: Journeys

Wed, 18 May 2005 18:55:24 GMT

I started in grass, as usual, walking this time over dunes toward the wet sand of a shoreline. East coast feel. Gray, restless, but not malevolent water. Walked some distance south, ocean on my left, toward a jut of rocky land with a lighthouse atop. At the base I confronted a steep stony cliff. It was a slow climb, but not arduous. A shiny, upscale automobile was parked in the gravel next to the lighthouse door. (This makes me smile.) I entered the building and stood in a dim foyer. In a little room to the right the same burly, flannel-shirted Pentacle king who accompanied me in the snow journey months ago sat in an armchair, reading under a circle of yellow lamplight. He kept his back to me. He knew I was there, but it was of little significance. He was keeper and protector of the place. Of me, even. A shaft of light descended onto wooden steps to my left. I began to climb the spiral stairs. They were well-worn but scrubbed clean, dry. On the landing at the top I turned toward the sea. Not very far out an opaque fog veiled the horizon. I kept my eyes on the water, willfully ignoring the view behind me, which I knew I must face but feared to see. Drank some hot tea from a china cup, nibbled a small cookie. Took a deep breath. Turned around to look out the landward windows. It was horrible. Charred withered destroyed smoking landscape. Looming over it an evil presence that filled the sky, black, bat-like, slit-eyes glowing red. Disney-esque. Gah! (as a friend likes to say). And I don't know whether anyone or anything exists out past the wall of fog to "benefit" from the lighthouse light. I don't know whether the destruction at my back is a view to civilization's apocalyptic future or simply my own hairy personal past. I only know, feel, that as long as I stay in this "clean, well-lighted place" I'll be safe.

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:00:15 GMT

It's not so prickly, this desert place. I bend to pluck a plant from a clump at my feet. I will use this in a tea to make a medicine for my kidney, which aches today. The stem is stiff and dry. The little root has come up with it.

* * *

I battle to relax for journeying or meditation or whatever is this hybrid endeavor I experiment with. I find my lips tense, flattening grimly. I'm forever reminding myself--let everything go. Loosen your mouth and kiss your life sweetly.

Breeze from the south. Sky deep blue and utterly clear, transparent. A warm breeze melting all that remains of snow. No scary headlines in the morning email. The world must still be out there around us.

I skipped the llamas' grain feeding yesterday. They'll be anxious today. It's a treat, really, they've grown accustomed to, gives them extra fire in cold weather.

* * *

We're tramping happily now in bright sunshine across a clearing of tall grasses bordered by deciduous woods. My companion is a cheerful young woman friend, behind me to my left. "Am I making this?" I ask. "Sort of," she laughs. I smile, too. We have fluffy soft gold-brown hair that falls past our shoulders. And flowers in it. We wear long bright skirts over several light petticoats, and billowy white blouses. We lift the skirts over an arm as we walk through the long grass. She's taking me toward a shadow, a shady opening between two tall trees. "Is that where we're going?" "Yes."

I feel a little apprehensive but my friend is relaxed and smiling, and I trust her.

A blue-slippered foot stepping onto bare clean dirt. A hush. An emptiness--hard bare soil and straight clean tree trunks. A brief sensation of creatures disappearing just ahead of our movements. No paths. Dry, pale, untrodden earth in a dim wood. The trees are young, smooth-barked and slender. No undergrowth, not even duff of dried leaves.

Holding my arms out straight at my sides I can touch a tree with the fingertips of either hand, they are so close. We keep moving forward. After some distance the trees are heavier, of greater diameter, and farther apart. The bark is rougher, grooved vertically. I run my fingertips down the rough dry creases in the bark. The ground here is covered with a light litter of broad yellow leaves. The forest becomes brighter. Still there is no sign of a path or of any previous passers-through.

I realize my companion is gone now. She vanished at some point when I was distracted by the trees. I look around. No one. But I sense her fingers grasping the white billow of my sleeve behind my left upper arm. She wants me to be still.

The picture of woods before me is sort of ... sublimating ... becoming transparent.

At first I stand on what seems to be a lunar landscape--black sky, a ground of hard white dust under my blue slippers. That's what I want it to be, but it won't be that. No--the sky is a uniform lavender, the ground a barren yellowy crust. A fat cartoon penguin waddles past me and out of the frame. I giggle. The ground and sky shift colors continually, cycling through a pastel spectrum. Pale rose. Powder blue. I know I stand before something and I keep trying to make it into a structure--a house of some kind, with a door. But it won't be. It is merely a locus, a point of some imminent phenomenon.

A seam opens then, and a form steps through to stand in front of me. A willowy tall person of feminine or neuter gender with a cloth draped around it. The person holds something out to me. It resembles a slender cut-crystal bud vase, but it's meant to be drunk from. A crystal flute of colored liquid--sapphire blue changing to pale champagne gold. My mouth waters. I take the vessel and swallow its contents--sweet and viscous, like a thin honey. I get to keep the crystal object. I forget about the form--discard the image--and turn away to my left. I become more myself, who I appear to be at this moment in this life. My body this aging one. I am shorn. I wear a pale yellow light sleeveless shirt and pale linen short pants, a sort of orange color, that end above the knee. My feet may be bare. I just stand and wait, clasping the little crystal goblet in both hands and holding it to my chest, staring at the undulating horizon. Then I begin to experience something too powerful and surprising and deeply personal to relate.

* * *

All morning I hear the low roar and feel the vibration of passenger jets passing over. The dogs keep jumping up, expecting a vehicle that never arrives. It finally dawns that I see no contrails. Oh! Fooled again. It's a hard south wind through the junipers, the powerful engine the rigid trees become, taxiing down the tarmac.

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 20:43:54 GMT

Journeys 101.1

I'm walking. The dull gray of the sky colors the snow a paler gray. I don't feel cold. Only fresh. Refreshed. New. From somewhere off stage left an enormous man falls into step at my left side. He is a great dark mountain of furs and hides with a vast black beard and eyes that glitter like polished pewter under bushy black brows. We walk together in silence on the hard crust of snow. My feet are warm in my mukluks with the in-turned fur. A black form in the distance becomes a cabin as we approach it. The outer walls are thick living chunks of bark from which lichens grow like fur, brown-black webby strands and protective green networks of plant matter. The roof is covered in a deep sod where grasses struggle against the cold. The large man forces open the heavy door with his left arm and stands against it as I enter in front of him. A warm, close interior, a fire already laid and blazing in a large square stove. I sit at a small table against the left wall. The bearded man removes his hides and furs and sits across from me. We never speak. Only gaze at one another. He is the King of Disks of my Tarot spreads, he tells me without speaking. He sees to it that I am safe and provided for. I know this, I say silently; thank you. His eyes peer out of his dark kind face like shiny dimes. I need words, I say without speaking. He stands and lifts a small square door in the floor. We descend steep wooden steps. Now we stand in a root cellar perhaps 6 feet square. The scent of living earth is powerful. He holds up a lantern. I look around to see what is stored there, images in my mind from root cellars I've seen before, shelves of dusty jars and barrels of whatnot. These fail to materialize--I can't bring an object into focus--because that's not what this root cellar is about; those are my own constructs, not true to the experience unfolding. This is about roots. The walls are raw, moist, crumbly earth with root fibers visibly protruding. The man reaches forward and opens two heavy cupboard doors of unworked wood, built into the wall of soil. Behind them--a TV screen (?), and black-and-white display. It reminds me of the RCA Victor console of my childhood in my grandmother's house, and I lapse into nostalgic images until I find myself back in the cellar with the patient, bemused man. I am in error again. Quietly he waits for me to understand. Now I find myself climbing into the screen. I am in the TV set. I am the TV set. I stare out through the open doors into the little dirt cellar and at the approving face of the large man with the lantern. I close my eyes and try to bring in a clear signal. Just like that, we're back walking in the snow. A raven stands out blue-black on the blank expanse ahead, the empty white ground. Beyond it a magenta glow spreads at the bottom of the cloud cover along the flat far edge. As we approach, the clouds lift further, revealing a brilliant sliver of enormous moon, with its silver star, up just ahead of the sun. The raven was my idea. I put it there. I'm pretty sure.