It is a place at the center of a maze

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6/1/02 8:45 AM


It is a place at the center of a maze.
It is hard to find.

I might sometimes, make a ball of twine.
Or be given one such by a lover,
to return again and again to that hidden spring along twisting, jagged
pathways
to drink
or
to carry water out for my beloved.

but,
LANDSIDE!
Mining disaster!
Dry and closed and sealed without a trace are you, my spring.
This is not poetry.
This is a lyrical prose that flows from somewhere else
and not my spring
which is shut and dry and packed and firm without so much as
a leak
a trickle
a telltale damp spot
to tell
where I should dig.
Where I should put my fingers
in the mud.

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2002

Answers


It's within walking distance, I hear -
seen in perpherality,
heard in the distance,
tasted through memory and hope alone;
Now, let me show you something.

go here...

cynthia

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-- Anonymous, June 01, 2002


I like this story, very much.

I have places like that, too. But they've come, for the most part, in waking dreams, not sleeping dreams.

Once, about 10 years ago, a friend of mine who taught a form of shamanic journeying (this *is* Eugene, you know) came up to me one day and, stumbling in a bit of embarassment, and saying that she NEVER did this, and she wouldn't be doing it now except for that she'd been told to do it, and she didn't want to do it but she'd learned that she had to respond to her inner guides or there'd be other hello to pay, she told me that she'd been instructed to teach me how to "journey", and so she was to offer me the instruction for free.

I had never expressed any interest in what she was doing, and she'd never offered before. This part of her world did not overlap with mine.

Some months later, a Siberian woman, a shaman of her people, came to the US for the first time. She came to our area, and she taught a small group of us some of the things her people had done for many centuries. She was very old, and had never been out of her valley, and translators helped us understand what she had to share about the spirits of humans and the spirits of forests.

Shortly afterwards I began to have experiences of being in other places and learning other things - not objective things, but I would/do experience landscapes and territories that are *very* tangible, and be able to carry them around with me - and the memories of the beings and animals I met - long after the journey had ended.

I have not done this for a very long time.

I think when I am finished here I will start this up again. I am curious about where I will go, when I start travelling in these other places again, especially when I'm free enough to go there.

: :

:: : : : :

-- Anonymous, June 12, 2002


Reeling, Realing. Yes, realing.

I work hard to dissipate the energy in my gut and around my heart that spins in patterns that I know too well, and don't wish to know any longer, and certainly not now - (but agreed to carry, agreed to the risk of carrying, agreed to the burden of carrying in the excitement of that edge that, for the moment looked special - that perch that I heard was safe...)

Still. Reeling.

This perch is not safe.

There are crocs underneath, and they're hungry. They eat little birds like me. They say they don't, but they do.

What would you think if I told you that there's a part of me that is completely honest when she says strong things, and supportive things, and "hey, buddy, it's ok - I can take it..." things, and that also there's another part of me that is very sad inside, and very sorry, and wishes she'd not said anything ever about tipis or forests or siddhis or hummingbirds or any of it, but had just kept her mouth shut...

I'm really sorry if I stepped on something and broke it somehow. I'm sorry if I was too strong in my siren call. I tried to warn you, and I'm sure I was warning me, too, but you wouldn't listen and so neither did I. I was oblivious. I thought everything was just normal - just bright - just finally the way it was easy to be.

The world keeps reminding me that I have to keep my light subdued, because people get drawn to me and I open up to them and then they leave - they shut down - and I can't seem to figure out what I'm doing wrong other than simply being myself, a self that just doesn't fit here.

Do you think that's how the Sidhe felt? Maybe you're right. Maybe I am one of them, stuck in the wrong world, still trying to get home. Maybe I'm lost. Do you think I'm lost?

I'm so sorry. I wish I was different than I am, for just this one little bit of me, so that people wouldn't run away - so that you wouldn't run away. I didn't know you well enough to have you run away. I was just getting started.

I feel a war in me. It began perhaps on Thursday, and was full on by Friday morning. Saturday afternoon I was turned all upside down inside. Tonight I'm still a mess, and the edge of what you've said is just cutting in.

I know this feeling - it happens when someone I'm close to is in turmoil, and is building walls. I only tell you this to share with you how much I feel I share with you, for I have never been able to leave this part of me behind that's so sensitive she can feel and see and know things that she probably shouldn't.

One of my friends who knew this part of me well said I had all the curses of the Sight, but none of the blessings - no teachers, no shields, except for my disbelief. And it's hell to go through your life disbelieving your Sight. Perhaps that's why I work so hard, and move so fast - I can't close myself down, and I can't help but connect, and so I make it impossible to be touched or to touch, for it does always go this way, Daniel. Always.

And I find myself wanting to honor your wishes - to "just go back" and talk about tipi life and burning man - but I don't know if I can do that. I'm too spontaneous. I have to flow too deeply and too intuitively, and to know how much difficulty I bring to you only makes me even more circumspect and cautious.

And there's another thing that you may have noticed by now: you could have just gone back to talking about tipis and burning man yourself. You could have reined yourself in, a little bit at a time, just like you do a runaway horse - ease him back on the bit, wiggle it around in his mouth, let him notice it - not fight it - and come back into the gait on his own, because it's right, not because you fought him back down to the ground.

So (and I'm going out on a limb here, friend, but there's a half of you that knows we might be VERY SPECIAL to one another and it's losing the race, and therefore so am I) you DIDN'T slow us down gently and imperceptibly because there are other forces at work in you that are accomplishing something else with the letter you sent, but I can't cipher it all out. You'll have to do that one. Maybe you'll share what you figure out.

This part who's speaking tonight is sore - less articulate and refined than the other parts of me; rougher and more blunt. But she's lost enthusiasm for the connection. She hurts.

I don't think I have anything more to say. Maybe I will later. Maybe you'll have patience with me, even though you don't know me - I mean, you DO, but you won't - but maybe something will come that will take us through this edge of awkwardness. From this place I can't see what it could be. You're older and wiser than I. Maybe you're stronger than I. Maybe you're smarter than I. Maybe you can figure this out.

I can't. I just hurt tonight. I'll try to be better, but tonight I just ache inside, and my own inner voice tells me to get a grip, and shake myself back into order again, to not tell this story to you in the Garden, but to just let everything lie.

But if you were HERE you'd know what I was feeling. And you'd want to know all of it - and you wouldn't want me to stay quiet, nor keep it deep and in. You'd want me to share because you're good that way.

So, I am...what should I do next?

Can you help me to water from that spring?

: : : :: : : : : : : : : : : : : :

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2002


Veni, Vidi, Bibi!

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2002


About that place that's hard to find,
and not to forget empiricism, mentioned someplace else.
And of course smiley crocodiles
and there have been hints at things like reincarnation
here and there I believe.
Just fingers pointing
and with regard to the dynamic tension that may or may not exist
between reincarnation and love,
well,
I'm just going to leave that for another session.

THIS story I've told before.
Let's see if you like it.
I think it belongs under mist because its a misty sort of place
it comes from that strains our credulity.
Near to, perhaps, that place of poetry.


"A foggy day, in London town..."
Do you do that song?
Perhaps you should.
But as foggy and misty and mysty a place as this comes from
I'm surprised its so hot and sunny clear and cloudless there.

This is one for the "anomaly files".

You know how some dreams are different?
Like, you wake up and go WOW!
THAT was a DREAM?
They are too real and clear and conherant.
They are too well structured.
Like a story you'd wished you'd thought up.
But you did.
Or did you?

I don't even have dreams like that once a year.
I think I've had under ten in my life.
It sees these clear dreams (and I'm not talking about "lucid"
dreaming; when these hit, someone or someTHING else is in control)
often involve a visitation from someone who's "gone on" ahead.
I've had a few of those.
But they do slip into other categories.
You can wake up disturbed.
Or comforted.
Or maybe just quizzical.

One morning I woke up quizzical; and quite bemused.
I'd had this DREAM.
It was as clear as day. As clear as the hot Egyptian sun.
There was a lake. A shallow lake, with palms.
By the side of the lake was a blocky, tapered stone building coming
right up to the edge of this lagoon or pond or pool. There were palms
around.
The sky was burning blue and cloudless
and the sun was dominating and ever present.
I could smell the water evaporating. It carried a certain smell.
An animal smell. Very different, not unpleasent. Almost sweet.
Everything was painted in colors of reddish-brown.
The stones, the earth the dust, and my skin.
I wore a white pleated skirt that was folded upon me somehow
as a bather might fold a towel.
I was in Sun City.
I was ME, but I was this person I was in.
It was difficult: I couldn't remember half of ME and I couldn't
awaken to half of him.
My daily routine involved walking from the stone edifice,
which, quite rightly was a temple, down to the edge of the pool
(which varied brown to clear).
It was there that I CARED from my charges all, these crocodiles.
The babies especially I cared for, and adults to.
And this was all in a sort of uneasy symbiosis: eye to reptilian eye.
I spoke to them in grunts and squeaks when needful.
I supervised the deliverly of oxen to be dismembered for feedings.
I planned great feasts of all sorts of things
laid out with grand decorum upon the gently slopijng banks
of that broad pool.
And everything was carried out in deepest mindful and focused prayer.
And who wouldn't approach these powerful creatures thus?
But it was not of fear,
but trembling was of reverential trepidation and of love too.
They ARE smiling.
And how I loved my charges, my sacred beasts, my gods.
I did and knew and understood things with and about them that
surpassed current common understanding.
And I knew just where I was.
It was a lake, and west of the nile.
Our pool was but a small developed portion
of a great marshy cul-de-sac of water
teeming with duck, heron, crane and ibis.
But I was focused on the Crocodiles.
I was sequestered.
I never left the compound.
I was a veterinarian.
Then I remember I was mourning,
grieving for a dead little one that had been a favorite.
Then I remembered working over it: working, working, working
with steady hands in steady trance and mouthing prayers
and ever so delicate,
then,
looked down
and in my hands discovered the tiny fine mummy of a baby crocodile.

I woke up.
"WOW. Trippy dream." (To myself and no one else.)
"What the fuck? I was in Egypt mummifying baby crocodiles? Where the
hell did THAT come from?"
I knew it was one of those REAL ones and so resolved to look into it
a bit.
But right off I began to discount it because
THERE ARE NO LAKES IN EGYPT.
Not right there, and big, and smack dab in the middle of the place,
west of the Nile. That's the Great Western Desert. Isn't it?
The dream was filed and floated away, but well remembered.
I didn't just run off to research but rather thought," that will bear
some looking into oneday."

But while perusing and atlas,or watching a documentary on television,
or something months or years later...
What?
There is a place called "El Fayoum",
a great marshy area right there,
and big, and smack dab in the middle of the place, west of the Nile.
I started!
"Uh Oh..." and it alll came back.
THE PLACE WAS REAL!
But then too strange even for these words:
a little scraping
and I found that on the shores of this "Fayoum" stood Heliopolis,
one of the great religious centers of ancient Egypt
and the seat of worship of the Crocodile God Sobek;
where crocodiles were raised, and tended, and worshipped in a pool
by the temple and ritually mummified.

Now anyone can say that I had heard of such things before in a book
or on television or summed up in some museum diorama.

Except I hadn't.

File it.



-- Anonymous, June 09, 2002



Silly woman. If you slowed down just a little and made still your raging thoughts and listened past the sound of your blood racing you'd know I love you.

-- Anonymous, June 18, 2002

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