Saturday, November 15, 2008

Remembrances from Apr 1997

Corvallis.  Sat, 5 Apr 1997 

My Dippy-Hippy self demanded that I nap in the circle in the sun and wait for visions. Since I'm lucky enough to have a circle of bricks a stone's throw from the house, complete with an outer circle of trees and next to a river, this impulse took on the nature of a Moral Imperative.

It was a beautiful day: sunny, but not too warm, with an occasional breeze to remind you that the Spring Equinox had just been last week.  And it was a Saturday, too.

My harp was set in the shade of one of the trees. The wind blew through the harpstrings, producing an otherworldly sound. I spread out a blanket upon the long grass, wrapped myself in my cloak (don't want to prematurely age my skin in the sun), and lay on the green sward. In the darkness of the hood, beneath the shadows of my eyelids, I waited.

The harp hummed under the unseen fingers of the blowing wind. I was drifting in the wood between the worlds; there was a woman in green walking towards me. She looked up and began to speak and -- a really loud airplane flew overhead.

The red-black screen of my eyelids shifted, resolved. There were snow-capped mountains Suddenly, I was seeing them through a stone doorway. The stone lintel of the portal was made elegant by simple straight lines carved along the edges. Wide stone pillars held up the roof over the door; it was a colonnade surrounding a courtyard which I had just entered.

Guards and yeomen, wrapped in bands of cloth reminiscent of something Asian, clustered in small groups about the courtyard. I walked towards the temple priests and -- AN ANT WALKED ACROSS MY THROAT.

Shaking the ant out of my cloak I relaxed once again.  It was no use, the sun was beating down on my cloak, turning it into a sauna, and more ants began to walk across my arms, feet and face. Unlike Starhawk, I was unable to eroticise this experience. I sprang up, and made ready my preparations.

Moments later, I began in the North (because Danger Always Comes From A Cardinal Direction), and started circling widdershins.

The voices of animals long dead roared out as the lawnmower blades cut back the grass and scattered the ants.

No comments: