Spirit Of Place

Down by the playground, this ancient guardian abides.

The Edge Of Autumn

Just days before the equinox and blazing hot. Autumn merely a celestial notion.

I'd been expecting a package and news had reached my ears that it had been delivered that very afternoon. Fantastic. With hope in my heart, I walked down the road. 

It was the same walk I'd dreamed of once long ago, and though now I was wide awake in the sun, a subtle hallucinatory quality had  nevertheless begun to steal across the land. 

Most of the time, it's not so obvious that this place is on the edge of the desert. In the brutal last days summer, though, with no soft greenery to cushion it. a barren moonscape reveals itself. Layers of memory (it seemed to me) had become exposed like rocks jutting above the surface, the bleached and jagged bones of the earth. 

I remembered my father, my siblings and the neighbors we'd had, and the games we'd played, among the limestone outcroppings that had their own names and the dry creeks and river bed. The agave, a huge, old towering thing, reached its spiky leaves to the sky. The needly hooked tooth edges snagged my attention, the way things do when the world goes strange.

Yes, the landscape was feeling restive, and really, who could blame it? It had been a relentless season

I was halfway down the road and the wind was picking up. Shades of the old dream again, but this time the wind was scorching, hot enough to distort the air. It rattled and hissed and shook the trees. Soon, like the dream, it began to howl. 

No sooner had I reached the place where the two roads met than I felt it, that mysterious, indescribable sense of another reality overlapping my own. I stood there for a while, half-hypnotized by the spinning vents on top of old Mrs. Kirtchner's house, wondering what it was that I felt, and how to even talk about it. But all I could articulate to myself was that I was standing at the edge of Autumn.

Well, hang around a crossroad long enough and you are bound to discover something.

My package was in the mailbox. What was in it? Eh, just stuff. A red herring, as red as my dress in the equinoctial wind.

I walked back home, once again full of knowledge that was beyond me to explain

Dustlight

It was the dead end of summer, the dry heat so dense you could lean on it, almost. It had been that way for a while; dust rising on Union street in the glaring sun.

I was more than a little wilted by 3 PM when I started up the front steps. If not exactly dizzy, at least a little out of sorts. Perhaps it's no surprise that between the second and third step, I felt time fold over on itself.

There I was as a child, walking up the steps to the hobby store on the self-same street, and the steps of the church hall, and the door of the Hermann Son's lodge for dance class, and swinging around the railings at the old convent with Karen, and playing hopscotch downtown as if these memories lived in a place made of summer heat and I had just wandered in.

I thought "the heat is a doorway" and though it only lasted a moment, I realized it was true.

Withered And Sere

It's the end of August and the earth is skin and bones. The air is on fire, the leaves have given up the ghost.

The feeling of lost time overwhelms me. I am lonely and heartsick and worn. I'm a moth in a lampshade, ragged wings burning.

Oh, but I shouldn't complain, it could be worse, so much worse, it's just being stretched thin in the heat, is all. The late summer blues.

I tell myself the loneliness doesn't matter, it's just my nature, and anyway how much of myself do I really need? No, no, it doesn't matter.

If I say it enough, perhaps one day it will be true.

Before Sunrise

One thing that's been a little different this summer is my morning ritual. In the quiet time just before daybreak  - most days, anyway - I make a small fire in a certain place, out of juniper and whatever other herbs that might seem to fit the needs of the day. It clarifies things. It brings focus. 

This summer has been one of successful witchery - so successful that I find myself confronted with that nervousness that comes so often in artwork, when your project goes from being nothing into  becoming something...a moment where you either press on or crumble in the face of fear.

I suppose it's good, to have that feeling - it means that whatever I make of this is up to me.

Squee

Given my previous post about Archie comics, I thought I'd share this nice little stash of 70's era digests that arrived in the mail today.

Scheme Supreme

Much to my surprise, this turns out to be the summer that my youngest child discovered Archie comics. One minute, I'm worried about his getting enough reading practice this summer, the next he's gleefully raced his way through 5 double digests with no sign of stopping.

Obviously I'm not one of those parents who think comic books are substandard material for teaching kids to read. Quite the contrary - I've been impressed by the speed at which his comprehension of even difficult words has improved. Anyway, I experienced it myself when I was just about his age.

I can even remember the moment it happened.

It was the night before Easter, and we were spending the holiday with my seaside cousins, which was always a thrill. Their house was very quiet at night, though, much more quiet than my own, and I despaired of ever falling asleep. My cousin was snoring away in the next bed so she was no help at all. On her bookshelf I spied a Jughead Jones digest - it was a bit worn and no doubt appropriated from her dad's bedside table (and really, if a chemical engineer like her dad could read comics, then who could find fault?) I opened it up and began to read a story called "Scheme Supreme."

I hardly knew who Jughead was or why all the girls in town were plotting against him, but the idea of a secret society (The United Girls Against Jughead or U.G.A.J.) laying out complex plans to prevent the spread of his anti-romance ways was very compelling. Even if the plans were a massive failure and by todays' standards, definitely not politically correct.

The eternal allure of the unobtainable man

Most of all, I liked the idea of the unobtrusively-placed red thumbtack that signals the meeting. Even at 7 years old I was fascinated with signs and signals. 

At any rate, I fell in love in love with Archie comics, and with Jughead and Betty especially (seriously, wouldn't they have been the best couple?) and they kept me company during those grim years at elementary school when I felt utterly alone.

For my son's part, he's thrilled to learn that Archie has been around for 80 years. This means he has 80 years worth of comics to read.

Now at least one of my kids will appreciate inheriting  my ridiculously huge comics collection one day.

Adventures In Orange

Gonzales, Texas, on a Tuesday afternoon. Wandering the quiet sun-bleached town. Remembering. Nothing special happened, no epiphany, just the slightest breath of the past, a faint scent to remind me of what it was like to look forward to something.

I snapped this in the mirrored window of a locksmith's shop ("space for rent", the sign said) because of the novelty of blending in with the color scheme.  It almost never happens, you know. I somehow usually manage to clash.

Gossip In The Grain

Late July. The corn is scorched in the field. The rustling leaves hint at secrets we are not yet to be told.

Season Of The Witch

It's high summer and magic is in the air. It's also overflowing my file folders, so it's time once again to share with you a collection of witchy gifs.  Enjoy.

A Multitude Of Moonmen

For many years now, I've had  recurring dreams of sending tiny little letters in tiny little envelopes through a series of tiny mailboxes concealed in strange places.

It's never been clear what the messages are, or to whom, but in the interest of evoking this dream, I have made a collection of tiny cards and envelopes. Perhaps soon I will know where to send them.

Rainy Sunday

Not fighting the witchy aesthetic today.

Midsummer

It was midsummer eve, and I was preparing a special place in the garden. When I was little, this was my favorite tree. I would sit in the crook of its branches and imagine that it possessed some sort of magic, was perhaps even an enchanted being.

This was years before reading The Old Woman In The Wood, though when I did come upon it, in the memorious summer I turned 10, it immediately became my favorite. It seemed perfectly reasonable that my tree might be a handsome prince in disguise. Although looking at it now, some features of this tree are unmistakably feminine.

While I was decorating, a snail came along to check out the prairie verbena. I have the feeling he approved the result.

Happy solstice to all.

Sun In Splendor

A day so hot, the air moves in slow motion. Heat shimmer rises into the sky. There's nothing to do but seek the water as the sun blazes its way toward the ends of the earth.

It's the burning edge of summer, and the morning chill of May is just a memory, unbelievable, ridiculous even, to think I could have ever felt so cold.

Man In The Moon

A nice view of the man in the moon, June 16, 2019.

The Gateless Gate

When I wrote about the twelvetide fortune-telling method in January, I didn't know how much to expect as far as divination was concerned. There have been a few subtle bits and pieces that had seemed accurate predictions, and this one in March that I'm convinced was quite accurate indeed, although the month was off.

Now I've got another hit, I believe, and this time, the timing was very close to the mark. Read on and decide for yourself...

This is what I wrote about my dream on December 30th, 2018:

"In waking life, there are two arched gateways in my town that are several miles apart. In my dream, however, theses gateways have become two sides of the same gate, as if the distance between them has disappeared. It's a little eerie, as if this suddenly appearing shortcut violates the laws of physics. Nevertheless, I pass through it on my way somewhere. I find a shop where I ask for a cup of hot tea.They say they don't have any, but I tell them they do, they just don't realize it. I find the tea and get my drink for free."

A couple of weeks ago, thinking about those gates, I went to check the one that is in my neighborhood. It had been a while since I'd last looked. But when I got there, what do you know - it was gone.

The gate had been in that space between the trees - previously, and always, as far as I know - it had  led to undeveloped land that was used as a wildlife reserve. Now, there was a road being built, It was easy to see down the cleared space to where a neighborhood was going up.

Now, I had known that a housing edition was being built somewhere back there, but it was my understanding that there would be no road connecting it with our neighborhood, for the sake of minimizing traffic. Yet there it was.

Feeling a bit disturbed by this, I drove the several miles it took to reach the new neighborhood to have a look at it.  The route I took is marked here in green:

This is a route that had been more or less the same my entire life, but sure enough, there was now a new road - one with the same name as the one in my neighborhood. Like so:

As you can tell by the positions of gate 1 and gate 2 on the map, they are not connected, but by golly, there is now a new road connecting them much more closely together, something I did not at all imagine happening last December.

Here is the second gate, just for reference:

And here is the new road, from the vantage point of the new neighborhood being built:

This is just on the other side of the now missing gate.

The distance between the two gates is now reduced considerably, and at the same time is sure to bring changes to this place, which had remained the same for such a long time. This change does make me a bit uneasy, much like the gate in the dream.

This was a prediction for June, and while I discovered this in late ,May, the road isn't open yet. For all I know, it will be open within the month.

As for the part of the dream with the shop and the tea, I'm not sure what meaning that has, if any.

I suppose it might mean that even though this change may be somewhat disturbing, not to be too closed-minded and risk overlooking any positive aspects of the new situation.

Wayfarers All

"He rose and descended river-wards once more, then changed his mind and sought the side of the dusty lane.There, lying half-buried in the thick, cool under-hedge that bordered it, he could muse on the metalled road and all the wonderous world that it led to; on all the wayfarers, too, that might have trodden it, and the fortunes and adventures they had gone to seek or found unseeking - out there, beyond..."

From The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Cloud Shadows

It's nearly the end of May, the days passing like cloud shadows on the road.

The Tale Of The Sad Cheese Sandwich

It's been more than 7 years since I left Victoria, 7 years since I wrote this post, and 3 more weeks that I've been struggling to write this one. Writer's block rearing up from the unconscious like some ferocious beast.

It's silly, you know. It's just a post about a sandwich. How hard can it be? Yet nothing works. It's all too serious, or too funny, or just weird.

I tried to describe that time, how it felt, the white heat haze and infernal geometry of the streets. The dusty wind that rattled the palm trees. It all meant something, though what that was, it's beyond me to say. The way that despair shrinks all your existence into a tiny point in space and time. How surprisingly sad it can feel to leave a place you hate.

I was about to give up, when by pure happenstance an old email to a friend coughed up the original tale:

April 25, 2012 -

The adventures of sad cheese sandwich and the she-hulk, part 1

Okay, so...the only bright spot in my life right now is the purchase of a cheese sandwich at a shop not far from the Silence of the Lambs storage facility (not it's real name :p) which I have in the afternoon between shuffling my furniture around. (Don't judge! Even if my life has dwindled to this sorrowful and lonely point, it's still a pretty good sandwich.)

However...yesterday, a couple of guys tried to interfere with Sad Cheese Sandwich time by giving me grief. I remembered your advice to go all She-Hulk on anyone who gave me grief, so I did. Of course, these things are relative - I'm not very Hulk-like, but I did give them the German Sneer, which is quite devastating. So yay me. ;p

This amazes me, reading it now; not just that I'd totally forgotten the She-Hulk bit, but the chirpy, almost cheerful tone I'd taken in one of the most unhappy periods of my life. So unhappy that - that particular day while sitting in the parking lot with the fabled sandwich - I'd considered running away to the desert and letting the situation implode on its own.

Oh, but of course I didn't, I couldn't. Chirpiness aside, I made the reasonable and responsible choice. I couldn't risk my marriage or take the kids so far from their father, or send my mother to a home. No, I must go back, yield to family pressure and effectively put myself in bondage for the indefinite future. Yay, me.

I suppose that's why it still rankles, and why it haunts me. It was one of the last moments of autonomy I had. Victoria meant freedom to me, and I'd be lying if I said losing that doesn't hurt every day.

7 years later, what is the result? One child grown, one nearly so, the baby not a baby any longer. Of the pets we brought, only Misu, the fearless warrior queen, survives. The children are happy, they swear. My husband is happy. They have taken to this sere and rocky place in a way I never did.

I still have a cheese sandwich sometimes, but it's not the same.

We retrieved our belongings from storage long ago. Yet I still keep the key. It's symbolic, I guess.

Waiting for the day I can retrieve my autonomy.

Walking In A Hippie Wonderland

For the Easter holiday, we took the kids to a renaissance faire, which is exactly like the renaissance, if it had been exclusively populated by hippie wizards and the occasional elf.

 

The kids had a great time and enjoyed the music and middle-eastern food. It also gave us the chance to shop for their dad's Walpurgis-birthday.

(and to buy this lovely green nd rust colored silk for myself.)

The youngest enjoyed the faery courtyard and the jousting especially. He made us play pretend jousting for the rest of the day.

All in all it was a happy, if non-traditional, holiday.

Now it's time to get ready for Walpurgisnacht and then, I think, to finally write my post about the Sad Cheese Sandwich (see number 8 here) Like so many things lately, seven years of waiting seems long enough.