I think I’ll side-swipe you with mellifluous prose today, if I can swing it. There’s just too much beauty around me (my own included), and that annuls any other concerns. I can’t escape it. I tried to soak up everything along my route home ….
But I don’t actually want to talk about today. I want to talk about yesterday, not even yesterday, but a far-off yesterday. About seven years ago. I don’t know entirely what brought it to mind, partly nostalgia, partly some indefinable something that currently escapes me; yet there it is … on the drive home, a mental snapshot emerges, each sight and sound as clear as if it were there in front of me.
It’s in the mid-70s, crisp, the sky yawning, blue, and mottled with cotton. Various animals are sounding their unique breakfast lyrics — owls, squirrels, dove, chipmunks, and cattle — as they vocally greet the day or scuttle around in the leaves. Apparently, ‘possum and raccoons had been prowling last night, leaving evidence at the scene — implanted heavily or frenetically in the soil at the big Rubbermaid ™ trash containers. My investigation leads me to believe these scoff-laws were after our garbage, and a moulage would probably indicate separate visitations, as the ‘coon prints appeared to overlap the ‘possum’s.
The scent of winnowed oak trees envelopes me, an almost palpable sensation that signifies Autumn. This odor is bitter and strident, yet it soothes me somehow, even as it assails my sinuses. Atop that is the sweeter pungency of manure, riding somewhere above, like the trill of a saxophone over a rhythm section. A lilting scent. Floating. Occasionally, I catch the waft of stale dirt as a breeze sweeps it to me, here, there, in a sort of cadence. This nasal rhythm is a fresh new music.
Perched on the sun-splashed roofs of barns and other buildings in the holler are dove, pigeons, swallows, and blackbirds. It looks warm up there. It’s a warmth from elevation that I can never experience naturally, but I can be thankful for the birds’ boastful reminder. Together, over a crop of maples, a few sparrows are mobbing a crow, finding strength in numbers. I wonder what that crow was after….
Daddy’s cattle are up in the his top pasture where it’s been recently bush-hogged. They’re only freckles on a green face, until I get close enough to see individuality. Two calves are frolicking with one another, and they kick and run and twist, illustrating the vibrancy of all youth. A young heifer stands nearby and watches, and I suspect she’s the proud new mother of one of these scoundrels. She seems to be smiling. But then again, cows are vapid creatures, and probably *are* always smiling, it’s a wonder their eyes aren’t blue – for the same reason that the sky is blue.
When you see these from a distance, the country seems magical. Peace and disorder somehow holding hands. But now I’m at the highway…. It winds through the valley like a tired gray snake, and I hop on its back. Here is where wonderment merges with routine, and I nod adieu to Pantherflight Demesne .. the “Little Blue House” that My Lady Mystique, The Pookie-Bear, and Myself call home.
I’ve had to get up this morning to go to the Post Office, and the utter banality of this exercise is not lost on me as I travel this mundane route. The sounds of chatter in the car from Pookie, the occasional question from Myst, the mellow sounds of the 80′s (mellow ?) on the radio .. all this soothes me, makes me feel in an odd sense, alive. Almost as if this is where I am supposed to be. But then the thought intrudes again – If I hadn’t of messed my truck up somehow (I have the _strangest_ luck with vehicles) – If I hadn’t messed up the truck, I wouldn’t have to make this trip to the post office now to retrieve a package that has been waiting nearly a week. The refrain goes something like; -mess up the truck, beg a ride to work, work until five, catch a ride home — post office already closed. School nights interject a timpani counterpoint on Tuesday and Thursday nights, as I catch an additional ride to and from school – leaving me even less time with my burgeoning family.
Still, we make it to the post office in own piece, despite the prevailing philosophy of a culture that prefers to make mountains out of molehills, and extends that philosophy into their driving. The mysterious package is a box of books, ordered nearly a month ago — I now have volumes one through nine of the “Lemony Snicket” set. The continued telling Pookie that she can’t read them has about driven her to that edge where she desperately wants to read them. Still, I have to read them first — even though they are children’s books, the subject matter (the ‘Series of Unfortunate Events’ that befall the hapless children, and lend the set its sub-title) could be a bit much. I’m hoping not – I’m hoping the author is writing his imprecations very firmly tongue-in-cheek, but just in case…
From the post office, we head next in the direction of Wal-Mart, a discount store popularized into the sub-culture hereabout’s vernacular (f’rinstance, “Going to Wally-World” is heard near daily around the coffee machine, that last bastion of the workday slacker). We make it in, ostensibly to purchase a birthday gift for the girl across the street, Pookie’s Friend, and to return a software game that steadfastly refuses to install and play correctly on Myst’s computer. They don’t take the software back — it will have to go into the pile for McKay’s ( a buy-sell-trade used bookstore) with some other things at the house. We also get a few things we need for the house, and pick up some chips for a get-together later that evening. Oddly enough, we completely forget the birthday gift, and while I am putting the parcels into the car that had so recently been purchased, My Lady Myst and the Pookie brave the wild herds extant within the store again in search of the elusive prey that will constitute the ‘perfect gift’.
We get home and the Pookster wraps the gift and takes it across the street. My Lady and I start lunch, and discuss upcoming plans for the night’s gathering, and the lunar eclipse that is scheduled for the evening. The doorbell rings – we answer, and there are the two girls, giggling in that way that is peculiar to a brace of 8-year olds everywhere. Apparently the gift that was picked out was the ‘perfect gift’ and Pookie’s Friend has come over to personally give effusive thanks. Telling her goodbye, we bring the Pookie-Bear in to eat lunch, and then we are off.
We get to the gathering place, and strangely for us, we are the first ones there. Momentary panic sets in. The last time we had been the first to appear at a gathering, it turned out that the gathering was not even taking place at *that* person’s house. We trekked down the drive and knocked on the door — thankfully it was answered and we were reassured that there were others there already, and we were supposed to meet there today.
Over the next hour, the rest of the ‘family’ arrives. Although we aren’t related by blood, we feel like a family to each other. The family that we have chosen to be. And yes, there are occasional squabbles, and occasionally we have a ‘black sheep’ that wanders away — but the ties that bind the rest of us together are the stronger for it. I call us a tightly-knit group of loosely bound individuals. One of the group hasn’t shown up and we call and leave a raucous message on her home machine.
There is potato soup simmering on the stove – a scent that always makes me feel ‘warm and fuzzy’. There is also ham cooking in the oven, and another person has brought hard sourdough rolls. The warm fragrance of apples and cinnamon wafts lazily off a platter of fry-bread, and the pungent tang of sharp cheddar skirls around it. The food is finished, and the host pours a mixture into prepared pie crusts that will eventually, well-nigh magically transform into egg custard pies. The nutmeg shaken over the top merely accentuates the anticipation. The family currently in the kitchen begins eating. Either we are all very hungry (some of us are) or the food is very good (which it is), as there is nearly no other sound for several minutes of concentrated mastication.
Someone breaks the silence with, “Should we tell the others it’s ready?”. The answer quickly follows, “No, let’s all get our first bowl out of the way first”. Hearty laughter ensues, and we feel a moment of steam-wreathed camaraderie. Eventually, guilt overcomes us, and we call the others in to eat, and the cheerful kitchen becomes a bustling activity center. A choreographed dance of bowls, ladles, bread, cheese and people. Truly a thing of strange and terrible beauty.
After the food, the conglomeration breaks up, children running shrieking around the house, occasional shouts to “Put that down!” and “Don’t throw that!” echo back into the house. The smokers gather on the front porch, until the gathering chill pushes them back inside where there has been a fire laid in the hearth. The wood is well-seasoned, and burns quickly and hot, so we continue to poke it every so often, and put more wood on. Tonight’s leader goes out to greet the land and prepare the space for circle, and the rest of us gather to decide who is doing what and where for the full moons and/or new moons, and the seasonal holidays for the upcoming six months. As we are wont to do, we start talking and reminiscing and time slips away. One or another of us continues to say “It’s getting dark”, or “Okay, she’s ready to go” … and we finally wind down.
Then it is potty-break time, the ‘one-cigarette warning’ that lets us know it is time to begin. The night is clear. The blue skies of the earlier portion of the day carrying over, and holding true for the evening’s activities. The moon has been risen for some hours already, and the lunar eclipse is already half-way complete. The circle stands, shifting feet, and hands wrapped round themselves, even our ‘crunchy’ members who need chairs due to age or infirmity.
The quarters are called, clear voices ringing out the invocations to call protections and blessings to us for our working. The center speaker, unused to the position, and nervous, reads off of a prepared paper, and her voice occasionally cracks in her anxiety. The story of the first people, the animal people, and how Man forgot the speech of the animals, and forgot to give thanks to the animals for the lives he took to feed his family. How the animals got together and decided to curse man with disease every time he killed without giving thanks. How man finally noticed, and called out “Why?”. How the plant peoples gave of themselves to provide a cure for every disease the animal peoples could devise.
At this point, the narrative stops, and we all watch the moon, slowly darkening, until only a bright sliver remains. The Harmonic Concordance is also mentioned. This night, a Full Moon, yet with no moon, and the Harmonic Concordance, is a night of changes. We called down healing for a sick member, a friend and family member. Feeling ourselves becoming living conductors of the earth and sky, the energy slowly being pulled up our legs and into our body from the earth, even as the sky energy fell down upon us and soaked into our skin. A healing tea was passed around, and every member took it, and held it, and gave forth from the abundant energy that was in us, and of us, and around us that night, in that place.
The platter and the chalice were brought around, the fry bread, and cider — grounding us, giving us back a modicum of what we had expended, even as the earth and sky energy left us feeling full and fulsome. The quarters were dismissed, and someone cracked a joke. The easy laughter amongst us telling more than anything of the easy feelings between us.
Driving home, feeling the slow seep of tiredness along the journey. Lost in thought, lost in wonder that the beautiful woman beside me chose me to be with. Feeling that full feeling well up again within me, washing tiredness away. Even more than the family I had just left, here with me now was my family. Family –
It is enough to make me wonder, again, what I have done to deserve the wonderful people in my life. I am continually at a loss, as I know my youth and childhood had long periods of rampany childhood shenanigans unleavened by the kind of good it would take to cause the rising in my familial fortunes. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, by teens, and twenties were unmarked by the abundance of ‘good works’ it would take to provide karmic returns of the magnitude I have experienced. I guess it is just exceedingly lucky happenstance on my part that has brought such superb people into my life.
It is odd that this particular memory chose today to visit, as I am no longer currently a part of the group aforementioned, my Pookie-Bear is bearing the cross of her own troubles in another city, and my father is gone westward this past year; yet there it is. Maybe it was the full moon soaring majestically over the house as I came down the hill, passing the pastures mentioned earlier, maybe it was something else. I may not ever figure it out entirely, but I will be thankful for it, in this time when I need a little levity, a little brevity - there it is, a memory stepping forth from days gone to keep me company for the drive home. It reinforces the cyclical nature of … well, of everything. What goes around, comes around; and if I have been paying off karma at a vastly accelerated pace for the past year, maybe this is a turning point again for me.
We’ll see. ~Tioraidh all, until our moonlit paths wind together again.
