.: ahhhhhhhhhhh yes. burning bright, as William would say, in this cold forest of the night. To tell you the truth (as if I did anything different), I keep the windows open in my new nutshell-kingdom (something was rotten in the old Viking state last night, you’ll recall) to chill my bones like a winter should. I have come to realize a very interesting thing about living in cold environs: it awakens the primal– the animal- in you, and creates a carnal, occult relation with the things of warmth. My cocoon-sleeping bag, my socks, the tropical waterfall of my shower, my warm coffee (!) in the morning– these things are the fiery glyphs of magick writ on your skin. It is shapeshifting, willful lycanthropy, the thaumaturgical becoming-animal, furs and claws, a beast.

So tonight I dream of tigers, of snow-borne Siberians and snow-pelted White Bengal. And tomorrow I will wake, yawn and stretch, and will run rampant– rapacious, lumbering, unstoppable– across the plumes and hills of Del Cerro and Allied Gardens.

For, as it has been said, I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.