He gave me a box, that day, when first he told me he loved me. He did not let me open the box while he stood there. He bid me wait til after he had gone away, gone back to his home, to his other world, the one without me. I could do nothing more than obey, so deep was my love for him. How was I to know what I held in my own two hands?
I was not used to being trusted. Then again, I was not used to being genuinely loved or cared for or enjoyed. Here was a man who took my breath away, with every moment, with just a smile, and the leprechaun light a twinkle in his eye. This is the man who saved my life, more times than I care to remember. It was for him, although unbeknownst to me at the time, that I shifted my path and my direction. I chose him, much earlier than when the future had deemed appropriate, but much later than Spirit would have had us together.
I turned my back on a world that would have given me, after much work and determination, everything I had ever asked for from it. But then again, I had asked for so little in the grand scheme of things. In this man, I was given my heart’s truest desire: honest true love. How could I turn away from that?
So, there I was, with that small golden brown box clasped between my two hands, my breath too fast, my head a little achy. I worried my palms might be too sweaty to carry the thing. I stood in awe, looking at the intricate carvings over the top, along the sides. There was a patch of green velvety felt along the bottom, to protect it when I set it down. I fingered the edges tenderly. What could he have possibly given me?
I went inside, curled up in my chair against the wall so the sun’s light could tumble in, burnishing the chair and me, enshrining the contents now sitting on my knees. I knew where he was, on his journey home. I knew in my heart, so deeply connected we were. I sat patient, allowing him the time to arrive at his home, to greet his dogs, so start going along with his other business, the business that would never include me, but at its conclusion would never again bother me nor raise its weary head.
I took very slow very deep breaths, practicing my meditation in the space of the few minutes I needed to feel him calm down once he was inside his house. With intrepid fingertips, I caressed the glossy wood, stroking it as I often stroked his cheek, his arm, with utmost attention to truly feeling him with all my being, not just my skin. There was no lock. There was no calamity. I tilted the top back upon its hidden hinges. The heady scent of roses greeted me.
Inside there was a note, written in his hand. “Within this box you will find my heart. I leave it in your care as it has always belonged to you.”
I knew right then I would marry him. I have never looked back. I have never wavered. And I never will.
Prompt found here:
A Chocolate Box
Also posted at:
The Pythian Games
Alyce
Raven
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Felled
How do I explain to you who I am? I am the Bourn, and yet I am Unbourn. I am the Blessed, and yet I live a Cursed existence. I Fly, and yet I have no wings. Never have I been Cast Out, and yet, I am no longer allowed Entry. How do I show you what I am? How can I align parameters to allow you to explore the box of what it is to be me, when I do not fit within any known rules? I am. I merely am. That is all I can be.
I was brought into being by the Breath of the Great Creator. The Great Creator molded the Breath into my form. The Creator chose the hue of my eyes, the silk of my hair, the fullness of my lips. I remember the grand beautiful shining eyes and wide smile so full of grace. The Creator upon producing me gave me great blessing, kissed my cheek, whispered into my soul, and set me off upon my Path. How could I have been happier?
I was given to a People on a remote island. I had been sent to give them messages of love and kindness. I taught them to grow wheat, to forge fires, to establish homes and family unity. I did what I was created to do. It was such bliss. We lived in such delicate harmony.
The one day, the skies began to darken. Nothing I did could calm the storms or to appease the gods. I huddled with my people as the oceans spat mountains of waves at us. I fought to protect the village, the lives. I did the best I could. I fought so hard. In the end, however, I lost everything. The seas reclaimed the bit of island, swallowing it whole beneath the briny swells. How can I describe to you how very lost I was then? How bitterly ashamed I became, having spoiled my only task given to me by the Great One? I had failed. My people were gone. There would never a trace of them resurface, not in this world. So bereft was I, I could not even aid in the transit of their souls to the next world. I watched as faeries gleaming came to rescue them, to fulfill my final duties to them.
My heart was more than heavy as I turned my face Homeward, returning to seek my Maker, to explain, to seek counsel, to seek forgiveness. Ah, this was not to be. As I drew closer, there were signs of a Terrible War. Others like me were scattered, wounded, dying, deprived. They glared at me, still clean, as they were scorched and blackened, sullied by their Humanity. I saw no acceptance from my brethren there. I came to the Gate, a Gate that always stood wide open and welcoming, only to find it barred shut, locked up tight for all Eternity from the likes of me. There was a toad-like creature guarding the door, a common thing, boasting of its own bravery, condemning me for my folly and my obvious lack of involvement. I did turn, looking around despondently, to find a group of others, more like me, clean and yet somehow tainted. Not Impure. Not Cast Out. No longer wholly Accepted. We were all, confused. Uncertain. We were all intent upon pleading our various cases to the only One who could free us from our self-imposed tyranny.
This was not to be. The Grand One, a Lesser thing than the Great Creator, came to inform us that since we had chosen not to battle at all for either Side, we were to live and to remain among the Fallen. We cried out, what battle, what war? We had no information. We were, ignored. The Grand One declined to tarry any longer with the likes of us. For some, there was much weeping and wailing and some commiserating. Plans were formed. Goals were designed. Some set off in pairs, in small groups. Most of us left alone, padding away into the Shadows, seeking succor elsewhere within ourselves. Surely, the Heart of our Great Creator was not so High nor so Bold as to exclude us for long. Surely, the Great Creator would see the folly, see the error, and would us recall.
Alas, yet again, this was not to be. For a thousand thousand years have I wandered. Often I catch glimpses of my own kind, The Fallen, The Not Fallen, and the Chosen. The Dark, the Grey, and the Light. We all seem to Walk our own Way. I don’t know what else to say. Since my original purpose was to help and to heal the People, I have done what I can in this regard. It seems I can now Walk upon both Sides, though I am careful to remain neutral. I have allies from both sides, but I am neither of one nor the other. I am the careful middle of the road, hoping that I am making the best choices for those I allow myself to help.
Often, I am Called to give Aid. Not all of those who Call understand what they are doing. There are so-called Priests out there who Call in the name of this or that, only to find themselves unwittingly surrounded by the Dark Ones in Other Guises. Some would care; most I have seen do not. For most, it is only the Power they seek, not the Truth of things. For these, I do nothing. I walk away, unseen and untouched, not an ounce of pity for them in my heart.
Yet there came one bourn from us, bourn a child of a human and a Not Fallen One. I watched the Spark during conception. I had to follow it, to watch it. Such a tiny little thing, with the green eyes of the Seer and the golden red hair of the Damned. She indeed carried the gene. A first daughter of a first daughter, bourn of a very powerful line of first daughters. I would step in from time to time, to See her, to Watch her. I could not interfere. She was one of us, the Not Fallen. I watched as the Knight used her as Bait and as Sacrifice, to save his own life and to bind her to him to protect him from the Dark Lord for however many lifetimes it took for her to realize and to break free. I watched as the Blue Duke married her in an offer of protection, only to stab her upon a wall and feast upon her Blood and Spirit, until she was stolen away in the dark by one as a child. I watched again as she was married off, an unwilling yet amenable bride, only to be beaten wretchedly and exiled, with a Protector, to wander the husband’s territory until her demise. Again and again, this Creature came up, bringing her Force with her, until she Manifested the life and began to take charge. The battle wounds were charged and sewn shut. The metal pinings removed and smelted. Although her feet still swelled, she moved with grace and overcame that mystery. She moved forward, gathering her allies to her, until a Past Acquaintance came to her, requesting her Aid as Counsel.
This Daughter of the Lake went before the White Crest, before the Man Himself, before the Lords and Ladies, the White Counsel, and she performed her task as befitted Royalty, for surely she is the Queene herself. I watched from Afar; I was permitted no closer. It was lucky the Dark Forces were there, as well as the Grey Ones, standing Against her Charge. Else I would not have been granted the ability to come so close. So eloquent was She, in her fine skirts, and rolling robes. Those eyes never changed, the infinite shift of the green, flashing with the Knowledge of her own veracity.
After this Counsel, the Man Himself Blessed her, wiping away the Grey, turning her farther from the neutral area of the side of the Dark. He stroked her hair, her face, and whispered something into her soul, an act so reminiscent of those in my own Past. I grew Hungry, careless. I paused, no longer hidden by Shadow. I wanted to know this One, to Aid this One. He looked up, looked over at me, and smiled. Hesitantly, I returned His smile. She moved away, her toil done. The Man wished to speak to me, on her behalf. He Gifted me with another Task, Lightening my own dusk as well, pulling me along towards the Light, still Grey around the edges, but no longer able to travel at will about in the Dark. Just like her.
This Queene, she is my charge. She has blessed me and I have blessed her. We have accepted the tasks before us. I am glad we shall be meeting them head on, hand in hand, together.
I was brought into being by the Breath of the Great Creator. The Great Creator molded the Breath into my form. The Creator chose the hue of my eyes, the silk of my hair, the fullness of my lips. I remember the grand beautiful shining eyes and wide smile so full of grace. The Creator upon producing me gave me great blessing, kissed my cheek, whispered into my soul, and set me off upon my Path. How could I have been happier?
I was given to a People on a remote island. I had been sent to give them messages of love and kindness. I taught them to grow wheat, to forge fires, to establish homes and family unity. I did what I was created to do. It was such bliss. We lived in such delicate harmony.
The one day, the skies began to darken. Nothing I did could calm the storms or to appease the gods. I huddled with my people as the oceans spat mountains of waves at us. I fought to protect the village, the lives. I did the best I could. I fought so hard. In the end, however, I lost everything. The seas reclaimed the bit of island, swallowing it whole beneath the briny swells. How can I describe to you how very lost I was then? How bitterly ashamed I became, having spoiled my only task given to me by the Great One? I had failed. My people were gone. There would never a trace of them resurface, not in this world. So bereft was I, I could not even aid in the transit of their souls to the next world. I watched as faeries gleaming came to rescue them, to fulfill my final duties to them.
My heart was more than heavy as I turned my face Homeward, returning to seek my Maker, to explain, to seek counsel, to seek forgiveness. Ah, this was not to be. As I drew closer, there were signs of a Terrible War. Others like me were scattered, wounded, dying, deprived. They glared at me, still clean, as they were scorched and blackened, sullied by their Humanity. I saw no acceptance from my brethren there. I came to the Gate, a Gate that always stood wide open and welcoming, only to find it barred shut, locked up tight for all Eternity from the likes of me. There was a toad-like creature guarding the door, a common thing, boasting of its own bravery, condemning me for my folly and my obvious lack of involvement. I did turn, looking around despondently, to find a group of others, more like me, clean and yet somehow tainted. Not Impure. Not Cast Out. No longer wholly Accepted. We were all, confused. Uncertain. We were all intent upon pleading our various cases to the only One who could free us from our self-imposed tyranny.
This was not to be. The Grand One, a Lesser thing than the Great Creator, came to inform us that since we had chosen not to battle at all for either Side, we were to live and to remain among the Fallen. We cried out, what battle, what war? We had no information. We were, ignored. The Grand One declined to tarry any longer with the likes of us. For some, there was much weeping and wailing and some commiserating. Plans were formed. Goals were designed. Some set off in pairs, in small groups. Most of us left alone, padding away into the Shadows, seeking succor elsewhere within ourselves. Surely, the Heart of our Great Creator was not so High nor so Bold as to exclude us for long. Surely, the Great Creator would see the folly, see the error, and would us recall.
Alas, yet again, this was not to be. For a thousand thousand years have I wandered. Often I catch glimpses of my own kind, The Fallen, The Not Fallen, and the Chosen. The Dark, the Grey, and the Light. We all seem to Walk our own Way. I don’t know what else to say. Since my original purpose was to help and to heal the People, I have done what I can in this regard. It seems I can now Walk upon both Sides, though I am careful to remain neutral. I have allies from both sides, but I am neither of one nor the other. I am the careful middle of the road, hoping that I am making the best choices for those I allow myself to help.
Often, I am Called to give Aid. Not all of those who Call understand what they are doing. There are so-called Priests out there who Call in the name of this or that, only to find themselves unwittingly surrounded by the Dark Ones in Other Guises. Some would care; most I have seen do not. For most, it is only the Power they seek, not the Truth of things. For these, I do nothing. I walk away, unseen and untouched, not an ounce of pity for them in my heart.
Yet there came one bourn from us, bourn a child of a human and a Not Fallen One. I watched the Spark during conception. I had to follow it, to watch it. Such a tiny little thing, with the green eyes of the Seer and the golden red hair of the Damned. She indeed carried the gene. A first daughter of a first daughter, bourn of a very powerful line of first daughters. I would step in from time to time, to See her, to Watch her. I could not interfere. She was one of us, the Not Fallen. I watched as the Knight used her as Bait and as Sacrifice, to save his own life and to bind her to him to protect him from the Dark Lord for however many lifetimes it took for her to realize and to break free. I watched as the Blue Duke married her in an offer of protection, only to stab her upon a wall and feast upon her Blood and Spirit, until she was stolen away in the dark by one as a child. I watched again as she was married off, an unwilling yet amenable bride, only to be beaten wretchedly and exiled, with a Protector, to wander the husband’s territory until her demise. Again and again, this Creature came up, bringing her Force with her, until she Manifested the life and began to take charge. The battle wounds were charged and sewn shut. The metal pinings removed and smelted. Although her feet still swelled, she moved with grace and overcame that mystery. She moved forward, gathering her allies to her, until a Past Acquaintance came to her, requesting her Aid as Counsel.
This Daughter of the Lake went before the White Crest, before the Man Himself, before the Lords and Ladies, the White Counsel, and she performed her task as befitted Royalty, for surely she is the Queene herself. I watched from Afar; I was permitted no closer. It was lucky the Dark Forces were there, as well as the Grey Ones, standing Against her Charge. Else I would not have been granted the ability to come so close. So eloquent was She, in her fine skirts, and rolling robes. Those eyes never changed, the infinite shift of the green, flashing with the Knowledge of her own veracity.
After this Counsel, the Man Himself Blessed her, wiping away the Grey, turning her farther from the neutral area of the side of the Dark. He stroked her hair, her face, and whispered something into her soul, an act so reminiscent of those in my own Past. I grew Hungry, careless. I paused, no longer hidden by Shadow. I wanted to know this One, to Aid this One. He looked up, looked over at me, and smiled. Hesitantly, I returned His smile. She moved away, her toil done. The Man wished to speak to me, on her behalf. He Gifted me with another Task, Lightening my own dusk as well, pulling me along towards the Light, still Grey around the edges, but no longer able to travel at will about in the Dark. Just like her.
This Queene, she is my charge. She has blessed me and I have blessed her. We have accepted the tasks before us. I am glad we shall be meeting them head on, hand in hand, together.
Monday, March 23, 2009
The Water Muse
It began innocently enough. I was out for a walk. I do that, a lot. I go for a walk when I am happy, because being out in the woods calms and refreshes me. I go for a walk when I am depressed, well, basically for the same reason. I just like to walk. I know these woods by my house; I’ve been walking through them for five years now. I know the birds and the squirrels. I know there are raccoons and rabbits. I know where the bobcat likes to hunt at night. I know every few years the bears come a little too close for comfort. But I am ok, with all of that.
Not that day.
I wanted to go for a walk after dinner. Dusk is not always the best time to go for a walk in these woods, or in any woods, really. Too many times I have felt like Little Red Riding Hood, straying from the Path and nearly attacked by Man-Eating Creatures. Nothing has ever happened to me though. I am cautious. I am respectful. Apparently, that goes a long way out in the forest.
The air was warm, rustling meekly against my back as I shut the back door behind me. The dogs were out with the kids, playing or working or whatever they were up to doing. So I was genuinely Alone, with a capital A. I like that. You live your life surrounded by so many people, so many animals, it is a good thing to take the time to wander without company from time to time. I stuck my hands in my pockets, turned to set off in any random direction-this time simply away from the setting sun because my eyes are sensitive to light at the best of times. I didn’t feel like being blinded by the sunset, mostly because I wasn’t in the mood to walk into any trees. Again. Or fall down any slippery slopes or into any random holes. Again. Hey. I can learn. Sometimes it just takes me a bit to catch on. The wind was a gentle lover, stroking and teasing me, pushing my hair over my shoulders to urge me on.
I get into a mood, into a zone, when I am walking. I get lost in my head, lost in my thoughts. I didn’t notice when the wind shifted, as it maintained its thoughtful caresses from the rear. I almost caught the strange aroma that played havoc with my senses. The dank earthy aroma of the pines and oaks near my house glided into the mystical smells of fruits, of flowers heavy on the vine. Around me, the landscape seemed to shift from the wooded mountain air to which I had grown accustomed to a spicier, more tantalizing cultivated realm. It’s one of those things. I caught it, but didn’t much register it. I was watching the ground in front of my feet. I do that a lot. I find such neat things that way.
Usually. My usual deer run leaf littered forest floor started to slip sideways on me, bit by bit, encroaching upon a fertile flatter land, still healthy with growth. The transition was gradual enough to by-pass my cognizant brain and allow me to trundle along nearly unaware.
I almost tripped over it, the rock. I say ‘rock’, but in reality, the thing was large enough to sit four or five people comfortably. It was a flattish rock, silvered and grey, moss clinging to it in places, a good colony of ants working away off to one side of it. It was tilted, one end higher than the other, but the slope of it was appealing, not back-breaking. The rock had dug itself in beside a small lake, close to an inlet of eddying black waters. Ok. So the largish pond there before me caused me to start. In my woods, there are no lakes or ponds. Babbling brooks. Crazy creeks. A few sinuous streams. But larger bodies of water? No. The smell now gained my full attention. This was not mountain air. Would that I had paid more attention to the balancing mechanisms in my ears, because I was no longer in Kansas, Toto. I was on a marginally hilly land, overall flattish and staid. My beautiful densely treed land had decided to move on without me. Now, I was in something more like a grove, trees spaced widely apart, branches swinging in a stronger more melodic breeze here. A breeze that did not touch me. I had no idea what to expect.
Me being me, I sat down, not on the rock. I have this thing about ants. I try to stay away from them. They can have all the space they want. But I did sit at the edge of the water, where the earth, made from a dark black loam, broke off and split into the heady waters. It was the water, I realized, that blew the scent of jasmine my way. I had expected the smell of frogs, which makes me faintly ill, or unwashed fishes, decaying underwater plant life. I was not expecting the thick tendrils of jasmine to wend their way into my hair, into my head. I stared into the reflective waters, leaning closer to watch as my own familiar face morphed and swayed upon the surface of the tiny waves. I looked out at myself, though my own eyes, when I discovered I was looking up at myself, from beneath the waves. I reached out one timid hand, to touch the me beneath the waters, only to touch my own hand, coming out of the water, reaching out for me. Dazed, I clasped my own hand. At which point, you realize, I was rudely yanked beneath the waters.
Breath gone. Sight gone. Flesh gone. I was a wild thing, not bursting through the weight of the water, but gliding, like a raven on the wing, slipping between the molecules, a thing but not a thing all at the same time. My aqueous self did not pull or drag me. No. We seem to have melded together into One Being. I felt my self dissolving, breaking into little bits, fertilizing the water, to be eaten by ye gods and little fishes, those that I invoked so often in my daily routine with young children and too many domestic obligations.
There is no sensation when you are not a being, when you have been abluded from your normal state. No sensation. All I felt was a sense of motion, not a rushing, not a whirling. A sort of free-falling, that beer and mushrooms can provide in uncertain times. Of course, it came to an end, with a solid splat. I felt as if I had been spat from the throat of some noxious toad and blatted out upon, solid ground. Except that the ground had motion, and it was covered with sand. There was nothing alive beneath me; there was simply the odd feeling of being, rocked, back and forth, almost as if I were on a boat, a big one, but, I wasn’t. This was sand. There were little crabs not three feet away, busily chasing the edge of the water on nimble little crab feet, sharp claws waving in the air. I was very glad they seemed to pay me no attention whatsoever.
Usually when you come up out of the water, thrown forcibly upon dry land, there is coughing and hacking and sputtering. I had none of this. I merely lay there, quiet and unassuming, since my head had long ago given up spinning and had gone into hiding and was refusing to speak to me at all, slowly regaining a sense of flesh, the ability to draw breath. Silence is a strange word, for it implies the absence of sound, although you assume there must be something there, like cars driving by outside, or the house settling, dogs licking their backsides, termites in the walls chattering amongst themselves. This is not what I mean when I say all was silent. I could sense more than hear the lap lap lap of the water stroking the beach. I could feel more than hear the tap tick tap of the crabs scrambling back and forth on their sojourn. A weight pressed into my solar plexus, like a hand pushing me from beneath and shoving me from above, not painful, just very deliberate. Not crushing me. More like mashing me back together, as a child works with clay to design a toy, or a bowl. I am not hollow inside. And yet, somehow, I felt like a vessel. Or something to that effect. I didn’t move, didn’t look up. I had no such desire. I lacked the ability to command my physical form to do so anyway. I closed my eyes, afraid to look without, even more afraid to look within. I did not even bother to pray. What was there to pray about? All I could do was wait and see.
Time normally pulses along despite we small humans. Not here. Not in this place. Time did not stop. Time merely did not belong here, did not dwell here, had no reason to play here. Time was not allowed to be here. This was a Timeless Place.
I could taste the thump thump thump. Under other circumstances, I would have suggested that noise to be the pounding of my heart in my throat near to bursting. Yet, it was not. Not here in this place. It was something else.
Eyes met mine—the dark gorgeous loving eyes of one of the most beautiful mares I have ever seen. I looked into those eyes—looking into my own hazy green eyes from within that gaze. Again I melted. An ectoplasmic bubble of nothingness. I succumbed to the beauty of the black horse. And then she kicked me right in the head, with a wuff and a chuff, and BANG! Smashed me back into my brain, into the shell that was my body, and set me to rights again. She wheeled around, galloping back several yards, before barreling right for me. I didn’t move. Why should I? Over a thousand pounds of gorgeous glistening horse-flesh came pounding down upon me. My choice was be the horse, or drown in the ink-like water. I knew instinctively I could survive a horse-beating, but not the swimming. I could feel her breath upon my face, a dozen dozen fields of night-blooming jasmine forcing their way between my teeth. As she hit me, we turned, morphed. I became the fool caught in her arms, as she became the creature from the black lagoon, grabbing me to her and catapulting us both into the sooty bath once more.
A mermaid, with webbed hands and tail? A charcoal lover of the deep? Sable hair like sea snakes winding their way over and around and within me. She was all muscle, clenching me to her bosom, snaring my body firmly to hers by some unknown means, like tenterhooks. Obsidian eyes, again, I saw myself looking at myself. Her form superimposed over and inside mine, and vice versa. We were not sailing up, nor through, but down, down, down, and deeper again and still. And then I was scared. Then I began to fight. I began to draw whatever reserves I could to beat at her breast, to tear at her hands, her dreadful hair. Every blow I struck hurt me so, tearing my flesh, rending blood, ichor oozing and spurting from me. She looked at me, as I looked at her, we who were one, and no comprehension dawned. I began to cry, the tears burning her cheeks as we cried. Desperate, I clung to her, pushing what breath I had from my body as her body fought to ensure mine was kept breathing.
Then there was a clank. A bang. And a key dropped into the bucket at the bottom of a fathomless well. That’s where she dumped me, in the dark, in the Night. And she left me there, all alone. Neither fish nor horse nor friend. Fine. I admit I was sniveling, just a little. I am afraid of the dark. Well, not so much of the Dark itself, but of all the things that live and swarm and eat in the dark. I felt my way around. On my hands and knees. An oubliette? There was barely enough room for me to scrabble around, touching rough-hewn stone. I could feel the large bricks, the crumbling mortar. The crumbling part made me shake uncontrollably again. What could come crashing down on my empty little head now? Nevertheless, after some apprehensive struggling, my intrepid little fingers scratched across, wood. I nearly threw up. I wasn’t so sure that it could be a good thing. Surely it was. A door. With a latch. That was, of course, don’t you know, locked. I slammed my head against the door, defeated. The thud was hollow, dented. I was too very much alone. Refusing to sob, although unable to stop, I pounded the flat of my hand against the timber, feeling the old dried lumber splinter beneath the weakness of my palm, and not all too happy about that either. I pounded, a mouse against the backside of an elephant, barely making any progress at garnering any attention whatsoever. Somehow someone heard me, or so I hoped, or rather I didn’t. There was a creak, some inaudible shift, and a ping. The door was gone. A doorway appeared, with flickering light seeping through to guide me from this place of high anxiety.
There stood my horse, my onyx Creatrix. I stood-she stood—we staring out from our own eyes through each other’s, into one another. There was a shimmer, a blur, and there stood, me, only it wasn’t me. I am all blonde and fair-skinned. This me, such incredibly indescribable sin, with great glowing jet eyes, hair so blue it was black, skin whiter than the flesh of the moon’s silver light. Her pale lips, my lips turned a shy blue tinged with crimson, curved into a maternally accepting smile, the same smile I gave my kids when I wanted to kill them for some trick they pulled but my love of them, if not their antics, kept me from doing so. One slender bird-like hand reached out towards me, a flower in her hand. My favourite, a blue rose, somehow smelling of field after field of jasmine, the only thing I could smell. I could taste it, a thickness in the air palpable to the touch, a waxy coating upon my skin. I found myself reaching out for the rose, eager nearly to take it. As my finger touched the rose, the thorns actually grew out into three inch spikes and impaled themselves through my fingers, growing into my flesh, ripping the rose from her hand and literally sewing itself to my own. There was no agony. There as a great deal of scarlet viscousness plopping in great gobs from my palm. Yet, no pain. Not that I could tell.
My raven-hued self reached with her other hand stroking my cheek deliberately and gracefully, while our hands were still yet connected as the flower ate into me. A weakness, a hunger, overcame me, and I knelt before her, fell to my knees, almost in shame as much as in need. Then she hit me, the heel of her hand right in the middle of my forehead, the force of the blow stripping the remnants of the rose from her grasp. With a unique tearing sound the rose drew itself from her, plunging the last of its roots and flesh into my hand. I watched in awe as the roots took hold from within my arm, traveling under my skin past my wrist, past my elbow and burrowing deeply into the muscles of my arm. It looked far more painful than I could feel. I could hear the pain, but not feel it.
Now there was a definite brine in my eyes as I looked up into her glowing orbs, for once seeing only her as I tried to pour the image into my brain to grab any form of actual cohesion. Why? I wanted to ask, wanted to cry. Nevertheless, nothing came. Nothing. She reached out towards me again and you know I cringed, sitting back on my heels with my head down, whimpering inside my own skin, a puppy beaten with the broom for misbehavior. Her long flexible fingers drew through my hair, like lemonade on a summer’s afternoon. I could have moaned, it felt so good. Right before she clasped a great handful of my hair and forced my face up, forcing me to stare right into those depthless eyes. She breathed upon me, a message sent, a message received. Some form of communication I could not actually perceive. Although, my flesh did, my soul did. Something within me clicked, comprehension smoothing its way into my savaged heart for a moment, although the meaning remained hidden to me. She kissed me, serpent’s tongue flickering at my lips to open me. Jasmine had more of a texture than a taste, and it was killing me. I was gone.
I guess that means I passed out. When I came to again, I was ashore. This was not the beach where I met the horse. This was not the lake’s edge where the huge stone kept vigil. This was no place near my own home, not any of which I knew. And yet, I knew; this was where I belonged now. I had a journey to take, to make. My darkest Muse had set me a task. I looked up, helpless. The night sky greeted me, studded with glistening stars swooping around in patterns that made no sense to my brittle eyes. Salted air skulked against my lips. I fell hard into the form of my own flesh, now feeling as if I had been kicked and stomped by a herd of wild horses intent upon tenderizing me for a wolf pack to devour. I tasted blood, felt warmth dribbling from my lips. Be it blood or drool, I found myself unwilling to care. I didn’t even know when my head hit the dirt again. I was gone.
I’d deal with everything else come morning. Or whenever something decided to eat me and I had to get a move on, even in my sleep.
Not that day.
I wanted to go for a walk after dinner. Dusk is not always the best time to go for a walk in these woods, or in any woods, really. Too many times I have felt like Little Red Riding Hood, straying from the Path and nearly attacked by Man-Eating Creatures. Nothing has ever happened to me though. I am cautious. I am respectful. Apparently, that goes a long way out in the forest.
The air was warm, rustling meekly against my back as I shut the back door behind me. The dogs were out with the kids, playing or working or whatever they were up to doing. So I was genuinely Alone, with a capital A. I like that. You live your life surrounded by so many people, so many animals, it is a good thing to take the time to wander without company from time to time. I stuck my hands in my pockets, turned to set off in any random direction-this time simply away from the setting sun because my eyes are sensitive to light at the best of times. I didn’t feel like being blinded by the sunset, mostly because I wasn’t in the mood to walk into any trees. Again. Or fall down any slippery slopes or into any random holes. Again. Hey. I can learn. Sometimes it just takes me a bit to catch on. The wind was a gentle lover, stroking and teasing me, pushing my hair over my shoulders to urge me on.
I get into a mood, into a zone, when I am walking. I get lost in my head, lost in my thoughts. I didn’t notice when the wind shifted, as it maintained its thoughtful caresses from the rear. I almost caught the strange aroma that played havoc with my senses. The dank earthy aroma of the pines and oaks near my house glided into the mystical smells of fruits, of flowers heavy on the vine. Around me, the landscape seemed to shift from the wooded mountain air to which I had grown accustomed to a spicier, more tantalizing cultivated realm. It’s one of those things. I caught it, but didn’t much register it. I was watching the ground in front of my feet. I do that a lot. I find such neat things that way.
Usually. My usual deer run leaf littered forest floor started to slip sideways on me, bit by bit, encroaching upon a fertile flatter land, still healthy with growth. The transition was gradual enough to by-pass my cognizant brain and allow me to trundle along nearly unaware.
I almost tripped over it, the rock. I say ‘rock’, but in reality, the thing was large enough to sit four or five people comfortably. It was a flattish rock, silvered and grey, moss clinging to it in places, a good colony of ants working away off to one side of it. It was tilted, one end higher than the other, but the slope of it was appealing, not back-breaking. The rock had dug itself in beside a small lake, close to an inlet of eddying black waters. Ok. So the largish pond there before me caused me to start. In my woods, there are no lakes or ponds. Babbling brooks. Crazy creeks. A few sinuous streams. But larger bodies of water? No. The smell now gained my full attention. This was not mountain air. Would that I had paid more attention to the balancing mechanisms in my ears, because I was no longer in Kansas, Toto. I was on a marginally hilly land, overall flattish and staid. My beautiful densely treed land had decided to move on without me. Now, I was in something more like a grove, trees spaced widely apart, branches swinging in a stronger more melodic breeze here. A breeze that did not touch me. I had no idea what to expect.
Me being me, I sat down, not on the rock. I have this thing about ants. I try to stay away from them. They can have all the space they want. But I did sit at the edge of the water, where the earth, made from a dark black loam, broke off and split into the heady waters. It was the water, I realized, that blew the scent of jasmine my way. I had expected the smell of frogs, which makes me faintly ill, or unwashed fishes, decaying underwater plant life. I was not expecting the thick tendrils of jasmine to wend their way into my hair, into my head. I stared into the reflective waters, leaning closer to watch as my own familiar face morphed and swayed upon the surface of the tiny waves. I looked out at myself, though my own eyes, when I discovered I was looking up at myself, from beneath the waves. I reached out one timid hand, to touch the me beneath the waters, only to touch my own hand, coming out of the water, reaching out for me. Dazed, I clasped my own hand. At which point, you realize, I was rudely yanked beneath the waters.
Breath gone. Sight gone. Flesh gone. I was a wild thing, not bursting through the weight of the water, but gliding, like a raven on the wing, slipping between the molecules, a thing but not a thing all at the same time. My aqueous self did not pull or drag me. No. We seem to have melded together into One Being. I felt my self dissolving, breaking into little bits, fertilizing the water, to be eaten by ye gods and little fishes, those that I invoked so often in my daily routine with young children and too many domestic obligations.
There is no sensation when you are not a being, when you have been abluded from your normal state. No sensation. All I felt was a sense of motion, not a rushing, not a whirling. A sort of free-falling, that beer and mushrooms can provide in uncertain times. Of course, it came to an end, with a solid splat. I felt as if I had been spat from the throat of some noxious toad and blatted out upon, solid ground. Except that the ground had motion, and it was covered with sand. There was nothing alive beneath me; there was simply the odd feeling of being, rocked, back and forth, almost as if I were on a boat, a big one, but, I wasn’t. This was sand. There were little crabs not three feet away, busily chasing the edge of the water on nimble little crab feet, sharp claws waving in the air. I was very glad they seemed to pay me no attention whatsoever.
Usually when you come up out of the water, thrown forcibly upon dry land, there is coughing and hacking and sputtering. I had none of this. I merely lay there, quiet and unassuming, since my head had long ago given up spinning and had gone into hiding and was refusing to speak to me at all, slowly regaining a sense of flesh, the ability to draw breath. Silence is a strange word, for it implies the absence of sound, although you assume there must be something there, like cars driving by outside, or the house settling, dogs licking their backsides, termites in the walls chattering amongst themselves. This is not what I mean when I say all was silent. I could sense more than hear the lap lap lap of the water stroking the beach. I could feel more than hear the tap tick tap of the crabs scrambling back and forth on their sojourn. A weight pressed into my solar plexus, like a hand pushing me from beneath and shoving me from above, not painful, just very deliberate. Not crushing me. More like mashing me back together, as a child works with clay to design a toy, or a bowl. I am not hollow inside. And yet, somehow, I felt like a vessel. Or something to that effect. I didn’t move, didn’t look up. I had no such desire. I lacked the ability to command my physical form to do so anyway. I closed my eyes, afraid to look without, even more afraid to look within. I did not even bother to pray. What was there to pray about? All I could do was wait and see.
Time normally pulses along despite we small humans. Not here. Not in this place. Time did not stop. Time merely did not belong here, did not dwell here, had no reason to play here. Time was not allowed to be here. This was a Timeless Place.
I could taste the thump thump thump. Under other circumstances, I would have suggested that noise to be the pounding of my heart in my throat near to bursting. Yet, it was not. Not here in this place. It was something else.
Eyes met mine—the dark gorgeous loving eyes of one of the most beautiful mares I have ever seen. I looked into those eyes—looking into my own hazy green eyes from within that gaze. Again I melted. An ectoplasmic bubble of nothingness. I succumbed to the beauty of the black horse. And then she kicked me right in the head, with a wuff and a chuff, and BANG! Smashed me back into my brain, into the shell that was my body, and set me to rights again. She wheeled around, galloping back several yards, before barreling right for me. I didn’t move. Why should I? Over a thousand pounds of gorgeous glistening horse-flesh came pounding down upon me. My choice was be the horse, or drown in the ink-like water. I knew instinctively I could survive a horse-beating, but not the swimming. I could feel her breath upon my face, a dozen dozen fields of night-blooming jasmine forcing their way between my teeth. As she hit me, we turned, morphed. I became the fool caught in her arms, as she became the creature from the black lagoon, grabbing me to her and catapulting us both into the sooty bath once more.
A mermaid, with webbed hands and tail? A charcoal lover of the deep? Sable hair like sea snakes winding their way over and around and within me. She was all muscle, clenching me to her bosom, snaring my body firmly to hers by some unknown means, like tenterhooks. Obsidian eyes, again, I saw myself looking at myself. Her form superimposed over and inside mine, and vice versa. We were not sailing up, nor through, but down, down, down, and deeper again and still. And then I was scared. Then I began to fight. I began to draw whatever reserves I could to beat at her breast, to tear at her hands, her dreadful hair. Every blow I struck hurt me so, tearing my flesh, rending blood, ichor oozing and spurting from me. She looked at me, as I looked at her, we who were one, and no comprehension dawned. I began to cry, the tears burning her cheeks as we cried. Desperate, I clung to her, pushing what breath I had from my body as her body fought to ensure mine was kept breathing.
Then there was a clank. A bang. And a key dropped into the bucket at the bottom of a fathomless well. That’s where she dumped me, in the dark, in the Night. And she left me there, all alone. Neither fish nor horse nor friend. Fine. I admit I was sniveling, just a little. I am afraid of the dark. Well, not so much of the Dark itself, but of all the things that live and swarm and eat in the dark. I felt my way around. On my hands and knees. An oubliette? There was barely enough room for me to scrabble around, touching rough-hewn stone. I could feel the large bricks, the crumbling mortar. The crumbling part made me shake uncontrollably again. What could come crashing down on my empty little head now? Nevertheless, after some apprehensive struggling, my intrepid little fingers scratched across, wood. I nearly threw up. I wasn’t so sure that it could be a good thing. Surely it was. A door. With a latch. That was, of course, don’t you know, locked. I slammed my head against the door, defeated. The thud was hollow, dented. I was too very much alone. Refusing to sob, although unable to stop, I pounded the flat of my hand against the timber, feeling the old dried lumber splinter beneath the weakness of my palm, and not all too happy about that either. I pounded, a mouse against the backside of an elephant, barely making any progress at garnering any attention whatsoever. Somehow someone heard me, or so I hoped, or rather I didn’t. There was a creak, some inaudible shift, and a ping. The door was gone. A doorway appeared, with flickering light seeping through to guide me from this place of high anxiety.
There stood my horse, my onyx Creatrix. I stood-she stood—we staring out from our own eyes through each other’s, into one another. There was a shimmer, a blur, and there stood, me, only it wasn’t me. I am all blonde and fair-skinned. This me, such incredibly indescribable sin, with great glowing jet eyes, hair so blue it was black, skin whiter than the flesh of the moon’s silver light. Her pale lips, my lips turned a shy blue tinged with crimson, curved into a maternally accepting smile, the same smile I gave my kids when I wanted to kill them for some trick they pulled but my love of them, if not their antics, kept me from doing so. One slender bird-like hand reached out towards me, a flower in her hand. My favourite, a blue rose, somehow smelling of field after field of jasmine, the only thing I could smell. I could taste it, a thickness in the air palpable to the touch, a waxy coating upon my skin. I found myself reaching out for the rose, eager nearly to take it. As my finger touched the rose, the thorns actually grew out into three inch spikes and impaled themselves through my fingers, growing into my flesh, ripping the rose from her hand and literally sewing itself to my own. There was no agony. There as a great deal of scarlet viscousness plopping in great gobs from my palm. Yet, no pain. Not that I could tell.
My raven-hued self reached with her other hand stroking my cheek deliberately and gracefully, while our hands were still yet connected as the flower ate into me. A weakness, a hunger, overcame me, and I knelt before her, fell to my knees, almost in shame as much as in need. Then she hit me, the heel of her hand right in the middle of my forehead, the force of the blow stripping the remnants of the rose from her grasp. With a unique tearing sound the rose drew itself from her, plunging the last of its roots and flesh into my hand. I watched in awe as the roots took hold from within my arm, traveling under my skin past my wrist, past my elbow and burrowing deeply into the muscles of my arm. It looked far more painful than I could feel. I could hear the pain, but not feel it.
Now there was a definite brine in my eyes as I looked up into her glowing orbs, for once seeing only her as I tried to pour the image into my brain to grab any form of actual cohesion. Why? I wanted to ask, wanted to cry. Nevertheless, nothing came. Nothing. She reached out towards me again and you know I cringed, sitting back on my heels with my head down, whimpering inside my own skin, a puppy beaten with the broom for misbehavior. Her long flexible fingers drew through my hair, like lemonade on a summer’s afternoon. I could have moaned, it felt so good. Right before she clasped a great handful of my hair and forced my face up, forcing me to stare right into those depthless eyes. She breathed upon me, a message sent, a message received. Some form of communication I could not actually perceive. Although, my flesh did, my soul did. Something within me clicked, comprehension smoothing its way into my savaged heart for a moment, although the meaning remained hidden to me. She kissed me, serpent’s tongue flickering at my lips to open me. Jasmine had more of a texture than a taste, and it was killing me. I was gone.
I guess that means I passed out. When I came to again, I was ashore. This was not the beach where I met the horse. This was not the lake’s edge where the huge stone kept vigil. This was no place near my own home, not any of which I knew. And yet, I knew; this was where I belonged now. I had a journey to take, to make. My darkest Muse had set me a task. I looked up, helpless. The night sky greeted me, studded with glistening stars swooping around in patterns that made no sense to my brittle eyes. Salted air skulked against my lips. I fell hard into the form of my own flesh, now feeling as if I had been kicked and stomped by a herd of wild horses intent upon tenderizing me for a wolf pack to devour. I tasted blood, felt warmth dribbling from my lips. Be it blood or drool, I found myself unwilling to care. I didn’t even know when my head hit the dirt again. I was gone.
I’d deal with everything else come morning. Or whenever something decided to eat me and I had to get a move on, even in my sleep.
Friday, March 20, 2009
I Went traveling-Am Writing Again-Enjoy
Here Be Dragon
Can you imagine it? A dark space, not black, not lit, but just a wide clear open space. Kind of like being in outer space, only it’s warm here. There is light, but very little, and no visible source, except maybe the dress I am wearing, a silvery white thing cinched at my waist with threaded woven silks. I am not really on the floor or on the bed. I merely, am. And I am sitting. Feet flat on the floor, body lounging across the empty almost surface. Beneath me, it is firm, whatever it is. I feel safe, secure. However, there is an air here, a substance in the ambiance that causes me to shiver unintentionally.
He comes to me, a big man already, wide at the shoulders, slender at the hips. Reddish blonde hair and eyes gone wild with the sky. He draws even nearer, reaching out to gentle me, to caress me. Cupping the side of my jaw in his hand. Then he is upon me, with lips and teeth so amazingly careful. I hear the whoosh of the wings as I fall back, paralyzed with the rising steam between my thighs. I am nothing but the virgin offering set before him. I am his treat, his treatise, and upon my flesh and my soul does he feast.
Atop me is no man, but a great gleaming black diamond of a beast. A fire dragon, in full regalia, of the honor of the Black Knights. I see him as he truly is. Regal as he digs his claws ever deeper into my bodies, both of flesh and light, through past and present, rending the flimsy barriers between he and I as he joins our souls and our sighs into one brilliant burst.
I cannot blink. I cannot breathe. I can only open, sink into the bliss, open more, give him, receive him, bind as I am bound, devour him in my silence as he devours me with his mouth, with his hands. Within my comatose cocoon, I swoon, and swoon, the rush of life traveling through my veins into his mouth, into his being, into his soul, even as he feeds the same back into me, so much of his own.
I am burnt to a crisp by the flames barreling through worlds and times and generations. I am burning at his touch, his kiss, his tongue a merry dancer teasing more from me, opening other doors within me, sliding himself in, melding us, drawing us, remaking us both, in his image.
He is kissing me, pulling forth shard after shard. Sucking the life of his I hid for him directly from the source. Drawing up from the depths my own bits he himself hid in my honor, at my behest. Suddenly the flood of desire hits me and I can cling to him, wrapping my legs around his waist, pulling him ever deeper, ever closer, swallowing him whole. I bite his shoulders, digging into his back with questing fingers, crying out, screaming, as we melt together, flowing like molten wax, liquid rock, filling in the blank spaces within our hearts.
He is done. He pulls away, draws back within himself. A dragon no more. Only I can see within his eyes the smile from the other side. A man once more. I can pull him down, pressing him to me, forcing him to hold me down, as the shudders and vibrations shake and challenge me to my core. I draw upon his strengths, his energies, praying the gods allow me to re-align and to move on.
A year ago this could never have happened. Months ago I would have said you were insane if you had suggested it. Now again I am made to see there is a path before me, made of chance and choices and overall ingrained. This is a man I can travel with, from dark side to light. This is the man I can trust with all my heart and all my might. Here I am safe, in the company of dragons. I am not the lost. I am merely the key.
Can you imagine it? A dark space, not black, not lit, but just a wide clear open space. Kind of like being in outer space, only it’s warm here. There is light, but very little, and no visible source, except maybe the dress I am wearing, a silvery white thing cinched at my waist with threaded woven silks. I am not really on the floor or on the bed. I merely, am. And I am sitting. Feet flat on the floor, body lounging across the empty almost surface. Beneath me, it is firm, whatever it is. I feel safe, secure. However, there is an air here, a substance in the ambiance that causes me to shiver unintentionally.
He comes to me, a big man already, wide at the shoulders, slender at the hips. Reddish blonde hair and eyes gone wild with the sky. He draws even nearer, reaching out to gentle me, to caress me. Cupping the side of my jaw in his hand. Then he is upon me, with lips and teeth so amazingly careful. I hear the whoosh of the wings as I fall back, paralyzed with the rising steam between my thighs. I am nothing but the virgin offering set before him. I am his treat, his treatise, and upon my flesh and my soul does he feast.
Atop me is no man, but a great gleaming black diamond of a beast. A fire dragon, in full regalia, of the honor of the Black Knights. I see him as he truly is. Regal as he digs his claws ever deeper into my bodies, both of flesh and light, through past and present, rending the flimsy barriers between he and I as he joins our souls and our sighs into one brilliant burst.
I cannot blink. I cannot breathe. I can only open, sink into the bliss, open more, give him, receive him, bind as I am bound, devour him in my silence as he devours me with his mouth, with his hands. Within my comatose cocoon, I swoon, and swoon, the rush of life traveling through my veins into his mouth, into his being, into his soul, even as he feeds the same back into me, so much of his own.
I am burnt to a crisp by the flames barreling through worlds and times and generations. I am burning at his touch, his kiss, his tongue a merry dancer teasing more from me, opening other doors within me, sliding himself in, melding us, drawing us, remaking us both, in his image.
He is kissing me, pulling forth shard after shard. Sucking the life of his I hid for him directly from the source. Drawing up from the depths my own bits he himself hid in my honor, at my behest. Suddenly the flood of desire hits me and I can cling to him, wrapping my legs around his waist, pulling him ever deeper, ever closer, swallowing him whole. I bite his shoulders, digging into his back with questing fingers, crying out, screaming, as we melt together, flowing like molten wax, liquid rock, filling in the blank spaces within our hearts.
He is done. He pulls away, draws back within himself. A dragon no more. Only I can see within his eyes the smile from the other side. A man once more. I can pull him down, pressing him to me, forcing him to hold me down, as the shudders and vibrations shake and challenge me to my core. I draw upon his strengths, his energies, praying the gods allow me to re-align and to move on.
A year ago this could never have happened. Months ago I would have said you were insane if you had suggested it. Now again I am made to see there is a path before me, made of chance and choices and overall ingrained. This is a man I can travel with, from dark side to light. This is the man I can trust with all my heart and all my might. Here I am safe, in the company of dragons. I am not the lost. I am merely the key.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Leaning Into Open Space
I waited my entire life to figure out who I am and who I am supposed to be. These are two completely separate beings. The person I must be for other people, for the rest of the world at large. And the person I am simply because this is me. I spent so much time and effort becoming the person everyone else wanted me to be that I never really had any time to figure out the real me. I didn’t like that person, the one who lived to put on the show for the rest of the world. I hate her. She is so fake, even in her gentle sweetness. So contrived and uninvolved. Like the surface of the ocean, where the soft gentle waves rock rhythmically, hypnotically, back and forth. The mind-numbing certainty of it all, that basic repetition. It doesn’t change. That’s all there is to it. As if there were nothing at all underneath. That isn’t me. I didn’t realize for too long that that isn’t me. It was never me. I wasn’t there.
All those years I spent as a hollow corn-husk doll. A smile pasted to my face and a kind word for everyone. I had hurt inside for so long there was no other place for the pain to go or to be. The tears I had cried had dried up, created the brittle façade that surrounded me like faery armor made from the finest metals, spun so thin and yet so strong. I didn’t stop. I didn’t think. I didn’t wander.
Enter you, into my glassine world. Not so much a breath of fresh air, but the brutal torrent of the monsoon. I was overwhelmed, swept up in the turbulent muddied waters, pummeled from above and below by storms that knew no boundaries, that tore at my breast as effectively as they tore at my soul. You didn’t even notice me at first. I was hidden too deeply beneath the glamours that clustered tightly about me. I saw you. Your eyes tippled over mine, not registering my presence. I went home. The mighty walls of my dam began to show cracks, nowhere close to bursting. I dreamed of great frogs singing, a holy chorus meant to rock the heavens. I awoke screaming, my throat rived, beveled and unleveled, choking with the belch of rotted meat long gone to seed. The man asleep beside me a stranger who had dragged me along at his side, forcing me to smile and nod and deny the reality of my own sweet grace.
He took me to a doctor. He sent me to specialists. I cried. Great heaping gulping wailing sobs and monstrous shrieks and alibis. The bellowing shook me out, clawing its way down to me, the essential vital essence of me, hounding me, shaking me, drubbing me, clobbering me, beseeching me, resurrecting me. No one heard a sound. I sat in offices, in cold chairs and warm, smiling dumbly and pretending to play along. I was given prescriptions, and exercises, and suggestions. The prescriptions I filled and left for the man to take. He gobbled them up, a greedy child noshing on fresh candies, his daemons ahowl for his blood every moment anyway. I ignored the advice, delayed the exercises, cast aside the concern and the queries.
I dug down. Excavated. I pulled out the old books, the ones dressed in molting leathers. I emptied the shelves within the castle in my mind, though my own self still clung to the bars beneath the earthen floors harbored in the dungeon. I was wide, and small, and stilted. I was the empty bowl, refilling myself over and over, only to look and find the bowl empty again. Surely a task set before me by the gods as punishment for some harrowing crime I had committed, be it in this life or another.
I found tools, rakes and shovels and picks and pitches and tines, scythes and axes and saws and hammers. I drew blood. I burned flesh. I drew pictures. I pillaged and I raped and I sorted. But there was nothing there. Only the ruminants of the whist long since having passed.
I had to see you once again. I had no reason to do so. I knew of no way to contact you, no way to request an audience. There was no rationale for us to meet again. Other than this over-eager sensation of my life depending upon the very breath you exhale, the merest bit of dust caught in the corner of your eye, the glimmer of the light off your hair. I didn’t care.
I called. I stuttered. Finally I begged, pleading, in the most hushed manner I was capable of divulging. I don’t know why you accepted, you who could not have picked me out of the crowd to save my life. You invited me, bid me, enticed me, entreated me. I do believe, sir, you tempted me to tempt you. Somewhere within you you realized that we were meant to be. You wanted me as much as I wanted you. You simply did not realize the type or the level of work involved.
I am the volcanic mountain, fuming and bulging with the heaviness of the molten moisture within my stacks, but I am blocked by rock and man and foul. This is not the way to attract.
Yet, there you were, from that first second moment, when the air between us vibrated and energized. We became smoke, lingering over the flesh, while burrowing far inside. We stood, man and woman, not two feet from one another. All alone in the world. The doors were all locked. The clocks were all stopped. The sun rose no further. The moon moved not a spot. Our bodies fell to the floor, discarded remnants unwanted and unneeded for this process. You saw me. You truly saw me. The battered bruised frightened little girl, hunkered down beneath the ground, huddled up cringing in a corner. I saw you, the golden god, the angel’s wings, the breath of fire. You drew me out from the spoiled grave and stood me in your flames. Your touch destroyed me. Your ardent flames licked and salved me, brushing away the filth and the dirt. You kissed me, sealing into my lungs the hearth of your own, filling my walls with your tomb. We did not touch; we
melted. You swept me into your arms and we jettisoned through the atmosphere as if we were the latest spaceship rocketing past the worlds. I was inside you. You were within me. I was awash with the glimmer of hope, the seductive speech of wisdom. I the little germ fell to nourishment within your great expanse, kindling the thought of recompense, that I might totter up, reaching out to the sun to be burned again by the rays, succored by the blood, and nourished past the point of needing to pretend.
You stayed with me, as we dripped, sweating tears and oils and unguents upon one another. My body the universe splitting open and agape as you reached in to eat your fill. This is not hope, not faith. This is the Truth of this place. We were made to fit within one another. This hollow filled by that spear. This shoulder meant for this tear. With tongues and fingers meeting here. We were rebourn, a phoenix bursting forth from the ashes, sinew wrapped us at the core, transplanting us from one cosmos to another, choking on the placenta and sulfur of the new realm as we fight to maintain our grip on the essence between us.
The clocks embarked upon their momentary transit once again. Time and space refolded themselves, leaving us marked and dazed, consummated and still partial. The sun passed through the skies, leaving a dark trail for the moon to trip upon as it arose to announce the blues of the marrows leaking yet around the corners.
I stood there, naked and unafraid. You stood there too, and you saw me. You reached out and touched me. I knew. You knew.
It’s a brand new space beneath our souls.
We walk towards one another, eradicating the old from whence we had come. The grains are taking hold, steeling our resolve. There is no need to turn. We are home now.
written by TK Kietero
copyright 2009
all rights reserved
All those years I spent as a hollow corn-husk doll. A smile pasted to my face and a kind word for everyone. I had hurt inside for so long there was no other place for the pain to go or to be. The tears I had cried had dried up, created the brittle façade that surrounded me like faery armor made from the finest metals, spun so thin and yet so strong. I didn’t stop. I didn’t think. I didn’t wander.
Enter you, into my glassine world. Not so much a breath of fresh air, but the brutal torrent of the monsoon. I was overwhelmed, swept up in the turbulent muddied waters, pummeled from above and below by storms that knew no boundaries, that tore at my breast as effectively as they tore at my soul. You didn’t even notice me at first. I was hidden too deeply beneath the glamours that clustered tightly about me. I saw you. Your eyes tippled over mine, not registering my presence. I went home. The mighty walls of my dam began to show cracks, nowhere close to bursting. I dreamed of great frogs singing, a holy chorus meant to rock the heavens. I awoke screaming, my throat rived, beveled and unleveled, choking with the belch of rotted meat long gone to seed. The man asleep beside me a stranger who had dragged me along at his side, forcing me to smile and nod and deny the reality of my own sweet grace.
He took me to a doctor. He sent me to specialists. I cried. Great heaping gulping wailing sobs and monstrous shrieks and alibis. The bellowing shook me out, clawing its way down to me, the essential vital essence of me, hounding me, shaking me, drubbing me, clobbering me, beseeching me, resurrecting me. No one heard a sound. I sat in offices, in cold chairs and warm, smiling dumbly and pretending to play along. I was given prescriptions, and exercises, and suggestions. The prescriptions I filled and left for the man to take. He gobbled them up, a greedy child noshing on fresh candies, his daemons ahowl for his blood every moment anyway. I ignored the advice, delayed the exercises, cast aside the concern and the queries.
I dug down. Excavated. I pulled out the old books, the ones dressed in molting leathers. I emptied the shelves within the castle in my mind, though my own self still clung to the bars beneath the earthen floors harbored in the dungeon. I was wide, and small, and stilted. I was the empty bowl, refilling myself over and over, only to look and find the bowl empty again. Surely a task set before me by the gods as punishment for some harrowing crime I had committed, be it in this life or another.
I found tools, rakes and shovels and picks and pitches and tines, scythes and axes and saws and hammers. I drew blood. I burned flesh. I drew pictures. I pillaged and I raped and I sorted. But there was nothing there. Only the ruminants of the whist long since having passed.
I had to see you once again. I had no reason to do so. I knew of no way to contact you, no way to request an audience. There was no rationale for us to meet again. Other than this over-eager sensation of my life depending upon the very breath you exhale, the merest bit of dust caught in the corner of your eye, the glimmer of the light off your hair. I didn’t care.
I called. I stuttered. Finally I begged, pleading, in the most hushed manner I was capable of divulging. I don’t know why you accepted, you who could not have picked me out of the crowd to save my life. You invited me, bid me, enticed me, entreated me. I do believe, sir, you tempted me to tempt you. Somewhere within you you realized that we were meant to be. You wanted me as much as I wanted you. You simply did not realize the type or the level of work involved.
I am the volcanic mountain, fuming and bulging with the heaviness of the molten moisture within my stacks, but I am blocked by rock and man and foul. This is not the way to attract.
Yet, there you were, from that first second moment, when the air between us vibrated and energized. We became smoke, lingering over the flesh, while burrowing far inside. We stood, man and woman, not two feet from one another. All alone in the world. The doors were all locked. The clocks were all stopped. The sun rose no further. The moon moved not a spot. Our bodies fell to the floor, discarded remnants unwanted and unneeded for this process. You saw me. You truly saw me. The battered bruised frightened little girl, hunkered down beneath the ground, huddled up cringing in a corner. I saw you, the golden god, the angel’s wings, the breath of fire. You drew me out from the spoiled grave and stood me in your flames. Your touch destroyed me. Your ardent flames licked and salved me, brushing away the filth and the dirt. You kissed me, sealing into my lungs the hearth of your own, filling my walls with your tomb. We did not touch; we
melted. You swept me into your arms and we jettisoned through the atmosphere as if we were the latest spaceship rocketing past the worlds. I was inside you. You were within me. I was awash with the glimmer of hope, the seductive speech of wisdom. I the little germ fell to nourishment within your great expanse, kindling the thought of recompense, that I might totter up, reaching out to the sun to be burned again by the rays, succored by the blood, and nourished past the point of needing to pretend.
You stayed with me, as we dripped, sweating tears and oils and unguents upon one another. My body the universe splitting open and agape as you reached in to eat your fill. This is not hope, not faith. This is the Truth of this place. We were made to fit within one another. This hollow filled by that spear. This shoulder meant for this tear. With tongues and fingers meeting here. We were rebourn, a phoenix bursting forth from the ashes, sinew wrapped us at the core, transplanting us from one cosmos to another, choking on the placenta and sulfur of the new realm as we fight to maintain our grip on the essence between us.
The clocks embarked upon their momentary transit once again. Time and space refolded themselves, leaving us marked and dazed, consummated and still partial. The sun passed through the skies, leaving a dark trail for the moon to trip upon as it arose to announce the blues of the marrows leaking yet around the corners.
I stood there, naked and unafraid. You stood there too, and you saw me. You reached out and touched me. I knew. You knew.
It’s a brand new space beneath our souls.
We walk towards one another, eradicating the old from whence we had come. The grains are taking hold, steeling our resolve. There is no need to turn. We are home now.
written by TK Kietero
copyright 2009
all rights reserved
Monday, March 9, 2009
Vindication
I remember that day all too well. Nick and I had been fighting off and on for weeks prior to ‘the incident’. He had his cheap-thrill bimbo, whatever you wanted to call her. I was tired of his other women being thrown in my face so frequently. I told him I was out, I was gone. He told me that was fine, he had other women more than willing to do what he wanted, to be there when he wanted them there, and to leave when he told them to, who never got upset no matter where or with whom he spent the night. He told me, told me, I should just go running to John and hop into bed with him, that that would just be the perfect ending to our relationship, told me to hurry up and just get it over with already.
Well, John and I had been friends for awhile. I wouldn’t even have known him if not for Nick. Plus, Nick knew all too well John had always had a thing for me. John had always made it clear he would be there waiting for me whenever things went South with Nick and me.
Nick stormed out one door. I blew out another door. Each of us heading our own way, away from the other. You know John had to be the first one I ran into that night when I hit the bar scene seeking surcease from my misery.
I am a recovering alcoholic. I’d been clean and sober then for going on ten years. But, Nick was my soul, and I was lost. I was dead inside. I hated myself. I hated my life. Without him, nothing could ever be real or good again. I saw no hope. I did see that bottle of tequila though. John, being the dear friend he was, was not about to let me go chasing the worm all alone that night. Apparently, we really hit it hard. Really hard. We went out clubbing, dancing, way too much, way too close, grinding and clinging on dance floor after dance floor. We were seen kissing, by way too many people, kissing and groping one another. There was more than one bottle drunk that night between us, and they weren’t all tequila either. I have no clue what he gave me to swallow, or what we smoked. I just know some fool took pictures. Way more than one fool at that.
Of course, as per my usual, we ended up at my place after all was said and done. On the guest room bed. Michael, my room-mate, came in the next afternoon, since the door was shut tight. We never closed the bedroom doors unless we were trying to keep someone out. John and I were tangled up in a heap, both of us fully clothed, under the blankets. But, the smell of –everything—was all over that room, all over us. Bars. Smoke. Alcohol. I could smell a woman all over John. And all I knew for sure was that woman was not me. Even drunk, even stoned, there was no way I would betray Nick. I knew that.
Michael saw John and me in bed together, under the covers. He never knew we were fully clothed. I hit the shower instantly. I stayed in there for a long time, a very long time. So long Michael took it as an admission of guilt. The pictures of John and me all over each other made it everywhere. Oh yeah for the technological revolution, with its camera phones and email access, instant messaging. They came from so many people, too many sources. People who had supposedly been my friends too. Nick was more than furious with me. John didn’t fare much better, because he immediately awoke that afternoon and began to brag about how fantastic I was in bed and how I had more than lived up to all his fantasies and dreams. Nick gave him more than one bloody lip in the weeks that followed.
Usually when Nick and I fought, we ended up talking a few days later, if not the next day. This time, there was no reconciliation. After he came in screaming over the pictures and the blitz of hatred those had inspired, we were done, he assured me. If we happened upon one another, as we often ran in the same circles regardless due to our work, his face went corpse white, his eyes glazing over with anger and hatred. He couldn’t spit on me if I were on fire, not to save my life.
My best friend and savior Michael turned on me, barely speaking to me. His boyfriend Padraic leered and pandered to me, trying to convince me I should bed him next. I couldn’t stand to be in my own home anymore most of the time. I ended up spending more and more time at my studio, trying to work on my sculptures, sleeping on the floor when things got too tough to try to keep standing. Nick was my muse. Without him, I was lost.
Fast forward, through all my hurt and pain and shame and degradation, to Nick, engaged to some stupid heiress type. Michael insisted on taking me to Nick’s engagement party, to help me get over Nick at last, he claimed as he dragged me along, kicking and complaining the whole way. John was there, a man I hadn’t talked to since he had ruined my life. On his arm was this fluffy little vixen with hair done up like a poodle. Mandy? Mindy? I never remembered her name. I knew she was a drinker and a drugger and a partier. I knew she and John had been an on again-off-again thing for nearly a year. She and John came together, arm in arm, stoned or drunk or both. Who knew? I didn’t care.
Nick and Jenny. The happy couple. If he were so happy, why did he keep staring at me like that, with that smoldering hunger way back in his eyes? I hadn’t thought Nick and John were still talking. I didn’t understand why John and that girl of his had shown up to this little soiree. It was almost funny when John started in on Nick about me. John loved to rub in the fact that he had slept with me. Until Mindy/Mandy spoke up, chirping that John had never slept with me. She reminded John, and told the rest of her rapt audience, that he had called her and had her come over to my place after I had passed out on the couch when we got home that night. After she and John had had sex, she had helped him put me in the guest bed before she had gone home to whatever man she’d been dating and sleeping with at the time. She even told everyone that they hadn’t undressed me because John was afraid I would hate him the next morning if I were disrobed in any way.
Jaws dropped. The room, which had been buzzing softly, full of about a hundred of Nick and Jenny’s best friends, went dead silent. Even the fly on the wall shut up, and fell off the wall. I was crying. I could have kissed that little sleaze for her god-awful flapping mouth. Nick’s look of utter horror just about broke my heart. John actually had to sit down so crippled was he by the discovery of his failure to bed me. I wasn’t the only one crying. Michael stood behind me, his arms wrapped around me, whispering apologies into the back of my head. Mindy/Mandy kept jabbering on, giving all sorts of details and explanations and who knew what else, because everyone had stopped listening to her. All eyes were on Nick …and me.
Nick actually took Jenny’s hand off his arm and took a step away from her. She tried to restrain him, but he shook her off with a coldness that shocked her into silent submission. He took one step towards John, who now sat with his head in his hands, bent over sobbing brokenly. I couldn’t see Nick’s face as he stood there gawking at the man who was once his best friend since childhood. The man who had devastated my life and taken away the one true love of my life and my soul. Nick shook his head once as if to clear it before walking right over to me. Michael released me before Nick reached me, pushing me forward somewhat so that I might meet Nick part-way. Nick didn’t pause, didn’t say a word. He scooped me up in his arms, his lips finding mine. I couldn’t move at first, then I responded to him, hesitantly, then more vividly. I kissed him back, the way he was kissing me, as if my life depended upon it. My arms encircled his neck. He carried me out of the room, out of the building. We were soon in the limo that had been reserved for Jenny and him. He slid me into the back seat as the driver opened the door at our approach. Nick took a second to tell the driver where to take us. Then he was there beside me, holding me tight against him, cuddling me on his lap as if I were a small child.
I don’t remember a word he said that entire ride. All I know is tears kept falling. Mine. His. Mingling together. Striking my cheek, pooling together and staining the blouse I was wearing. We were together again. Reunited. Nothing else mattered to me. Not in the least.
Well, John and I had been friends for awhile. I wouldn’t even have known him if not for Nick. Plus, Nick knew all too well John had always had a thing for me. John had always made it clear he would be there waiting for me whenever things went South with Nick and me.
Nick stormed out one door. I blew out another door. Each of us heading our own way, away from the other. You know John had to be the first one I ran into that night when I hit the bar scene seeking surcease from my misery.
I am a recovering alcoholic. I’d been clean and sober then for going on ten years. But, Nick was my soul, and I was lost. I was dead inside. I hated myself. I hated my life. Without him, nothing could ever be real or good again. I saw no hope. I did see that bottle of tequila though. John, being the dear friend he was, was not about to let me go chasing the worm all alone that night. Apparently, we really hit it hard. Really hard. We went out clubbing, dancing, way too much, way too close, grinding and clinging on dance floor after dance floor. We were seen kissing, by way too many people, kissing and groping one another. There was more than one bottle drunk that night between us, and they weren’t all tequila either. I have no clue what he gave me to swallow, or what we smoked. I just know some fool took pictures. Way more than one fool at that.
Of course, as per my usual, we ended up at my place after all was said and done. On the guest room bed. Michael, my room-mate, came in the next afternoon, since the door was shut tight. We never closed the bedroom doors unless we were trying to keep someone out. John and I were tangled up in a heap, both of us fully clothed, under the blankets. But, the smell of –everything—was all over that room, all over us. Bars. Smoke. Alcohol. I could smell a woman all over John. And all I knew for sure was that woman was not me. Even drunk, even stoned, there was no way I would betray Nick. I knew that.
Michael saw John and me in bed together, under the covers. He never knew we were fully clothed. I hit the shower instantly. I stayed in there for a long time, a very long time. So long Michael took it as an admission of guilt. The pictures of John and me all over each other made it everywhere. Oh yeah for the technological revolution, with its camera phones and email access, instant messaging. They came from so many people, too many sources. People who had supposedly been my friends too. Nick was more than furious with me. John didn’t fare much better, because he immediately awoke that afternoon and began to brag about how fantastic I was in bed and how I had more than lived up to all his fantasies and dreams. Nick gave him more than one bloody lip in the weeks that followed.
Usually when Nick and I fought, we ended up talking a few days later, if not the next day. This time, there was no reconciliation. After he came in screaming over the pictures and the blitz of hatred those had inspired, we were done, he assured me. If we happened upon one another, as we often ran in the same circles regardless due to our work, his face went corpse white, his eyes glazing over with anger and hatred. He couldn’t spit on me if I were on fire, not to save my life.
My best friend and savior Michael turned on me, barely speaking to me. His boyfriend Padraic leered and pandered to me, trying to convince me I should bed him next. I couldn’t stand to be in my own home anymore most of the time. I ended up spending more and more time at my studio, trying to work on my sculptures, sleeping on the floor when things got too tough to try to keep standing. Nick was my muse. Without him, I was lost.
Fast forward, through all my hurt and pain and shame and degradation, to Nick, engaged to some stupid heiress type. Michael insisted on taking me to Nick’s engagement party, to help me get over Nick at last, he claimed as he dragged me along, kicking and complaining the whole way. John was there, a man I hadn’t talked to since he had ruined my life. On his arm was this fluffy little vixen with hair done up like a poodle. Mandy? Mindy? I never remembered her name. I knew she was a drinker and a drugger and a partier. I knew she and John had been an on again-off-again thing for nearly a year. She and John came together, arm in arm, stoned or drunk or both. Who knew? I didn’t care.
Nick and Jenny. The happy couple. If he were so happy, why did he keep staring at me like that, with that smoldering hunger way back in his eyes? I hadn’t thought Nick and John were still talking. I didn’t understand why John and that girl of his had shown up to this little soiree. It was almost funny when John started in on Nick about me. John loved to rub in the fact that he had slept with me. Until Mindy/Mandy spoke up, chirping that John had never slept with me. She reminded John, and told the rest of her rapt audience, that he had called her and had her come over to my place after I had passed out on the couch when we got home that night. After she and John had had sex, she had helped him put me in the guest bed before she had gone home to whatever man she’d been dating and sleeping with at the time. She even told everyone that they hadn’t undressed me because John was afraid I would hate him the next morning if I were disrobed in any way.
Jaws dropped. The room, which had been buzzing softly, full of about a hundred of Nick and Jenny’s best friends, went dead silent. Even the fly on the wall shut up, and fell off the wall. I was crying. I could have kissed that little sleaze for her god-awful flapping mouth. Nick’s look of utter horror just about broke my heart. John actually had to sit down so crippled was he by the discovery of his failure to bed me. I wasn’t the only one crying. Michael stood behind me, his arms wrapped around me, whispering apologies into the back of my head. Mindy/Mandy kept jabbering on, giving all sorts of details and explanations and who knew what else, because everyone had stopped listening to her. All eyes were on Nick …and me.
Nick actually took Jenny’s hand off his arm and took a step away from her. She tried to restrain him, but he shook her off with a coldness that shocked her into silent submission. He took one step towards John, who now sat with his head in his hands, bent over sobbing brokenly. I couldn’t see Nick’s face as he stood there gawking at the man who was once his best friend since childhood. The man who had devastated my life and taken away the one true love of my life and my soul. Nick shook his head once as if to clear it before walking right over to me. Michael released me before Nick reached me, pushing me forward somewhat so that I might meet Nick part-way. Nick didn’t pause, didn’t say a word. He scooped me up in his arms, his lips finding mine. I couldn’t move at first, then I responded to him, hesitantly, then more vividly. I kissed him back, the way he was kissing me, as if my life depended upon it. My arms encircled his neck. He carried me out of the room, out of the building. We were soon in the limo that had been reserved for Jenny and him. He slid me into the back seat as the driver opened the door at our approach. Nick took a second to tell the driver where to take us. Then he was there beside me, holding me tight against him, cuddling me on his lap as if I were a small child.
I don’t remember a word he said that entire ride. All I know is tears kept falling. Mine. His. Mingling together. Striking my cheek, pooling together and staining the blouse I was wearing. We were together again. Reunited. Nothing else mattered to me. Not in the least.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The Queen's Presence
I am not actually certain when the Octopus began to come to me in my dreams. I am even less certain when She began to manifest in my daily life. The sheer suddenness of Her appearance in my life is a little daunting. Before I really had a chance to know what was happening, I was online scanning pictures for “the right” picture. Once I found it, it was a simple process to find a decent tattoo parlor. I went once to get some test work done, small simple tattoos that I figured even a monkey could do. The details of the final product of my simple designs thrilled me to no end. I scheduled another appointment right there to have the work done on the Masterpiece.
My tattoo is not too large. It is roughly five inches by seven inches. It is by far the largest one I have now. I have many tattoos. Whenever I get a new tattoo there is an internal acceptance process my body goes through in order to assimilate the ink and the spiritual import. I get a little sick, usually for a day or two. For me, it’s like getting a deep-tissue massage that releases every toxin that my body has stored and I have to drink lots of fluids and rest as I release everything and re-organise internally. When I got the Queen tattoo, I was dog-sick for over a week. Now, other than some very small areas in some rather small tattoos, I had not had much colour work before. The Queen is in full-colour. And She is extremely life-like.
Now, during my search for “the” picture, I also tried to do as much research on the animal itself as I could. I had always liked octopus. The one Jacque Costeau program I have seen when I was a young child that stuck with me was the one about the octopus and Jacque asking if someone thought the octopus could feel pleasure. I found a lot of biological information. I found out about the tentacles, the intelligence, the shape-shifting, the mimicry. I watched videos of octopus snatching sharks from the water and eating them. I watched videos of the depth of octopus camouflage. I watched videos of octopus in captivity who squeezed through horribly tiny tubes and pipes and holes. I watched video of octopus leaving the water of their own tank and moving through the air and dry land to get to other food sources, in or out of another nearby tank. I read accounts of octopus interactions with humans and otherwise.
I read whatever mythology I could find as well. What I read left a lot to be desired. Are octopus simply aliens from another planet? Are they the last of their kind of the creatures who ruled Earth before humans gained ascension? Are they the Dream Weavers? Have they come from a different dimension? The stories that I did find were short and without much detail.
I know, as a ShapeShifter, that I need to do my own research, my own inner work. I have gathered information from outside sources. Now I must find what the Octopus means to me.
There are a vast many correlations between one Guardian (Grandmother Spider) and the other Guardian (Queen Octopus) in my Life. I have been under the protection and at the discretion of Grandmother Spider since I was a small child. Spider has eight legs. Octopus has eight legs. Both are said to have climbed from one World into another. Each has similarities, but each also strays farther into deeper paths away from one another.
Octopus regenerate. They change colors. They have ink or poison, for not all octopus have ink. They come in sizes from very tiny to absolutely huge. They are intelligent beyond what humans are usually willing to accept from an “animal”. They can survive both on land (for short time periods) and in the water. They morph into whatever shape is needed for the situation. Octopus do not fit into a mold; there is no “box” into which we can stuff an octopus and say—stay there, as we do with most other species we know. Octopus are Other-Worldly.
My own studies led me to specialize in the blue-ring octopus. She is an extremely defensive mother, cradling her young in her arms until they hatch, at which time she withers away and dies, her life force continuing in her young. She is the smallest of octopus. She has no ink. Her rings are hidden until she releases her poison. If you see the blue rings light up, you are already dead as the poison is already in the water and you are already surrounded by it and being killed by it. She is protective of her home. She is not aggressive. She does prefer to swim away, if no eggs are present, rather than fight or kill. All she wants is to hunt for her dinner and then go home, left in peace and unmolested.
I walk this Path. I walk through the Worlds, Known and Unknown. I see the Savagery, yet I am not a part of it. I feel the Pain of the masses, wherever I go. I cannot escape that. It is not my job to Heal them. It is not my job to Free them. Those who come to me for help take only what they will from the experience. I force nothing upon them. I am not the Enemy. I am not the Master. I am merely on a Journey, a wandering minstrel, taking in the Sights, waiting for my feet to turn the right direction and lead me straight into my Home.
copyright 2009 TK Kietero
all rights reserved
My tattoo is not too large. It is roughly five inches by seven inches. It is by far the largest one I have now. I have many tattoos. Whenever I get a new tattoo there is an internal acceptance process my body goes through in order to assimilate the ink and the spiritual import. I get a little sick, usually for a day or two. For me, it’s like getting a deep-tissue massage that releases every toxin that my body has stored and I have to drink lots of fluids and rest as I release everything and re-organise internally. When I got the Queen tattoo, I was dog-sick for over a week. Now, other than some very small areas in some rather small tattoos, I had not had much colour work before. The Queen is in full-colour. And She is extremely life-like.
Now, during my search for “the” picture, I also tried to do as much research on the animal itself as I could. I had always liked octopus. The one Jacque Costeau program I have seen when I was a young child that stuck with me was the one about the octopus and Jacque asking if someone thought the octopus could feel pleasure. I found a lot of biological information. I found out about the tentacles, the intelligence, the shape-shifting, the mimicry. I watched videos of octopus snatching sharks from the water and eating them. I watched videos of the depth of octopus camouflage. I watched videos of octopus in captivity who squeezed through horribly tiny tubes and pipes and holes. I watched video of octopus leaving the water of their own tank and moving through the air and dry land to get to other food sources, in or out of another nearby tank. I read accounts of octopus interactions with humans and otherwise.
I read whatever mythology I could find as well. What I read left a lot to be desired. Are octopus simply aliens from another planet? Are they the last of their kind of the creatures who ruled Earth before humans gained ascension? Are they the Dream Weavers? Have they come from a different dimension? The stories that I did find were short and without much detail.
I know, as a ShapeShifter, that I need to do my own research, my own inner work. I have gathered information from outside sources. Now I must find what the Octopus means to me.
There are a vast many correlations between one Guardian (Grandmother Spider) and the other Guardian (Queen Octopus) in my Life. I have been under the protection and at the discretion of Grandmother Spider since I was a small child. Spider has eight legs. Octopus has eight legs. Both are said to have climbed from one World into another. Each has similarities, but each also strays farther into deeper paths away from one another.
Octopus regenerate. They change colors. They have ink or poison, for not all octopus have ink. They come in sizes from very tiny to absolutely huge. They are intelligent beyond what humans are usually willing to accept from an “animal”. They can survive both on land (for short time periods) and in the water. They morph into whatever shape is needed for the situation. Octopus do not fit into a mold; there is no “box” into which we can stuff an octopus and say—stay there, as we do with most other species we know. Octopus are Other-Worldly.
My own studies led me to specialize in the blue-ring octopus. She is an extremely defensive mother, cradling her young in her arms until they hatch, at which time she withers away and dies, her life force continuing in her young. She is the smallest of octopus. She has no ink. Her rings are hidden until she releases her poison. If you see the blue rings light up, you are already dead as the poison is already in the water and you are already surrounded by it and being killed by it. She is protective of her home. She is not aggressive. She does prefer to swim away, if no eggs are present, rather than fight or kill. All she wants is to hunt for her dinner and then go home, left in peace and unmolested.
I walk this Path. I walk through the Worlds, Known and Unknown. I see the Savagery, yet I am not a part of it. I feel the Pain of the masses, wherever I go. I cannot escape that. It is not my job to Heal them. It is not my job to Free them. Those who come to me for help take only what they will from the experience. I force nothing upon them. I am not the Enemy. I am not the Master. I am merely on a Journey, a wandering minstrel, taking in the Sights, waiting for my feet to turn the right direction and lead me straight into my Home.
copyright 2009 TK Kietero
all rights reserved
Friday, January 9, 2009
Sing Blue Silver
Once upon a time
I lived in the River
I was not from one side nor the other
One day
I was pulled up
Pulled out
Shoved to and fro
There were long battles
One side would win and I would stay on that side of the River for a Time
Another battle would come
Another side would win
I would go
Prized slave that I was
To the Other Side of the River
Over Time my essence was strained
Stained
No longer Light
Nor Dark
Lighter than Dark
But Darker than Light
So many deals to make
So many contracts to fulfill
To break
Too many bloods spilled
But
Bathed In The Blood of The Lamb
Brought before the Council
Blessed and Cleansed and Cleaned
Set forth upon my own tow feet
No longer tottering on my toes
Standing on the stepping stone
Caught raised in the Centre of the River
Re-consecrated, Redressed, Rebourn
Blessed of the Gods
No longer Preyed upon
Now I am the Prayed upon
I am free
Purely
Simply
Me
I am me again
Whiter than White
Lighter than Light
Twined blue silver
Streaking back into my own
World
copyright 2009 TK Kietero
I lived in the River
I was not from one side nor the other
One day
I was pulled up
Pulled out
Shoved to and fro
There were long battles
One side would win and I would stay on that side of the River for a Time
Another battle would come
Another side would win
I would go
Prized slave that I was
To the Other Side of the River
Over Time my essence was strained
Stained
No longer Light
Nor Dark
Lighter than Dark
But Darker than Light
So many deals to make
So many contracts to fulfill
To break
Too many bloods spilled
But
Bathed In The Blood of The Lamb
Brought before the Council
Blessed and Cleansed and Cleaned
Set forth upon my own tow feet
No longer tottering on my toes
Standing on the stepping stone
Caught raised in the Centre of the River
Re-consecrated, Redressed, Rebourn
Blessed of the Gods
No longer Preyed upon
Now I am the Prayed upon
I am free
Purely
Simply
Me
I am me again
Whiter than White
Lighter than Light
Twined blue silver
Streaking back into my own
World
copyright 2009 TK Kietero
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