I had an interesting idea today. I had brought my sketch journal to work instead of a book to keep me occupied during breaks and lunch, so I ended up writing a journal entry. And I thought, why shouldn’t I scan in some of my random journal pages that I have in various notebooks, in addition to some of the more memorable journal entries from my “real” journals in the past? So, as my first entry, non-interesting though it may be, I offer to you May 7, 2004.
I also had the most fascinating conversation with a co-worker today. I don’t think anyone from work reads my LJ, so I think it’s safe to talk about it—I won’t be “outing” Mike as a non-Christian, which, yes, would be a bad thing in bible-belt BG.
Wow, I just stole my own thunder. How lame is that?
Anyway, in our weekly department meeting, I mentioned that I’d be heading out to the Waterville Community Garage Sale this weekend. Now, Mike tends to come down to my cube and talk to me, anyway, since he noticed that Deb and I are so isolated, being in a different room than the rest of the department. (Given the cliqueishness of some people, though, we prefer it that way.) But today, he came down to ask about the garage sale. Turns out that he likes to thrift, too, which is cool. We got talking about what we look for, and I found out he’s a Medieval buff, collects Renaissance-related stuff and cast iron and things like that.
So, he drifted back to his own cube in the other room, and after lunch I got an e-mail from him. Funny shit—all sorts of whacked out pictures from around the net. I plan to post them on my page eventually. After that, he stopped past my cube again to ask what I thought of those pictures, and just to say hi before he went off to clock out for his own lunch.
And we ended up talking for an hour.
The conversation ranged from my soy candles to essential oils to herbs… then we got into a discussion about what he’d printed off to read during lunch: some Norse mythology, an epic poem about Odin. From which point we got talking about cultural history and mythology, which morphed into religion, of course. We were kind of feeling each other out (so to speak) about how far to go with the conversation. He’d mention symbols and runes and how often they’re misused, so I’d mention people’s misconceptions of the five-pointed star and its various meanings, so he’d mention how those meanings were explained to him, and so on. Eventually we both discovered that we consider ourselves non-Christians, but are kind of “in the closet” about it publicly, due to everyone’s misconceptions of paganism. That wasn’t all we talked about, though—we also discussed the Ren Fests and SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and Goth Night at Uptown and “dabblers” in Wicca and other poseurs in the counterculture. Anyway, I told him I’d be up for a double-date to one of the Ren Fests this summer.
Just to clarify, I don’t consider myself an all-out Pagan or Wiccan or what have you. I don’t believe in The Great Horned God as an actual entity whom I could call to assist me, no more than I believe that the Judeo-Christian God (whose name I do still have enough respect for not to put into writing) actually follows our daily lives. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe that a god may have had a hand in creating our world/universe, or that I don’t believe in an afterlife of some sort. Honestly, I’m just not sure, and I won’t be until I die. At any rate, just the fact that I no longer believe that Jesus was the Son of God would be enough to ostracize me from many circles.
In other news, I relocated the credit card that was lost on my desk at home, and managed to order Mom a Mother’s Day present. (Mom, I hope you haven’t found my LJ yet… but if you have, Happy Mother’s Day!)
P.S. – If you haven’t checked out my webpage lately, I’ve got some new sketches up. The U-Haul rut photos are also posted in the Photos section, if you haven’t looked at those yet. Good stuff.