Aslaug's Axe Shed

…refer to their ‘muse’ from time to time. Personally, I don’t really think one of the nine muses has time to set aside for me specifically. Even if we count Sappho, who by Plato’s estimate was the tenth muse (before the Church burnt all her works), they’re probably fairly overworked.

Nonetheless, SOMETHING has been whipping me hard lately, inspiration wise and I’m finding myself hard pressed to keep up with it all. I’ve got ideas for my own setting, for Nacther (the working title for the book I’m hoping to publish and which I’ve started working on), the last chapters of Transitions and the storyline for Witchhammer and subsequent stories in that continuum…

I still have to work five days a week, and I’d like to have some kind of social life as well. Frankly there just aren’t enough hours in the day…OR night…for it all. I suppose this is what causes some people to collapse with stress. It hasn’t quite gotten to that point for me, however. So far I’m not stressing but I am mildly annoyed that I can’t seem to fit everything into my schedule…

Work-wise, things are still good. Yesterday was the first day of work for a new colleague, who will be sharing my office. I knew all along that there would be more people coming to work there, and frankly I’ve missed some company, but the problem is that smeone made a cockup in planning all this. Gitte, the lady who started there yesterday, and I take up two computer-spaces already. There are three computers in the room. In two weeks, a guy called Anders starts working there on a three-months project going through the textile collection and registering a lot of things that are backlogged. That’ll make for a full docket. The computers will then be in use.

The problem comes when the Museum hires a new Public Relations person in a couple of weeks, because one of my two bosses is currently borrowing the office this person has to use. Meaning she’ll have to come and work in our office down in the basement too when that happens. And to make things ludicrous, they need to hire another registrator at some point this fall as well, for me to train, since it’s really a two-person job. That will make for five people trying to squeeze into a three person office. Obviously, that won’t work and everyone realizes it. The common phrase at the moment is ‘well, that won’t work. We’ll have to figure something out’ but so far no one seems to have gotten to the actual figuring out.

Let’s hope a solution pops up, or I foresee a VERY stressy fall

Anyway…I’ve done good so far. When they came back from vacation, both my bosses were impressed with the amount of work I had managed to get done while they were gone. One of them turned out to be done JUST in the nick of time too. When you have a museum with literally tens of thousands of individual items, from thimbles to horse-drawn carriages, you’re bound to occasionally misplace something. Alright, it’s unlikely you misplace a carriage, on account of its size, but you could conceivably misplace a thimble quite easily.

However, a museum can only function if all the items in its catalogue are easily found.

So let me illustrate with a purely fictional example. Let’s say I needed to find a specific item. Let’s say this item is a part of some machinery from the local brewery. Apart from my attempts at brewing mead here at home, no one working at that museum really knows anything about brewing alcohol, which is entirely fair and reasonable. Let’s say this machine-part is in fact a fairly big piece of equipment. Normally, an item like that would be placed in what is called Section F09b, industri and handicrafts. However, section F09b is HUMONGOUSLY overcrowded as I can attest to, and consequently, this large machine-part wouldn’t fit there. So someone thought ‘okay, let’s move it to behind shelf F1, by the wall. No problem. Behind shelf F1 there’s floorspace set aside for this kind of thing, but let’s also say that the person who moved the machine part then forgot (in the midst of all the rest of the work he or she had to do that day) forgot to update the file…

The next time someone looks for that item, they’ll go looking in section F09b…and find no machine part. Panic panic panic…oh woe is us, what -shall- we do, our hugely important machine-part is woefully missing.

Part of my job these past few weeks has been to go over more than 500 misplaced items that have been found to be placed somewhere ELSE than their registration said…and then fix the file.

I actually managed to get that done in the two weeks where my bosses were on vacation (while getting a LOT of other work done too), which they hadn’t thought was possible. Turns out it was a good thing I DID, because today…the national board of cultural inheritance (to whom every museum in Denmark is accountable) will send someone to specifically check on our registrations. This is done once a year, but it would’ve looked bad to have a lot of misplaced items we hadn’t taken care of. So I’ve done good…

All this is gibberish, probably, to most of you…and I’m just rambling anyway

I’d probably better stop that and get moving. The bus leaves in ten minutes anyway

Take care all…

I have little to tell, really…and little to rant about for once. Imagine that. Things are reasonably quiet for the moment, and I have very few things to say for that reason.

However, there is one thing I should explain here, for those of my readers who don’t go to my forum. I know there are some, but I have no idea how many…

I am three chapters away from putting the lid on the Transitions series. Just three more chapters to go, and it’ll all be done and dealt with. Needless to say, I am feeling a bit strange about it, since it’s been a part of life for five years now. But it’s time I finished it up.

HOWEVER, that does not mean I won’t be writing anymore. Far from it. I have other things coming and there will be new stories posted to this site. And those won’t be set in the socalled Sabrinaverse either. It’s time I made my own ‘reality’ to write about, and it will happen with the next story.

Furthermore, I am going to try out a new style of writing. I’ve hinted at this to others before, but I suppose it’s safe to say now that what I intend to do is write the next story in the first person (except the prologue and possibly the epilogue). It will be an ‘I’-story…with a clear narrator. It’s something I feel safe in doing by now, but which I haven’t had the guts to really do until recently. I wasn’t sure if I had what it took to write like that but it appears I do.

Anyway…I hope you will enjoy the last chapters of Transitions. Next week will see the posting of chapter 34, so there are still plenty of chapters to be posted. As usual, I have more completed than have actually been posted here, on this site.

I can promise you all, the story won’t actually be over until the last full stop…but by then, I’m sure you will all agree that it is over.

Happy reading…

Having to write this post irks me, but the events of this weekend really forces my hand.

Apparently, at least one of my readers (name isn’t important…let’s call him X for lack of inventiveness’ sake), appears to have believed that my blog entry was about my faith being ‘gutted’ by reading the books I blogged about last week. He first wrote me an email stating how he believed that this was probably how things happened, and how he felt Catholics had come closer to the truth about divinity than others. His Email was highly aggressive, but I chose to believe I had read it wrong, or at LEAST that he didn’t mean it to be. I reread it a few times but it did not seem less aggressive any of the subsequent times, and when I answered him, I tried to point this out while at the same time explaining that my faith had in fact not been gutted. That I had, if anything, been reaffirmed by reading books that trivialized my beliefs and feeling that this was an uncomfortable thing. Had I simply shrugged it off, it would have been a different matter, but thinsg that are close to my heart were twisted into a largely unrecognizable shape, and I did not like that.

That’s not ‘losing faith’ or having one’s faith ‘gutted’. That is, if anything, a strong confirmation of personal belief. I tried to explain this in my return email as well.

The main topic of X’s first email was that I should, to use his own words, examine the reasons for my faith. He also claimed to understand exactly what the author was trying to get across, which I find hard to believe since X is American and therefore hasn’t had a chance to read these books yet. They have, as far as I’ve been able to determine, not been translated into English. Furthermore, as I EXPRESSEDLY stated several times, the author herself explains what her goal was in the epilogue of each book; namely to write a fictional story of what COULD have happened. In that regard, her book is the exact same kind of story as AVC, with the one caveat that mine dealt with history, and hers deals with religion. But both are fictionalized stories, set thousand of years ago. Nonetheless, X felt certain that what she really attempted was to prove how the old norse faith was wrong, and how I was in fact worshipping human beings. He then went on to explain the benefits of Catholicism…including the willingness of Catholics to admit to having done wrong. To X’s credit, he did acknowledge that certain parts of his own faith made him uncomfortable…but he then went on to use an expression that struck me as particularly unpleasant…

He said: “In your case I will counsel you to look carefully at your reason for your faith.  Just because what you believe in is more comforting does not make your faith right.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t find any single reason for writing that, unless he was telling me that my faith was, in fact, wrong. Something which I consider a gross personal insult, since neither X, nor any other human being has the right to tell me such a thing. If my faith is right or wrong, it is up to me to find out…alone…through my own actions. Nothing so far in my life…NOTHING whatsoever…has shown me that my faith is wrong for me. MANY things have shown the opposite to be the case.

I tried to explain this to X in my return email as well, while reminding him that his style had been rather aggressive. He exalts his own beliefs, while telling me that mine are wrong. But I also pointed out in my email to him, that while I found his statements aggressive, I didn’t think he meant them to be.

I really thought X was trying, in a rather strange way, to express some kind of support.

Turns out I was wrong.

This morning when I got up there was a second email from X, who starts by saying that I didn’t understand his message correctly.

He then goes on to write: “What I am saying and to some extent asking you to look as your reasons for you faith could be for the wrong reasons.  Just because your faith are comforting is not what is wrong.  What I am asking you to ask your self is, is simply just because what you hear or think fit your wants and needs could be wrong.”

He then goes on to explain how he acknowledges Darwin’s teachings and how the Catholic Church ‘burnt itself’ with Gallileo. He then speaks of how ‘evil’ he thinks it is that many Christians takes Genesis ad verbatim and tries to force others to think that is the only way to see the world, before he continues with:

“I am not trying to insulting you, I commend you for having your faith.  I am only hoping to get you to consider where your faith is place could be incorrect.”

And finally, he pulls out the big hammer and smacks me between the eyes with it by saying:

“Don’t look at yourself as evil, maybe a little miss guided a little.  Though miss directed would be a better description.  You have faith, which is very good.  Just in wrong direction.”

I think the last time I’ve had anyone be this grossly disrespectful towards me was the last time Jehova’s witnesses turned up at my doorstep, refusing to go away until I threatened to call the police. That happened over twenty years ago.

If X thought he was being helpful, I have to SERIOUSLY disappoint him because I feel violated by these emails of his. He’s openly proselytizing…OPENLY attempting to convert me. Something I have expressed my revulsion of on a LARGE number of occasions.

I answered him briefly, sending off a second email telling him I wanted no further discussions on religion with him because of that. I also pointed out that before he tried to convert me he might want to get something straight. Namely that by Papal edict from the hands of John Paul II…the Pope so many people seem to think was an angel in disguise…I am unsavable. I have done something to myself which means that I belong to the ONE  SINGLE minority that can’t be saved, because I have willfully cast away my soul. Strictly speaking, I am even forbidden from entering a Catholic church.

Nevermind mass murderers, satanists, rapists and pedophiles. They can all be saved if they fall to their knees and ask genuinely for salvation. But I can’t, because I willfully undid God’s creation. Ergo, I am…by Pope John Paul II’s (the man some people seriously wanted to receive Nobel’s Peace Prize…) edict, the pinnacle of evil in the flesh.

I did not ask to be converted. I wrote what I did on my blog to vent some steam. NOT to invite people to try to get me to subscribe to their faith. Most of you, thank the Gods, have shown me an amazing amount of support and kindness since the original post. I was touched and warmed by posts on my forum made by Nicolai, Kellan, Frazikar, Karou and Yamara…and I have received other shows of support. Valaina offered to get on a flight from England if I could wait two weeks with my bl??t, so that she could be there for it! Instead, we agreed to do it just before the fall equinox where she’s in Denmark anyway. But she was willing to fly over here, just to support me in doing this rite.

That’s how friends react! That’s how good people react. By seeing I was upset and offering genuine support, rather than pity. And by showing respect for what I consider sacred.

NOT as X did…by jumping on a wrongly perceived chink in my armour, trying to convert me!

I will leave this with one of the last statements of X’s second email:

“I have for many years wondered if the Catholic faith was started incorrectly.  Did God want us to reaffirm our Jewish faith?  Only time will tell.  Heh, I still can’t help think of a quote of Albert Einstein about, I think Buddhism, being a ‘perfect’ faith.  Perhaps their all right?  I don’t have the answer.  But your are correct in not insulting or saying the faiths of others is wrong.  To do sow would only belittle yourself.”

I strongly urge you, X, to look at that one more time…and then next time you feel the urge to tell me that I am ‘misguided’ or ‘misdirected’ and that my faith is wrong, then you REMEMBER that line, yourself!

I’m sure you’re smart enough to then stay quiet.

Thank you

I brought the books back with me today, and I explained to Pia why I couldn’t read them…and how it was affecting me to do so. She was quite understanding, especially once I’d explained the reasoning behind it, and she said she could see my point. She wasn’t upset at all, not that I had really expected her to be. But still, it’s never nice to have to say no thank you to the kindness of others, for any reason.

So there it is. Now I just need to find a time to do a small bl??t to acknowledge the hands of the gods in this.

Thank you all for your support since last night. It’s greatly appreciated.