The Song and the Flame

(Cross-posted to all blogs, with apologies for duplication.)

Thanks to Jenny for pointing me toward WPtouch, which allows me to implement a mobile theme. I don’t know whether anyone reading this will particularly care or not, but if you’d like to view this blog on a mobile device, that should now be a lot easier than it has been. The mobile version will continue to change slightly as I fiddle with settings and fill in summaries and whatnot, but the basic functionality is available now.

The mobile site should not affect how the normal theme works in a regular browser. However, I have also just upgraded to WordPress 3.0, and I have no idea what that might do. If you see anything broken, it’s probably a 3.0 issue, and I’d appreciate it if you could let me know in a comment.

You know… I’d only meant for this theme to be temporary. The more I look at it, though, the more I like it. The color of the header graphic reminds me of congac amber — and amber being something that I associate closely with my Patron, and something I wear a lot of, that seems as appropriate as a custom sun image does. Even if I didn’t do it myself.

I’m still not sure about the bright orange links; maybe I’ll try to calm them down somewhat. But there’s less change needed here than I thought there was, really.

I intended to do more about blogging my Pagan values this month. I really did. I’m finding myself at kind of a low point creatively, though, and am having difficulty coming up with the energy and motivation to write much. I may or may not get another entry about it in before the end of the month. Sigh.

Which makes me wonder why I’m also planning to finally get some work done on the template for this blog, which is also creative work. But I’m going to try anyway.

The theme, I mean. I am super-tired of the old one. This one gives me sort-of an appropriate look and allows me to use widgets, so it wins for now. I’m never one to leave well enough alone with a theme, though; as soon as I have a chance to update graphics, it will be changing again.

…And I apologize for the bright-orange links.

Right. It’s not quite been a year since I blogged here. Yikes. Is anyone still out there?

I’ve been trying to read scholarly sources again. Mikalson’s more readable than Burkert, but I’m just not getting much of anywhere lately and I think I have to admit that it’s time to try something else. (This frustrates me very much, as detailed on my reading blog, but what I didn’t want to get into there was that I also sort of feel like a wannabe. I feel like I just keep quitting reading scholarly sources because it’s too haaaaaaard. Which, tough shit. You picked a religion with homework. And this is why this makes me feel like such a failure.) Then it hit me. DailyLit! Has Greek stuff! Primary sources! It’s a little limited in that I’m not sure what the translations are, and I don’t in most cases have the luxury of choosing which one to follow, but it’s better than nothing, which is what I’m doing currently. So the question now is, to dive into the Iliad again and try to finish it this time, or to move on to drama? It’s been a long time since I’ve read or seen any Greek drama…

I feel as though I may be setting myself up to fail. I know I’m in that kind of phase right now where everything seems terribly important and I’m trying to do too much, and I’m afraid I may wind up dropping back on religious practice again just out of sheer overwhelmedness-with-life. But I have to try, don’t I?

In other news:

I think this blog needs a new design, too.

Everyone at Mom and Dad’s (well, all the adults; not Natalie) got one of these in their stocking. Mine is sitting on top of my binary clock on my desk at work. It’s grey, with a creamy color on the breast and around the eyes. I just meant it to be a fun little toy, but… I can’t help it. Every time I look at it, I see Randall’s sig in my head, which is sufficiently tied to Athena in my head that my brain leaps right over the graphic to the Goddess herself. No direct contact, though. That I’ve recognized. Maybe just my imagination making connections.

Would it be a bad thing, though, to have more things that reminded me of the Gods around at work? Apollo’s got his own little shrine, of course, but I hadn’t necessarily given a lot of thought to the others. Which I haven’t been smited for yet (not a request), but it can’t hurt to pay the others, or at least the other Olympians, a little attention too. Maybe this would be a fun way to get back to a little more religious content in my life — do a little research and figure out what (either already on my desk or that I could add to it) I can do to represent the unrepresented.

I also kind of want to go through this blog and rearrange. Sort things better, maybe stick all the early angsty-me stuff into one big “old stuff” category or something, I don’t know. It feels very disorganized right now.

OK, it looks like the Hellenic Recon Reform project is finally about to get rolling at TC, so I’m going to back off on my efforts here for a bit and see what happens there.

Welcome to the new blog! Which finally has a new look, too. And a name! A few notes…

First, the title comes from something that jumped out at me when I was doing ritual one day. I realize that for those who know both of us, referencing “flame” here might bring up a connection to Shadow’s religion, Flamekeeping. I do not intend to make such a connection. (Not that I think there’s anything wrong with Flamekeeping, that I want to distance myself from it! Just want to be as clear as possible here.)

Second, the categories aren’t perfect. I’m kind of seeing how they work for now, and might rearrange later. I hope they’re at least clear enough to not be totally confusing.

Third, of course this is all under development. That’s what I’m doing, religiously–discovering as I go along. However, be aware that anything in the “Percolating” category [note: no longer exists] is even more fluid and subject to change than usual, because I’ve specifically decided I have to think about these things.

I think that’s it. Enjoy!

Another slow week. Blargh. The last couple of weeks it’s been the play; this week I just can’t friggin’ think. I feel awful about neglecting this so much, but at least this week I do have fairly concrete evidence that I’m not just making up excuses. Because I can see it in other areas of my life too.

A good example: Last night I accidentally shut one of our cats in the linen closet overnight. The part that proves my point is that I saw her go in when I opened it, but almost immediately forgot she was in there and closed the door behind her after I’d gotten what I needed out of the closet. (I feel really bad about it, but she seems to have forgiven me, as she came and sat on my lap for a while this morning.)

I haven’t forgotten about writing in this blog, I swear. Suddenly there’s actually stuff for me to do at work, so I can’t take the time to do stuff during the work day the way I had been, and then I had a very busy weekend too. Hopefully I can get some entries going soon.

I’m suffering from an episode of brain-deadiness again, so since I can’t come up with anything to say I organized what I’ve already said, using text files on my hard drive. Now I can reference what I’ve previously written on a given subject whenver I need to without hunting through the archives.

At least it’s doing something, I guess. *sigh*