The Long Goodbye: Part Four

Share

It seemed I had two choices before me. The Page of Wands, a young, spontaneous and energetic form that could be the very embodiment of the internet as a medium, with its attention-grabbing multimedia and almost endless opportunities for someone to make a name for herself through charisma and laughter. Or the Ten of Pentacles, embodying formality, structure and an engagement with traditional patterns of expression that could lead to the fruitful, prosperous marriage of spirit and form characterized by generosity and exchange. And the third card? The choice that was not a choice?

Making a Clean Break

Last night, I had a dream. One of those dreams so vivid and blunt, it's hard to ignore the message. One of those dreams that just feels like a metaphor, even when you're in it.

I dreamt I was a student in college again, engaged in a class discussion led by a wise old professor. Yet this professor seemed to take particular pleasure in setting me up for embarrassment and frustration. As the discussion progressed, he would often interrupt himself or students as they explained their ideas or expounded on theories, and shoot a question at me. Being a dream, I can't now remember even what the subject was — but I do know that, again and again, I felt the frustration rise as I found myself interrupted, torn out of my focus on the ideas of others as they unfolded — forced instead to stand up to prove myself to these peers, to prove myself worthy of being there to learn. It wasn't enough to attend, to listen intently and consider carefully the concepts being shared. But more frustrating was that, each time this professor interrupted the flow of conversation to challenge me to a verbal duel, he allowed only a sentence out of my mouth before he veered back again, leaving me hanging there dumb, my words decontextualized and my thoughts unfinished. It felt for all the world like a goddamned Twitter feed — one hundred forty characters was all I got.

Until at one point, I finally managed to break out of it. The next question he asked me, I found myself speaking in paragraphs. Whole arguments cascaded out of my mouth in point after point, theories backed up by evidence and examples, counter-arguments considered and deconstructed. The professor seemed impressed, asked another question to prompt me... yet I could feel something slipping. The students around me began to talk over me in their own conversations. Someone behind me snickered. Mid-sentence, the professor interrupted me again, this time to tell me, "Well, at least you've finally demonstrated that you're not a complete idiot, which is a bit of a surprise. Some of your ideas were actually pretty sound. Of course, you're horribly boring, so boring that your dullness itself is offensive and detracts from the values of your ideas no matter what they are. You were more attractive when you weren't saying anything."

Keeping the Days: The Orchid Shamans

Share

The Orchid Shamans
Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA


As the days grow darker and the winds grow bitter here in Pittsburgh, one of my favorite ways of coping is to retreat to the Phipps Conservatory and Greenhouse to meander through their rooms of lush greens and radiant blossoms. The orchid room, especially, always fascinates me. I imagine each orchid could be a shaman from some strange, exotic tribe, wild feathers and fringe and face paint, flinging their arms open to some unheard drumbeat pulsing in the roots. If I were a shaman, I think I'd want to be a shaman of the orchids.

Keeping the Days: Autumn Sepia

Share

Autumn Sepia
Frick Park, Pittsburgh, PA

Keeping the Days: Leaves After Rain

Share

Leaves After Rain
Frick Park, Pittsburgh, PA

Keeping the Days: Woods in the Fall

Share

Golden Woods in the Local Park
Frick Park, Pittsburgh, PA

Keeping the Days: Fire and Flame

Share

Autumn Water Lilies
Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA

Keeping the Days: Water and Wave

Share

Moonrise over the Atlantic, Outer Banks, NC

Dreaming the Blue Sword: A Vision of Nonviolence

Share

In 2007 the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing Mahatma Gandhi's birthday (October 2) as the "International Day of Non-Violence." The resolution highlights "the holistic nature and the continued relevance of the Mahatma's message for our times, indeed for all times to come. It encompasses the rejection of violence against oneself, against others, against other groups, against other societies and against nature."

We were in the dream, deeply, all of us abandoned to the dark and nervous landscape of nightmare.

There were so many of us, all strangers, all lost in what might have been a vast forest of ancient trees, their rough bark twisted with vines, or what might have been a great hall of smooth marble pillars, impassive as gods holding up the infinite ceiling of the night sky. Whatever it was, it was grand and tall and sweeping in every confused direction, and we bumped and stumbled together, low and frightened and half-blind. I was panicked, terrified, my heart pounding in my gut and my ears and in the soles of my feet. And in my hands, slick with sweat and fear, I gripped a sword.

Keeping the Days: Earth and Stone

Share

Mushrooms of Acadia National Park, Maine

Keeping the Days: Water and Well

Share

Witch Hole Pond, Acadia National Park, Maine

Ruby Sara :: To Pray in Color

Share

Greetings, friends, from the sweltering streets of the fiercely-wild urban midwest! I am honored to be posting here at Meadowsweet & Myrrh this month — many thanks to Ali for the opportunity!

From where I write this, the land is up to its ears in late summer weather — hot, muggy, days and restless nights. The rise and fall of cicadas and the smell of roasting corn. These days between, when the Beloved has died again for his people (say Hail to that Sweet King of the Raw Feast, Master in the Wheat and the Corn; the Fire in the Whiskey, the Burn in the Blood!) and the orchards settle in for apple season, I anticipate the double-edged lessons of harvest — bread and death, decay and abundance. The days grow ever shorter, but still the Mama overflows — gardens run weedy and rampant with fruit. The tomatoes ripen and swell into a ready red, the rose hips begin to turn, and those who garden anticipate zucchini bread, and zucchini casserole, and zucchini soup, and grilled zucchini, and zucchini conversations, and zucchini jokes... and sacks of zucchini left on doorsteps by anonymous hooligans with green thumbs and dwindling storage space. All hail the mighty zucchini! If we were to create a green saint of determination and fortitude, we might do worse than to nominate this outrageous vegetable/fruit. Zucchini may take over the world yet, haunting our days with its yellows and greens. I love zucchini like I love the summer — the flagrant, saucy ripeness of it, the fiercely mad dancing that goes on and on forever — a whirling, roiling drumbeat of moths and moons, of color and life.

Yes, summer passing slowly into fall is a season of outrageous color. The Mama, giving up her precious ghost, gasps her last in shocking, glorious extravagance — soon the sunset season in red and copper, thrust against a matchless blue sky. Yellow corn, squash and apples. Golden honey, and rain that turns the wind into diamond music. The smell of smoke, even... the colors of harvest not only in those our eyes perceive but our other senses as well. The color of heat, the smell of ripe apples rotting on the open ground, the sound of bees in the field.

Etymology of My Gods

Share

Update: In light of this morning's news, I would like to dedicate this post to Isaac Bonewits and his family. Though I never knew him personally, I find myself deeply saddened by his passing, but also deeply grateful for the vision and influence he had within our community. His thoughts on liturgy and theology have both challenged and inspired me, even when I haven't always agreed with them. American Druidry wouldn't be the same without the energy and devotion he brought to everything he did. I pray we will one day achieve, with joy and grace, that vibrant Pagan community he envisioned and worked for all his life. May your journey beyond the Ninth Wave bring you peace and beauty, Isaac, and may love and blessings comfort your family and friends in their time of grief.

That word for god — the breath, the gleaming — the shining days like great columns bearing up the sky, buttresses, rafters. Beams that in their falling, hold.

I say the names of my deities, I feel the drop of each sound into silence. They gather on the long, bent grasses in the meadow and the field, *dewos-, the many that glisten in the coming dark. Amulets of sky, jewels of the daylight, coalescing in the movement of my breath, the lingering touch of the wind. They draw themselves, wavering, into the weight and gravity of form.

I open the door, and the gods enter the dark interior of my being. The gust, the call, tracing themselves in the dust of the rafters, the shift that shivers down in drifts of gentle gray and grit, mingling particulates stirring in every corner of the sunlight. What is so small and intimate and strange — numen, spirare — the dancing footsteps of spirit in the air, the vital stir of fear, the silent thrill, calling me to courage in the deep spaces of my birth and dying, the liminal between. I am on the threshold, pouring out my breath in quick libations. I am pouring out my soul-song to mingle on the doorsill with the soft noise of their presence.

And She is rising up again, and rising up, she is the exalted queen and lady of all that rises up —

Madeline, Praying (a short story of quiet and mystery)

Share

A hand injury has cruelly kept me from the keyboard for the past week, and in the interest of healing I am still taking the typing very slow and easy. So that my lovely, loyal readers won't feel abandoned, however, I offer you something from the stockpile. The following is a short story I wrote seven or eight years ago, way back in college, before coming whole-heartedly to the Druid path, during a time of grappling with (dis)enchantment, death and mystery. Oddly enough, it features a girl named Madeline (more cynical and angry at Spirit than I ever was), and a hint of flowers. I thought it would be an enjoyable follow-up to last week's guest post. Reading it now, I can only remember hints and shadows of what I was trying to grasp as I wrote it. But I hope you enjoy it, despite its uncertainty.

Madeline, Praying

Entering the abandoned church, she felt as if she were entering the glen of a deep forest. Etched stained glass windows filtered light like entwined branches arching out from the thick columns, trunks of stone. Normally so hard, so brittle, the glass just like any glass, fragile and easily shattered, splintered by a brick or baseball. The marble and granite unmovable, chiseled perhaps, but otherwise worn only by time stretching into future eons of unwritten histories. Yet as she entered the church, she felt as if she were entering something alive, something breathing, momentarily transformed from brittle, breakable, into something delicately living, moving with the breeze, shifting colors of sunlight through branches of trees, seemingly so still and yet growing, always reaching, imperceptibly, in all directions for the sustenance of warmth, of earth and sun, of water, air and light with which the world of this stale chapel was suddenly transfused.

Delving into Divination: A Long Story of Silliness

Share

Temperance (XIV): Dressed in faded red, she perches perfectly balanced and at ease on the twisted limb of the old tree, suspended in air rippling, spiraling, tingling with the great powers that surround her. In her pale arms she cradles the pulsing sphere — wisps of energy, the tiny fey beings, drift and rise like steam, swirling and weaving, twining around each other as they climb until they blossom into full, solid forms. Watery blue, fiery gold, the great-talonned dragon and the frantic phoenix entwining, arching skyward, each with an orb of its own, pure color. The stony gargoyle makes offerings; the little songbird opens its wings wide, about to take flight. Her thoughts turn around them, seeking the power of their presence. She touches the sphere, undisturbed, her long fingers moving lovingly in contemplation — the perfect, pale-white glow of a halo exactly framed by the curve of her small, delicate wings, the light of it whispering to her, her thoughts turning around each other, dark and bright, water and fire, a sensual dance of power, duality, tension and life. The brown curls of her hair float as if caught up in a warm, rising current. She holds the churning forces of the world in her mind, between her hands, and every movement is poised here, utterly, in this moment, like a gulp of delicious air, like a quiet gasp in the center of a storm.

- excerpt from my tarot journal

For one reason or another the practice of divination has been something that, for a long time now, has given me trouble. I just never seemed to "get into" it. Perhaps because of the amount of study and memorization it seemed to require (though for other subjects and practices this has never stopped me). Or perhaps because my day-to-day life is often so exquisitely routine that daily readings hardly seemed relevant. Or maybe both. Though I consider myself a generally intuitive person, cultivating this aspect through my creative writing, divination as a regular practice seemed... unnecessary, one of those things people did to feel "occult" rather than taking the time to analyze their motivations and behaviors in more mundane ways, or maybe to wow their friends at parties. But I don't go to many parties, lovely readers, not many parties at all.

The April Fool

Share

I was waiting for the right time to share this, but today is such an amazingly beautiful day — warm and sunny here outside Phipps Conservatory, with the miniature daffodils in bloom and a single red tulip already spilling open among the green beds, and inside the agave plant in the cactus room (Jeff's favorite room in the Conservatory) is in bloom for the first and only time its whole life, sending up a flower-topped stalk forty feet into the air, so high they've had to remove a pane of glass from the greenhouse ceiling... aw, hell, I decided, I'll just blurt it out! Jeff and I are getting married!

In fact, we're getting married next month! I know, I know, you Pagans out there might point out that traditionally Beltane (or May Day) was considered a day of ill-omen on which to be married, associated as it is with rather more ephemeral and (gasp!) even illicit love affairs and heady-passionate tumbles in the dewy grasses. But you know... we're tired of waiting! For the past week, Jeff's youngest daughter, age five, talked about little more than her mother's up-coming June wedding to her next husband, and how pretty and expensive the dresses would be, and dropping incredibly casual hints to us, such as, "When are you and Daddy going to get married? You love each other enough, don't you?"

I guess Jeff took his daughter's hints to heart, because this morning I rolled groggily out of bed to find him already downstairs, preparing a luscious raw vegan breakfast (complete with a few lit tealights blessed by my Kildare-flame candle and a few twigs of blooming, bright yellow forsythia from the backyard in an adorably tiny glass vase on the table) and, before I was even fully awake, he was down on one knee. To be fair, he's spent a lot of time on his knees lately, having broken his foot about a month ago and finding crawling around the house easier than using the too-short crutches to hobble around on (he's gotten to know the cat better this way, too)... but this time it was, you know, the big Down On One Knee, the real deal. Apparently, he'd been saving up for a ring for the past month or so, but he's always been terrible at keeping secrets and, anyway, neither of us knew my ring size. So as of this morning, I wear proudly on my finger the white, ratcheted band of one of those plastic ring sizers they send you free in the mail.

And after enjoying a delicious berry breakfast, we got to talking about what comes next, and well, we started to wonder... why wait? We can hop down to the County Register or whoever and get a marriage license and, after a quick informal ceremony, be done with the whole thing. None of this big white dress and half a dozen bridesmaids and $500 wedding cake nonsense. Anyway, we're Pagans, which means we can chuck half the wedding traditions right out the window to begin with as being stuck in an anti-feminist and archaic form of purity-obsessed Christianity.

Can we plan a wedding in a month? Who knows! But one thing we can be sure of is that come Beltane, we'll be on our way to husband-and-wife-hood regardless of whether the florist can scrounge up enough calla lilies or the photographer knows how to highlight our new matching hubby-and-wifey tattoos (I'm thinking a single tiger lily in a heart with each other's names emblazoned across, maybe on the bicep, or the forearm?).

And the best part is, for only $15,000 or so venue fee, we can hold the ceremony in Phipps Conservatory itself, among the blossoms and foliage we have come to love so well! It's a dream come true! But one thing's for sure: April is bound to be a crazy month for two fools in love!

The Tale of Mabon: A Bedtime Story

Share

The kids sit each in their beds, the littlest one propped up half upside-down on her elbows, her tiny bare toes playing over the pinewood slats of the bunk above hers. Their father has just finished lighting the candle of the newly created altar, its offering bowl already overflowing with small gifts from the day's explorations in the park: acorns, stones, leaves and feathers and cicada shells. Everyone rests, quiet and attentive at the busy day's end. I speak softly.

"When we picked out this statue in the store, your dad and I wanted to get you something that would remind you of your own mother, and of the Mother Goddess who watches over you all the time. And I know some of you—" I wink gently at the second-oldest, a serious girl who frowns a little in thought, "some of you liked the other statue better, the two parents cradling the infant, because it reminded you of rebirth and renewal. I liked that one, too. But the more I look at this statue, the more it reminds me of a story. It's a story about separation and loss, and of finding family again in unexpected places. And I think—I hope—that when you hear this story, maybe you'll begin to like the statue a little better and it will have new meaning for you, as it does for your dad and me." The kids are silent, stretching restless limbs beneath their sheets.

"The story I want to tell you begins, 'Once, a long time ago when the world was new...'"

Once, a long time ago when this ancient world was still very new, there was a mother. Her name was Modron, which means Great Mother, for she was beautiful and strong, and her love shone from her as light from a great sun. And Modron had a son whose name was Mabon, which means Great Son. Mabon glistened and glimmered with his mother's love, and within him, his own heart also shone with love in return. Those who looked upon him were dazzled by his great youth and energy. But when he was still just an infant, a tragedy occurred. Mabon had not yet slept three nights at his mother's side, suckling at her breast and nuzzling into her arms, when he was stolen away into the darkness! When Modron awoke to find her beloved son gone, and no one who could tell her who had stolen him away, she mourned and wept, and her tears swelled and flowed like a great ocean. For a Mother's sorrow, too, can be great as her love.

Many years passed without sight or sound of Mabon, and all this time Modron continued to grieve and hope. Then, one day, a king arrived seeking to speak to Modron of her son. The king's name was Arthur, and he came with a retinue of skillful and courageous knights following behind him. King Arthur and his knights had been set an impossible task: to hunt the huge and terrible boar called Twrch Trwyth. This boar was so strong, and so fast, and so tough, that no hunter in the world could track him down and kill him, save for the greatest huntsman of all. No one knew who this huntsman might be, but rumor in the land whispered Mabon's name, the Great Son who had once shone with such energy even when just a babe. The people said that if Mabon still lived and could be found, surely he could kill the boar. And so King Arthur had come to Modron, to ask her if she knew where her son might be found.

The question pierced her heart and made her laugh through her sorrow. "Do you think I have not wondered that myself, all these long years? And yet, though my sorrow is as great as the deepest ocean, as vast as the darkest expanse of sky on a moonless night, I have never been able to discover where he is, or if he is even still alive. You have come a long way, King Arthur, but I cannot help you. You may as well ask the blackbird where the boy is hidden!" she added with a sad, helpless wave of her hand.

King Arthur, too determined to give up, went and did just that. He and his knights searched out the Blackbird, an old creature who had long guarded the gateway into other realms on the edge of dawn. "Blackbird," Arthur called, "We are looking for Mabon, son of Modron, who was stolen from his mother's side three nights after his birth. Do you know where he may be hidden?"

The Blackbird peered down at Arthur and his knights with quick, obsidian eyes. "I am old, as you well know," he said at last. "You see this dusty spot here where I sit? When I first was born, there used to stand here a smith's anvil, the biggest you might ever see, made of the hardest iron. Yet no hammer ever touched this anvil, except that I pecked at it with my beak gently every day. Now, nothing is left of it but this dust beneath my feet. That," said the Blackbird, stirring the dust with his wings, "is how old I am. And yet I have never seen nor heard of Mabon, son of Modron.

"But," the Blackbird continued, "I know of one who is even older than I am, and I will take you to him."

Arthur and his knights thanked the Blackbird for his kindness, and followed his lead. He soon led them to the bright Stag of the forest, whose old coat glistened as with midday sunlight. "Stag," called Arthur, "We are looking for Mabon, son of Modron, who was stolen from his mother's side three nights after his birth. Do you know where he may be hidden?"

The Stag lowered his huge, antlered head and gazed at Arthur and his knights with ancient amber eyes. "I am old, as you well know," he said at last. "You see this massive oak tree beneath which we stand? When I was first born, this oak tree was barely a sapling sprung up from its acorn, and yet now it is the biggest tree in the forest, thick with years of growth, its heavy limbs stretching wide in all directions, and the prongs of my own antlers number just as many as its branches. That," said the Stag, swinging his head with pride, "is how old I am. And yet I have never seen nor heard of Mabon, son of Modron.

"But," the Stag continued, "I know of one who is even older than I am, and I will take you to her."

Arthur and his knights thanked the Stag for his kindness, and followed his lead. He soon led them to the Owl, whose rippling, moonshine eyes had watched the comings and goings of night for unknown ages and now looked on King Arthur with placid kindness. "Owl," called Arthur, "We are looking for Mabon, son of Modron, who was stolen from his mother's side three nights after his birth. Do you know where he may be hidden?"

The Owl adjusted her silent wings and turned her haunted, blossomy face towards Arthur and his knights. "I am old, as you well know," she said at last. "You see this ancient forested valley in which we stand? When I first was born, there stood a forest here even older and more wild than this one, and I watched as the people of the land moved in and cut it to the ground; yet as the people slowly abandoned the land for more fertile soil, another forest grew up in its place and that, too, became wild and strange with age, until again the tillers of soil moved through slashing and ripping up the roots from the earth, and the forest withered and disappeared and the valley became like an empty bowl beneath the sky. But the lives of people are passing, so easily will they go to war against each other, so quickly do they drain the sacred land dry—and so again human beings left this valley to the gods of wild places, and this is the third ancient forest I have watched grow to wilderness here. That," said the Owl, her low eyes shimmering like deep pools, "is how old I am. And yet I have never seen nor heard of Mabon, son of Modron."

"BUT!" the boy chimes in loudly from his upper bunk, and I laugh. "That's right!" I say, "I see you're catching on..."

"But," the Owl told Arthur, "I know of one who is even older than I am, and I will take you to him."

Arthur and his knights thanked the Owl for her kindness, and followed her lead. She soon led them to the noble Eagle, who held his head aloft and flourished a beak and talons so sharp and true they might slice the air itself in two. "Eagle," called Arthur, "We are looking for Mabon, son of Modron, who was stolen from his mother's side three nights after his birth. Do you know where he may be hidden?"

The Eagle regally preened a few stray pinfeathers into place and blinked at Arthur and his knights with benevolent, piercing eyes. "I am old, as you well know," he said at last. "You see this tiny rock I clutch between my talons? When I first was born, there stood here a mighty standing stone, so lofty that it towered above every mountain, and I could sit upon it every night and lift my head to strike my beak against the upper limits of the black sky, and each peck pierced the darkness and became a star. And yet the stars you see now are numerous, beyond counting, and I made every one; and the standing stone that thrust up from the earth met wind and rain, the elements of air and water, and together the three joined in a dance that wore the stone away, until now all that remains is this mere pebble at my feet. That," said the Eagle, clacking his beak that had made the stars themselves, "is how old I am. And yet I have never seen nor heard of Mabon, son of Modron."

The children moan in sympathetic exasperation, and I hush them and quickly return to the story, riding the energy of their anticipation, pulling their attention taut as a bowstring.

By now, as you can imagine, King Arthur was beginning to despair that he would ever find Mabon, the Great Son of Modron, to help him hunt the wild, terrible boar. His face was haggard with searching, his eyes sunk deep from sleepless nights and long journeying to these ever more ancient beings, none of whom seemed able to help him. His knights, though loyal and trusting in their king, were beginning to tire as well, and being a good king to his people and friend to his companions, Arthur knew he must soon call off the search for their sake if not his own.

The Eagle, whose keen mind could read the fatigue and stress in Arthur's expression, had sympathy for the weary king. "But let me tell you a story," he said to Arthur. "This story begins: Once, a long time ago when the world was new.... There was a great famine in the land. I was still young then, and had my fair share of suffering and hunger. One day, I had flown far from my usual hunting spots in search of something to eat, when I spotted far below me, in a small pool shaded by nine hazel trees, the quick shimmer of a fish in the water. Without second thought, I dove! I clenched onto the fish with both feet, sinking my talons deep determined to catch the thing, for if I didn't I would surely starve before nightfall. But the fish was blessed with an almost monstrous strength, and it dragged me under, down and down into the spiraling, swirling darkness of the pool. If I had not finally relinquished the thought of my own hunger gnawing within me and released my quarry, I would have drowned.

"This creature, I learned later, was the ancient Salmon of Wisdom, even older than I, who had lived for ages upon ages in the sacred pool, feeding on the hazelnuts which fell into the pool from the surrounding grove. Hazelnuts, they say, are food for the gods, and I would not be surprised if the Wise Salmon herself were a goddess dwelling in that strange and mysterious place. A mere king like myself," said the Eagle, "could never presume to capture a goddess against her will! But let me tell you, Arthur—if the Salmon of Wisdom still dwells within that pool, I can take you to her. Although all the oldest creatures of the land could not tell you where to find Mabon, son of Modron, certainly she will know and she will help! And if she cannot, then your quest truly is beyond all hope."

And so, with new hope and fresh energy, Arthur led his knights with the Eagle as their guide far across the land, over gentle green downs and through dark twisting woods, until at last they came to the sacred pool in the hazel grove. Exhausted, King Arthur knelt by the side of the pool. Its surface moved in subtle wavelets from where a small stream fed into the pond, weaving and trickling between the roots of the trees. It seemed to Arthur, as he looked upon the water, that there in the reflection of shading branches he could see the ancient, sparkling eyes of a goddess smiling at him—then they were gone! In a flash, the silver body of a fish flickered by, and Arthur called out, "Salmon of Wisdom! We have come a long way to seek your help. We have spoken to the Blackbird, and the Stag, and the Owl, and the Eagle, and of all these ancient beings, none could lead us to what we seek. We are looking for Mabon, son of Modron, who was stolen from his mother's side three nights after his birth. Do you know where he may be hidden?"

From the depths of the pool there came a lovely, watery voice, barely distinguishable from the bubbling of the stream. "And did you ask his mother?"

"Well, yes!" Arthur said, "But she said she did not know!"

Sad laughter bubbled up from the glimmering darkness. "Modron's sorrow over the loss of her son is as great as an ocean, and as obscure," said the Salmon, "but the ocean is my home, and I know the secrets of its depths as I know my own. Every year I return to this pool and follow the stream far into the hills of this country, all the way to spring in the courtyard of the Castle of Light. And I tell you, Arthur, that for many years now I have heard the weeping and sorrow of one lost and alone when I have come there."

"Do you think, Wise Salmon, that this sorrowing sound may be of the Great Son?"

"I have no doubt," said the Salmon firmly. "And I will take you to him. You may ride upon my back as I swim—but, I can only carry two. So you must come alone, Arthur, so that when you have freed the son from his captivity you may both ride back together."

So King Arthur took leave of his knights, who saw their king off with a mixture of courage and trepidation, and he clambered aboard the long, slippery back of the Salmon of Wisdom. Quick as light glinting over the water, the Salmon swam with Arthur astride her, and it seemed the countryside sped along on either side of them with a magical speed so that in almost no time at all they were approaching the place where the stream began its journey, the spring by the great Castle of Light.

Now the Castle of Light was strangely named, for in fact it was a dark and forbidding place, overgrown and half-rotted and ruined from long neglect. As the Salmon of Wisdom drew closer to the fortress, Arthur too could hear the weeping and sorrowing sounds echoing from within its mossy stone walls. Leaping from the Salmon's back, he charged into the dim courtyard of the castle and battered the hilt of his sword against the inner door. But the door was old and spongy with rot and gave way before him, and he thrust it open, following the sobbing noises down and down into the dripping dungeons of the Castle. There, at last, he came upon the hunched, weeping figure of a man huddled in a corner. At the noise, the man looked up, and though his eyes were red from crying, his face was radiant and youthful beneath the grimy streaks of tears.

"You there," Arthur said, with the command of a king in his tone, "Are you Mabon, the Great Son of the Great Mother, Modron?"

The young man sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, straightening up. "For sure I am, sir, and I've been locked in this dreadful dungeon for ages upon ages."

"Well," said Arthur, "the doors have rotted and the walls have crumbled, and I have need of a great huntsman to stalk the wild, terrible boar called Twrch Trwyth. So I have come to set you free. Will you come?"

"Of course!" Mabon said, and followed Arthur swiftly from the black of the dungeons up into the wan sunlight above. Together they mounted the Salmon of Wisdom, who looked on the young man with secret gentleness and did not strive to keep the King and his huntsman dry on their return journey home. Waters from the stream splashed and danced against their sides as the Salmon leapt and plunged, her glistening body writhing with the joy of dodging rocks and limbs, and soon all the dirt and strife of years in the dark had washed from Mabon's face and his whole being seemed to shine, strong and healthy again.

And this was how he came to his mother, Modron—bright and gleaming, accompanied by the majesty of Arthur and all his brave knights following behind—and she swept him up in an embrace of gratitude and happiness that was greater than the ocean, greater even than the sunlight and the sun itself. Then she released him, with a smile and one last thankful kiss, and gestured that he could go, with her blessing, to help Arthur hunt his ugly boar.

For, it turns out, he was indeed the greatest huntsman in all the land, and he made a swift end to the huge boar that had eluded so many before him. Then, there was a great feast and celebration afterwards, which I assume Modron and Mabon both attended with pleasure, seated honorably at the King's own table. And that is as good a place as any for the story to end.

The children all begin asking questions at once: "Who was it who stole Mabon in the first place?" "How could he be good at hunting when he was locked up since he was a baby?" "Why did it take so long for them to find the Salmon, when she knew all along?" "Where did you hear that story, did you read it in a book?" the oldest asks. And the boy, perched on the edge of his bunk, asks, "Why did Arthur need to hunt the boar?"

"Why did Arthur need to hunt the boar?" I repeat, with a wink. "Well, that's a whole different story, for another time!"

Lost In Thought....

Share

The sensation crept up on me slowly over the past week or so. I would sit down somewhere with my laptop, sit down to write, and that creeping, subtle sense of confusion would descend. Or maybe that's not quite it. Maybe I would descend, settling down into the inner landscape of my own mind, looking for the trail of breadcrumbs and blue pebbles left behind from my last writing session. Nothing ever looked the same. Sure enough, the words were there, for the most part where I'd put them, signifying directions and ideas, places I had intended to go. Now where was I? What had I been saying? I would write intensely and slowly until I was tired, until sunset and twilight, and then I would go to bed. And in the morning, I would wake up like a half-dazed sleeper in an unfamiliar place, and ask myself: where was I, now?

Writing isn't usually like this for me, at least not anymore. Writing posts for this blog is usually like a pleasant trip out into the countryside, equipped with a picnic blanket and a set of colored pencils. Find some hill with a panoramic view of sky, green and lovely rolling hills, maybe a stream wending its way to the ocean always inexplicably just beyond the horizon--spread my blanket and pull out my sketchpad. It was all there in front of me, and I sat still and quiet, attending, moving my fingers through the air, moving my pencils in scratches and scribbles across the page. Today, I would say, I want to write about meditation, and I would go sit on a hillside somewhere and watch the subject of meditation slowly coalesce in cloudforms and move in sheepish shadows over the shimmering fields below. Or, today, I want to write about grief and longing, and I would sit by a shallow creak and watch the muddy algae flicker and bend in surrender to the restless redundancy of its current. Or, today, I want to write about what it's been like to write...

In college, I used to build things with my writing. Sometimes what I built was a poem, but more often I was building essays, academic papers, analytical responses. I built with the raw material of class discussion and scholarly citations. This kind of writing was not quite like going out to the countryside to watch the wind and waters move across the earth; it was more like clearing a small patch of flat ground and propping up a shanty out of local stones and fallen branches. Sometimes I liked what I built. Every once in a while, an essay I wrote struck me with a kind of shy impressiveness and I would catch myself thinking, "Look what I made with these ideas, look how I supported this one with that one, how I found the best way to utilize the sharp edge of this argument and the suppleness of that philosophy... and how it all holds together, yes, quite nicely I think." What I made was my own in design, but I was working with what fellow students and teachers, what classes and texts, what others had given me. I learned the craft of engineering an argument.

But this is something else. For the past couple weeks, I've been struggling. There are times when I wonder if I'm not as smart as I used to be, if my brain is out of shape, like a muscle I haven't used all that seriously since I graduated college and left grad school to pursue my own passions. If I had stayed in graduate school, I could have a masters, maybe even a doctorate by now, I could be some wizened professor (or perhaps still unemployed, but with a scholarly publication or two under my belt). I would have a foundation, a network of vetted and institutionally-educated peers, some external confirmation of my work and my progress. Maybe I have been fooling myself, believing that I chose freedom when really I chose laziness and lax standards. Maybe if I were still in school, my brain would be accustomed to endurance and resistance training. Maybe writing these posts about pacifism wouldn't be such a struggle.

But then, maybe that's not quite it. Maybe it's just that I'm descending, settling more deeply into my own thoughts. I don't know what I would build with the ideas of others on pacifism and peace--but I have that creeping sensation that this is not engineering anymore, that I am not really building an argument at all. Instead, each writing session feels like turning again towards the jungle, going out once more into the wild. There are tracks and the thin trails worn by animals in the underbrush of my thoughts, and I step carefully, one foot in front of the other, swinging a stick from side to side to beat the bramble and insects out of my path. Each day I go out into the wilderness of my own mind to see what has been living and growing there, what howls in pain at night, what flowers or fans its feathers in the shifting light of sunset or dawn. How could I not know? How could I be so unfamiliar with my own internal landscape?

I want to pause, to catch my breath--but this is the jungle now, not the pleasant farmland and sunny hills closer to home. I'm on the edge of my own consciousness, pushing forward into the dark where seeds planted in childhood, planted lifetimes ago, have grown up thick and unchecked to obscure the lay of the land, where ideas are skittish and comfortable with camouflage. Something leaps from branch to branch high above in the canopy, and all I catch is a glimpse of brown fur, a long tail, the rustling leaves--I have to move quickly before it's gone.

I can feel it, every time I sit down to write, that urgency, that lack of perspective. I keep moving, feeling my way deeper, hoping to stumble suddenly upon a glade or vast gaping valley where I can stop to look around, to see where I have been and where I might be going. I don't know if my ideas hang together, if the words I have set down here and there to mark my way give trustworthy direction. Sometimes I feel as though I can't even be sure what I'm trying to say, or if what I want to say makes sense at all or rests instead on some secret, shoddy framework that may come skidding and tumbling down with the next heavy rain. This is not a mapping or surveying expedition. This is an excavation; this is a scavenger hunt. This is me, edging half-blind through the inner wilds tracking the ghosts of memory and culture, of Gandhi, King and Christ, catching the scent of reverence on a dense and sluggish wind curling through the limbs of trees as ancient as the heart; this is me, stooping now and then to turn aside a stone or trace the spiral lines of new-grown ferns, collecting samples and cuttings and discarded animal bones to bring back with me for closer study.

Now.... where was I?

On Striving & Strife

Share

The following is an excerpt from my personal journal. It's self-indulgent and whiny, to give you fair warning. But I had a tough day at work and I'm exhausted and I need to hear from you lovely, supportive people out there that it's not all noise and worthless effort.... Because I have absolute faith you'll chime in to comfort me. Because you're wonderful like that.

I really do like my work. What I dislike, at times, is my job.

Which might sound weird, since most people who wait tables dislike the customers. I actually quite like my customers. Rarely these days do I meet someone who is just so awful and demanding and rude that it actually upsets me. Most of the time, a sincere smile and honest effort to be helpful will decrease the stress-level of even the angriest customer, and those few that can't be appeased or helped, well, they're only going to be there for an hour or so anyway at most, and then they're gone.

What's stressful is coworkers. Especially lazy coworkers who do nothing but complain about the work and the customers, and then turn around and complain that they don't get more hours or that their customers don't tip them better. Well, which is it? Either you want to be here more (and really earn the money you somehow think customers owe you), or you want to be here less and forfeit good tips because of a lazy, bad attitude.

What stresses me out is that, I love my work. I mean my real work, the work of writing and studying and engaging deeply with the world through an active spiritual and artistic life. And I do it for free, a measly three days a week and whatever other hours I can scrape together. The other four days, I go in (very early and always on time) to a job where, on any given day I could work my ass off for almost nothing, but where most of the time I wait on customers who like me and tip me reasonably well. I don't smoke (cigarettes or pot), I don't drink, I don't party, I don't drive, I don't have cable or even health insurance. I make tons of sacrifices so that I can squeak by working four days a week at a "real job" so that on my days off I can--what? relax? get high? go to the bar? No. So that I can write essays and poetry, meet self-set deadlines for book reviews and newsletters that don't earn me a dime, go to the park to be grateful for the trees, spend time in meditation and practicing guitar. I love my work.

Meanwhile, I am open to ridicule because I "never go anywhere" and I never "do anything" but "sit around and read books." Some days, even when my customers are kind, my coworkers make me feel like crying. I have the right to the choices I've made with my life, and I have worked hard at this restaurant for four years now, to earn seniority, to establish a regular schedule and familiar customers. So that in my spare time, instead of frittering away funds on things to help me escape reality, I can settle down into my life and learn to love it, learn to cultivate happiness and gratitude, and try my hardest to give back, to give freely and without need for compensation or reward. Because I want to be that kind of person, the person who can give freely, with no strings attached, because her basic needs are met and she's content.

It's been a long time since anyone loved me for my good intentions. You spend enough years at a job like this, and you start to think that the only thing that matters is what you actually accomplish, what you can actually do for others. They don't care if you're trying. And everyone wants something. The list grows, and the more efficient you are, the more they want. And gods forbid you're happy--because, certainly, they aren't, and they will want what they think you have, since it seems to bring you something they haven't found for themselves. So they will criticize your restraint and your modest lifestyle, and they will continually fight for those shifts you rely on to barely scrape by. How can you please them, how can you possibly ever give them what they want from you? They want you to be like them--to go clubbing, buy expensive clothes, blow hundreds of dollars on pot and cigarettes--and at the same time, they want you to make do with even less, to cut back so that they can have more. It's only fair.

But I'm tired. I work so hard, because I love my work. Still, every once in a while, I want to be loved just for trying. I want to be supported and appreciated because I strive, because every day, every moment of my life, I am always striving. Striving to be a better waitress, striving to be a better coworker, a better writer and a better thinker and a better friend. To be more independent, and to be more involved; to be more caring, and to be thicker-skinned; to be more confident, and to be more modest; to be more ethical, and to be more accepting; to be more outgoing, and to be more easy-going; to be more imaginative, and to be more realistic. I even try, idiotically, to be more helpful and efficient while maintaining a socially acceptable level of apathy and cynicism.

And yesterday, my best friend confides that he sometimes feels he can't talk to anyone because no one cares about the things he does, or at least not as much. So I want to care even more, to read and learn even more, so that I can be there for him and be someone he can talk to. Because he's important to me and I don't want him to feel alone. But I only have so much energy. And sometimes, I don't know what to do. I try to seek stability and health, so that I can be my best, so that I can accomplish all these things... but sometimes, I end up feeling utterly inadequate.

Last night, I dreamt that my best friend and I were at a parade, and he handed me a small brown pill. I swallowed it whole, like an inside joke, and it turned me into a donkey. And I just ran away from everything, ran on my four hooves striking the dirt, my tail swinging at flies and my long ears flopping, soft and gray. To be a beast of burden, to be soft and gray and free to be simple, to chew grass and stare with large eyes at the world.

So this is the parade. And I'm the ass.

Thoroughly Thurled

Share

In the dream, my old college professor feeds page after page of the Torah into the scanner, letters scrolling down a nearby computer screen in a kind of river-like matrix, flickering, converting to numbers and back again.

The Hebrew alphabet has no vowels; this is what my boyfriend and I discussed over lunch the day before, sitting in the cafe of the local natural history museum, munching on organic veggie wraps and grilled cheese sandwiches. The linguistics of thought, the shape of consciousness, mind itself, embedded with grammar, running over syntax like water over stone, plunging, eddying and moving on again. Breath, exhalation, that which is sacred and cannot be written. The Hebrew alphabet has no vowels. We asked each other, does that make a difference?

In the dream, the computer script searches for meaningful combinations of letters reconverted according to some obscure theological algorithm, a pulsating crossword-puzzle alive with juxtaposition. Now and then, a word in red slips by amidst the stream of symbols and nonsense text. "A red-letter day," my old professor jokes. Mundane words, articles and adjectives, verbs, nothing that coheres or speaks. One catches my eye, and I peck at the keyboard to check the software for bugs.

"There's something wrong," I answer my professor's raised eyebrow, "It's generating noise, now. 'Thurl,' for instance, isn't a real word."

"Yes it is!" He laughs shortly. In dreams, he's often laughing.

"I've never heard of it. Then what does it mean?"

"It is the time," he says, "in a TV Western pistol duel, between when somebody shouts 'Draw!' and somebody else shoots. Or, it is the time right after afternoon tea, but right before an early dinner." I can tell he's teasing me. I wake up scoffing and grinning.

Down at the park that day, I'm too enthralled by the moving surface of the stream to notice the hem of my dress darkening with muddy water where it drags along the rock's edge. I crouch, bare feet planted on the warm rough stone where it juts out into the middle of the creak, and watch the tangled green locks of algae wriggle in the current beneath webbed reflected sunlight.

"I looked it up," I tell my boyfriend, "and it turns out, it means, 'the hip joint of cattle.'"

"So you got that one wrong!" He dips a big toe into the water, saying, "It's not as cold as I expected--but slippery."

"Well, I don't know. So, the other definitions were, 'an aperture or hole'--or as a verb, 'to cut through, to pierce.' And then there's something to do with mining, 'a communication between two adits.' An adit is the long, horizontal entrance or passage into the mine."

"I still don't see what that has to do with dueling." He straddles rocks, gripping his way from one to another towards where I'm perched over the raw umber rushing water. The stream presses itself through a few cracks in the stone, becoming a small waterfall that churns iridescent and pushes an exhalation of soft-gray bubbles down to brush the bottom of the streambed before rising swiftly back to the surface. From where I sit, I can watch this happening forever, never growing old.

"There's a story--I think it's a Zen parable--about a butcher whose knives never get dull. Everyone thinks he must have some magic about his knives, or a special kind of metal, so that he never needs to sharpen them. One day, his young apprentice gets up the nerve to ask. And he explains, his knives never get dull because he doesn't actually cut through the meat and bone the way a less skillful butcher would. Instead, he finds the thin-spaces-between that already exist in the flesh, and he just slips his knife into them."

"That sounds like it's probably Zen," my boyfriend agrees. I stand to embrace him as he steps cautiously onto the rock where I've been crouching. It's then, straightening up, that I notice for the first time my skirt's hem, damp and heavy dragging along the rock, leaving a dirty streak where it slaps and clings to my pale lower calf. "Don't you feel as though winter is still hanging around?" he asks, looking out over the surrounding swamp. The noisy creak twines through last year's leftover straw-like cattails. The sky above is an aching hue of blue unbroken by clouds. A few overhanging trees have just begun to bud. He holds me close, and I can feel his diaphragm expand and contract, his whole body warm against me as he sighs.

"Maybe a little, but I can't really feel it when you're smothering me like this," I say to provoke him. He pulls away in playful defiance, teases and prods me until I recant.



"I think it was a story about the time between when you breathe in, and when you breathe out," I say, sometime later. "But the 'hip joint of cattle' reminded me of it, and then there are all those obsolete definitions about piercing and apertures, openings, entrance-ways, communications. And--if you think about it, that moment of a duel between the draw and the shot, that thin-space-between when nobody breathes. Or the time between meals, I think that was supposed to be a joke about just how wide that space-between can feel sometimes, when someone is hungering. And then, if Hebrew has no vowels, 'thurl' is just how you'd say 'thrill' without the 'i', thrll. Isn't thrill also a kind of moving through the thin-space-between?"

He looks at me with a mix of incredulity and amazement. "How is it that you can learn vocabulary in your sleep?"

"I'm just that good." I wrinkle my nose at him, which is my way of winking or raising an eyebrow.

"And this morning you were saying you were 'too full of words.'"

"I was--too full of words, my brain was noisy. I couldn't focus. But being out here..."

We're walking home, through the wooded ravine that will lead out of the park back into the cluttered urban neighborhood. The soles of my feet are still recalling the warm solidity of rock beneath them, my toes the quick sliding skin of water. We're still stuck smack in the city, the white-noise grind of traffic reaching us through the trees, but everywhere the birds are following each other, the scrappy chipmunks skittering over roots and the ruts left by bicycle tires in the mud. There are insects again, bees in the underbrush, and I feel as though I have escaped, finally, from some cold pressure that has wrapped my lungs for so long I had ceased to notice it. There is space again, movement in all directions that pull and stretch the landscape into distance, opening it up again. Everywhere, life is opening it up again under a high, bright sky. Birdcalls pierce the breeze, connecting one long, dark tunnel of mind to another.

"Being out here... I'm so full of thurl."

Dream the World Awake

Share

The idea that "life is but a dream" seems to be cropping up a lot in my life recently, and when this kind of synchronicity happens I usually try to pay attention, think carefully and keep my ears pealed. Often a growing obsession will draw me on with a certain fascination or magnetism, increasing in intensity until I reach a moment of triumph or break-through, when the struggle to comprehend resolves into an unexpected and unexpectedly easy clarity. But this time is different. Whenever someone mentions this idea that life is a dream, that we are the dreamers dreaming the world, that our goal or purpose is (or should be) to "dream the world awake"--I feel repelled, repulsed even. Far from wanting to pursue the idea, I am constantly backing away, insisting no, no it isn't; and yet, the theme keeps appearing suddenly, slipping around some corner like a stubborn ghost. So for now, I'd like to take a moment to articulate for myself--and for you, dear reader, if you care to tune in--where this sense of repulsion and objection comes from, why I feel so invested in the "realness" of this life and world. Perhaps by doing this, the reasons for this unwelcome haunting may become clearer.

Dreaming the Persistent Other

Don't get me wrong. I am not your typical secular Westerner who eagerly dismisses dreams as the randomly generated nonsense and noise of a tired brain in rehash-and-recovery mode. There is of course that problem, when comparing our existence to a dream in a culture that refuses to take dreams seriously, much like the metaphor of the amusement park ride that Bill Hicks uses in the video clip above. Such a comparison can, intentionally or merely by implication, express a certain nihilism. "It doesn't matter--it's just a ride," Bill Hicks assures us immediately after mentioning our tendency to kill off good people, those with the wisest souls and kindest intentions.

But it does matter! Doesn't it? In a dream we might experience a tragic and horrifying murder, one that has us shaking and sobbing and slobbering into our shirt sleeves, only to wake up the next morning to a real world washed with dew and full of life. It doesn't matter, it was just a dream, we breathe with relief, and smile. It wasn't real. But we can say this precisely because those dream-people, whether they die in dream or not, cease to be when the dream has ended. They have no unique or independent existence from the dream, and so in a very important sense they simply aren't real. But even the most level-headed, down-to-earth Miss Practical-Shoes might pause to phone up her brother if she dreams that he has died or fallen gravely ill; perhaps not because she believes her dream to be true or accurately reflective of reality, but maybe simply because she recognizes her brother as a unique being with an independent existence and her dream reminds her of her interest in and concern for his well-being. On the other hand, when dream-people reappear or persist from night to night, they can grow to have a semblance of independent existence. Ask any child suffering from night terrors, any grown adult struggling with recurring nightmares: the anxiety of repeated dreams can be very real, indeed, with powerful effects on life in the waking world.

The importance of the dream-world in our "real" lives increases tenfold when you believe, as I do, that dreams are a way for us to connect with aspects of ourselves and our world that we can't normally access in "ordinary consciousness" while awake. In dreams, intuitions and extrasensory perceptions take on concrete symbolic forms that we can interact with and even, potentially, influence. We may travel to places we've never been, only to arrive there the following day with a sense of familiarity. We may anticipate the needs of others, their vulnerabilities or fears, before we have consciously acknowledged them. We may even encounter nonmaterial creatures, beings of energy, emotion and thought, guides and gods, ancestors and children not yet born. In amongst the chatter and noise of our sleeping brain's reverberating chemistry, we might discover revelation and prophecy, if we are listening attentively, respectfully and with a hint of healthy incredulity. In short, it's rarely true that a dream is "just a dream," even when it is. Rather, dreams have the potential to connect us to a vast interwoven, multilayered reality that penetrates and transcends our ordinary experience as individuated material selves.

So what do people mean, exactly, when they say "life is just a dream"? Do they mean that somehow suffering and pain as we experience it in this life is illusory, unimportant, irrelevant? Even if such a view can free a person, to some extent, from his own suffering (especially if it is self-generated through fear or guilt), it is unlikely to help him cultivate compassion for the suffering of others. After all, their pain isn't real. When we wake up, we'll discover we are God, and then won't we all have a good laugh. Besides which, not only is the pain of others not real, but perhaps even the other itself is not real. Perhaps, like the people populating my dreams, I'm making you all up and one day I'll wake up to discover that I am God dreaming the World dreaming Me (and I've been talking to myself in my sleep). In which case, all the more reason to shrug off strife, pain and death when it happens to other people and focus primarily on my own happiness and self-fullfilment. I might as well make it as enjoyable a dream as possible, right? And thusly whither away concepts like self-restraint, sacrifice, altruism and even love beyond that of self-gratification.

Dreaming the Creative Act

Granted, most people who talk about the world-as-dream have, I think, a more sophisticated concept in mind. If I understand it correctly, the metaphor is meant to illuminate our role as "dreamers," that is, creators of our own realities. We have all experienced in dream the strange freedom from ordinary causality: a painting we see in our dream reminds us of our old childhood family farm, and suddenly we find ourselves again at the farm itself, just as we remember it. Or, we want to get to the theater faster, and suddenly we are not running but flying, gliding, leaping buildings. People morph into other people and back again. We play out a scene as we simultaneously watch ourselves playing it out from some external perspective. These are all common-place in the dream-world. The usual laws of gravity and time do not apply. And because of this freedom from physics and normal cause-and-effect, our wills are raw with power, the dream-world seems to respond readily to our stray thoughts and passing whims. Not only are we, as the dreamer asleep, creating the entire dream-world as we experience it, but even within the dream we sometimes have a sense of heightened control. Even nightmares--of being unable to run or scream, of being displaced out of context or willfully misunderstood by everyone around us--can evoke a sense of irrational lawlessness that, if only we could master it with a stronger will!, we feel sure would sway just as eagerly in our favor.

Because this is true of dreams, people who compare the "real world" and our existence in it to dreaming often strive to emphasize our ability to shape our reality, to influence it through intention and focused willpower to an extent far greater than we usually believe possible. As a philosopher-poet type myself, who has fostered a life-long love for art and creative work of all kinds, I came to my belief in the fundamentally imaginative-creative aspect of our existence many years ago. And yet, there are aspects of the world-as-dream metaphor that nag at me, striking me as sloppy or inaccurate. Besides the problems of suffering and the collective or Other that I mentioned above, if we take the world-as-dream analogy too seriously we soon run up against a major stumbling block: science.

I have written before about the relationship between science and magic, in response to the ponderings of other skeptics. The world-as-dream approach may seem to circumvent much of the conflict by suggesting that the physical "laws" of hard science, being just another aspect of our dreaming the world--are thus only as inflexible as we believe them to be. Suddenly, we are free to believe whole-heartedly and without complication in things like synchronicity, intention manifestation and mysterious action-at-a-distance. The problem with this view is that we also succeed effectively in turning science into a collective delusion, in which we all agree that free-falling objects accelerate at exactly 9.8 meters per second per second and the earth revolves around the sun rather than the reverse (though this has only been true since most of us started believing it).

Although I am far from a materialist, I do have this odd knack for befriending atheists and science geeks. Because of these friendships, over the years I have developed a tremendous respect for the scientific process of discovery and analysis, as well as an acute appreciation of its natural epistemological limits. In other words, although it may be true that science can only describe this one tiny little aspect (that of the material, physical world) of a greater transcendent reality, it proves to describe that particular aspect with surprising clarity and consistency. Much more lucidly and reliably, I would argue, than one might expect of a human species still unable to agree about things like whether yellow American cheese is yellow or actually orange. (Certainly, we can come up with all sorts of elaborate theories about a guiding superconsciousness or Spirit that sets limits on how our own chaotic willfulness ultimately manifests, but most of these prove cyclical and self-justifying, with no way of gauging their validity, likelihood or relevance.) Furthermore, because science has set for itself the goal of dealing uniquely and specifically with the physical world, and we have all experienced either directly through experimentation or indirectly through the by-products of science such as technology and medicine, to call science into question as mere delusion calls into question these experiences themselves and our ability to trust our most fundamental intuitions about the world in which we live and move and have our being.

For some, this notion is not disturbing at all. Of course we should mistrust our senses and experiences of the world; Descartes, Father of the Scientific Method, said so himself! (Although he may have only said it as a sneaky way of getting the Church off his back.) But as an artist, the thought of being so fundamentally disconnected from the physical world around me as I experience it not only frightens me, but shakes my notion of meaningful engagement to its very core. I engage with the world creatively, through writing, music and art. But as Annie Dillard points out, "an artist lives jammed in the pool of materials," even while the philosopher roams the realm of ideal forms and the mystic soars deep to the seat of fiery love and union. The shape and limit of matter, its particularities and idiosyncrasies, its movement and resistance, all of these aspects of the physical world are absolutely and utterly essential for the creative artist. One is not creative in spite of but because of them. I know and trust the power of words--and my own creative power in working with them--because I have come to respect them as having a kind of existence and life of their own, a reality that reaches beyond my own will and so can also grab hold of me and yank me suddenly beyond myself. I am not a master or maker of words, I am a friend, a companion, a lover. In the same way as a musician finds a companion in his instrument or a sculptor in her stone or clay. These things must be real at least in some sense, and we must be able to trust our experiences of them, if our creative work is to make any connection, to have any meaning.


And so, it seems to me that, even if these world-dreamers are right, even if life in this world really is "just a dream," this is one of those times when, as they say, "the only way out is through." Rather than dismiss our experiences of a stable, scientifically-comprehensible physical world as merely the self-perpetuated shared delusion of a people asleep, we must seek to engage this world deeply and passionately, cultivating attention and presence in all aspects of our lives with the playfulness, creativity and trust of children. By doing so we discover that, like our dreams themselves when we stop reducing them or explaining them away, the world will reveal to us an infinite potential for deeper connection, understanding, evolution and awakening.