Ms. Graveyard Dirt is an Aries (with Pisces and Mercury in her moon and Leo as her ascent) born at Resurrection Hospital during the year of the monkey.
A small signet ring topped with the lower case letter lambda, a common gay pride symbol dating back to the 1970s. From my Pride Line.
Over the centuries, us queers have used a variety of symbols to identify ourselves to each other. In the 20th Century, signet rings have been a popular motif: used by lesbians, particularly, in the 1930s, and by gay men more commonly in later decades.
The Greek letter lambda was adopted as a symbol of gay pride in the 20th Century: in 1970, by the Gay Activists Alliance; in 1974 by the International Gay Rights Congress; in 1987 with the release of the Lambda Book Report, which would grow into the Lambda Literary Awards, which today may be the most famous usage.
Terracotta relief showing Skylla, a sea-monster (Milos, found in Aegina 336-323 BC)
Scylla is a terrifying sea monster from Greek mythology, famously encountered by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. Living in a cliffside cavern opposite the deadly whirlpool Charybdis, Scylla was once a beautiful nymph transformed by a jealous curse into a grotesque creature with twelve deformed feet and six long, snaking necks, each topped with a horrific head boasting triple rows of sharp teeth. As ships passed through the narrow strait, she would lean out of her cave to snatch and devour sailors directly from the decks. Forced to choose between risking his entire ship to Charybdis or losing a few men to Scylla, Odysseus chose the latter, helplessly watching as the monster struck like a predator and devoured six of his finest companions.
in folklore depictions of rusalky, their fatness is sometimes a trait that is emphasized. fatness is, of course, associated with richness and abundance of the earth, something which rusalky are welcomed to share with mortal folk during the green week
a rusalky post for rusalky week. i want to share some ukrainian folk stories about relationships between the rusalky and their living relatives. and if you don't know, rusalka is an undead natural spirit, usually (but not always) of a girl who died a violent death, or died prior or during the rusalka week. recordings of folk texts are taken from the work "ukrainian mythology" by volodymyr halaichuk, translated by me.
• a girl died before rusalka week. and her sister remained. the dead girl was buried in her clothes, but they forgot to give her her favorite skirt, that she wanted. she came back as a rusalka. she came to her sister, and asked: "oksana, can you get me my skirt?". oksana asked: "what do you need it for?" "i will go party". and so for the whole rusalka week, she visited her sister. every evening oksana left her the skirt on the hedge, and her sister took it and partied. but then the mother noticed it, as the skirt was constantly dripping wet. the rusalka sister told oksana to not utter a single word to her mother about what is happening. but once her mother pressured her, and the girl told her so and so. after that, the rusalka stopped coming.
• there was a good girl, and she died. she wanted to be buried in her silk skirt, but the mother didn't fulfill her wish. the girl died before rusalka week. then the neighbors started dreaming that the girl was asking "why didn't mother give me my skirt?". then, when the rusalka week came, the mother placed the skirt in the corner of the house. then, when the next day came, she looked at it, and the skirt was dripping wet. and so they knew that the rusalka girl came
• a girl died on rusalka week. and so a year came by, but the parents still mourned. but during rusalka week, they saw her khustka move, and so the father pounced on it, and hugged it tightly, and didn't let it go. turned out it was their girl. he placed her on the corner of the house. and so she stayed in one place for a whole year. only when the dziady (ancestors' holiday) came, she ate the steam from the food offering, and then again returned to her corner. but then when the rusalka week came, she looked through the window, and clapped her hands, and exclaimed "my people are coming!" — and she was gone.
• there was a dead girl of 15 or 16 years, who's parents catched her, and locked her in the house. she sat at the clay stove in the corner, her face to the wall, as she refused to turn her face to them. then they noticed that when they cook food, she disappears, and so they knew she was eating the steam from the food. from now on, they left the house before eating, so that she could eat the steam in peace. and so she lived here for a whole year. but then pentecost came, and then three days more, and then she jumped from the stove, and exclaimed "oh! oh! my people are here! my people are here!" — and nobody saw her afterwards.
• once a group of musicians returned from the party late at night, and their way was through the fields. and towards them another group of musicians walked on the same road. when they finally crossed paths, the living recognized that the other group was dead. the dead musician spoke "so what are we gonna do now? now we are doing a playing competition. the one who wins gets the girl from the others' group". and so they played, and the living won. the musician who won chose a girl and said "you're going with us". in that village was a mother, who's daughter drowned herself on the pentecost. when the rusalka got to the village, she recognized the girl as her daughter. she stood in the corner of the house for the whole rusalka week, never talking, facing the corner. and when the week passed, they never noticed when and how, but she disappeared.
Black Eau de Toilette by Comme des Garcons is a Oriental Woody fragrance for women and men. Black Eau de Toilette was launched in 2013. The
Modern dark smoky addictive perfume, men and women can both wear it. White and black packaging with logo of Comme des Garçons Black stores.
Notes: black pepper from Madagascar, incense of Somalia, leather, liquorice, birch tar, pepperwood, cedarwood, vetiver
Not to single anyone out, but there's a jar of black liquorice in the wooden herbal medicine cupboard next to the yarrow and nettle, and I certainly didn't put it there.
While I make the out-of-place discovery, a neighbour two streets over is burning raked leaves. With my face buried in the herbal cupboard - why on God's green earth is there a jar of fucking liquorice in here? - I'm too far away to enjoy the primal bonfire smell, but I can detect that someone is burning something organic nearby.
Black pepper, without the tickling note that makes you sneeze, joins the black liquorice in the wooden herbal medicine cupboard. Instead of being another misplaced food item, it somehow unifies the pepper, liquorice, and cedar, and the complementary trio pushes the strong medicinal scent aside.
Frankincense - not just "incense", but very-absolutely olibanum - charges to the front of the race after 10 minutes of aerobics (my preferred time to test perfume is when I'm exercising), overtaking the black pepper, liquorice, and cedar, though only by a short distance.
This is fucking heaven. It's smoky, but not burny; it's mysterious, yet naive in its captivation. Frankincense holds its distance as the clear front-runner, keeping the pepper and liquorice from turning into permanent-marker black.
Alas, my visit to heaven was brief. (😭) After about 15 minutes, frankincense loses momentum and is overtaken by the other runners. It's still very much in the race, but the new configuration of the three competing notes isn't as wow-inducing as when frankincense was in the lead.
Black pepper, liquorice, cedar, and frankincense somehow coalesce into gingerbread, the proper old-fashioned European kind that tastes better five months after baking. No heavy sugar glaze, no dusting of powdery icing sugar, just a dense, almost-stiff loaf of gingerbread that can be sliced like black rye.
And I mean, it's a good gingerbread. It's actually a really fucking nice gingerbread. If I were looking for a gingerbread that wasn't too gourmand but still clearly gingerbread, Black would be the hands-down winner. But for 15 minutes, I got to experience heaven, and how does "a really fucking nice" gingerbread even compete with that? Exactly.
(TBH, I'm tempted to retest this one to see whether a more generous application will lead to a longer trip to heaven.)
I originally wrote this for National Coming Out Day, almost ten years ago, now.
I think about rewriting it every year, but I also still stand by every word
I am queer. I am a witch. To me, those experiences are inseperable
