#odindiety

 it’s wednesday again.

there are thousands upon thousands of stories out there about people first finding gods in fiction, about seeing a reflection of themselves and of something More Than Ourselves in a story told purely to distract and entertain.  there are common threads in all of them.  there is nothing new under the sun, but we keep telling the tale anew in the hopes of touching just one more heart by submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

my first brush with Óðinn was like this.  unsuspecting and unselfconscious i lit a joint (blissful wizard, i should have known) mid-episode of american gods and as the smoke was cresting in me, i heard him.  i heard him.  with the voice of ian mcshane he reached out from some distant brane and poked an air-hole in the tin foil lid of my perception.  a vast and indefinite soul locked eyes with me through a dim led screen and fed me a taste of his grief, a desperate thing as thick and as sweet as honey.

Was it instinctual, or just ... idk. Inevitable is the word that comes to mind but I don’t know how that fits. I don’t know much right now, except Hey Hey Mister DJ is talking to me through the Bose while I’m waiting for my mother to die.

Anyway. The point. The picture. An altar with beer cans and blue things and flowers - and an empty orange syringe, freshly washed after holding a dose of morphine sulfate.

They tell you your mother-father-partner-child is coming home to die, isn’t that a blessing? (A receptionist actually said “congratulations” to me)

What they meant was she’s coming home to starve to death, and my job is to keep her stoned and unconscious until it happens.

I stood at her bedside holding the empty syringe, hoping the dope would kick in fast, that she wouldn’t have to be present for her body’s shenanigans. I think I was talking to Him - to Them - but maybe not, maybe it came out of nowhere, the idea that a syringe can look like a spear.

(His hand is on the back of my head as he plays me another song, another knife in my heart. In my lungs. How the hell did He get custody of Duran Duran?)

Throw it

Pitch it across the hospital bed to bang off the wall.

“I dedicate this battle to Odin.”

Not hers, of course. She has her own God, and she found him again before the fog took everything away from her but the knowledge of misery.

My battle, which is nowhere near as bad as hers but I don’t have Ativan and morphine to help me through. I do have a hybrid strain called Scream (and did I laugh when I was handed the jar not long after I signed my mother’s life away with a DNR? You betcha.) That tucked into a blueberry blunt wrap is enough to keep me off the cigarettes at least.

(Do you believe? Don’t you trust me? Me wise magic)

He started off this musical interlude with View to a Kill. I had to laugh, just .. what the fuck else could I do? What else could I expect, from the one who doesn’t hesitate to use a low blow? He’s been knocking me on my ass from the start, why should this be any different?

(The first stanza of Birdhouse in Your Soul. Omfg if that doesn’t sum it up sometimes)

I dedicate this battle to Odin, because I don’t know what else to do, who else to turn to for something this monstrously awful. 

There’s more, I think, a lot more, but the nurse will be here soon and I can only hide under the Bose for so long.

Hey Hey Mr DJ

Hail to you Odin