seven interests

[terabient]

yeah, that bit about posting 'something substantial soon?' nooooooot happening...yet, at least.

instead, here's a meme:

Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

Comments

[terabient]

ok~

bellydancing
fire-chains
poi
farscape
egyptology
real ales
paganism

Ok so I've had to do this in two parts - I just keep babbling on!

[theplaidsheep.livejournal.com]

1)Bellydancing - I've done this on and off for several years, and it's never been strictly belly-dancing as it was a mix of different cultural styles: Indian, arabian, egyptian and eastern european with a bit of spanish flamenco thrown in too. Now I absolutely love to dance, most especially when a deep and steady drum beat gets my blood going and I'm very much an intuitive dancer, and my style changes with the tune. I've had various bits of formal tuition but could never stay put for very long. I like nothing better than dancing round a fire to the beat of a myriad drums and a digiridoo droning in counter point. XD

2)Fire-chains and 3)Poi - These are actually one and the same, except for the former is the latter set on fire! Poi is Maori in origin; as an object it is a tasselled ball and cord woven from plant fibre, as an art-form they are swung in pairs or more by Maori women. It has developed from there into streamered balls on a line, and into balls of kevlar on chain, which are then dowsed in parafin, or some other fuel and set alight. At it's base, it's just twirling balls in a circle and moving them about and around your body. As a dance and an artform, it looks and feels amazing and it can be used if desired as a form of meditation or trance working. I love it for all of these things, but it does requires discipline, stamina and rhythm and a healthy respect for working with fire. I would highly recommend youtube to witness the glory of poi and fire chains.

4)Farscape - my first love in fandom. As a tv series it is second to none, the concept, the writing, the cast and characters... it's just insane and technicolour! It is the story of your every-man cast down the rabbit-hole (or in this case worm-hole) to the other end of the galaxy and finds himself in the middle of a prison break and a giant living starship called a Leviathan. It has just the right mix of humour, seriousness and insanity that you would expect would a person from the back end of the twentieth century end up in this situation and it just expands out from there. It also features the most amazing animatronics that you will ever come across, two of the main cast are puppet aliens, but my god so life-like that you forget they're not real. Also the soundtrack is cracking! I'm not sure I have the words to express my love more than this.
For this tv series I attended conventions, for this tv series I became an active part of a small forum and met some amazing people, one of which who became my best friend. For this tv series I wrote letters of complaint to the tv station who produced and then canned it, and that was in the US. I wrote letters of complaint to sponsors of the channel. Hell, when the head of the station said that scifi was the province of teenage boys, I sent my bra in support of my goddamn gender in protest! It makes me sad that I may never be that crazy about a tv series ever again, but there several years of my life which will be remembered very fondly.

Part 2!

[theplaidsheep.livejournal.com]

5)Egyptology - I've always loved ancient cultures, there's just something alien yet familiar about them that just hits my kink-button. In the past human-kind has done some amazing things, and some quite horrifying. There beliefs and worldviews especially can be quite fascinating, and sometimes you are just left thinking: omg why?? I think ancient Egypt is one of the most unique cultures in the word, for their entire existence depended upon and developed around a single river and very little beyond that. It was their life and death, for without that river there would be no life. And they became from a nation of independent, almost disparate, entities into one of the most famous cultures in the world ever to exist. Who doesn't know about mummys? Or the great Pyramids of Giza? Or the strange animal headed gods which they worshiped? And the more you look into it the more human, yet strange it becomes, I love it!

6)Real Ales - ok, so I lifted this bit from wiki: Real ale is the name coined by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) in 1973 for a type of beer defined as "beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide". What it means to me is beer and ale with body and flavour which can vary from brewery to brewery: it encompasses pale, porters, stouts, milds and bitters. It's just so much better - and often cheaper - than the mass produced crap that serve out of taps or bottles, give me draft any day!

7)Paganism - Ah, this is actually the difficult one. I can say with certainty that I am polytheist and this would qualify me along to be pagan according to the monotheistic religions in the world. What I believe though has changed and developed over the years through my many forays into ancient history and cultures (I have two degrees to show for it!). Like many pagans though, I started off in wicca as it was almost by default the only active pagan religion available to the public. I came to paganism like a good number of people desperately seeking something that resonated with the barely formed philosophies of my teen years - and that just clicked, and it was quite joyfully that I came across an active faith devoted to the feminine aspect of deity and I through myself in whole-heartedly. It took me many years to finally come to the conclusion however, that no matter how I tried I just couldn't make the robe fit. So, my philosophies are very pagan, I believe in many gods, I believe in the latent power of the world around us that has been variously described in physics as potential and kinetic energy, and quite wonderfully by the ancient Romans as Numen. I believe that some of us have the ability to manipulate this power. I believe we are all apart of the universe physically and spiritually, yet we are still individuals in our own right, reflections of the creation we live and the gods and spirits are equally apart of that. So I will continue searching until I finally the right robe to wear - or discover I shouldn't be wearing one at all!;)

Re: Part 2!

[lustychan.livejournal.com]

Your reply about Paganism was much more eloquent than mine! Kudos.