Chaos Attraction

Birthday Rituals

2007-04-24, 11:28 a.m.

In e-mail today, Jess sent me a picture of Yggdrasil with this note:

"You're constantly branching out, adding more and more leaves to
carry, while your unseen world is twisted around itself. You can
carry a lot, but there comes a point where it's too much, and what anchors you can't hold all of those branching interests and little
tasks."

That sounds pretty correct.

While at my shrink appointment on Friday, she asked me what I do for my birthday. I have a couple of rituals, which are kind of in lieu of doing cake and a whole lot of presents and partying on the actual day.

These days, my celebratory stuff tends to be spread out. I went to another birthday party last Friday, will be getting cake at work Wednesday and possibly at volunteering on Thursday, and presents seem to be strewn about at random throughout the month. It's kinda like Birthday Week, except not quite since it's also celebrating everyone else's b-days around the same time. (Though I am always stumped as to what to do about my coworker whose birthday is the day before mine, since he is not social and would probably rather ignore it than have it even mentioned to him.)

Incidentally, the birthday party I went to was great. At one point we ended up heading out to Rainbow City at night and played hide-and-seek sardine-style in the play structure. I was thinking at one point as I was hiding, "Gee, at my age most people are sitting home with their babies right now, and I'm hiding in the dirt under a wooden castle. I know it's wrong at my age to be doing this, but I think I'm having a lot more fun than those people."

Anyway, back to the birthday rituals. I do the following every year on a weekday birthday, since I can't exactly do a whole lot otherwise:
(a) I get Jess to do a horoscope tarot card reading for me- we did this over the phone yesterday. (This year looks like it will be peaceful and quiet.)
(b) I go through tons of websites looking for birthday horoscopes.
(c) I get takeout Chinese for lunch.

So, that's what I told my shrink I end up doing. She suggested that I do what she does on her birthday every year and make an art project that symbolizes what you want for the coming year. I was all, "Like a collage?" and she was all, "Well, I did a 3-D collage..." She stuck actual stuff onto a lightswitch cover for hers.

I liked the idea, even though I am booked to hell with other projects I should be working on, but was unsure how MUCH time I'd get to even work on something today (I have tarot class tonight). Plus collage anything, 2-D or 3-D, takes forever just to find the appropriate stuff.

So, what could I work on that was fast and yet worked with that symbolism?

What I came up with was paper beads. I'd bought a pagan magazine that had a "crafts" issue, which had an article on how to make paper bead spell objects. You write your intentions on the bead papers, then roll them up and make the beads. Perfect, eh?

I ended up doing mine at home the day before. According to my shrink, that's cheating, but oh well, I'm glad I did it when I had three hours to spare, since I had to wait for glue and paint to dry. And here it is, wearable for the big day:

For some strange reason I woke up way too early today, so I took the time to open my gifts (yay DVD collections!), watch some television I had saved up (everyone should watch Blood Ties on Lifetime/iTunes, it's frigging brilliant and the best adaptation I've ever seen of book to film), and...do a little morning ritual for my new anklet, charging it up and whatnot.

Here's to hoping the year goes well!


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