Same Place, More Stuff

Raven Rabbit Ram is an expansion of the ethos that started with Paris of Harrisburg. I tried to ask the ultimate question, once an overwhelming challenge to identify and therefore pursue the purpose of life itself and now, more or less, simply the keystone of content marketing: "Why?" I came up with a few too many answers to fit under one sassy advice columnist. The only one I liked was, "Why the fuck not?" The world will tell you to find a niche, to drill down on one thing and become so good at it you're undeniable. If that's you, congratulations! Go for it and don't stop until you get whatever you want. For me, I can't narrow my focus, and if I could, I think it might be a waste of perfectly good peripheral vision. Never mind that you'll find our overlords over at Amazon and Facebook made it pretty far on the premise that a loose and malleable mission statement could be adapted to include global domination of whatever market they feel like crushing that day.

I know I'm not alone in my inclination to take a broad view of both myself and my options. I'm married to a musician, philosopher, chemist who could chase any one of those rabbits to their natural end but chooses to meander down every trail, and that's without even mentioning his super complex unrelated job. My dad was a nuclear engineer, aviator, builder, mechanic, painter, and poet. One of my favorite people is a woman who works consistently as a professional pedagogue, poet, jeweler, and visual artist and has been a social worker, technical writer, and radio personality. I know an amazing kid who wants to be a lawyer and a tattoo artist. I know an even littler kid who wants to be an ice cream-tasting ballerina cop. Hell, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a babysitting, SCUBA diving rock star and brain surgeon. (Spoiler alert: I'm not a huge fan of kids I'm not related to, I'm not a strong swimmer, and I barely made it out of high school chemistry. I did marry a musician and am working diligently on grooming my mostly disinterested family into a Partridge style situation, though. Perhaps if I had learned to avoid boxes at a younger age, I wouldn't have told myself those were static deficiencies.)

What do we possibly have to gain from boxing ourselves in, tucking our natural curiosities and passions away from us and into the realm of hobby, or worse, distant admiration? Extreme specialization is only valuable insofar as our one and only human life is an extension of a capitalist system of productivity. Do we really think if the grid went down tomorrow, the others in our makeshift tribe would let us stick around, repeating one not so useful action over and over? If nothing else, we'd bore ourselves into exile and starvation. Or perhaps we'd accidentally reinvent a system of arbitrary gender roles based on our most innate biological functions after having abandoned all the good practical and intellectual ones. In any case, it's a drag. We're so many things. We should embrace that.

One of the things I am is someone who lives with depression. I chose to re-launch the site on the Solstice because it's a day of profound hope. It's the day I envision Persephone beginning her long ascent from the Underworld. It is the promise of the light returning, the very light Gnostics, Christians, and Pagans alike (from the Northern Hemisphere) anticipate throughout the Advent season. The longest night is a promise that gifts us with the will to hang on. The day after this and every day after that, the light will grow brighter and stronger, awakening us and filling us with the vitality we will require throughout the year. If the Ram and Rabbit rule the spring and summer months with their fertile drive forward, the Solstice falls under the watch of the Raven, a call to look back and dig deeply inward for the embers of light and hope required to finish out the year.

Raven Rabbit Ram will use that light to burn down boundaries and expectations and to foster more than one thing in our souls. It is place, time, and movement. Past, present, future. Reflection, Planning, Acting. Inspiring, Creating, Spreading. Spirit, Mind, Body. Magic, Intelligence, Power. Death, Birth, Life. Marry, Fuck, Kill Gathering, Kindling, Burning. Like any good trinity, it represents infinite trinities, and there you have the mystery.

I'm really looking forward to the articles we have coming up including today's horoscope by Virginia Lengyel, an excellent TV review by Pat Kelly, and an upcoming Paris edition offering advice for the family-weary this holiday season. We expect to be featuring more audio and visual media as we move forward, and we invite you to join us. Submit your work to parisofharrisburg@gmail.com if you would like to be featured or reviewed here. You can find out how to contact or commission our contributors in their bios, and we'll be updating the Links and Dates page with their live comedy, music, and readings.

Thanks so much for joining us!

Christina Lengyel | Editor