Samhain Full Moon

Feeling good. Makes me suspicious. Too used to depression. It could be all the vitamins Mark has been recommending to me. Much better than anti-depressants. My body dislikes anti-depressants. (I never could handle drugs.) But vitamins - or just that I tell myself they're vitamins not drugs - those I handle well.
I'm back from Istanbul. I'm writing up the trip, preparing the photos, concocting the narrative, wondering which blog to put it on, where else to send all this material. I had a wonderful time. I didn't do all the things I wish I'd done. 17 day trips wear me out. I got a bad cold in Edirne and it lasted through the flight home and well into another week. But it's over. I feel healthy. I could almost lift weights if I still belonged to a gym. (And I should, since I lost 15 pounds walking around Istanbul and eating only fresh Black Sea fish.)
Feeling good. Waltzed into town and everyone called me up and began offering me free-lance jobs. I even had to turn one down. They're all getting themselves done on time, and none of them are even distasteful. DVDs reviewed. Manuscripts copy edited. Magazines proofread on line. Checks arriving. (Or they will arrive.) Tickets to everything except "Rock and Roll," for which I may have to pay full price just because I have a crush on Rufus Sewell. This is not a catastrophe.
All my jobs will be done (it seems to me) by Friday sennight - so I can in good conscience fly to Chicago the following Monday. Ideally, someone or three will offer me other jobs before I go, and I shall be able to work on them while away.
I did magic with the Full Moon just before Samhain. I did magic for health and prosperity and inspiration and peace of mind, and Ronald's health, and my mother's health. The Samhain full moon is the mightiest of all full moons; if you do moon esbats and magic, that is the time to send your wish to the Lady of the Lune. She is in the giving vein, more now than elsewhen. Remember that. Then I look Her in the Eye and say, "Lady of Silver Magic, come into my life." (As Leon taught me.)
It's my theory that Witches gathered at the Full Moon because, not wanting to attract attention, they wandered about at such times and could see their way. When the moon was dark, they couldn't see a hand in front of them in the woods or on rural roads, so (my inference is) they did their private magic then, with the home coven crowd. This is all my practical interpretation - I didn't get it from books or Books or traditional lineage or secrets passed in Circle - I thought it all out, and up, for my own self. You don't have to take it seriously if you don't wanna.
I'm reading books about Istanbul: Orhan Pamuk, Graham Greene, Barbara Nadel, Lord Kinross, Stephen Runciman, Freya Stark. There's no point in doing this after coming home, no prospect of a repeat any time in the foreseeable. But because it fascinates me. And I didn't do so much reading before I went (except in guidebooks to places I never did visit) because I was having so many anxiety fits about the trip. None of the horrors came true of course.
(Or very few: the Hotel Tria DID forget to send a car for me to the airport at midnight, when it was far too late to catch a cheap bus to Sultanahmet. My ancient hiking boots did fall to pieces at last, in the mud of Edirne, like some soggy veteran of the Balkan Wars in which that weary city last changed hands, twice.)
But somehow it seemed necessary (necessary? to whom? or what?) that I have the anticipatory ghastlies before I went. Then everything seemed so much easier, pleasanter, better once I was there. And now it all seems so long ago - certainly more than a couple of weeks.
And life is good. Sort of good. Time to anticipate the next disaster.