Don�t worry about tomorrow. Don�t even think about it. Suddenly life becomes fascinating, because the only thing that exists is right now.

My winter vacation suddenly improved. I was no longer bored because I found myself constantly meditating or doing yoga. Even when I wasn�t doing those things, I still was happy because I was just enjoying being alive in the moment all around me.

There is a power in not being able to say "I�ll do it later." When all you�ve got is right now, you suddenly feel ready to try anything, no matter how scary, or to laugh at anything. You may never get another chance to smile ever again, after all, who knows? The future really is a complete and utter mystery.

The future can be a slippery thing, like an eel, only often times much more beautiful. For example, I knew that my future as an exchange student was going to hold many more unpleasant experiences (and awesome ones as well), but I had no idea that a huge revelation would come out of a having a really bad time.

The same music that I�ve been hearing for the last three hours is still blasting around me. My ears are beyond throbbing, and my mind, bless it, is using its wonderfully powerful gift of zoning out the world around me. I�ve been told by many people, most often exasperated teachers, that my daydreaming abilities are uncanny.

Right now I�m lamenting on what a crappy evening I�ve had. I�m at a friend of my host brother's house for a party. We arrived just in time for dinner, but unfortunately Kevin (my host brother) didn�t tell his friend that I�m vegetarian, and so I felt terrible watching him run around at the last minute trying to make me something. I ended up eating plain cooked pasta after everyone else had already finished eating.

I cast a weary eye over at the group of four or five teenage boys who are standing in front of the karaoke screen and wailing French pop songs into their microphones. I couldn�t even sing along if I wanted to, not that there�s a microphone for me anyway. I sigh. They�ve been doing this ever since dinner ended, and I�m about at the end of my rope. Kevin�s friends are all cute, and normally very nice. This is supposed to be fun, I�m thinking. It�s a freaking party.

Kevin chooses this moment to momentarily separate himself from his microphone and plops himself down next to my perch on the bed.

"You�re supposed to be having fun, you know?" He reminds me.

"Yeah, I know." I don�t mention how impossible it is to have fun while being forced to listen to screechy French karaoke for three hours straight. Instead, I tell him that its late, which it is, and that I have to get up early the next morning, which I do. He looks at me, nonplused.

"So I think I�m going now, ok?" Suddenly he gets it, but looks at me as though I�d be crazy to leave.

"You can find your way back ok?"

"Yes."

This whole conversation takes place in French. A few moments later I find myself outside in the pleasantly cool night air, a full moon lighting my path when the curtain of clouds lets it shine through. I have to take a path through a field to get to the main road, which I�ll then follow home. I�m so upset that I had such a crappy time that I almost don�t notice how beautiful it is outside. When I do I stop for a moment just to take in the moonlight shinning down on the leaves and grass. The scene is stunning, and it almost knocks my unhappiness out of me. It seems as though the moon is trying to tell me something as it shines right down into the depths of my eyes (it�s done this before) but still, I will have none of it.

I find myself stomping along, my feet landing like heavy rocks with each step, and at the same time words are forming at my lips.

"Stop it. Just don�t right now. I�m not in the mood. Just leave me alone."

And the moon goes under the clouds.

I continue on in my anger, so much like my own private storm, until I get to the main road. As I step into the glowing light of the street lamps my anger dissipates like the darkness.

A new feeling comes over me. I want to sing, and so I do.

Sometimes I still wonder if anyone heard me that night, perhaps as they were laying bed waiting for sleep, when suddenly they hear a voice far away, singing in the middle of the night. In English, no less. I don�t even care though. I just make my way home straight through the center of town. I feel like something inside me is glowing (it happens from time to time) and I just need to sing. I need to hear my voice echoing back at me from the deserted streets.

Eventually I find myself in the little square just before my host family�s house comes into view. I stop then, and take a deep breath of the cold pre-spring air. The wind kicks up and I feel my hair whipping out behind me. The words to one of my favorite songs come to mind, and I have to sing them.

"I�m not just gonna stand around waiting for my lips to be read. Falling through the cracks in the ground, and I�m hoping that you�ll make your next more. That you�ll make you next move. I�m not gonna stand around waiting for you."

It feels so great to sing in the wind, and I spin around with a smile on my face, feeling my hair and the wind sailing all around me. When I stop and open my eyes, quite suddenly, there is the moon. A chill, like goose bumps, runs all through my body. It was then that I got it.

There is a card in the tarot deck (which is something I believe in) called the Moon. The Moon card basically represents illusion. The real moon that we see in the sky gives the illusion that it itself is actually shinning, and yet it is not so, it is merely reflecting the light from the sun down at us. The meaning of illusion in the Moon tarot card is derived from this. As I looked up at the moon that night I thought of the tarot card that goes along with it, and the word illusion struck me so hard I almost fell down.

I figured it out. Illusion is when you believe that a party should make you happy and that people who walk home alone at night singing songs to themselves are weird. I could give hundreds of examples of what illusions are, but lets suffice it to say that that night I realized that all the things I had been believing in so very much were just illusions that society had backhandedly thrown at me. I felt so happy to realize that not only there is nothing wrong with me for being the vegetarian that I am, and for not feeling very impressed by Kevin or his friends even though they are all cute by societies standards. That night I realized that illusions are everywhere, and that we only have to scratch a tiny bit at the surface of what we do every single day to see them. I decided right then and there that I would live out my life the way I see fit, and not worry about the things that I am supposed to do. It�s all just an illusion, almost every single thing that we hear. I realized that I have to follow my own dreams; they are the only ones that don't have masks over them to hide the truth. My dreams are the real suns; the others are just reflecting the light.

It was that night that Kevin ceased to impress me, I remember. I realized that night just how much things had degraded in my second host family, and I really don't think I was ever very happy there again. I think mainly it was because suddenly I could see that the entire family was just formed on illusions, and every single member of that family was following moons, forgetting their own individual suns.

It�s been a month and half since I've changed into my third host family as I write this, and I couldn't be happier. Why? Mainly because my third host family isn't too worried about illusions. They know what they want and live their lives to have fun. My host mother even to told me that one day, just idly, as I was putting on my shoes before school.

"You have to do what you love in this life, Julie, if you don't it�s not worth anything."

I wanted to cheer.

The first month with my third host family has been absolutely insane. I've been running around from rotary event to rotary event. I spent two weeks travelling all around France in a charter bus full of other exchange students, which was a learning experience in and of itself, if nothing else. In between these things I've been just spending time laughing my butt off with my host family. We have so much fun. Until recently I haven't had much time to even consider spiritual matters. All that changed though, with the Black-Eyed-Dog. How that little dog ever managed to save himself from drowning and teach me to stop waiting and to reach out and grab life by the horns at the same time I'll never know, but he did.

There is only one more realization in this long list that I can share with you, and it is a good one, though not overly dramatic. Unlike all the others previously mentioned, it didn't all suddenly hit me square between the eyes, but rather it just kind of crept up on me slowly.

Last fall I was sure I was Wiccan, as I was all of last summer as well. This winter, however, I spent a good deal of time questioning what I believed, and if I really was, indeed, a member of the Wiccan faith, so to speak. I'm not entirely sure what did it for me, whether it was the long runs I've been taking down by the river where tall fields of grass spread as far as the eye can see, waving beautifully in the wind, or if it was more just a deep realization in me that it�s something I've always known. Whether it was the beauty of nature that finally made me wake up and see, or if it was just my spirit reaching out toward the truth, I will never know. All I know is that one morning I woke up and knew with absolute certainty that I am Wiccan. It�s just as simple as that. I've become more grown up in my belief of my religion as well. I realize that Wicca doesn't have to mean to me the same thing that it does to everyone else. I said in my last issue of Pumpkin that I was not Wiccan, but rather just the faith of Julie. Thinking about it recently though I realize that the faith of Julie is Wicca. Everything I believe is a belief in the Wiccan religion. We go together perfectly. I truly believe that that is the only way to find your faith. To have your beliefs, and find a religion that follows them. Not the inverse. I am Wiccan, and I'm so happy to say that! Every day as I go for my run by the river and see the fields and flowing water, or when I eat lunch in the park and watch flowers grow, or even just as I step outside and breathe in the fresh spring air I feel the power of the earth and I know that Wicca is real.

"Papa!" My host sister calls out. Her tiny six year old body is barely visible above the thick undergrowth. Her tiny hand, still growing, is clutching a small bouquet of mueget, tiny white, bell shaped flowers that grow close to the ground and smell heavenly. My host sister sights my host father and goes crashing off through the forest to show him something.

I turn my gaze back down to the ground to search out more mueget, commonly known as lilies of the valley in English. I spot some tiny flowers and stoop down to pick them. I'm so happy to be in the forest searching out flowers on this morning. I am here with my whole host family performing a French tradition that goes all the way back to pagan times, which brings me to the root of my joy.

I was wondering what I would do for Beltaine.

It is the first of May, commonly known as May Day, or Beltaine by the Wiccan community. It is one of the eight sabbats that take place throughout the year. This sabbat is to celebrate the bounty of spring and the earth coming back to life after winter. This is the holiday that is marked by the May Pole. I was personally thinking about going out to gather flowers by the river or something along that line, but this is so much better. I am sure that going out on Beltaine morning and collecting lilies is a French tradition started by the early Pagans. I couldn't imagine a better way to celebrate Beltaine than by performing a centuries old tradition. Life truly is perfect.

I pause only for a moment to breathe in the scent of the tiny bell like flowers of my own bouquet before I set off running after my host sisters on a nearly overgrown forest path, my goddess hair lightly bouncing behind me, and laughter, along with my happiness, is filling up the spaces between the trees.