Voices of the Norns - What To Do?

Detail Present day altar, New Orleans - Smoke

Dear Norns,

I am right now in a sort of a searching phase. There are many things in my life which create resistance, that eat much of my energy. I often find myself alone in a vacuum with the question; what am I supposed to do? I'm grouping for guidance, something that gives me the feeling that if I do the right things and work harder everything will work out for the better, as long as I keep at it. I have tried many sounding boards, both in my immediate surroundings and with people outside of my personal sphere, but I still find myself feeling helpless and alone. Do I really have to fight this hard? And if so, how long? I did have a hope that I would find deeper connection and context in the geographical location I have now chosen to build my life, or at least that things would become somewhat easier. But I remain a stranger that guest plays a little here and there without feeling that I belong. So, what am I supposed to do?

Hugs

Emilia

Little sparrow,

We hug you back. We do, we do, and ask ourselves; Why do you have to work so hard? Why do you have to? Do you? 

Beyond survival there are few things people have to do. There are meaning and goals. Those are yours to create. Here's a non-secret that is easy to forget. Places have souls too. Souls of places are slow and not very easy to charm, but they are seldom fickle like people are fickle. Oh, people ... not a bad race, we don't say that at all. But so much ado, so much running around, making noises, shattering endlessly, breaking sacred bonds pretending they were never there in the first place.

Do you know what the Protestant motto is? It is: if shit happens all I have to do is work harder and it will work out. This is not necessarily true. Not always. The Catholic motto is: if shit happens it's probably my fault. That is not necessarily true ... either.

Talk to this place you think you've chosen (you might want to wait until you're free from human company for this) and ask if it wants you? Be respectful. Root your own soul. You will want know this; calm people gravitate to people that have calm souls. The fickle ones fall away, which isn't a big loss. Most people are a lot of work. Especially these days when the languages of places - earthenware and birds - are so seldom used. Speak that language and perhaps somewhere there you can find answers to the right question which is not what to do. It is; what do you want?

With outmost blessings

The Norns

Detail Present day altar, New Orleans - Flowers

Voices of the Norns - Past, Present and Future - an Offering

It has been quiet on this blog for awhile. I found myself in the world of not knowing what to share. The written word can be used for so many things and not all are suitable for immediate flaunting.. Creative writing has to take it's time and will, hopefully, be shared eventually. Private journal writing is for the most part, well, private. Nobody really wants to know the rambling of my journal pages. You just have to trust me on that one. It's beyond mad alert. It's tedious. Meanwhile, while the fictional stories in the making are slowly, painfully slowly to be honest, being created and private journal pages keep suffering I find myself thinking of what to share. Which undoubtedly leads to - why share?

Now, that is a good question. Or rather, for any writer, the question. As I would happily, chappily said in writing classes of old - everyone has something to share. Write, just write ... jada, jada. Easy to preach, is it not? When we talk to others we know the way all too well.

When Michael and I published The Echo World we had a natural venue. Nobody questions why you should write in a magazine, you just do. Not even myself. Truth is, I miss The Echo World. Not the deadlines, they are as the name implies, deadly. Not the deliveries, or scraping around for suitable material, nor the technical issues. I don't miss those parts much at all, but I do miss the given venue.

Echoes from The Echo World days, Magic Land

The Echo World was a creature, an all-consuming bratty little bastard with a tender heart. Leftover copies of the last issue are presently forming into new creatures of paper-mache. Painfully slowly I might add. All is well in the world and it keeps revolving, unfolding and evolving.

When I met the voodoo queen of New Orleans the first time (there might be more than one voodoo queen here but for me there is only one, an eighty plus miracle of a woman who runs the Voodoo Spiritual temple. Her name is Miriam.) she repeated in a sing-song voice for no apparent reason, "The past echoes forward. Isn't that great? We don't have to dwell on the past because the past echoes forward."

I have been thinking about what parts of The Echo World I truly do miss and would like to echo forward. One part that was great fun was Voices of the Norns - Past, Present and Future. I have decided to reawaken Voices of the Norns. Simply because I feel like it. Or, perhaps closer to the truth, because I missed them lately. And they are, for quite natural reasons, never far away.

Voices of the Norns - Past, Present and Future was featured in The Echo World over its last years and some were republished on this blog. If you are curious click the links: 

Voices of the Norns - Past, Present, and Future - The Worlds

Voices of the Norns: Past, Present and Future - The Voice

Voices of The Norns - Past, Present and Future - Anger

Voices of The Norns - Past, Present and Future - Freedom

Voices of The Norns - Past, Present and Future - The Broken Key

Voices of The Norns – Past, The Present, and Future - Unconditional Love

I invite you to ask questions to the Norns and see what they come up with. This is an offering, FREE of charge and for our mutual curiosity. There are only a few things to consider:

The Norns are cryptic and sometimes harsh. Do not ask a question you do not want an answer to. I will give the answer as close to the words I am given as possible. If you're ready to play, fire away. Send your question to sofiakarinaxelsson@gmail.com. 

I will choose questions, edit down if need be and proofread. That is my only charge. The Norns will do the rest. They usually do.

Word of the Day - Rain train

Rain train, meaning - (simple google search): basically a storm that forms from the conglomeration of smaller scale thunderstorms but is not as big as a mid-latitude cyclone.

Left for something, Elysian Fields Ave, NO

I learnt this word yesterday. And today. And I will probably learn more about the concept tomorrow. Another meaning of rain train: pretty tedious.

However, moist and murky as they may be, rain train days are perfect curiosity days, or cultural days if you want to sound more focused. New Orleans have a lot to look at and the public library culture pass is a great invention.  Michael and I are looking into  possibilities. But first a walk. A rain-hanging-in-the-air walk.

St. Roch Cemetary, NO

Holding Magical Space

To hold a space for magic -real magic - is the most delicate thing and requires strength of a rare kind. It is - I imagine - like teaching a moth (to teach a butterfly would be similar I assume. I really have no firsthand experience with the analogy on a whole.) to lift a barbell heavier than its own weight.

To lift that barbell yourself would be impossible. After all, it's the jobb of a moth, or a butterfly, and a fictional one on top of that, doing an impossible task.

If one holds that magical space long enough, (Just discarding that it is indeed impossible.) then maybe, sometimes, sometimes miracles do happen.

Butterflies on mural , Who Dat Coffee,
Burgundy street, New Orleans

A Very Red Day

A day is filled up

     with every thougt we have

          every feeling

               every action

               every joy, every low grade sadness of things lost, of the color we paint our aura, or our walls.

This is a good day. Early still. But I will cook a chicken (in the oven, the hottest red spices, lots of onions) and put up pictures in our workroom (second hand frames, some already filled with images of fiddlehead fern and mountains and trees. In some I will put doodles I made over the last years.) In the room where Michael and I write and work and dream. A very important room for us indeed. 

I think I'll use plant allies, those warm and happy ones - cinnamonsticks, cloves and orange peel, I'm sure I'll come up with something more - and make some tea. It will fill up the room with scents. Scents have colors you know. Those scents are reddish, a warm orange hue. The color of the chicken cooking will be a deeper red. It's the chillipepper mostly and the paprika, of course.

Feelings also have colors. At least for me. The feeling of accomplishing something is also red; a bright, shiny red. So putting up those pictures on the wall radiates something. Punching nails into the wall with a hammer defiently creates ruby sparks.

I think this is a very red day.

From collection Associations by Jeffrey M Fletcher

Ancestral Healing, The Shadow-Side of "Light Workers" & Predications For Humanity

I seldom lazy-share the ideas of people in the so-called spiritual field. But there's so many things I want to say and it takes a lot of time. So sometimes, I think it's ok to share the thoughts of a person you admire. Someone who doesn't simplify anything. 

Like right now for example. I'm listening to Teal Swan in a beautiful interview about Ancestral Healing, The Shadow-Side of "Light Workers" & Predications For Humanity. If you're tired of the humbug of ... well ... many things. This interview is worth its weight in gold.

Petals

Everything you want will come flowing in.

If you ask for it. But be careful.

If you want love, you cannot make a list of the traits you wish a partner to have. If you want money, you cannot think that hard work or losses, much more important than money, is also on the horizon. If you want health, you got to do the work that a healthy body and mind demands.

Everything you want will come flowing in. But wishing is not a shopping list. There is a price to every gift. The price may be high if you haven't thought it through.

What do you really want? Are you willing to pay the price? Is your wish pure, devoid of pride and petty return-to-sender sidenotes

Then, and only then will everything you want come flowing in, slowly but surely like petals moving gently on the water surface.

Petals by Jeffrey M Fletcher