Working on it.
Grace in Ruins
The Andes
“Have you forgotten what it was like to flow over Earth, the lazy beat of unfurled wing, the sensuous sensation of warmed rock?
Have you forgotten how it felt to sip on morning dew, run between the grass blades, sleep within a flower?
Have you forgotten how to sing trees to shape, build sanctuary’s of rest, be in perfect health?“
Best I remember..
Nobody owes us anything.
I was sitting on the 8th of May writing, when a beautiful and rare black fantail appeared. I had just written on how hard the anti life brigade were working on retracting joy from the rest of the world and how oddly prepared I felt and indeed how incredibly joyous I was…
Those of you who are new to this blog, may not realise, I write in “I” as I’m an experientialist and therefore can’t spell (finish uni kids). I promised to try not to generalise long ago. Which feeds my inner narcissist well and gives tongues the ability to wag licentiously.
I have been involved for 9 years in an experiential aspect of what is known as Gordon Whites “Blended Cycle Model”. Pheww that is heavy, nine years ago I embarked on a Chaos Magic game. A LARP whereby any could play, there was one rule that I can recall, at the end of the keyboard, there needed to be a people. The premise of the game for me was simple, Magic is Real. Others had different premises.
People arrived at the game in varying form, sometimes two forms, often names were changed, for sense, for confusion, for action. Mine and a few others have remained the same for many cycles. Names came, names left, names changed, names came back, the board we played upon changed three times. Each time the board changed, I lost. My points were counted in stories. Myths and legends of the named ones, were hung in the halls and in our flight, the stories were left behind. My experience was not in story collection, it was in writing them. I’m not the best scribe, many are greater, but I did make and use Hermes’ ink, in several lives.
When I wrote and indeed when I write upon the nine year running game, it is not because the game is over, nor has a new game begun, it is because, for me the game is real. Blended Cycles, right? And I speak as Game because there are many who would understand the plays in no other way, they win some, they loose some. For me the game, as magic, is real. Not some form of real. Real.
The stories within the game are now free to fly as is the games creator. The anti life brigade, who are come to steal joy, found a way in and stole mine (narcissist right?). They poked and prodded, tested every barrier, every spell, every roll of the dice, they found a little niche and boom, zapped straight in and ripped the joy out. The joy was ripped from me and the many, for we are legion. Not The Legion, well mayhap, I hear a few of them wailing in grief also, for they are playing too.
“My mind went still and in that stillness came a wall of Sensations. It started at the edges of my mind, an edginess, it travelled through, became closer and everyone it touched, stopped their motion, listening, feeling into the stillness and then it came a sound so loud a sound huge, wailing grinding. I remember falling to the ground curling in a ball my body hurting my mind exploding. And then nothing, my mind reached, nothing. Only physical sensation and I with so few words then, know now that this physical sensation was pain.”
The memories that were supposed to be prophecies wrote themselves in the between time, of suspicion and arrival.
The black fantail remains with me, the messenger of the underworld, in solace. It will not leave again and I once filled with joy, will haunt the archives, the halls, until joy fills me again.
Here, it is beginning
“Whose lamps give joy,
beneath earths depths
to mortals who’ve finished life”
May I be a light.
In gratitude Professor White, in gratitude.