2008 LUGHNASADH/IMBOLC PROSE ENTRIES

[Earthwoman]

Notice: Please add your original essays, short stories and philosophical works for the current Eisteddfod here.

[Hennie]

The Dance


She jumps from the West over the fire and dances to the East.There her dance becomes a circle dance, deocile, halted for a short moment each time that she greets one of the directions. After she has rounded her circle a few times, her dance spirals inwards.

She lights a torch at the fire and jumps to the East again. She greets the Stars and invites the Spirits of Air to accompany her. She dances to the South and greets the Sun and welcomes the Spirits of Fire. On goes her dance, to the West, where she greets the Moon and asks the Spirits of Water to join her. Then to the North. She greets the Earth. She receives the Spirits of the Earth.

Again in the East she sings a song of the joys and the grieves of the child. She dances to the fire, jumps over it and back to the South. There, full of confidence, she sings about the strength and he weakness of the adult. Back to the centre, over the fire and back, to the West where she offers a song to the harshness and sweetness of old age. To the centre, jumping over the fire and jumping back. In the North she whisperhums about the beginning and the ending of death. Back to the fire, over and again over.

In the East she once again calls a cheer, then she lets her self sink to earth, where she gives in to healing visions and dreams, protected, sustained, One.

Her green are the greens of high summer, there is brown from the earth, from the trunks of trees, from a glittering blackbird, blue of the ever changing skies, red is the blood, the fire, the Love. She walks through a wood, following an unclear path, on to the silence of the depth of the forest, where there seem to be hardly any animals, where no bird is heard, where even the wind in the treetops hushes.
She shivers. There is a damp over the bottom of this wood that gets to her bones. She feels the urge to shout it out, to prove that even here is Life, a thought, an emotion, a pounding heart. Instead she looks for a tree that feels friendly,as friendly as possible in this wood and sits with her back against the trunk.

She feels her energy body and feels how it merges with that of the tree. Suddenly she feels warm, relaxed and, almost impossible, without sorrow. She gives in to this here, this still threat that also is the most intense spring of hope for Peace that she has ever experienced. She closes her eyes and there is the Other who she is herself. She doesn't ask why anymore, she doesn't need an explanation either, there is only this : Life expressing itself dancing.
She jumps up from an airplane that causes a pain of sound that makes her body cramp. She cries with an intensity that she has never experienced before.

She doesn't understand, why this destruction, this annihilation of a world, this brutality? But does she need to understand it? Is it sufficient that she can be part of this? Is she allowed to ask these questions? Is she able not to ask these questions? The light in our eyes is the only thing that counts, isn't that so? After one final gasp, she leaves the wood; all is right.

The fire has extinguished when she stands up in the glory of day. She asks guiding from The Shining Ones and walks relaxed from the East, via the North, the West and the South back to where she came from. Nothing has happened.

[wyeuro]

this is the beginning of the first chapter of a novel called
'the dead bartender'.

moonlight flooded the front gardens of mayflower street that evening and the first jonquils were out when gavin and arinya came tumbling out of number forty three laughing and ran across the lawn hand in hand, taking the flower bed at a jump and landing on the asphalt right next to gavin’s car. well, gavin’s mum’s car really – she let him use it in return for running her around and doing errands. its bonnet and hood were criss-crossed with the moon-shadows of the twigs of the flowering cedars that grew between the parking spaces to shade them.

gavin unlocked arinya’s door and let her in and then ran round to his side. they met inside and kissed, and it would have been a longer, stronger, tenderer kiss, because they really were romantically in love, though they were neither of them nineteen yet, if arinya had not pushed him away and told him to get going, they were already going to be late if he didn’t hurry. besides, she didn’t want him to kiss her there where her little sister sonya could see her through her bedroom window if she stood looking out with the light out – which it was just at that moment.

so she was feeling for her seat-belt while gavin was steering with one hand and clutching the two parts of his seat-belt fastener with one hand ready to cinch it when he had both hands free while he was turning the wheel with the other hand, and he was just beginning to accelerate out into the carriage-way, leaning round to look back over his shoulder when he was so shocked to see a taxi speeding towards him that he slammed his foot down on the accelerator instead of the brake and lost his grip on the steering wheel. gavin was killed instantly when the taxi ploughed into the driver’s side. the impact slammed the passenger side into the trunk of a flowering cedar and arinya died six seconds later in a shower of shattering glass. the driver walked away with minor injuries, but he cursed that boy, near as a touch, all the way to hell!

arinya slid with a sad but somehow grateful sigh from her body, sorry for its brokenness as if it were something she’d done to it, and she rose slowly through the area occupied by the roof of the car as if it were not there. she could see it, and she could see through it. she could see the people running out of their houses, her mother, her sister, see but not hear their screaming, the dogs running wild, cars pulling over, men running. she felt the shock radiating outward. she could see the whole suburb turning towards it, ambulances rushing, police cars converging on the scene. she could see the whole city, lights moving, lights blinking, still lights, lights all meaning something, cytoplasmic movements, hidden, unhuman purposes, the metabolism of a great greedy being. she saw other accidents and other events in other areas, cars rushing along long, straight strips of molten light that were roads, and the countryside around, the sea all the way to the south, the land, the mountains the hills, the distant deserts…

it dawned on her slowly that she had been rising, that this rapidly expanding panorama was to do with how high above the earth she now was, and that made her really understand that she really had died, and that the still and infinite silence was all there was to hear now because her body’s thrumming symphony of heart and lungs and gut had ceased. she listened deeply to the silence, not panicking, but in awe, and it occurred to her that she would soon see an angel. the earth was far away, back-lit by the sun with the moon like a tear on her cheek, and arinya could now see the whole raging, towering, whirling starscape surrounding her. she turned for the first time away and saw the hollow caverns within the starry sky, and heard at last their howling.

opal sheened and vibrant came the dragon, bristling and business-like, with eyes so strange that arinya fell immediately in love with her, as a rat does with a cobra, and she yawned wide open a ravenous maw far greater than the dragon’s from the yearning heart of her own being, until she became a vast complex of stalactited caves of rainbow-coloured enquiry within mountains of stacked-up experience that she knew was hers forever, and on cool, glittering wings, with a delicious swish, the dragon glided in.

nor was she the first maiden to devour her dragon. nor was she aware that it too had devoured her, wrapping itself around her cavern-veined mountainscape like a mouth round a biscuit, and she died again. and it was then that she saw the angel, with dragon eyes and a blazing halo like the sun, and wings that spanned the galaxy. then she was afraid, so he carried her close to his shining face and left her alone it a sunny field in a green and pleasant land far from the earth, but like it, where she stood in her shabby, strappy shoes that her mother hadn’t quite approved of, in her lime-green satin sleaze dress with shoestring shoulder straps, and second-hand mink coat, her purse string wound round her wrist, and her hair in a vampish knot tied up on one side of her head with a black velvet ribbon, still dressed for a night out at blue maxe’s wine bar, where gavin was a bar tender.

but gavin too was dead. she saw him easily, by remote viewing, standing on the road in his day-glo shirt and his tight jeans, his natty tan boots and his black leather workman’s cap. he seemed to be trying to help, going to the car window, trying to open the door. but there were only dead bodies covered with blood. perhaps at last he realised that one of them was his own. she saw him stagger and reel, way out onto the crown of the road, among all the police and ambulance people, and the neighbours who had come out to help, where he staggered about brokenly for a while. then she saw a dark ghost come down obliquely from the east, which flew like a great raven, but was a man; and it wrapped gavin in its cloak – arinya could feel the warmth of it – and lifted him into the air. she saw them fly away over the rooves and disappear in the blackness of the night.

she didn’t know whether he was in danger or not – but she felt a deep certainty that she had to find out. but how? she must find someone who could tell her. she drew her attention back to the sunny meadow in which she stood, and saw in the distance the spires and smoke of a village and, a little ungainly in her narrow high heels on the soft earth, she began to walk towards it.

wyverne /|\

[Michael C. Page]

Alban Arthan Ceremony 12/22/2007:

It was 6:15am when I walked out of the house into the darkest time of the year. It was pitch black and not a single sound was heard except the wind. The wind was a white wind and though it was December, the temperature was a balmy 52 degrees. Even though I had planed to celebrate the Solstice inside, there was no way I was going to let a perfect morning go to waste. So I grabbed my Ritual pamphlet, a flash light and a sweat shirt and headed for the play ground/park behind Manchester School. Manchester school is located atop a ridge and surrounded by farms on all sides, so it is an Ideal place to watch sunsets and sunrises. Sunrise was due at 7:20 - no hurry – I can relax into the Ritual.

As I began the rite, I felt a deep sense of peace and calm overcome me. As I called peace to the quarters and said the Prayer and chanted the Awens, I knew in my heart that this way, this path was the path I needed to walk and not just for myself, but for my Home. This Deep peace in Ritual I had never experienced before. Even when I was in Seminary at St. Meinrad College, contemplating Catholic Priesthood, the feeling of peace eluded me. I remember what my spiritual director at the College said to me when I told him of the problem. He said; “Michael, you don’t have a problem. You have a challenge. You are a very spiritual person Mike, but you don’t know how access it and use it yet. You will. Just give it time.” The words of my Benedictine Mentor echoed in the darkness. How many years ago was that? 16 years. Sixteen years to reach this level of inner peace. A peace which comes from being Fully Present in the world and fully embracing this great gift of Life. Then a joyful sadness came over me, for I realized that though I was fortunate to be gifted this Peace, many may never feel its warmth.

Then I closed my eyes and sank into the darkness. I sank into what felt like a cave. I felt the presence of the Goddess. That is when the Triad entered my mind. Three things necessary for the fulfillment of enlightenment: Purpose, Vision and Trust in the Gods. When we become enlightened, our lives are invigorated with Purpose and the Vision of what to do with that purpose, but without Trust in the Divine, the vision is clouded in a mist and the purpose lost. A voice gently broke the silence and asked: “Do you believe, my Bard, in the Purpose you have been gifted?” She asked…… “Yes” I replied……. “Then Blow the Horn.” I blew the horn and its sound echoed though the Darkness back into my being. She asked again: “Do you believe in the Vision given you, My Bard?” I said yes a second time. She replied; “Then blow the horn.” As I blew the horn the second time a fear pressed around me as though I was about to suffocate. I wanted to run – I wanted to break free of the stagnant air, but I said to myself: “NO! I have run to long.”….. An eternity passed before her voice cut through the Darkness. “My Bard, My son, do you Trust in Me?” She asked…… “Yes”, I said. - I blew the Horn the third and final time and the sound was magnificent. And with that liberating trumpet blast went everything that ever hindered my life. All hindrance, all obstacles, all destructive force was blown out of my body and into that dark abyss. Then the doors opened. The Light hit my brow. My entire being became a golden ray of the Sun.

I opened my eyes to find that the sun was rising. The Mabon had been reborn…..and so had I. I watched this new Mabon and the clouds play together in the light of a New Day – a New Life. Then when it felt right I finished the Ceremony and spiraled forward into the world. AWEN.

[LadyCelt]

The Beetle and the Spider

“Come outside, you gotta see this.”

I looked up from my jewelry project to see my husband poking his head inside the back sliding door.

“What is it?”

“There’s a beetle caught in a spider web and you should see the fight that’s going on.”

Intrigued, I followed him outside and across the yard to where the fence meets up with the corner of the house. There, between the fence post and the downspout, a small grey spider had set up her snare in hopes of catching dinner.

Having observed, last year, a little spider in my foyer dispatch a huge deer fly with ease, I figured the beetle didn’t have a chance. We stood quietly in the afternoon sun, watching the half-inch-long beetle flail wildly as the spider, half its size, worked just as furiously to wrap her prize in silk.

Several times I fought the urge to pick up a twig and help the beetle get away, but I held back. This wasn’t my decision to make.

The beetle twisted and turned violently in the web, taking swipes at the spider as she danced around him looking for an opening, a weakness she could exploit. The beetle gave her none. Every time she darted in, the beetle fought back with renewed ferocity. Slowly, almost painfully, it freed its limbs one at a time, wings whirring like a tiny buzz saw.

The spider was relentless. Although she seemed to know she was no physical match for the beetle, she kept trying to weave a fresh web around her prey even as it inexorably tore itself free.

By this time my husband and I were cheering the beetle on: “Come on! Come on! You’re almost there! You can do it!” Yet still we resisted the urge to help the beetle get…that…last…leg…loose.

Suddenly, it was over. With a final lurch backward, the beetle tumbled free of the web, spread its wings, and flew away.

The spider paused for a few seconds. I could almost imagine her heaving a resigned sigh as she set to work rebuilding her ruined trap.

I went inside, inspired to design a new pair of earrings for myself. One sporting a beetle charm, the other, a spider. Two creatures who taught me a valuable lesson: Not matter what the odds, never, ever give up.