A Solstice Homecoming

Happy Solstice everyone! Tonight I got one of the greatest gifts any expat could get for solstice, the feeling of home. My friend Stacy invited me to her friend Fang’s house for her celebration.

I walked onto a porch festooned with prayer flags; in the windows candles burned, shaded by randomly hung tapestries.

The walls were covered in bookshelves, books of every imaginable kind, vintage and subject were shelved according to no order. Why? Because this was Chaos. She even answered the phone “Chaos”.

There were men dressed in skirts and/or velour in the living room near the food stuffs. There were all sorts of people I’d like to get to know better. A really funny guy named Bumblebee, a ton of other people whose names I’ve forgotten. One guy had a brand of the Chinese symbol for peace on his arm. I asked if he had a Cthulhu on his ass, and he nearly showed me. Lots of computer people, some BDSM people, just people of every sort except the kind you try to avoid at any cost.

They even had a holiday tree, which was a sculpture of chicken wire, xmas lights, and pulsating neon fiber optic lightlines programmed to flash in a particular sequence. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, and perfect for the venue. It was built mostly by a very slim Asian man in a yellow turtleneck and a dog collar.

There was a fire pit in the back yard with someone simultaneously playing two drums and a didjeridoo. Fang handed me a flask and said “single malt”? I grinned and asked what version. She replied “Laphroig, 12”. Oh dear god, that stuff had a kick to it. She then spit a mouthful on the fire to welcome the ancestors and poured the dregs in the mud for Mother Earth. Then twenty people simultaneously said “Huzzah!” I nearly fainted.

The place reminded me of a place I used to frequent in Minneapolis called “the hippie house”. This place had more order, oddly enough, but the minute I heard a faint bootleg of the Dead playing on the sound system as I browsed through “Toward a Critique of Foucault” I knew I was “home”.

I was so grateful I just about cried. Meaka had wished me a Happy Solstice earlier in the day, and I just missed her intensely. I’d been talking to another pagan friend about Mayday in Minneapolis, and realizing there ARE some things I miss. I miss the wheel of the year, every season in its place and celebrated there.

Tonight, I got a little bit of that back, and it was lovely. I could even sit and watch the fire, knowing I wasn’t going to freeze to death doing it.

I got to geek out and be outgeeked, and bond with people just because we were us. I’ve missed that.

Sometimes I think I’ve been an outcast so long I’ve grown unsure of what to do when shown welcome. I’ve forgotten how to leap since that 3000-mile leap that got me here. I’ve grown to mistrust my judgment, given the last two disastrous dating experiences.

I’m finally in a group of relationships that are all based on communication, imagine that! It’s not traditional or monogamous, but it’s a hell of a lot healthier than the “traditional, monogamous” crap I’ve been dealing with since….er…..puberty. [Except the professor, she was neither traditional nor particularly monogamous, but the rest of that story should go to the publisher, first. Y’all will have to wait]

I had stopped looking for other geeks, and all of a sudden I am flush with geekery everywhere. I had stopped looking for somewhat sane polyamory, and then found it.

I think I’m going to stop looking for fiscal sanity next, you never know, maybe I’ll get it. Unfortunately, this underscores just how inappropriate the Bible is to my life. What works for me is “Don’t seek, and ye shall find.”

So celebrate what you celebrate, but remember it all started with the fire burning deep in the night, hoping the sun will come back tomorrow.

Merry Solstice to ye! Huzzah!