Contest!

For those that don’t know, May is Military appreciation month in the US; it contains more military holidays than you can shake a stick at (for a full list, see here). In honor of the festivities, I am going to hold a writing contest running through Memorial day.

Up for grabs are two clay cameos, one for each category in the contest: poetry and short essay (see photo below). The “Ares in Naos” design is for the poetry category and the “Thrakian Rider” design is for the short essay category. The former is based on a coin obverse from Anatolia and the latter on a coin obverse from Thrakia.

Rules are simple–all entries must pertain to Ares or the military. One entry per person per category. Winners are selected by the readers, and everyone is allowed to vote only once in each category. You may vote for your own entries. This is an internationally open contest.

Poetry: No style restrictions. 25 word minimum preferred except for haiku.

Short Essay: 500 word minimum. If citations are necessary, you may use whatever style is most comfortable for you. No style restrictions, but non-fiction is preferred (I want to save that for another contest).

Entries are due no later than 2359 Eastern Time Monday, May 27, 2013 (Memorial Day in the US). Please email entries to aspisofares@gmail.com . Good Luck!

Still Alive

I promise, I am! I’m just finishing up finals for my winter semester and graduating and all. Doesn’t leave much room for writing sometimes.

Speaking of writing, I’ve come to a big decision regarding my book–or books rather. I’ve decided to split what I have into two separate volumes: one for philosophy/theology-type stuff, and another purely for cultus. I came to this conclusion following my first earnest prayer for divination. I asked Ares for a sign, and lo, I saw two woodpecker’s holes in the same tree while on a garlic mustard pull. I confirmed my interpretation by asking Dionysos through Sannion.

However, even in light of this, I’m staying away from the gods for a while. I’m all sorts of covered with miasma; My dog gave birth a week ago, but we unfortunately lost the puppy. We guess that mom didn’t produce enough milk and we didn’t catch it until it was too late. So, not only do I have birth miasma, I also have death miasma :-/ . Such is life.

Anyway, I have a few half-baked posts in the works, on such topics as leadership and followership. but I’m not sure how far we’ll get; I can’t do thinks piecemeal or I’ll drop them.

A Little Musing (and foul language, just an FYI)

So I just broke out the good whiskey (Crown XR for those who care about such things). Why? Well I have a few reasons. For one, this is my third post for the day, and for me, that’s a lot. Secondly, because Sannion is driving me to drink. In a good way. This is toasting whiskey, so a toast to him.

He wrote a great post about writers in the community, and how basically everyone is full of crap. It definitely left me with a kill-the-phonies vibe ala Catcher in the Rye. There are days when I can’t tell when Sannion is being a jerk or when he’s being serious. Maybe like me he’s serious about being a jerk? It doesn’t really matter, because all I’m doing is gabbing. And he f**king called it.

So anyway, he was wondering where all the other folks in Hellenism are at. You know, people who aren’t writers. The sad thing is, while it may be his fingers doing the typing, there’s a part of me that’s damn sure he’s not the one speaking. Sannion is the tool of a god. You don’t have to believe it. I’m not even sure I believe it, but there’a a part of me that knows I’m right (because I usually am). We need to start doing things. We need to really come together if we want to create a community. I’ve seen the posts everywhere, too, so you can’t say, at least nominally, that you don’t want it.

Sannion also talked about leadership, and went into it more with Suz in the comments (she’s pretty great, even if I’ve never really gotten to interact with her much). They talked about how people get pushed into leadership, and how that never works out well for people. There’s a problem with leadership though. It has to be wanted. But it’s a catch-22, because we inherently mistrust the people who want to lead. We have cautionary tales about groups that became insular because of self-aggrandizing leaders. I get that and that sucks, but here’s the deal: if someone doesn’t want to do a job, are they going to do a good job? Hell no. One of the reasons the military works so well (and let;s face it, it works better than anything you civilians can really imagine, even when it doesn’t) is because you don’t get to pick your leaders. If you get a shitty commander, you deal with him or her until another one comes along to replace them in two years.

I’ve thought about starting groups before, but I put up with too little bullshit to really make that happen. I’m what you’d call a hyper-conservative. If I could, I’d go back in time to Sparta, then throw myself from the cliff because I have psoriasis, and the Spartans wouldn’t have any of that shit. I really live up to my name’s etymology, and I’m as unmoving in my positions as a stone monument; it literally takes a force of nature to get me to move. Don;t get me wrong, I know what I’m doing and I have the experience, but even if it’s something a community might need, my impatience for stupidity wouldn’t allow it.

Part of the problem is due to the nature of the internet. Sannion talked longingly of days past when people got to get together to do ritual and yada yada yada. Then the internet happened and we were given choices. Choice, contrary to what republicans (the system advocates, not the party) may posit, does not actually make people happy, especially when we get all the choices the internet offers. Don’t like Hellenion? Join Neokoroi. Still not a fan? How about Elaion? There are (or at least were) plenty of groups, fora, and mailing lists. So what happened? Choice happened. The days Sannion and Suz and the other folks miss–they had one choice: participate or be alone.

I can say I’ve tried not being just a writer. The truth is probably less than that. My ego is even disappointed, and there isn’t enough collective data-space in the world to fit my ego. Also, as nice as it would be to be a “professional pagan”, that doersn’t pay the bills, and I’m not the kind of person who is okay with merely getting by. Maybe that’s why I love Ares so much: the world really is not enough. So I guess I’ll go out and start taking things over. Gotta make the big man proud after all. And Sannion, if you’re reading this, I owe you a drink, and you’ll have to come out into the world to get it.