![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotessefive questions meme, from idlerat. Comment for five topics of your own - rat gave me: Lotesse (your name!), Tolkien, Jane Eyre, Spike!Elizabeth Bennett (your icon!), Oregano (your motto!)
my name: I shifted back to by proper pseud when I got my dwth - I'd gone by lotesseflower. And that feels pretty cool. I picked "lotesse," or more properly, "Lótessë," when I was just a kid, in maybe 1999? And I have the good luck, ten years later, to still like the name. It's the Quenya fifth year of the month, which corresponds to my birth month, and my d.o.b. is weirdly important to me.
My family pays pretty close attention to astrology, and my position as a Gemini/Taurus cuspie helps me make sense of my relationship with my doubly Gemini father and boyfriend. Gem is an air sign, associated with Mercury, so you get language skills, quick wits, good argumentative abilities, flashy tempers and other quicksilver weirdness. But Taurus roots in the earth, is practical and pragmatic and patient. I understand my Gem daddy better than anyone else, but I'm more even-tempered, and frequently am able to calm both him and The Boy down pretty effectively.
I also appreciate the way my pseud ties me back to my primal fandom. I know a lot of fen consider this a bug, not a feature, but Tolkien wasn't just my first fandom. It'll be my last. Which segues nicely into
Tolkien: my sweetest love. And my first. I grew up with The Hobbit, went into LotR blind at 11 years old, and found the world changed forever. I'm so thankful that I read LotR young, because I went to it without expectations. I can still remember hitting the second chapter of Fellowship, the one where the nature of the Ring is revealed, and gasping with the shock of it. I had no idea. I had to put the book down.
I've been away from Tolkien for a couple of years. I had to clear the films out of my head, and also I think I needed to go discover new genres and lenses and ways of reading. Since, oh, January? I've been coming back, and it's fascinating how passionately I still love these books. When I too my break I was a high school kid, trapped and miserable and melodramatic and pretentious. Now I might be a grown-up, and I'm definitely more of a feminist, and I've held on to a long-term relationship, and I understand things more. I used to love the Elves above all things, but now the hobbits have my heart - their determined, compassionate pragmatism now strikes me as being more important than Adventure and High Beauty.
Jane Eyre:: is the book that made me a feminist. Well, that and Room of One's Own, read back to back when I was sixteen. The writing sample that I submitted to my graduate program was on Jane. It strikes me as the sexiest book in the world, and I love how wild and proud and free it is.
the Spike!Lizzie icon: was a joke, actually. The Boy and I have this inability to contain our snark when faced with Pride and Prejudice, and the BBC adaptation has this great shot of Liz standing my a rock formation in the Darbyshire portion, with stirring music and the whole nine yards. And The Boy leans over and mutters, "They haven't got a rock this big." And then how could I not? I'm kind of amazed that I can use it, because I absolutely hate Spike. But it's a line from when he's still all cool and villain-y, so I guess it's okay.
I don't love Elizabeth as much as some - I have issues regarding satire as political speech, and I always sort of want to shake Austen's girls and ask them why they're not more angry. I get where Austen's coming from, but all the same I think it's allowed an engirlification of her work, and has permitted modern conceptions of her to paint over her fangs. The pissy Bronte characters are much more to my taste.
oregano: the line is Pablo Neruda's, who I have great passionate love for. And that line carries two resonances for me - the water thing, and the kitchen witchery. I grew up on Lake Michigan, and learned to sail at the same time I learned how to walk. I am never happier than when submerged in water; it makes me feel safe, okay, at rest, free. The Lake is my therapy, or used to be. I'm living in southern Indiana now, but my grandparents live right on the lake up Chicago way, and I go there as often as I can. And there's a swimming hole at the state park here, a limestone pool with a waterfall where the creek falls down the stone, and that's pretty decent.
As for the kitchen witchery. I use that term because my practice of magic is ridiculously low-key. There are potencies in growing things, and in elements, and in seasons, and I invoke them for the influences I want. So I'll burn basil and loosestrife in the aftermath of a fight, and mind to eat almonds on days when I feel the need to be smart, and put pennyroyal in my shoe to keep my body from being tired during a bad waitressing shift. There's nothing special about me for doing these things, only knowledge and intention. I don't do covens or initiations; I just try to keep mindful of the plants around me, the herbs that I cook into my food, the spiritual significances of the cycles of the natural world going on around me.
In this system of meanings, Oregano is bound to Venus and air. It is an herb of happiness, tranquility, good luck, health, and protection, and for letting go of someone you love. It is also said to protect and promote psychic dreams when worn on the head during sleep.
idlerat. Comment for five topics of your own - rat gave me: Lotesse (your name!), Tolkien, Jane Eyre, Spike!Elizabeth Bennett (your icon!), Oregano (your motto!)my name: I shifted back to by proper pseud when I got my dwth - I'd gone by lotesseflower. And that feels pretty cool. I picked "lotesse," or more properly, "Lótessë," when I was just a kid, in maybe 1999? And I have the good luck, ten years later, to still like the name. It's the Quenya fifth year of the month, which corresponds to my birth month, and my d.o.b. is weirdly important to me.
My family pays pretty close attention to astrology, and my position as a Gemini/Taurus cuspie helps me make sense of my relationship with my doubly Gemini father and boyfriend. Gem is an air sign, associated with Mercury, so you get language skills, quick wits, good argumentative abilities, flashy tempers and other quicksilver weirdness. But Taurus roots in the earth, is practical and pragmatic and patient. I understand my Gem daddy better than anyone else, but I'm more even-tempered, and frequently am able to calm both him and The Boy down pretty effectively.
I also appreciate the way my pseud ties me back to my primal fandom. I know a lot of fen consider this a bug, not a feature, but Tolkien wasn't just my first fandom. It'll be my last. Which segues nicely into
Tolkien: my sweetest love. And my first. I grew up with The Hobbit, went into LotR blind at 11 years old, and found the world changed forever. I'm so thankful that I read LotR young, because I went to it without expectations. I can still remember hitting the second chapter of Fellowship, the one where the nature of the Ring is revealed, and gasping with the shock of it. I had no idea. I had to put the book down.
I've been away from Tolkien for a couple of years. I had to clear the films out of my head, and also I think I needed to go discover new genres and lenses and ways of reading. Since, oh, January? I've been coming back, and it's fascinating how passionately I still love these books. When I too my break I was a high school kid, trapped and miserable and melodramatic and pretentious. Now I might be a grown-up, and I'm definitely more of a feminist, and I've held on to a long-term relationship, and I understand things more. I used to love the Elves above all things, but now the hobbits have my heart - their determined, compassionate pragmatism now strikes me as being more important than Adventure and High Beauty.
Jane Eyre:: is the book that made me a feminist. Well, that and Room of One's Own, read back to back when I was sixteen. The writing sample that I submitted to my graduate program was on Jane. It strikes me as the sexiest book in the world, and I love how wild and proud and free it is.
the Spike!Lizzie icon: was a joke, actually. The Boy and I have this inability to contain our snark when faced with Pride and Prejudice, and the BBC adaptation has this great shot of Liz standing my a rock formation in the Darbyshire portion, with stirring music and the whole nine yards. And The Boy leans over and mutters, "They haven't got a rock this big." And then how could I not? I'm kind of amazed that I can use it, because I absolutely hate Spike. But it's a line from when he's still all cool and villain-y, so I guess it's okay.
I don't love Elizabeth as much as some - I have issues regarding satire as political speech, and I always sort of want to shake Austen's girls and ask them why they're not more angry. I get where Austen's coming from, but all the same I think it's allowed an engirlification of her work, and has permitted modern conceptions of her to paint over her fangs. The pissy Bronte characters are much more to my taste.
oregano: the line is Pablo Neruda's, who I have great passionate love for. And that line carries two resonances for me - the water thing, and the kitchen witchery. I grew up on Lake Michigan, and learned to sail at the same time I learned how to walk. I am never happier than when submerged in water; it makes me feel safe, okay, at rest, free. The Lake is my therapy, or used to be. I'm living in southern Indiana now, but my grandparents live right on the lake up Chicago way, and I go there as often as I can. And there's a swimming hole at the state park here, a limestone pool with a waterfall where the creek falls down the stone, and that's pretty decent.
As for the kitchen witchery. I use that term because my practice of magic is ridiculously low-key. There are potencies in growing things, and in elements, and in seasons, and I invoke them for the influences I want. So I'll burn basil and loosestrife in the aftermath of a fight, and mind to eat almonds on days when I feel the need to be smart, and put pennyroyal in my shoe to keep my body from being tired during a bad waitressing shift. There's nothing special about me for doing these things, only knowledge and intention. I don't do covens or initiations; I just try to keep mindful of the plants around me, the herbs that I cook into my food, the spiritual significances of the cycles of the natural world going on around me.
In this system of meanings, Oregano is bound to Venus and air. It is an herb of happiness, tranquility, good luck, health, and protection, and for letting go of someone you love. It is also said to protect and promote psychic dreams when worn on the head during sleep.