“Somewhere out there, there’s a timeline where my once husband did not have injuries that took away his amazing physicality; we toured the world on motorcycles, feeling wild and free; and we kept our family together by love’s enduring fidelity.”
(Feels Like A Sunday – Elderbrook)
After his amazing, high energy show last night, today finally feels like a real Sunday.
A Rare Outing
Last night my youngling and I saw Elderbrook live at the Roseland Theater, Portland.
I got dressed up in firebird red and gold layers, phoenix belt, and sparkling light reflecting aspects with accent hair clip feathers.
We sat in the ADA section because my hip had acted up again and my youngling had just acquired a foot injury, making our arriving there challenging.
But this did not stop us from sitting – then standing in place while cheering, zagreeting, and dancing!
We got to see Vandelux first as a wonderful bonus – and Elderbrook’s show was AMAZING!!!
(Deadrose – Unprocessed)
A Bird In The Hand
She could see the good and potential in people, and she never played coy keep away games to get a man to have to earn her.
She just just loved with an open heart and invested without ego or judging one.
And she wondered if this was why men felt that they could easily take her for grantef.
(Title ref to phrase, “A bird in the hand is worth two in a bush.”)
I Was The Secret
“I had not known they were protecting me.”
Mimicry
“I guess we are all just riffing off of others’ art in one form or another that inspires our own evolution.”
Revivalism
Pleasure vs pain
Hear: we go again
Supposed dichotomy
But merely positioning
Connected by a cord of
Reflexive self definition
Any loss is heart breaking
And love is allowed purity
Extremes are not the only
Dictate for experiencing
Goodness in charity does
Not have to be dust-pasty
And heat’s revivalism does
Not need Hell’s propagating
For sweet to know bitter
Doesn’t need bittersweet
Wolf’s Bark
“Just because I hear it does not mean I have to get up, yet!”
Passion’s Release
“Some lovers demand a sacrifice
A constant bloodletting fealty
An all-consuming codependency
Where the host feeds its parasite
Maybe that’s why wild magic and I tease
We are both independent, refuse shackling
Like tiny, willful dragonlets landing briefly
Transfixing and coaxing our souls’ release
But what am I without form’s definition?
And what is a song without lips to sing?
It seems we are caught up in an impasse
Forced to build trust while intertwining”
Glimmers In The Dark
“Will there come a day when wild magic comes to my bidding, reminding me what I should always know, allowing me to keep and create freely?
For now, I’m as a broken oracle, unformed and yet reforming where there should always remain something…
I am a mouthpiece nightingale, mutely seeking melodies that feed, arriving one moment to consume me – then flying away again, leaving me starving.”
Hear Me Out (Song In Progress)
By Athena Stairs, March 20, 2025 – Sleep Token Influence
Hear me out
I’ve got a boundary
I should have set before
Hear me out
No you can’t be
Coming to my front door
Hear me out
You say its not a sin
But I can’t give more
And all you think to do
Is lie and make me blue
Hear me out
Hear me out
Oh
If you could tell the truth
We’d have something to choose
Hear me out
Thats what you said before to me
You promised that we could be free
But then you went and said her name
And now its driving me insane
You never had any belief
You only steal the things you keep
And tear apart what we could make
You only know how to forsake
Hear me out
(Tbc…)
Having To See Myself
As the patient.
It Takes A While
For blasted.nerve ends to regrow and torn fascia structures to amend.
If A Man
“If a man hedges the line about anything – but most importantly, in how he addresses fidelity – this calls into question his ability to speak and act truthfully and responsibly, creating cracks in any trust he tries to keep building.”
“Evening Lounge”
Going With The Flow
It Is The Strangest Thing…
“I already tended to elders, watching them whither in their later years.
I already witnessed vitality of adult youth taken much too soon and experienced caretaking a half life barely being lived.
Now as death surrounds me of beloved companion familars, I experience myself further caught in-between realms.
Nerve-endings painfully screaming, high energy sizzle-crackling at frayed synaptic tips.
Torn joints and muscle fibets struggling to reconnect while disconnecting defensively in response to every attempted movement’s overstim.
Spinal cord compressions tensing from contorting, weakened fascial tissues and shorting out my system struggling to keep producing any beneficial productivity.
I am just describing the microcosm of the seemingly unrelenting, next-level personal hell I keep fighting against to push it back behind daily consciousness to just breath and exist in any given moment.
I am living what is a preamble to a type of aging functional decay, while masking and doing my best to simulate walking and normal interactions.
I swear – there better be a HUGE payoff down the line for this painful continuum’s suffering.
I keep living my life fragmented, out of step with the normal patterns of time’s unfolding.”
(Blood Sport – Sleep Token, From The Room Below)
Kicking Out
“Some extra loss and regret…”
“Blue Yonder”
Why Still This Angst?
“It has been an often repeated thematic to be misidentified at any stage of my life.”
Ahhh-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!
“Today, I was given the senior discount without being asked if I was a senior.
WTF-?!
I do not look like a senior.
I do not act like a senior.
I was then told upon my questioning that 55 is senior.
Again, WTF -?!
Um.
No.
The younger cashier had to call the manager to change the total, and the also very young manager then asked after arriving, “Ma’am, why don’t you want the discount?”
I explained cheerfully and matter-of-factly, “Because I’m not a senior, and I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
Why else would I not want the discount?!”
(Forevermore – Laxcity)
The Crone
“I never understood why she was so eager to claim me.
I just thought that she was a heartless opportunist, hell-bent on sucking out my 40’s vitality…”
(Whisper And The Wind – Bodie)
“Ebb And Flow”
The Pure Ones
Ancients so old, they became a part of Time’s fabric – yet could still be reached by those who had worked hard, then broken, then worked hard again for the truth despite society’s unrelenting resistance.
Why Now?
Why in the deepest part of her grieving did she suddenly catch the unmistakeable scent of cologne, as if the man wearing it were here, consoling and comforting?”
As If To Say
“My work here is completed…but I was just getting started…”
Leaving
“They are all just…”
(The Night Does Not Belong To God – Sleep Token)
When The End Comes
“There is no more frolicking in the sun…only licking wounds that never end, until it’s done.”
Tears In The Dust
“It Really…Really…Really Sucks…
During the prime of their years I spent my energy growing, defending, and protecting our animals from the fall.
And now that we finally found a good place to live and shelter, the family disbands, and each older animal has come to its life’s expiration date.
All I can do is attempt to help each one pass on gracefully as I hold him or her in my arms, attempting to still give nourishment until at the very last moment where they can no longer hold on, and just fade away.”
Artist Dedication: Sleep Token
Thank you for understanding the deeper hurts and more extreme struggles, and by conveying your thematics so beautifully, giving hope and shelter in the darkness when it seems there is nothing and no one.
Am I Getting Better?
“Meeting deep grief’s sadness by allowing its heavy tears to suck one under and drag one down to the bottom instead of fighting to stay afloat might actually be restoring the buoy effect that got deflated in an overtaxed optimist.”
“Photo Bomb 1 & 2”
Athena Stairs, March 16, 2025
Song artist unknown.
Spell Bound
She could not remember well her life before it all changed…
Captive
“The choice to not run away has never really been a choice…”
(Title of multiple meanings)
Signs And Symptoms
“It might be that more of my system is coming online after the long period of shock’s suspension from the accident.
I can’t expect that it has been happy…”
Life’s Death
“It upsets me that all I can do is slow the fall…”
(Eveeryday Anyone – Nominal)
When Is It Enough
To have spoken of such things to where their grip relinquishes the life caught and throttled within?
In The Aftermath
Although she had known at the time that the zealots were full of sh** to condemn her as a child when she had commited no wtongdoing, they had still gotten their way because it was if she were actually condemned to living in Hell, surrounded by their vacuous influences.
Hip Support
“A plan is to get the surrounding, 3-dimensions of support muscular fibers reactivated and working properly again, thereby decreasing the extreme load currently overstressing the joint capsules.”
(Distraction – Sleep Token, Visualizer)
Prohibition
In a Man’s world
Man is absolved
Regardless of
Harm’s actions
While women
And children
Suffer resultant
Consequences
(Thread The Needle – Sleep Token)
Conscripted
“Vitality can burn out in the constant struggle for survival.”
Candid Corvid Productions 