Notes from ConVocation 07

So con...well we definitely don't ever want to do another Death and the Hanged man theme. Three presenters including Ken cancelled due to major illness, family death, and hospitalization in the family. So we had to rearrange a number of the classes and add a few here and there, but overall things went pretty smoothly. It was pretty drama light!

Jon, Kyle and I got there Wednesday night. Joe and I spent the afternoon shopping for stuff and checking out a costume place. They had dance shoes galore, but none to fit my big duck feet. When we got to the hotel, I nested and took a few hours to acclimate...that many people super charged for the weekend tends to overwhelm me. There's only so much super charged excitable energy and cranky ass people bitching about their luggage I can stand all at once.

Thursday
Opening ritual was fun from what I could see standing in the doorway. I got to play door guard...big shocker there. There wasn't much in the way of exciting classes Thursday night. One of my students was an art show volunteer and I talked with her for a while at the show. She wanted a second level attunement and wanted to know if I wanted to trade for any of her work at the art show. Her husband makes those big wooden jewelry boxes and she puts in the glass beads and the fairy pictures on the top of the boxes. I picked a gorgeous cherry wood box with blood red velvet trays with orange/black/silver stones and an autumn fairy in a burgundy dress. I will have to post pictures on my blog soon. Drumming sucked ass if you were not there for meditative pansy drumming with a weird 12 step audience participation thing going on...not sure what that was all about. I danced a little and left. I hung out in the smoking suite for a while and when Kathy asked me to teach a Reiki class at 9:30am I decided to crash around midnight.

Friday
I had about three people at my Reiki class...not much advance notice for people...it went pretty well. My beginner belly dance class was a tad smaller than usual, but people had to choose between Alex's drumming class and my class. We had a lot of odd class scheduling this year. Jane is taking over next year as programming chair, so it should be a lot better. Right after my class, Wiggins and Alan dueled using boffer weapons. Youth and enthusiam vs Wisdom and treachery...Alan (the youthful) so got his butt kicked! It as fun...all we needed was the big turkey legs and some mead ...maybe a foam finger or two.

So Linda Newman's class...She went so fast and it was 3 pm...my siesta snooze time, but here is everything I can remember. We are just now getting out of Mercury retrograde...yeah...I think it ends some time late march...so don't sign or agree to anything that you can't get out of later...big communication breakdowns. We are approaching a two year Virgo in (Saturn?) phase starting August. We are about to go into Virgo mode and start the big critical analysis...dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s. Basically its time to lower the bar on our expectations and bring our goals down to a realistic achievable level. I don't remember all the signs, but Virgos are about to redefine themselves not just what hats they wear, but they way they see themselves in the world. Scorpios are going to take a step back and let people fall and stumble so that those people learn their own lessons. ok my brain is cramping and I can't remember the rest...I think Panda took notes.

The Chocolate fondue was a big hit in the con staff room. I brought 5lbs of dark chocolate, strawberries, Oreo cookies and pretzels. We finished off my bottle of Moniac I bought two years ago...people were very happy since the drought in Scotland kept the heather and clover crops way low and the bees couldn't do their thing to make honey and thus it was a dry year in ye old Canadian import stores for good mead.

Saturday
My Gothic belly dance was awesome! We had tons of fun being all creepy and I made them do several improv exercises which they loved. I'm so mean!

I also went to this crazy class/ritual about the shadow self. So tip for yawl out there who are chaos mages...don't channel Loki and then channel the arch angel Micheal right after. This dude...apparently a well respected author...talks on about the shadow self and Jungian philosophy and whatnot and tells us he is going to take us through a guided ritual so we can meet aspects of ourselves. To do this, he is going to channel these two magically delicious beings into himself (thankfully not at the same time) and we have to charge a vessel of liquid (fruit juice) with the essence of the entities while helping him invoke the deities into himself. He hands us these 3 oz plastic cups and all I can think of is the Johnstown incident and all those wacko people drinking the fluorescent green coolaid. In case you were wondering, Loki tastes sweeter than Michael...hmmm. So we are also not suppose to open our eyes at any point during the ritual...he he he fat chance...I am trying very very hard not to bust up laughing...I'm more curious to see what he looks like possessed. One of the participants actually asked him before we started if he was going to need help getting the entities out of him...so like the arrogant little ceremonialist he is he says this is how he proves how good a chaos mage he is.

Now the whole time people are fervently chanting "E O Loki" I have little fairy visitors who are sitting on my head looking into my face asking me what the hell am I doing as if I was embarrassing them by just being there. I told them to shut up as I was trying to have a serious experience...there went a whole chorus of hysterical laughter from the fae. I think I lost cool points. Of course stifled laughter in the mind is not good for guided meditation...in case you were curious...so I had a few problems...I kept wanting to go up the stairs instead of down them and my funhouse of mirrors was not cooperating. The "E O Micheal" portion of the show wasn't too bad. At least I got to hang out with my astral self for a bit. I left the ritual feeling like someone had rubbed my fur the wrong way...stupid humans.

The Peruvian fire ritual was very cool...Gopher has been working with Mateo Empie now that she opened up a shamanic program...its bizarre to see him as a high functioning coherent person who was actually very cool to hang out with...I think its one of the signs of the apocalypse. The masquerade ball kicked butt. I dressed as Death from the Sandman comics. Joe while trying to be cute, ripped one of the rings out of my corset. There was no blood on his part, but I now have one less ring to lead slave boys with...the sacrifices I'm expected to make.

We did have a west side story moment in the drum circle with the belly dancers...apparently one of the ladies brought her whole troupe in to dance at the drum circle. They were showing off and intimidating the other dancers so much so that they came over to the ball and asked me what they should do. Well I marched over there...after the time warp and NIN's animal...and had to represent. I was basically very nice about standing my ground and not letting them get into my space...a little passive aggressive negotiation was all that was needed to get the other women to get their butts on the floor. Plus I was wearing my badass leather corset and 2 inch heel boots dressed as Death...that in and of itself would intimidate the hell out of anyone :)

The rest of the evening was a combination of dancing, drinking, eating and beating the crap out of merry. Nobody parties like the constaff. I will have to get the private CD of photos from Patrick, but until then, here is the link to his flicker account and some of the PG friendly photos from the event http://www.flickr.com/photos/skysinger/

Sunday...got up around 10:30 am...missed the Kinky Pagan class...did some last minute shopping... I got a set of stain glass lotus flowers with a crystal pointing out of the middle of the flower with a copper penny under the crystal. They fit perfectly in my hand and are great to dance with. I also got a stuffed buffalo and a braid of sweet grass direct from the reservation Linda Newman recently visited. We said our teary goodbyes and set off early to avoid the crazy ice storm headed toward Michigan.