All the kings horses...

Can you feel it in the air? This untimely chaos, or flux, may have something to do with the turning of the seasons. As much as I love the fall, I'm always loathe to see summer go. And summer was exceptionally short this year, so it's doubly hard. As much as I try to love the cold weather I'm a desert creature at heart and love the heat. Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for the dark goddess, it's just the cold I can't take. Give me sunshine, or warm sands. Give me a hot spring, or a steaming bath. I'm pretty easy to please. Really though, this has been a transitional week of beginnings, sudden endings, and other high weirdness.

Au revoir golden light of summer. Photo by Richard Stanley.

So yeah. Feeling kind of guilty. Feeling like I've been a little neglectful here. Comes with the creative territory...

After the all the fabulousness that is Paris, I fell ill. Really freaking ill. Like laying in bed and aching in every joint of my body kind of ill while the world is bathed in a demented heat haze ill. I'm still sick with the last lingering effects of something caught in my lungs and chest that refuses to leave. This kind of thing is rare for me.

So, deep breath. I need to do this. I've been feeling horribly guilty about an issue and I haven't known what to do about it. My friend Amy Wallace's memorial was yesterday and I didn't write anything for her. I knew I couldn't be there, but it would have been the least I could have done. She would have done so for me. I can make all the excuses in the world about why I didn't do so, but at the end of the day I didn't do it and that sucks on my part. So I will do it here.

Things I loved about Amy.

1. Her sense of humor. I loved that I could be talking to her about Wilheim Reich and orgone boxes and suddenly she would giggle and admit she used to own one and that her and her then boyfriend used to make out in them all the time.

2. I used to love the phone conversations we would have in LA - literally until the batteries ran out. She always knew where I was coming from, whether it was happiness, some new strange obsession about the Middle Ages, or a broken heart. I loved her anecdotes and the way she would get lost in telling a story and then manage to find her way back and tie the whole thing together. It was always a meandering and thoroughly entertaining trail.

3. Any was never judgmental. She was talented, creative, and adventurous, and lived an extraordinary life.  Maybe it's some fluke of alchemical chance, but when the impossible becomes possible there's little need for judgement. Life takes such bizarre twists and turns that nothing really surprises you and instead becomes the norm. And somehow through it all you manage to keep some sort of sanity. I think the key to this is sense of humor - see first thing I loved about her.

4. Moral quagmires are my personal Achilles heel and I often get down about these kind of things. Amy always gave me confidence when I was low, and she was a great listener. That is a precious commodity within itself, a rare quality which showed the kind of person she really was.

I'm not always a great friend, but Amy always made me feel like one. I get too caught up in what I am doing. I like when things are in fast forward. I like to have goals and be focused towards them, and in all this I forget people sometimes. It's not because I don't love them. I just forget. It's not my best quality, along with this sense of there will always be another time, or there will always be more time. My best and longest friends know and accept this. But the truth is there is never more time. Time is a precious commodity. No more procrastination. No more forgetting people. I don't want to be that person anymore. I know there's nothing in this world we can actually hold onto. All things are lost in time, but while I'm here I'm going to make the most of it. My head still hangs in shame, but the best I can do is learn to do better.

Self and Amy Wallace at one of her book signings in LA a few years ago.

Even in the midst of all this unwellness, Melissa and I managed to finally get down a solid structure for the next Saurimonde book. It's very exciting, and has fucking twists that I never saw coming until they appeared on the page. The book will culminate with a sabbath to end all witches sabbaths. And that's all I'll say for now. But there will be enough sex, death and esoteric content to be just as over the top and entertaining as the first book. At least fingers crossed it will be. I'll be sharing bits and pieces of it in the upcoming weeks.

I received the loveliest gift from my beautiful friend Una this morning. It was an golden apple she picked from the orchards of Avalon on the slopes of the Glastonbury Tor on the fall equinox. I'm well acquainted with the symbolism, and just the sight of the lone green apple warmed my heart, and when I read the story behind it, I cried. I'm just putting this out there as a reminder to my friends, and to myself, that just knowing someone out there is thinking of you can make all the difference in the world some days. Who can you remind today?

Glastonbury Tor. In where lies the orchard of Avalon.

I told you this was a place where I could be honest and unload. Some of these posts will be heavy, some will be breezy. I've got a dark and complex heart, but I love life. Still, October is right around the corner (and will probably be here already by the time I get a chance to post this) and film festival season will be in full swing. There will be new adventures in the making. Like writing, travel always cheers me up. Landing in a new place stirs my blood. Being in a foreign city, immersed in its rhythms and its history, is exhilarating and inspiring. The imagination runs wild with infinite possibilities... and that's always a good thing.

Much love from where the worlds touch,

S - xx