good at all (yet another subculure that likes to believe it is far more open and accepting than it actually is) I pretty much figured I would end up alone. This was a pleasant surprise. We have all the important stuff, like our spirituality, in common, even have a few of the same issues though we came by them in different ways, it saves us from having to deal with unrealistic expectations. I can't usually be around someone for that long without wanting to kill them or at least lock them up in a closet somewhere where I don't have to look at them for the next couple of days; this hasn't been the case here. I don't think I've ever been happier.

Hellenismos

A popular name for the reconstruction of the ancient Hellenic religion and which has apparently been trademarked by a certain walking ego and his empty headed lackeys, or at least so you would think from the way they talk. Even when I thought that I would be a general practitioner worshiping the whole pantheon and immersed in the culture, I never referred to my religion as Hellenismos, I just never connected with that word and called myself a Hellenic Polytheist instead (and, the opinions of certain walking egos aside, I do seem to remember a time when the terms were a lot more blurred than they are now that some people have loudly thrown a hissy fit, people called what they did a variety of things but we all understood it was for the most part the same thing). Now, because my focus has shifted from culture to the liminal, I don't even use that as a descriptor any longer. There are things I like and things I don't like about the culture, both the ancient culture and the one in the modern community, but for the most part my experiences there have been overwhelmingly positive, and I feel as though I do have a place there albeit one on the far fringe.

books

I have always loved reading (I was one of those kids that had books rather than friends), horror of course. Started off with kiddie horror, read some of the teen stuff (R.L. Stein and the like) and graduated to adult horror when I found that the teen shit was almost always disappointing (mostly because it always offered a rational if convoluted, real world explanation at the end; I'm reading fucking horror here, I want there to be monsters and demons and people coming back from the dead, if I find out at the end it was all just some douche bag playing a prank then I feel like I've wasted my time). The first two I remember reading were Stephen King's Christine, and Clive Barker's The Inhuman Condition. Clive Barker is still my favorite author; I have a personal theory about Stephen King that the longer the story is, the more time he has to develop the plot and the characters, the better it all is, my favorites of his work are The Stand, It and The Dark Tower series, while a lot of his shorter work is dreadful (there are exceptions, I liked Apt Pupil, which was a novella in Different Seasons, made into an absolutely horrid movie, horrid because it didn't have to be so bad, it had a good cast and a good director, but unfortunately it was being made around the time Columbine happened and so to appease hysterical public sensitivites they rewrote the whole thing, completely changed the ending, and what we got was a castrated version of what should have been a harsh, twisted look at the psychological interplay between two unstable people and what effect their joining has on each other). When I was younger people tried hard to discourage my reading habits, trying to forbid me from reading horror and trying to push other things on me, because you know I'm a girl and girls don't like horror and if I do then that obviously means I'm going to kill everyone (no, seriously). But while I can sit through a movie I don't care about, with books its different I have to be very interested in what I'm reading or I can't make myself get through it. The plan failed, and luckily for me they didn't manage to kill my love of reading in the process.

Of course, I haven't been reading much fiction lately, trying hard to find things that appeal to me (Alan Campbell and China Mieville are two newer finds for me; I like Neil Gaiman some of the time but I don't think he shits gold the way most other people seem to feel). Lately I've been reading a lot more non fiction, related either to my interest in serial killers and forensics or my religion (both educational scholarly works, devotionals written by people I know, magical or mystical practice when I can find something decent).