(Part 1 here)

 

https://www.facebook.com/TammyTVitale/videos/10156096199937807/

 

 

March 23

I’ve lost all my dreams
misplaced the book where I wrote them down
the books I used to figure out just what it was
I wanted, or what wanted me.

Without it how can I tell you
of the white feather presented to me
just before I awoke to find
the white wolf blinking his yellow eyes,

unmelted snow on his fur?
What if I told you that this has nothing to do
with feathers and wolves or the color white?
If I told you that all of this is

Her, whispering her stories
trying to make me come back and play?
What if I told you she is dead
and I killed her?  What would you say?

Perhaps I should begin
at the beginning when she crept in
while I was occupied with some drug
whose precise letters I can’t recall.

It was never that I didn’t like her,
just that I had no context
for what she loosed in my house – the
scent she trailed like honey,

The men who came sniffing
like hound dogs on the track;
the body thing – she said our bodies are
beautiful – take off your clothes

And I did.  She said speak up
and I did.  She said dance bare and
howl, she said ride wild things between your legs,
she said you are who you are

And I was.  And then, I think, she went
away or did I tell her to leave or
did I cut out her heart that night
when I closed my mouth, put on my clothes

And began to follow the rules.
Sometimes in the dark I hear something
that sounds like a scream or maybe it’s a keening,
and I wake up, sheets wet with sweat,

Nightgown twisted up to my neck
as if I were trying to take it off – what
would you say if I told you, after all,
it was only a dream.  Would you believe me?

 

March 30

I am a conduit.  Dictation from Morgaine, the other one.  The one I was named for.

Once…

there was a time I lived on an island. Some say it had groves and groves of apple trees. Some say it was known for it’s green. Some say it never existed here on earth but in the spaces between here and there. Some have called it Atlantis before that sunk into the sea. Some call my home Avalon where dwell women who hold all of Earth’s magic.

I am here to tell you that the back story doesn’t really matter. That is the past. In the here and now things change on their own accord: new story lines move in and lay themselves over old story lines, ideas are born, the shape of the goddess changes with stories and beliefs.

But humans are a curious lot and need to know about “the olden days” like the children of the Universe that they are – so young yet they feel so old. So I will tell you some of the old stories first. Or you can skip to the last story here which starts with climbing out of my namesake’s computer. It’s up to you. You and your free will.

**

and then there’s the wolf…..

His snowdamp fur has the whiteness of a winter animal well-prepared, his eyes are yellow around black holes into which I spin, Alice falling after the Rabbit, Persephone returning to Hades, starlight collapsing in on itself in an uncharted universe. What I hear is wind rushing through ancient canyons telling secrets – “if the landing doesn’t kill you, it just might set you free.”

My hands are shaking so hard I’m afraid I’m going to knock it everything off the table. I am stayed by a white paw. The house lights blink out. “Can you see in the dark?” I suppose a wolf speaking is no less believable than an apparition climbing out of the computer. The apparition laughs. The wolf’s breath is garlic and seaweed in my face and the world turns to liquid but I can breathe.

[cutout quote:  I think my biggest achievement is that after going through a rather difficult time, I consider myself comparatively sane.  I’m proud of that.  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

 

April 1 (and this is not a joke)

Sitting on a wicker chair on a back patio moist from heavy rain brought in by thunder and lightning, I close my eyes and open my thoughts with no agenda. Almost immediately I hear, “How can you break the rules if you don’t know which rules you are following.” I am no longer startled by Morgaine’s appearance, the shimmery air, the white wolf at her side. Since she escaped from the computer she can show up anywhere but most usually does when I am at rest or taking a pause and a breath to reset my day. Or daydreaming. Or maybe taking a nap or trying hard.

The sun feels warm on my face and I am not in a place where I want to argue.

I have read it is said of dark goddesses that they take away the need for perfection. They are not considered beautiful, but whomever said that obviously has not been visited by Morgaine. These goddesses kill and dance on corpse, or in Morgaine’s case, send crows to pick out the eyes of the dead on the battlefield. They own the night sky. In overlays of incoming religions, sky gods have been assigned the original feminine power and the goddesses’ stories have been rewritten and the goddesses  renamed evil. That is the overlay of rules, grounded in culture, that I can see sometimes when I make art, but not so much when I write.

Anyone writing a creative work…

“I am not a creative work, I am Morgaine. Triple Celtic goddess. I will tell my own story.”

…knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you [“I’m not a book”] or so says Joseph Campbell. If anyone might know, certainly he would.

“Truce. You dictate and I’ll write. You can tell me all the rules that can be left behind and not followed, and all the rules I don’t know I’m following. I am so sure you have a much better handle on that than I do.”

The wolf laid down on the ground beside my chair, his nose and one paw on my feet. Not wishing to disturb him, I stayed still and watched Morgaine settle herself cross-legged on my other side.

“Once,” she began…..

**

Once…

all of the Goddesses were known by the One name, but then the One became many, humans peeling off pieces of personality and renaming. But if you track far enough back, we start to meld together. I won’t start at the beginning. It would take too long and be too confusing, just know that there are lines and webs and tangles among many of the Goddesses who appear different from each other aren’t really. Let us, therefore, not get confused by the arguments about who is or is not connected. In the end we, all of us, Goddess, animal (including humans), fish, fowl, plant, rock, reside in the same webbed Universe of being. If you need to argue, go elsewhere.

My power comes from the sea. Some say Morgan was taught the intricacies of magic by Merlin but I am here to tell you otherwise. I learned them from my mother, Igraine, who taught my 8 sisters and me how to reach into the oversoul that is also called Universe, how to shape-shift, to see outcomes, to guide those who would use their powers for good and cross those who would use their powers for evil. You may conflate me with The Morrigan of the Green Isles, no matter what anyone says. That is simply me in my triple aspect – close enough that some already intuit our sameness, different enough that some like to challenge the connection with research and logic. There is no logic to magic and shape-shifting, believe what you will. I am Empress of the Wilderness, High Priestess of the Tarot, Lady of the Isles, Governor of the Waves of the Great Sea, Great Mother. I am Isis, Medea and Circe. I am Night, Star, Moon. I am Crow, Wolf, Dragon. I am the Life Force: Life and Death as complements not competition. I am the Path you walk during times of transition and change. I fly before you, guiding your Way.

It was the White Monks, men claiming only one Divine Power – co-opting that power only for images of themselves – who captured my story, changed it. The Feminine Power was allowed nothing integral to itself: magic (working with the energies that surround all of us) declared evil and those that did not look like them who would wield it storied into the dark depths of depravity. If you are told a lie enough, it will become true unless you are intelligent enough to look at all sides, astute enough to listen between the lines.

As a consequence of the White Monks and their falsehoods I traveled back to my home, my island, healed those who called on me, they becoming fewer and fewer. Perhaps I slept. Perhaps I enjoyed the time with my sisters as sisters are wont to do: sometimes loving, sometimes squabbling. It is no different for us who are elevated from your image.

Then there were voices calling my name, in all its manifestations. Women waking as if from some drugged sleep to look around, venture out to find the buried treasure of lines of Power that had been covered over, hidden, usurped; women deciding that enough was enough; women taking that which was naturally theirs but had been forgotten.

It was to one of these that I appeared in my crone guise, but not crone as others might describe. No. Crone in her full power and assurance. Handing out….fortune cookies. Apparently that’s the form that prophecy takes these days. Who am I to deny or discourage? I showed her how the rules are to be followed by showing her that she can tear them all up and throw them away. Rules are made for….

 

…and by overlords. A free person need follow only the rules of her heart, which will not misdirect her, and which will stand her in her true power.

And the next thing I know I find a time machine, climb out its door or out of my namesake’s reveries or out of somewhere that I have been and cannot name and am standing beside her, bringing along my familiars. It feels like the beginning of an adventure. The world “out there” has seen much changing of its own accord and there are new story lines birthing daily. I find I have some catching up to do. Like the story I began to tell has already started shifting as I speak it.

 

April 5  Morning Musings

The Pileated flies from tree to tree in front of me, looking back as if beckoning that I follow, nonchalantly hammering its bright beak here and here for a quick feed.  There is mist rising from moist ground swirling as it hits the humid air through which I swim, a distant rumble but no lightning as I count the seconds signifying distance.  No danger.  Under the thunder the thrum of the Earth, breathing.  I shift.  Grow wings.  Soar after the great bird, god’s messenger I have been told.  Sun sends rays like waterfalls through the oaks standing guard and below a white wolf that trailed me as I trailed the bird, stops, confused where I lifted off the ground.  Ahead there is a door through which I glide, charting now my own course, no one to lead, no one to follow.  The darkness is split by a red moon with an orange halo and farther out a purple moon banded with yellow.  I am surrounded by small creatures drifting on the zephyr on which I rise, their eyes a startling blue grey.  I think of my ancestor with those same eyes, the burning times, how she escaped in the end, made her home in the forest, fed herself full of acorns, wild blackberries that drew in their thorns, bee balm, mallow and teasel, slept with the old momma bear and her twins all winter long.  In the spring we wake, dream shadows buoyant as spider silk.  I reach out to touch her but she floats away and I am left alone.

[cutout quote:  That instint to turn to your art journal when you need to process the goings-on of daily life is something many can relate to..]

 

April 6

I am Morgaine, an odd name, I know, and I could never find it on all those holiday ornaments, door decor, notebook binders which sort of left me out of the whole gift/collection genre. Plus, no one every pronounces it correctly even though it is the same as it looks: More-gain. Some days I look at that as sort of a rah-rah to myself from my parents, as in: you go, Girl.

Anyways, my name is a variant of the character/witch, Morgan La Fey (“Morning Fairy”), from the isle of Avalon and she’s all twisted up with the Arthurian legends but I never paid them much attention, focusing more on her in any studies I have done, which wasn’t many until recently.

So recently, while minding my own business – literally – I was trying to work on my coaching business one day, feeling very overwhelmed by being everything from CEO to chief cook and bottle washer with no assistance, and I took a nap. And while asleep, I was visited by Morgaine (however you want to spell her name. I’m going to keep this spelling both to confuse you and to let you know that I’m not sure what’s really going on here – maybe I’m having a psychotic episode which, sometimes, I’d like to believe because at least I’d have a reason for what’s going on in my life). And Morgaine (you will differentiate us from here on out because I will use “I” for myself, which makes sense. You can even forget we have the same name because knowing my name isn’t all that important. I don’t think) during that visit, told me, basically, to tear up the rule book. And then I woke and took off to journal and sketch even though there was a storm coming, actually, and, I have discovered, metaphorically. I had good thoughts that day.  I was writing metaphorically, not actually, but strands twist and things change.

**
I wrote about that and thought all was good and well until that day Morgaine climbed out of my computer to stand beside me, shimmering witchy air and all, followed by a white wolf. I may have been napping again. I hope I was napping. But she keeps appearing (maybe she’s a recurring day dream/reverie/nightmare?), she and the white wolf and I don’t really know quite what to make of it all.

As a creative spirit, however, I find that answers to many of my questions come through writing or art so I am quite willing to try to work all this out right here.

Later on April 6

Of course It was simply a question of time before the dragon showed up. And why not. When goddesses and wolves clamber out of computers the world twists a bit on its axis and parallel universes warp, bump into each other, tear holes in the way it’s always been, birth stars and black holes (that look like black black eyes), tangle tales from one place and the other ‘til the original story is lost with nothing to take its place – how are we to find our way? We will need new maps. The unseen pathways followed by birds have become visible confusing pilots everywhere. Ships sail off the edge of the world, down waterfalls that never end, Sirens summoning them to return to no avail. We have two suns, 5 moons and a comet that circles the planet each day spraying a tail of chartreuse sparks across the evening sky. The computers have all died. Sipping Chardonnay, I sit by candlelight after dark, making marks on paper to tie to pigeons’ legs like while the never absent white wolf snoozes beside my stool at the high counter, her mistress disappeared for seven days and counting though I have sent thoughts and quarks and butterflies to find her. Still, the crickets remain singing their predictions of rain and the whip-o-will cries from farther and farther away until all I hear are owls’ call and response. They say that tomorrow the ocean will rise. I will find it at my doorstep, bringing whorled shells, ropes of seaweed, a turtle head with no eyes and a crystal ball. Meanwhile I play cartographer trying to chart a way home.

**

The visions have started again.  The peonies I picked for the parlor have already fallen apart.  I reached to feel their velvet and came away with a hand full of petals, pink as a sunset.  Last night I hung my paintings in this new space called house but not home.  I unpackaged shiny new hardware because everything else was lost.  I could hear the house holding its breath as I hammered the nailed into the walls, the red dragon with matt scales and garlic breath tapping its talons on the wood floor, giving me suggestions on placement and skew.  What am I to do with this?

[cutout quote:  “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.  Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”  Helen Keller]

 

decorative pages.  Right sides – dangles move

 

April 10

Voices swim on the humid night air, tree frogs acting like back-up singers.  I thought I knew the story but kept getting lost having confused a maze for a labyrinth.  A common confusion but deadly.  I missed the detail on how it is important to be able to navigate by the stars – their signs and portents as unreadable to me as Chinese glyphs.  I run my hand over the stones as if proximity will translate meaning but nearness is only that.  It is not intimacy.  Nests fall apart, even those strongly built, twined with yard, survivors of wind and rain.  A storm comes and all is asunder, sticks spread like tiny fallen trees across the ground.  Too often it is only an idea that is left to hold it all together.  And that is never enough.

**

“when your neighborhood is flooded, don’t fear drowning.  This is why God made white dresses and long-haired women.  Make a boat out of police lights and whatever can contain a country.  I’ve fished in puddles, came home with the universe’s first cells to serve my family dinner.  We lost our appetites.  We lost our minds.  When I misplace something, I always look first under my skin.  Meghan Priviello

 

April 15

The sea outside my door brings me spiraled shells, spiked shells, horned shells, flat shells. Like my cat who proudly presents a dead mole at the front door, purring and prancing her pride and love for me, the sea proudly serves up severed turtle heads, half of a dead fish, a welk’s egg case bored through by a worm. The cat thinks the fish might bear a third look, but doesn’t want to get her paws wet so demurs. I take a conch shell in hand, search inside for its critter which is long gone leaving behind only smooth pink, think of fritters in the islands – the smell of fried seafood, the feel of hot sun, the taste of salt air. Holding it to my ear I hear words I can’t distinguish before off it wafts on a breeze carrying gulls overhead, tumbling seaweed down below. Soon there will be waves lapping at the doorstep. Perhaps I will drown.

**

Death by drowning, according to my googled research, may take three to four minutes but a person can only struggle on the surface of water from twenty to sixty seconds before submersion. But that is water. There are more ways than one to drown. It is possible on dry land to be overcome by a deluge of paper required to be finished by next morning, no less a task in comparison to spinning straw into gold. And gold, of course, is the reason for the paper, but not for you, for the corporation which shall remain nameless, one substituting easily for the other when all is said and done. But on land drowning is never done, it commences daily, promising succor in return for your sacrifice. You might wish to trade the sheaves of food it puts on your table with what the cat or the sea brings in.

[cutout quotes on left side:

Clearing the clouds – I analyzed the completed journals and realized that each page represented a certain aspect of myself that had needed my attention at the time of its creation….

boldly givin out inner selves over to the structures and habits of our work, not knowing where it will take us or how it will expose our true identities.

covered in netting/tactile]

 

April 21

So Morgaine has been joined by “The Dragon” – why am I surprised you ask? Well, I’m not really. It was actually only a matter of time. If I were to expect anything to crawl out of the computer (perhaps “expect” is a rather strong word there), but if I were, it would have been The Dragon because she is my totem. I have always thought that I am a dragon. Daughter is a dragon by way of the Chinese zodiac, but I am a rat. Nevertheless, that daughter is a dragon tells the true tale.

April 30

O.M.G. The Dragon has learned how to use the phone and says she left my Mother a message (which may be impossible because my Mother died about 30 years ago, but these days nothing is a sure thing). This cannot bode well.

I’d write more but I have to go feed the unicorns. They are very nasty when they are hungry. I’m giving serious thought to letting The Dragon take care of them. Or the White Wolf who says he’s silver and that his name is Onyx. Don’t get me started on talking to a wolf. My namesake has disappeared
.
How am I ever going to keep all of this secret?

Continued…..Part 3

Part 4 (final…for now)