Between health stuff and prep for FSG, I will be difficult to get in touch with this week. I've been "blessed" with some pretty high grade exhaustion during the week I am preparing and packing for a week long event where I'm known to work. Luckily, I have a PA coming to the event to help me out.

I also know that I was supposed to organize a Black Rose contingent in the DC Pride parade. Between finding out it costs a lot more money than I would have guessed, and being too ill to find a work around, I just can't hang. I feel like an ass, because it's something I felt really strong about.

Have I mentioned how much I hate being ill?

I have been dodging phone calls, only checking email every third day or so. I'm seeing at least one doctor before FSG in hopes of making a significant change before then.

I'd say I'm sorry, and I am when it comes to how I've made people feel. I'm not sorry about this stupid illness that keeps robbing me of my life.

Does someone have a leather biker jacket I could borrow to wear in FSG's main ritual? I need a men's size 50 or larger.

Hi revolutionaries!

I want to take a moment to talk about My Pagan Camp. This would be Free Spirit Gathering, a huge event at Camp Ramblewood every summer, culminating in the Summer Solstice.

You might have noticed that lots of people are posting about it. Part of this push is because this year, the deadline for registration is sooner than people may think. I don't know about you, but I've been super busy and if I didn't get nudged I may have missed it. So for those of you who know all about FSG, but just haven't registered yet, please do.

You *can* wait to reg at gate, but there is a tangible chance that there may not be room in the cabins should you wait - especially if you're only coming for the weekend.

(And a note for staff people: if you don't reg by the 31st, even if you're working full time, you have to pay the late fee and face the possibility of having to tent.)

There's another reason, and I'm not afraid to say it. FSG is suffering from lower-than-typical reg, like most big events this year are. I know, there are more and more events pushing for our vacation days and money. This event, which is over 20 years old, is really in a moment of concern. So I'd like to tempt at least three people - just three - to register for FSG for the first time.

So if you've never been before, here are some reasons I think you'd really like this year's event.

• This year, the rituals are being led by The First Church of Asphodel. The theme is based on an astrological alignment that only happens once every one thousand years -no lie - and you'll be invited to make actual change in the world, to create a more open, accepting, loving society. And unlike most giant group rituals, it's been structured so that every single person has a specific, active role to play, and not just as witnesses to ritual drama.
  
• The class list is available here. Really, take a moment to look it over. There are a bevy of teachers from all over the country who are bringing some top-notch pagan education to the gathering. These are published authors, active priests, educators, activists, shamans, and other people you've probably heard of if you're active in paganism. Everything from entry-level classes to some pretty advanced stuff.
  
• Specifically, yours truly is teaching three classes and leading a couple of rituals. I'll also be there all week, and if you let me know that you registered specifically from my recommendation, I will give you a free divination/shamanic consultation for your trouble.
  
• The atmosphere is incredibly healing. Just being in a place where every sort of personal expression is accepted and openly loved is mindblowing. People of all body types are running around naked, or fully dressed in goth finery, or wearing witty nerd shirts. No matter what kind of people you like hanging out with, you'll find them at FSG.
  
• Every night, you can find a number of activities to engage in. You can dance and drum by a giant bonfire, participate in all night alchemical rituals, meet and share space in Ecumenical Sumbels, or just walk around from cabin to cabin, pull up a chair, and hang out with whomever is there.
  
• You can choose to spend an entire day naked in the pool.
  
• You don't have to stay at Ramblewood. If you really want to come, but camping scares you, there are motels within a reasonable driving distance. I mean, it's your added expense, and you don't get a reduction in reg for doing it, but it's an option if staying in a cabin really wigs you out.
  

The biggest reason I go to FSG every year is that I have found a wonderful, open, supportive community that gathers in one place for an entire week. Even when I was a newbie and didn't know very many people, the open heartedness of the event showed itself to me in very tangible ways.

So if you have the week to spare, and you've been looking for a spiritual event to hang out at, I can't recommend FSG more. Especially this year - both because they need you, and because you need this.

Hi all.

For those of you who might find it interesting, I recently submitted a rant for "Blood for the Divine", a blog about Ordeal Path work.

The article is called, What We Do Is Dangerous, In Case You Didn't Already Know

Please go, read, comment!

For an upcoming LARP (this fall), I am looking for a seamster/tress who can make four 50's style, Donna-reed like dresses, including the crinaline. I'm going to be playign Edna Turnblatt, in full drag.

Three of these would be the exact same design and construction, going from "under middle class" to "upper middle class", with material that screams John Waters. The last one would be a more formal looking dress, made in the same or similar design, but glitsy in some way.

If you could send quotes to queendelirium at yahoo dot com, I'd appreciate it. Quotes can be for money, barter, etc. If you're playing in Lullabye, I am a trained vocal coach, and would be willing to trade for working on any musical number you're thinking of performing. I also have a piano, and can read music.

If you're not playing in Lullabye, I'm willing to barter time, services, or just about anything.

Hi! I'm Del! You may know me as the person who brought FSG the great mobility aid known as the Short Bus!

Well - that was just the beginning.

I am compiling a list for the FSA coordinators, the movers and shakers, about all sorts of ways we can make Beltane, Free Spirit Gathering, Fires of Venus, and even Mythical Journeys more disability friendly.

So if you have ideas, thoughts, dreams, complaints, or suggestions, please send them to me at queendelirium at yahoo dot com. I will add them to the list.

Be creative! Think big! I mean, I've already listed "A Wheelchair lift for the pool." I know that may not happen in our lifetimes, but even just making people aware of ways the event isn't truly accessible can be enough, for now. And you never know what may garner enough support for fund raising, or donations, or something falling out of the sky.

So please email your suggestions to me, and I will add them to the mega list.

Thanks for your time and attention!

Edited to Add: I know LJ comments are really convienent, but I don't want my personal journal to be a place where the dialog between FSA and attendees happen. Please email me your suggestions, and when the list is ready for submission I'll be sure to let everyone who made suggestions read it before I submit it.

~Del

My mom has a blood infection. She's miserable, suffering from major headaches and nausea. She very respectfully asked me not to come; she doesn't want a lot of visitors, doesn't feel it's a serious situation, and would rather I stay home.

Honestly, I was happy about that. I'm not feeling so great, so I don't have to work this into my week.

But I had actual offers to take me out there, and for that I am eternally grateful.

You guys rock.

I received two phone calls from an emergency life system, located in Springfield, MA. They obviously couldn't give me any information about who it might be in reference to, since I didn't know.

1. If you had an emergency last night, and I am your emergency contact, please let me know the status of that emergency. If you had a friend who had an emergency last night, who knows me and might have listed me as a emergency contact, please ask them or their families if I might have been their emergency contact.

MORE IMPORTANTLY:

2. If I am your emergency contact in ANY WAY, please inform me of this in clear language. I need to know what you expect of me, and other relevant information such as next of kin, medical information, etc. You know, information that an emergency contact should know.


The service also posited that it could have been a misdial, but the likelyhood that I'm someone's contact is not null, so I figured I would put this out there.

Hey ignited_spark! Hey prism_pet! I need valid working email address for you so cool things can happen.

So a friend came to visit me today, and she asked me how Beltane was.

I've been spending the last few days rolling the whole event around in my head, trying to figure out how I feel about the event as a whole.

"Professionally," I said, "It went really well."

The one class I taught had a good number of people in it, and people seemed to genuinely enjoy and learn from it. The Gender Bender Ball was a raging success and lots of people want to see it happen again. I was able to serve as Kinky Priest and Shaman for people, which always makes me happy.

"Personally, it was all over the map. Mostly negative, but not entirely."

My car died because someone else left my lights on after borrowing it. I got into a really big fight with Ninja that has yet to really resolve. I realized that I do not feel at home in the Fires of Venus ritual space, which has big reprocussions. A lot of people I love failed to respect my new-ish gender identity, specifically calling me a "woman" or "Miss" or other feminine words that kept triggering me.

On the other hand, I received stellar service from my potential submissive, had three really hot scenes, including one with my Dad's wife - a Loki's Wife, not my dead paternal figure - got Sir Q to take pictures of a hot woman wearing my needles, created a relationship with a member of my leather family I had not connected with before.

Overall, when the event came to a stop, I was happy it was over.

I don't know. I love Beltane - it's my absolutely favorite event all season. But this year I let it overwhelm me in a lot of ways. I have to find a way to participate in the event that doesn't overtax me, and that includes finding a safe space to sleep where I am not awoke by loud sex at 4am. I have to find a way to involve myself by teaching and facilitating, but only within the realms of what I can give. I have to find a way to clearly negotiate what I want to happen with the people I am in relationship with who happen to be there - both what we'll do together, and what we'll do when we're apart.

Right now, I'm in a funk about it, and I know I'll go again next year, but I feel like I want to throw a bit of a tantrum about it. Last year, I found out my paternal figure had died while I was there. This year, I just had a ream of bad experiences that didn't help me fall back in love with the event the way I wanted to. I know I'll be back, but I want to lie and say I won't. I guess I want some comforting, some sense that people care I had a difficult time and want to ally with me to make next year better than the last two.

I need to talk to the organizers about accessibility. It really upsets me that the handicapped entrance to the dining hall is locked during meals. That the times I didn't have my own car, I found myself stranded for long periods of time. How disimpowering it feels not to be able to get around on one's own. I was fairly weak during Beltane, and when my car died I lost all sense of mobility.


I love this event so much, but we're definitely out of the honeymoon stage. Now I just need to decide if I love her burping and farting all the time.

About once a year, I post about Kiva, a microlending service that I've been a member of for 3 years now.

The concept is simple: $25 is not very much money to most Americans, but to people in developing countries it can be equal to or more than a month's salary. Kiva partners with local microfinancing institutions in countries all over the world, where entrepreneurs sign up to receive these loans. Your loan, combined with other members, can help someone start a new business, upgrade an existing business, or in other ways help the working poor better their situation.

It's not a donation. Kiva boasts of a very high repayment rate - higher than 90% - and personally, every single one of my Kiva loans has been repaid in full in six to twelve months. You do earn interest on the loans; not very much, but it's noticeable over time. You can choose to take your money back, or to reloan it to other borrowers.

As a fairly lazy person, what I like about Kiva is that I sacrifice $25 from my stores once, and that money goes to help several people over time. When the grocer in Vietnam repays the loan, I take that same money and give it to a taxi driver in Togo. When they repay it, I may have enough to loan to a pharmacist in Nigeria and a cattle driver in Ecuador. These days, between my own money and a single Kiva gift certificate I was given, I have four loans out right now. And if I'm feeling super charitable, I can donate the interest to Kiva directly, to help with their costs. (they'll happily take $2.00 donations).

Finally, when times get rough, you can always take money back out. Sure, you might have to wait until the loans are repaid, but like I said earlier, the longest I've had to wait is a couple of months.

So there's my stumping for Kiva. I'm sure others who use the service will add comments about how wonderful the service is.

PS. Lots of shamans I know get pinged to donate when they read my proddings about it, so I apologize beforehand.

Dear Livejournal Land:

Let's see. It's been a while. I've fallen out of the habit of this whole journaling thing. I start a lot of my recent posts that way. Yesterday I got a brand new laptop, so I'm hoping maybe this means I'll journal more often. Who knows.

Things have been busy but not busy, which is hard to explain. There's a lot of planning going on, and lots of little trips hither and yon as of late. I've also been struggling, healthwise, but living up to my obligations. Yesterday it became official that I'm the new leader of the Queer SIG (Special Interest Group) for Black Rose. Tonight I'm going up to the Haven to play in a Werewolf table top game. Holy crap, RPG, batman! Then tomorrow early in the morning a band of us (Ninja, Rave, and myself) are driving up to Philly for a kink class extravaganza at the Black Phoenix, and then we'll be home Sunday night.

I'm gearing up for Beltane, which will be here before I know it. I also have the Transgender Religious Summit, which should be interesting.

In other news, I had to retire my lip rings. I took them out for a medical procedure and they just did not want to go back in. Then I kissed Ninja and realized how much I missed kissing him without them, so they're gone. I have little dimples where they used to be, which I hope will heal out in a month or so.

My hair is a different color. You should just expect that every time I post to LJ, my hair is a different color.

In the sights -

• I'll be attending Sex 2.0 in DC on May 9th. I'm not sure what to expect, but I got a godpush to go.
  
• I'm teaching at Queer Invasion in Hartford CT on Memorial Day Weekend.
  
• In June, I'll be at Free Spirit Gathering. I don't know if I'm going to teach or not. I might take a year off; we'll see. I am debating going to Leather Retreat, but don't know if I can afford it.
  
• In July, I am teaching at CampOUT in West Virginia. I'm really looking forward to this event!
  
• In August, I'll be teaching at Black Beat and Floating World III, back to back weekends.
  
• In September, I'm planning a technology-free spiritual retreat for myself, but be back in time for Fires of Venus.
  
• In October, I'll be coordinating the Spirit Worker's Intentional Gathering, and then probably teaching and/or security at the Black Rose event.
  
  
  
  So as you can see, things are about to get really busy. There's not a month between now and November that I won't be on the road in some capacity.
  
  Whoo-wee.

for all of you who admire my tee shirt that says "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful, Hate Me Because I Fucked Your Dad", T Shirt Hell is letting "members" (you just have to sign up) vote on what shirts to bring back, and that one is on the list.

I've been feeling like I should write a general update thing. I used to do this a lot more often, but lately my life has been pretty quiet. I've been on the sicker side of things, so I've been spending a lot of time resting, seeing doctors, and feeling kinda crappy. When I do feel well, I've been mostly going out to kink events, because I can sit and chat with cool people and maybe play a little here or there. I went to SuspenDC and had a really great time, but had to leave early because I started to feel really unwell.

I've been horribly out of touch with most folks, and being even more awful at answering my phone than usual. I battle a lot of fatigue, and most of the time if I don't know what you're calling about, I'm afraid of getting wrapped into a really long conversation that saps up my spoons; you know, the ones I need for eating and climbing stairs.

Speaking of stairs, if it's any indication how poorly I've been feeling, I've taken up sleeping in the television room about 90% of the time. It's a big combination of reasons that change, from needing to jiggle my legs, to needing to have some form of television-like noise on in order to sleep, to not having enough spoons to climb all the stairs. Even though we're not looking as seriously as we were, if a single floor house dropped out of the sky (that met most of our other requirements) I think I'd be much happier.

Throughout all of this, I still manage to go out, or have people over from time to time. We've also been going through a frugal phase, so I haven't been able to get together with people the way I normally do, which is to invite them out to a meal. But we've had game nights and general hanging out here, and we like coming to your place and hanging out too.

I taught my Sex Magick Class here last night and it went pretty well, if you ask me. I'll probably be doing something like that again, although I'm not sure what class to teach next. Maybe I'll make a poll or something. However, it turned out to be exactly the amount of spoons I had, as my least favorite symptom took over that night (the leg-compulsion thing) and I was up jiggling all night. :Sigh:

I'm really looking forward to Beltane. I'm slowly getting my ducks in a row, and next week I'm going to make the Gender Bender Ball all organized and pretty. I'm just praying for a good health streak during the event, and am going to do whatever I can to promote that.

I'm generally happy, and/or frustrated with still being undiagnosed after three years of not knowing what the hell is going on with my body. My doctors seem to be giving up, for the most part, and just treating the symptoms as they come up, rather than trying to figure out what the underlying causes might be. Of course, I have to schedule both a cervical and spinal MRI this week, so maybe they'll find something there.

So that's about all that's going on with me. Life is slow but interesting.

Wednesday, from 8-10 pm, here at the Dojo, I'll be teaching a Sex Magick 101 class for the crazy price of $5! The class that gets rave reviews at events and festivals along the East Coast, taught by your favorite punk instructor. Bring your curiousity, open mind, and questions!

If you don't know where the Dojo is, drop me a line at queendelirium@ yahoo.com and we'll make sure to get the address to you in time!

In case you're not reading the responses to my recent post about the Sex Magick Class, I'd like to point something out.

I'm very portable.

I am willing to travel to just about anywhere on the East Coast to teach any one of my classes. If you can gather enough people to make it worthwhile (in your living room, in a library public access room, in your local sex/bdsm club, in the basement of your church, whatever, I'm not picky!) I will happily come teach. You do the organizing, I'll do the teaching, and we'll split the proceeds.

It's really that simple.

I'm working on my non-kinky class list, but I'll happily send my list to anyone who asks. I'd appreciate it if you were serious about booking me, though.

Some of my classes include:

Kink Spirituality: Finding What Feeds You
Etiquette in the Dungeon: How to be a Polite Voyeur
BDSM For Bigger Bodies
BDSM and Mental Illness
How to Cast a Spell in Five Minutes or Less
Piercing with a Purpose
Sacred Body Modification

I'm working on getting a website together, but in the meantime, if you're really interested, so am I.

Wednesday, March 25: Sex Magick 101, taught by Del, in Germantown, MD from 8pm-10pm. $5 entry fee.

As some of you may know, I've been thinking about hosting some of my well-known event classes here in my home for a reduced price. Well, starting next Wednedsay, thought becomes reality!

On Wednesday, I'm inviting all those who are curious about my most popular class, Sex Magick 101, to come get the two hour version for the price of a venti latte at Starbucks!

( Class description follows. )

Hi.

It's been a while, eh?

In a way, the lj silence is pretty indicative of how things have been going as of late. I've settled into a fairly quiet life for the time being. Poking around, scheduling my year, seeing doctors, etc. The good news is that I'm in a "feeling fairly well" streak, probably due to the new antibiotics I'm taking. The bad news is that I've developed a new neurological symptom that causes me horrible insomnia - for now, I've got it under control with a sedative, but I also need to see the neurologist this week to figure out how to control it permanently, or at least until it goes away.

I've been trying to sort out my house a little, working on some of my altars, cleaning parts of my house that lay cluttered longer than they should. When I get tired or achy or sick feeling, I lay down and watch bad television. Most nights we stay in; once in a while we'll go to a friend's house or run an errand or something.

Like I said, pretty quiet. Pretty domestic.

In other news, as evidenced by my last post, I have some interesting prospects on the horizon. Everything from new relationships to a new apprentice beginning to present themselves. I'm not sure what will actually manifest, but I'm happy to have options.

So, how are you?

I've been feeling like I want to go out on a date with someone new, and I have a couple options but I'm not quite sure who to ask. I'm fairly certain that all the individuals listed would be open and interested, if only our schedules would align.

So I'm curious to see what my lj audience thinks about who I should ask out. Other than R, I've not been on a date with any of the others, although I've had a playdate with S. By "date", I mean "meal and some sort of hangout" - with no promises of future relationship or sexual activity.

I really will ask out the one that gets the most votes. Feel free to ask questions about the contenders or to lobby for your favorite choices in the comments. You can also start your own campaign, either for yourself or someone else you think I should go out with, and I ask my constituents to read the comments before making their decisions.

The only exclusions: No exes. No one more than 1 days travel away from me, unless they're willing to come here. No one who isn't (at least in theory) available for a more structured relationship down the line.

That all being said, here's the poll:


Poll #1360901 Who should I ask out on a date?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None

Who should I ask out on a date?

None of the above: You should ask this person out!