Marie Alessandro – Gods in the Cogs

https://vm.tiktok.com/V7wLy3/

I have almost forgotten how travel spaces feel. It doesn’t matter what kind… Bus depot, train stations, airports. They are places Not-Here. They are misty and nebulous, with all travelers criss-crossing lives, timelines, experiences, nations. You can be invisible, or a character of interest in the bored eyes of a long layover. There is a subtle kind of altered state, a soft kind of drugging, delirium leaving trails in your vision from poor sleep, changing timezones, too narrow seats that we place ourselves into, as that sky high egg crate carries us aloft. The bored mundane who traverse such paths often, the dream-eyed drinking it in as though a great feast. Easily this crossroad is a place where one can throw intent into it, and feel it stir the world-pot. Sigils are built into airports, a simple glance at a map with this in mind traces out the magicks within.

I’m a witch at this crossroad, right now. I am crossing into that liminal space, drifting, to see where I am drawn. Each ripple grows larger rings. And here I am, skipping rocks off of them.

Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.

I have never in my life wanted to just… Not work…. In such an existential and desperate manner. I want to stop the world, get off, do some shots, and sleep in.

I am actually nervous about going to Copenhagen and meeting strangers, not knowing the language, so far away! I’m DYYYYYYIIING to just SIT on the boat that first night and do pretty much NOTHING but listen to the water and drink some apple wine. Think about life and death and art like a proper, worldly goth. Then dive in and experience THINGS.

Then come home and, after a 4 day goodbye, stop working for a short while. Sleep. SLEEEEEEEP. And I’ll cry. And drink. And rabidly clean my house. Reject more podcast concepts and names. Make art. Do bone work.

Take an end of life/death doula training. Go goth dancing. Talk to skulls. Alas, poor Yurick. Hang out with dad. Contemplate how much I’m like him, and how much I’m not.

Get some paper maybe 😋

Dissolve. Reassemble.

Then go to school. ❤️

It has been 30 years since I’ve written an essay for college. My life is so different now.

My first go at writing a college essay wanted me to write about something that had an impact on my life. At that time, I wrote about making costumes, and specifically, wearing a gopher suit to school on Groundhogs Day.

Those were easier times. I was accepted and made it through a semester before my mom got sick. I didn’t accept her illness and then, 6 months later, she was gone. I had to leave school. There was no more money for it because of the sheer COST of her death. It is something everyone deals with, death. It’s been something I’ve never stopped being absorbed by, and not in ways that are always negative.

First, I became very goth. Cheerful and nihilistic, playing with the visuals of the romanticized dead. I created art and performances in my 20s and 30s , themes of death and life. I jumped into life experiences head first. I traveled the US and explored places, while I took on the more vibrant side of life as a dancer, a performance artist, a burlesque performer, and an art model. As I reached my 40s, I settled down. I went into more practical work, married, and generally toned it down. Sort of.

If you visit me, you will see my hobbies and passions still cover my fascination as reflected in my hobby of bone collection and articulation. I have a lovely collection of such items, many which I processed and put together myself, in my curio cabinet. I make bone jewelry for friends. I paint skulls in particular, which hang on my walls. I will enthusiastically tell you about those bones – their names, the animals it came from, how this one or the other developed deviant scars, twists, and bumps from damage or disease as the bodies heal them. I think of these things when I hold my collection, how they heal, how they survive damage, and how they tell their stories to me long after they are gone.

I think of these every day I visit and take care of my dad. I lived with him for 2 years after his stroke, and I’ve watched his many illnesses slowly make his world smaller. He’s developing dementia now. I’m more afraid of seeing him disappear before me than when his body dies. My bones bring me a little focus when I feel broken and hurt watching him fade, reminding me of the fleeting nature of life, to enjoy what it brings, and to try and share that joy with him while I have the privilege. When I told him I was going to go back to school, his face lit up, even as I see the shadows in the hollows of his face. He radiates life in that moment. And it gives me life.

I look forward to being there. I can feel it in my bones.

I started using Facebook as a replacement for LIVEJOURNAL of all things. It’s been very useful, but it’s also no longer as good a platform for the way I personally care to put words out in the world. Not sure I’ll stick with it, but I believe I’ll try to use this platform more. I’m less interested in full on discussion than in letting out my thoughts these days, at least online, and for discussions I’ve been active in Facebook GROUPS which has been perfect.

Besides, as dad gets worse I need to seriously go back to letting out the grief, and I don’t think social media like Facebook is right for that.

Last, I’m starting school again. I’m trying to do SOMETHING creative with my GodsInTheCogs moniker. And here we are.

So…. Hello! Again.

There are times, in my current incarnation of my life, where I feel nibbles at my heels of past influence, echos, as I live in the house I grew up in, taking on a role as advocate and caretaker for my elder father. We have had a series of relationship-states over the years that ran the gamut . He was a good father growing up, supportive in that somewhat distant but full of love and pride way that strong Sicilian men have. Later, a decade passed with very little contact and I nursed my hurt and wouldn’t be the one to reach out, which was also his stance, once my mother died. A renewed relationship then followed when I moved back to Boston, to rent the family home myself rather than he sell it…and back again, as he moved back and I, out again as we hit another strained point in our relationship. His health began to slide and I eventually moved back in. I would say outwardly that I did so solely to be there like a good daughter, but that is such a lie. In truth I had had my heart flattened as an 18 year relationship ended, and being the independent person that I am, I have trouble admitting out loud that I needed somewhere to slink and recover a sense of security that I had lost long ago. That is something I feel echoes of here.

The house and this situation has other echoes – my mother, notably. And with her, the merest whispers of my Catholic history. It comes up at odd times – looking for an umbrella in a closet knocks a random religious prayer card into view. A box of old jewelry yields a beautiful blue crystal rosary. I hear “Ave Maria” as my dad watches Italian TV which starts a conversation about what a beautiful voice my mother had, in choir especially. I loved singing in choir with her.

Among these bittersweet saints lurks reminders of me, the sinner. By that I mean that I feel literal haunts sometimes, guilts I should feel nevermore, in relation to who I am. I liked girls as far back as I can remember, and I remember knowing how I had to keep that a secret because that was not ok, especially at a Catholic school. I remember being a very sexually aware teenager who made her OWN decision to wait to have sex until I was 17, and being guilted and cried for and oh, the prayers … when it was discovered that I was no longer virginal, at 17.  I remember how this subtle but ever present judgement bothered me, and I find it now to be like dust in my eyes, bothersome, but something I try to brush off as of no importance.

Hello Holy Ghost, sit down, let’s have some tea. Let’s also acknowledge how my first Goddess was the Virgin Mary, shall we? I have a great story of being sent out of CCD class when I insisted that Mary was a demi-goddess and I would only pray to her from now on. Let’s recognize that, though erroneous, I LOVED the person who Mary Magdalene was portrayed as – independent, unconcerned with your moral judgement, yet bound to the Christ. Or how I loved mythology and saw in Jesus echos of Osirus, of Mithras, of Orpheus? Thanks to the Mass, I love ritual, appreciating the idea of blood sacrifice (and let’s perhaps acknowledge cannibalism, even if only symbolically).

Catholicism merged with the other knowledge I acquired in my hungry head, and  shaped who I am in ways that is hard to discount.  I have to hold on to this knowledge by contain it when I see the scarier shadows of fear come over my dad as mortality looms. I do not like having to occasionally try to voice my opinion that there is no hell to worry about, because if I explain further, my implication is that there is no heaven, a thought which I am afraid may hurt my father and bring despair. This alternates with my dad sometimes saying he has a hard time believing in god, or anything, until it swings back again. It comes up in random moments when something in my lifestyle he doesn’t like comes up (like not being interested in marriage, my comfort with sexuality, my very unladylike habit of staying out overnight, or the non-direct way gender topics come up when I see my dad struggle to accept that the person that I love is “male” by birth…but…not), and even then half the time it’s my mother he mentions as someone I should do honor by, not god. It is part of our push and pull, and I suspect it will always be there, even long after he is gone.

I made this blog in order to posit my thoughts to a larger world, to set a more professional tone, to a differing readership, than the ones I have held on platforms such as Facebook (varied and subject to the whims of the algorithm), Livejournal (a place I was the nakedest and most raw and cannot look at without an ache), Twitter (one account of a more ribald nature, and another, civil one that you can find easily 🙂  )

I’ve been pondering how to put myself forth here, for an imaginary, grown up, digital world.

I’ve been indecisive about how much “me” I put out here. For years friends have told me I put too much out there. That’s a place I felt truest. But it is a place where I set, and perform, on the stage I didn’t start off to be on. A place that lent themselves easily to my gift of Persona.

One I am seeking to place aside in the name of Living Authentically.

I’ll be myself, as I have no other choice.

So, if you came here and you met me in a professional setting, then welcome. This is me, moderated some, civil, but forthright. I hope you feel comfortable. If you aren’t, share with me why. You can expect some personal stories here, strong opinion, and many many queries that I will type to the world, until I hear you answer.

So. Interact with me, my lovelies.