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Post by Senbecc on Nov 9, 2006 16:04:24 GMT -5
I've given this topic allot of thought lately. I am an old fashioned southern gentleman who leans heavily to Irish chilvery. I am a hopeless romantic. I grew up in the Ozark mountains, and I had a country boys up bringing. I remember being little and out there among all that southern beauty. The hot humid southern summer nights were something I must have come to take for granted. LoL, and everything you ever heard about southern kids being slaves?...ITS TRUE! My mom was awful....We knew when we got up how hard we were gonna have to work that day...If my mom felt she felt like doing something....EVERYBODY needed to feel like doing something....My mother is quite a lady, this is the woman who blew out the side of our house with a 12 Gage shot-gun because she saw a rat...Yes...She got it. I remember when I turned 21 and couldn't put the vodka down for various reasons, I was out in the back yard and I saw her coming up with a ball bat and told me "One more sip and I'll brain you myself". For as handy as my mom was on a shot-gun no body had me whipped on a sling shot. And thus was my first experience with the bull....*Snickers* I'll just say (because it was a cruel thing for me to do) the bull tore through a barbed wire fence and I ran up on the pourch...Couldn't get up there haha. But then mom comes home...Once the beast was finally calmed down I got my ass whipped by everyone in the neighborhood...I swear they stood in line for miles to get a piece of that action! Those assholes weren't missing out...Welcome to the south! I have been the boy in the woods... I am a romantic and a poet. I have considered that perhaps this is hopelessly. I would walk to the ends of the earth on my lips for for someone I'm in love with. This started when I was very young....When other boys thought they all had cooties, I was romancing them...Even one of my moms friends once...Bet mom wanted to crawl in a hole. Nothing can stand in the way of their happiness. I met a woman when I was younger who I thought had taken that from me forever, I felt nothing after that for those women I'd be with, and nine times out of ten it was a mutual thing. This woman and me had built a life and she left me over and over and I'd always take her back...That last time I just thought it was dead in me. Then I met a woman on MnM. Something about her energy made her so very exquisite to me. She soon became the energy by which all others are measured. She and I explored the depths of our souls together...I fell in love. Later things would happen that would force us to loose contact, and so one day she was gone...I never stopped thinking of her though. Much later I met another woman on Myspace, and yes I remembered the passion and while I knew I was hungry for a suddenly remembered sensation I simply didn't know how hungry I was...I thought I had shut it off again, but when she came into my life our passion made me forget all about those defences...I was like a child to it. I opened up completely, almost an involuntary reaction. However it reminded me, that it does still live in me and that I am still capable, all I need to do is guard my emotions better. It also showed me that theres such a thing as opening up to wide, and giving to much to fast. Love is a passion which knows no boundaries or distance. It is formless and can be seen in the mind with explosive splendor, and a soft touch, with a sweet I missed you voice, to let you know you are needed. I suppose these are my thoughts on love. I am a shaman, poet, and ambassador to my people. My magic is words, and I can promise you this druid needs no body to touch a woman, or anything else for that matter. I am a keeper of wisdoms and knowledges so ancient their ages can never be measured. I introduce people to the ways of the Celt. I am a follower and enforcer of Brehon law. I am a judge before my court. Let all those trusted and respected in this Druid's court speak. One of the most important things is to know yourself, for that is the most important form of knowledge of all. Let us take a group journey.
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Post by wren on Nov 9, 2006 16:32:32 GMT -5
And, we're supposed to follow that? ? Well, Who am I? I am a long lost Highlander who longs for the hills and dales of my ancestors. My heart beats to the bag pipes and the bodhran. My soul speaks Gaelic, even if my lips do not yet do so. I am a dancer of the Oran Mor and a child of the moon. I am a student of everything I do not yet know and everything else about which I have more to learn. I think intelligence, passion and poetry are sexy. I am a deep-feeling and passionate romantic who has never known that kind of love returned… ever. I am slow to anger, slower to judge and quick to embrace new friendships. I find trying on other people’s shoes quickly relieves me of the need for grudges. I believe thinking in the first place is always better than apologies in the second place. I think lying, betrayal, apathy and conscious injury are senseless and unconscionable. I am a Jersey girl born and bred (but for two brief and very long years in central PA). I am in love with the shore (beach, for those of you not from Jersey), the Pine Barrens, and the Rancocas Creek. I am in love with all green and growing things and have many animal friends, both domesticated and wild. I plant faery gardens and lay out faery rings and I leave out food for the Good Folk. I share my home with a house spirit who loves to open windows and play games with my belongings, along with two beautiful, intelligent, discerning and wonderfully maddening children. I am passionate about: love, my children, my studies, the environment, the past, the present, the future, all things Celtic, all things Druid, all things unknown and unseen. I embrace the Darkness as well as the Light. I hope someday to call myself Druid.
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Post by wren on Nov 16, 2006 16:56:14 GMT -5
And, today, I am a wet marshmallow...
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Post by Senbecc on Nov 16, 2006 16:59:58 GMT -5
And, today, I am a wet marshmallow... LoL, hello highlander I hope to get more involved in this journey of an understanding of the self...It is an important journey for each who take part. We love you sis! Be strong.
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Post by wren on Nov 16, 2006 17:04:00 GMT -5
*beans him right between the eyes*
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Post by bran_sinnach on Nov 17, 2006 0:51:28 GMT -5
Who am I...well, I am a number of things. There are the most basics of who I am, such as that I was born and have since that time lived here in Oklahoma, and that there has been many a day Ive pushed myself in her sweltering summers and frigid winters to accomplish that which was set before me. That I have wonderful parents who share everything they can with me to make me happy, and that I respect them and love them more than I can say. That not terribly long ago I found a beautiful girl who I adore and fully plan to spend my life with. But I am so much more than these things, so instead I will attempt to convey who I truly am...though in my life, that has been two people...I was once the dragon, consumed and unbridled, burning the land as I went...and as I am now, the Raven Fox who seeks wisdom over materials, and finds comfort in his goddess and all that the world has to offer rather than wallowing in that which it denies. And no matter which incarnation I have been, I am a man who lives his life apart from others. In my first incarnation I was the dragon, and when I say such I do not mean a noble creature, but instead the beast who flies across the land leaving destruction in his wake, or perhaps Smaug from the Hobbit. I was a creature then consumed by a darkness it seemed I had always known, a darkness at first spawned from a sense of such difference from all those around me. When the other children played and talked of this game or that, I sat and thought and discussed meaning with teachers instead...it was this sense of in-betweeness that enwrapped me in a sense of isolation, neither child nor adult, and first gave the dragon its wings with their bitter winds and fiery breath born from an angry heart. There was no despair, and instead I enwrapped myself like a coat of scales in the anger and contempt I felt for my fellow men, for while I had many things and would gain many more, they would always have that companionship and understanding that it seemed I would be forever denied. If I was to be denied such joys and innocent pleasures, I would fill the void instead with everything else that I was gifted with, and gathered to myself all things I found which caught my interest and perked my dark amusement. I hoarded it all as the dragon hoards his piles of gold, and as the dragon knows no true pleasure or use from that which he so greedily guards neither did all the piles of 'wealth' I myself hoarding so desperately fill the yearning within myself. At the age of nine I discovered magic, and in doing so, I discovered something that seemed to stir and beckon to some silent, sleeping part of me that lay beneath the scales of hatred and the thick, sinewy muscles of greed I had built about myself. However, as the dragons words seem pure and are yet treacherous, so too did I even make this which seemed to cry to, and perhaps for, that hidden part within me. Instead of finding peace and harmony within its arms I instead devoured it as I did everything else, and rather than seeking ways to better myself and others, I instead sought the darkest of the dark and road to that which I had developed a hunger for beyond all others...power. I sought ways to bring suffering to those I despised, to manipulate others into dancing to my commands, and the darkest of all...I found and began to train myself in a manner that would keep my twisted spirit here even when my flesh fell into ruin about me, at a cost so high and terrible I shudder to look back upon it now and think of the steps I had already undertaken to see its success, and to think I had fallen so far as to see my fellow man in so low a light as to be willing to do what I saw then as justified. I had fully become the dragon, power hungry and with a burning lust for all that had value-yet in the end has so little, a creature that was embittered towards men and felt both hatred and yearning for the happiness that seemed to fall to them so easily, manipulative and cruel and without feeling, and most of all, I brood in my cavern with all of this...completely alone. It was not even the darkness I resided within, for the darkness is beautiful and a balance to the light, a natural part of the cycles of life and world which is constructive and destructive all at once. No, I wallowed in the pit, the Void, but they were not natural things but grand, horrible palaces of my own design. When I faced death, when through my own arrogant actions I almost slipped from this world to the next, I was awakend. I climbed a cliff and expected the stone to yield to my will as people did, and instead I think the spirit of the cliff chose to toss me over rather than have me defile its beauty by roosting upon it. As I went sliding down the side towards the edge, I knew very well I would most likely die, and in that moment as I continued to slide and grab for purchase on the loose stone I found myself regretting the lonely, warped creature I had shaped myself into. I had no intention of praying, instead merely wishing I could have done things differently and seen where in my life I could have gone, if I could have indeed found happiness with time and different choices. The edge was feet away now, and as I slid I began to feel the scales and talons I had created for myself sloughing away through the power of admitting what I had done to myself and others, admitting that I regretted it all, and at last making a vow to whatever powers might have been listening that if I did survive, which I greatly doubted, I would try to make something out of whatever sort of life I was left with afterwards. I remember going over the edge, and feeling sorrow for the waste I had left behind-though strangely it seemed to me at the time I did not despair, for I thought even then that perhaps in another life I could repair the damage I had done. I felt the air rush around me, I closed my eyes and accepted my fate...I heard the caw of a crow-and I found myself on a small ledge hidden beneath the lip of the cliff, safe and well enough despite scratches and bruises. And that sleeping, hiding thing deep within me at last awoke and rose with all the fire of a phoenix reborn, the inferno of its re-birth incinerating all the dark armor and hate I had built around myself and leaving my fresh and new upon a ledge of stone with a great green forest stretching before me and a winding river. I was reborn not a new man, for I had learned from the mistakes of my past I now saw for being just that, but instead a man wisened by having taken a twisted path and knowing what it means to tread that barren walk. As I sat there, staring in awe at the world and myself, I heard the caw of a crow once again, and looked up to see a massive one perched upon the edge of my little stone lip. When I had first heard it as I fell, I thought I had imagined it or made the sound myself. As I sat there looking at it, I at first merely thought it was another bird roosting here, cawing at me for having disturbed it. But then, as I actually looked at the crow rather than merely acknowledging its presence, it seemed somehow to be something more than a crow. She stared at me with a fierce intelligence as she stood there, black feathers shining like onyx in the sun, and for the first time in my life I felt not between worlds, but as if I belonged. I cant say how I knew it, though from the things I know now I believe she merely spoke to me in a silent way, but I understood then that my vow had been heard by such a power, one who had taken me in, and I was expected to honor that promise which I had made in my time of need. I felt so strongly connected to her as I sat there, all at once feeling stronger and weaker, and things swirled and changed and flowered within me as I stared on in amazement. What had once been a Void, an unnatural blackness, now became a natural darkness that made me comfortable and at peace. I understood that this was herself, who she truly was, that she was sharing herself and her nature with me so that I would truly understand myself, and to a better degree her. She revealed to me the beauty of her darkness, and I let it envelop me and take the raw iron that had been my terrible blackness and forge it instead into the beautiful, complex sword that was her tender darkness. At the time I did not know who she was, and perhaps even who I was anymore, but I would later come to understand that it was the Morrigan and that it was she who saved me that day, from both myself and the cliff, and who also shaped me in an image more that of her own, one of a spinning, guiding darkness that is not a counterpoint to the light, but a part of it. After that point, she became as much a part of me, always with me, as anything else in my life could ever be, and at times I am at a loss as to whether call her my goddess or mother. As I sat there upon the stone, a dragon reborn into darkness as something purer and whole, she bobbed her head to me and gave a final caw before taking flight and making her way into the blue sky, her beautiful black wings spread wide. When I climbed back up the cliff and at last sat upon safe ground once again, I knew that the dragon I had been was dead and gone and that at last I was whole again, that I was now the man which I would later come to call Bran Sinnach, the Raven Fox. (Heh, Ill continue this in another post so none of this gets deleted.)
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Post by bran_sinnach on Nov 17, 2006 1:09:47 GMT -5
For a time, now stricken of my hate and bitterness, I was confused as to just who I might really be. I would spend entire days in silence, not brooding, but thinking and trying to understand just who I truly was. I began to understand many things that I had been blind to before-that is was not the sword that was important, but the cherished memories I could make with it, or perhaps that it was pointless to harbor anger towards my fellow men when they had done naught but seek happiness for themselves- and continued to philosophise more and more about a widening range of topics. I had always felt drawn to Ireland, and as I began to look into Druidism during my studies, I was struck by it as lightning and knew almost at once that I had at last found a faith which I did not have to make compromise after compromise for, but instead that fit my as wonderfully as a glove...and I discovered the name of my goddess, I learned that she was named the Morrigan. I was still physically alone much of the time, yes, but no longer was I ever truly alone, for I knew the Morrigan was always with me and was always there to encourage and guide me. I found I could be happy, truly happy, if only I would allow myself to have it and not scrabble for that of others, I learned that it was knowledge of self rather than power of others that gave me true joy. I studied my faith diligently and worked hard for higher understanding-I sought to better know nature, to seek more knowledge, and to truly understand myself and my truth against the world- and it was upon one of my vision quests that my nature of the fox and the raven were revealed to me-thereafter I knew my name, my true name, was and would always be Bran Sinnach. I discovered the joys of writing in all sorts, of surrounding myself with those things that nature offered up and that I found and gave me pleasure not through their ownership, but because they struck a chord of harmony with who I was as I placed them about me, and I understood what it truly meant to have the desire to help others in whatever way I could, truly want to give aid without reciprocation, for the first time in my life. These discoveries and so, so much more have been found and created over the last five years of my life, and for the last three I have known the privelidge of being a priest of Morrigan, working in ways to better learn from her and all she has to offer. I practice by myself due to where I live, and in fact Ive never had the pleasure of meeting another Druid in person other than my wife, who did not know what she believe any longer when I met her and am now instructing in our ways, though through my meditations and the Morrigans guidance I find contentment rather than lonliness in the silence and stillness of being by myself now. And so at last we come to me as I am here and now as I write this here for you all to read, and I hope that perhaps even one soul might understand themselves, or anything for that matter, if only slightly from this tale of mine I have told here. I tell you now, you can find happiness no matter how black the world may seem or you have made it, that happiness is waiting for you if only you will allow yourself to wake up and see it for all that it truly is. Take it, for it is yours, and truly it is something that we all deserve to have.
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Post by ihrian on Nov 17, 2006 6:56:42 GMT -5
wow...who am i..well, im erin, and i like coffee nah but really, i spose.. im a 15 year old aussie girl, born in a small town called bundaberg on the coast of queensland, this is a town where i swear half the people in it were related to me..i can prove it too, we did a family tree, and EVERYONE was in bundy xept for the first two, as far as they got back, who were from Lancashire in england...i was surprised to learn that, brought back memories of someone...bundy also sucked, and i lived there till i was 7, when we moved to Brisbane, which back then was so exciting coz it was a big city with parks and tall buildings and lots of cars and the roads actually went places, lol bundy's pretty backward, ehehe.. i come from a mum who as a kid was mad about ireland and history of all sorts, and her mother, who is just the same. ive developed the same love, beginning with my adoration of the corrs, which i think got me into playing violin, either that or my mum, coz i dont really remember. i began playing violin in grade 4, i was 9. its the best thing ive ever done, i loved it from that first day and havnt stopped, i dont think i ever will. i started figuring out how to play corrs songs, erin shore, toss the feathers, by ear when i was about 11 and then got hungry for more irish music (i have a vast and evergrowing collection now ) and it grew into a fanatic love of ireland, and now im insane! and my name is so not a coincidence, mum gave it to me because she loved ireland so much i love her for that! i used to be really shy little thing, im really short too, but i never got nervous playing in front of people...im not shy anymore tho, lol ppl dont believe me when i tell them i used to be. my whole life pretty much is violin, ireland, violin, ireland, and history..all history, not just irish but irish especially, i wont deny it... moving on, kinda.. ive never been out of australia, and only once out of queensland. i desperately want to travel, go places, my favourites at the moment are ireland russia wales and africa...ireland is pretty well obvious, russia coz i have a sudden infatuation with russian music, wales coz i have friends from there and i like the language, and dont ask me why i want to go to africa, coz i have no idea, the ideas just been following me around for a few months...but i just want to see everything, i have no patience, i tend to be like that, i want to do everything at once or not at all...i dont recommend it, it doesnt really work all that well...i dont know where this is goin, so have fun my dad had juvenile diabetes since he was 13, so ive been brought up around him being sick and having to go to the hospital every week. one of the reasons why we moved to brisbane was to be close to the hospital here, the hospital in bundys pretty dodgy...in 2000 he went to sydney to have a kidney pancreas transplant, so we didnt see him or mum for 2 months. in that time we lost our cat =( it was very sad. highschool has been the very best years for me so far, im loving where im at right now, im just cruising along, laughing all too much and taking nothin seriously, we have the best times at school. im not a stressy person, so exams and assignments dont bother me. we go out, have fun, cause a bit of trouble, make a lot of noise, and have more fun. our quartet played at the valedictory ceremony today, and we played 'after all these years' by silverchair...it was really beautiful, and it even made me sad, thinking that in 2 years we have to leave too, im looking foward to it but not at the same time, lol anyway, i better go,
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Post by wren on Nov 17, 2006 7:08:57 GMT -5
It is an honor to know you both!
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Post by ihrian on Nov 17, 2006 7:20:34 GMT -5
lol, well, brans made so much more sense than mine, buut u get that
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Post by ihrian on Nov 17, 2006 7:21:19 GMT -5
It is an honor to know you both! you too, wren, you too
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Post by bran_sinnach on Nov 17, 2006 8:49:57 GMT -5
Yours was an equal mine in every way, Ihrian, for the stories of our lives are too unique to be used as a measure against one anothers. And the same to you, wren, and all here, for it has been a pleasure getting to know everyone. I look forward to seeing more posts in this thread!
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