I haven’t done any work on this site in a few months. That’s how it goes, I hit a moment of passion, I dive deep on it for a while, and then I just kinda drift away.
I’m still pursuing this, Gygratru has never left my mind. I was trying to teach myself the runes, in a way that would help me memorize them, but I don’t think I can name the first six in order. I got stuck with Gebo, transferring it between jeans pockets, touching it by accident and trying to remember what I was supposed to be dwelling on, what lens I was supposed to look through as I moved about my days. Hell, I even left it in my pants and it went through the wash, this little leather tile my brother-in-law cut out and glued in a double-layer to prevent curling, and which I seared the runes into on the Hunter’s Moon one year ago.
Can it be? Has a whole year gone by? Fuck, for that matter, maybe two years have. I have no sense of time, I just hide out in my home office, drive out for familial duties, grudgingly attend the rare social occasion, and then look up about once a month to realize that another month’s gone by, the seasons are changing.
Toki’s still with us, he turned 18 in August. I call him my little “skogkatt,” and as I cradle his diabetic, arthritic body, I whisper the adventures we’ll have, sailing across the whale-roads to Vinland, in search of new chickens and fishes for him to eat. I don’t know if he can hear me, either he’s growing deaf or his cognitive decline is such that he can’t respond to his environment like he used to. Still, I think he feels me vibing at him, he knows he’s loved. He purrs so hard it turns into a cooing sound, and then he’s happy.
But my wife gets restless, watching the summer bleed away and we haven’t done anything to enjoy it. It sucks that she got stuck with someone like me, for whom winter and summer are all the same, just clocking time until I die. So we went camping for a few days, and I made it lovely. We cooked well, we rested and enjoyed each other’s company. The people in the next site had to stage a domestic altercation at four in the morning, but that’s how people are, but we have no control over that. All we can do is start a perfect campfire and roast seasoned potatoes for breakfast, boil up water for mushroom coffee and watch the dawn through the trees not yet winter-barren. And we went on a road trip, she loves that, and we’ve seen a few movies. The Roses, a celebration of how horrible broken people can be to each other. Kurosawa’s High and Low, a remarkable cultural statement of great depth and vision. This week I’m looking forward to seeing Wardruna on tour, and then the theater season starts with A Doll’s House at the Guthrie. I don’t necessarily care about going to plays, but I know it’s good for me. It’s important on some level, and my wife and mother appreciate going out with me.
As for my spirituality, I’ve been letting the world beat me down, and I haven’t turned to Gygratru for comfort and support, the very reason I created it. I don’t need to tell you how fucking chaotic our ever-worsening political situation is. It’s really taking a toll on me, and I fluctuate between throwing in with community organizations and lying down on the floor until I decompose between the floorboards. Every time I do remember to honor the Giantess, of course, I feel better. I feel refreshed and a little stronger. But depression is such a special disease in that it lies to you. You can acknowledge that, but as a very wise woman recently said, you still think it’s lying to everyone but you. It feels like a lower-vibration entity attached to me, distracting me whenever I’m about to do something that’s good for me, like lift weights or get a glass of water or walk down to the glade for some calm. Instead, it makes me pick up my phone and open up my games, tedious and repetitive little time-consumers that provide nothing but a frenetic anxiety that lasts long after I’ve shut them off. I’ve uninstalled one of them this afternoon and will probably remove the other two before the weekend. It’s not worth playing these for retailer gift cards or negligible Bitcoin investment; I would rather, I would really rather return to reading books and hand-writing letters. My heart longs for it, and my depression steers me away from it, and everything going on in my state, my nation, and the world today feeds the depression and leaves me burned out.
There’s some irony in getting stuck on Gebo, “relationships.” That’s why I agree to go out to movies and road trips and camping and whatever else with my wife, to nourish and protect that relationship. The depression can’t touch that, it only affects how I treat myself. I’ve had long, empty weekends when I fully intended to settle down and do some writing, research Gebo and summarize it meaningfully, finally post it on my website and take up the next rune to memorize. Though at this point, honestly, I’d probably be better served to start over again because my memory’s such shit (another reason I’m returning to books and writing). My wife has expressed a desire to commit to Gygratru with me, both to support what was once my passion and for her own sake. She loves the idea of the giantess, though she keeps calling her the goddess, and really, in the legendary myths the difference is only technical.
Fuck, I just glanced at my phone again. I purposely turned it off to write this, and my reflexes are trying to take over. The urge is so strong, but I’m fighting it.
So she wants to learn Gygratru with me. But what have I done with this spirituality? It’s hardly developed. Today I deleted the Stories page, because I’m not close to writing out the stories of the Giantess Archetypes, and I took down the Contact page because why would anyone want to contact me? I took down the unpublished Rituals page, because I’m clearly not working on any rituals. I have my own ritual for prayer and communion, but that’s nothing to scream about. On the plus side, fewer pages up means the site may work better on mobile devices. I noticed the overhead menu was cramped and not all the options were showing. I can’t even blame my poor coding skills for that: I asked ChatGPT to write up the HTML/CSS for me, and it did a great job, but it’s not scalable for mobile, I realized that.
The Giantess is waiting for me. I can feel her, she’s always there, smiling a little sadly that I’m holding myself back from her. I talk to her once in a while in the course of my day. I glance guiltily at my neglected and off-season altar, raise my empty palm to reach out in some small way and let her know I’ve never forgotten her, even if I’m not honoring her. I haven’t started volunteering my time at the community kitchen. I’ve dropped off studying the runes. I’m not even feeding myself food worthy of her or exercising to keep in shape for her worship. I’m fucking failing all over the place, honestly, and much of the time I don’t even care. Really craving oblivion, with the way things are heading. I was talking with someone else about how it feels to be born into this lifetime, solely to bear witness to Ragnarök. I don’t think she liked that idea, but I find a strange peace in it, one that the gods never did. We all know the world’s about to end, very soon, and we’re watching the signs and tracking the downward spiral. The gods chose to take up arms and build a fortress and collect the most valiant dead warriors and go up against the jötunn and the natural order, every single one of them knowing it was absolutely, thoroughly futile. I take the other position, nibbling an expensive candy bar from Dubai while watching the gorgeous sunsets the wildfires produce, simply enjoying my pathetic little joys as the sands of the hourglass run out.
But I never walk away completely. I sleep, I lie about, I distract myself with phone games, the cognitive equivalent of McDonald’s and Taco Bell, but once in a while I emerge and study. Today I researched what anyone knows about the Icelandic/Old Norse calendar, the names of the months and how they were structured. I created my mulberry runes a year ago, you see, and that deserves a blót, a grilling. One full year of this being in my life, even if I’m not exactly a froth-mouthed zealot. A couple weeks ago, I opened up my long-overdue McKinnell text and studied the Vǫlva and summarized her in my notebook, the one I brought to Scandinavian Myths class, led by Anatoly Liberman himself. I killed a pen with all my notes, a new pen that started the notebook and ran dry about a month ago. I surprised myself with how much affection I held for this throwaway plastic shaft, recalling everything we’d been through together. Humans are weird, aren’t we, misplacing our affections and dumping all our energy in tilting at windmills.
Well, what else are we supposed to do before we die? Any activity is as pointless and futile as another, you may as well entertain yourself. This path will not end with a political assassination, so I’ve got that going for me.
I will rejuvenate my altar and resume praying, before the Wardruna show. I’ll invite my wife to pray with me, meditate down at the glade, and I’ll figure out how to start volunteering, work it into my weekly schedule. I’ll research a responsible ecological nonprofit to start donating to. That’s how to honor the Giantess, protecting the earth and being kind to other people. I’ll start eating better and do my little workouts throughout the work day. Maybe I won’t learn Old Norse, and I’m sure some of these library books will have to be returned before I get to studying them, but any progress is progress. I guess.