A Rolling Stone

February 9, 2018 / Lisa / 3 Comments

In the late 1980s my father and I hiked to the old Sunset mine. There, we found this large rock full of iron pyrite. You know, fool’s gold. The rock looked painted in gold, the pyrite was so thick. Dad and I took turns carrying the heavy thing back down the trail. At home, it became a door stop for the cabin, and dad loved telling people it was real gold but ‘he didn’t need the money’.

So of course it was stolen.

This past week I was talking to a police officer friend about restoration work that will be happening at Sunset mine, which led into telling him about that rock and how somebody stole it back in the early 1990s, obviously thinking they were going to get rich.

He started laughing and said ‘I know where that rock is!’

A local person who has been in and out of jail many, many times, has frequently told people that he’s rich because he has a big rock full of gold. He ‘found’ it years ago. The officer has heard him say this many times.

Yesterday, the officer friend was on a call that involved another person who is well-known to the police. That guy mentioned that his friend recently gave him a rock full of gold.

I told my friend that if he sees that rock he’s to confiscate it. Doubt he could do that, but wouldn’t it be great if the rock came home? I assume it’s the same one, because how many big rocks thickly coated with fool’s gold can be floating around our little neck of the woods? Well, actually, probably quite a few now that I think about it. But still. If that rock ever does come home I’ll take a photo of it and post it here.

Meanwhile, I kind of like the idea that the rock just keeps rolling on, moving from story to story.

Somewhere, dad is laughing.

Myths And Reality

February 5, 2018February 5, 2018 / Lisa / Leave a comment

If you want to read an excellent blog post on why the world needs more fairy tales, go to Jaimie Lee Wallace’s post on ‘Live to Write – Write to Live’. She talks about what we learn from fairytales, how they teach us to deal with monsters, and ties them to modern-day problems and genres such as urban fantasy and science fiction.

Wild woodland creatures

Her post made me think about how our current society is so cut off from not just fairy tales, but from each other. Where do we go when facing a monster like a terminal diagnosis, or bullying? Do we seek out the elders in our family or tribe? Do we call mom? Ask to have tea with a friend? Of course, but also we google. We sit alone in front of a computer and interact with the internet. Or we post it on Facebook and wait for replies from ‘friends’. Some who are actually friends and some who are strangers. We think interaction with a friend via a computer screen is the same as sitting with someone over that steaming cup of tea.

Not that I’m someone who’s comfortable in crowds. I get on people-overload mighty fast. But I’m sure my point is apparent.

Something magical must live in that keyhole

Yesterday I needed to find out how to wind wool on a kniddy-knoddy, a process in spinning. I went to YouTube (and then had to have my husband explain what I’d just watched). I realized that years ago I would have had to interact with people to find the same thing. I would have found a spinning group, or gone to the library, or called a grandma or auntie.

Auntie and me

My current work in progress has to do with myths. The idea came from the classic ‘what if’ question and made me look at our fears. Why we fear certain things, what fear is beyond just an extreme version of feeling out of control.

But Jaimie Lee Wallace’s blog post also brings out another reason for this current story. It is making me look at, not just fear, but isolation in all its many forms.

I choose to believe in fairy tales. Heck, I tell people I still believe in Santa. And it’s why I love super-hero movies. Show me how to put the monster back in its box and banish it for a hundred years. Show me how a band of friends can beat back the end of civilization as we know it. Show me there’s someone out there who can save the day, and then teach me how to be that person.

And remind me to unplug, walk in the woods, and look for magic.

Do you see the dragon? Or some mythical beast?

Rituals

January 28, 2018January 28, 2018 / Lisa / 2 Comments

Yesterday I participated in an event full of tradition and it got me thinking about the importance of ritual in our lives. That and the difference between ritual and routine.

‘Ritual’ is defined as a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.

‘Routine’ is defined as a sequence of actions, regularly followed. In other words ‘habit’. Although for my husband the routine of morning coffee is more like a ritual.

Art fishing 2

I think we use those words interchangeably, and in doing so, forget the underlying emotional connection to those things that are actually ritual rather than routine. In using those words so easily, we lose the connection to our past, our heritage, our culture.

Yesterday I had to squash feeling like an interloper because the event I participated in was of a different heritage than mine. But as I sat outside by the fire, with wind high in the trees, light rain falling, and singing all around me, I realized that while that ritual may come from a culture I had no ‘blood’ connection to, they were rituals that I had an emotional connection to.

Jennie Aug 2010 037

I choose purposely to use the word ’emotional’ rather than ‘spiritual’ because those who know me know that I am not much of a believer in organized religions. I don’t believe there is an afterlife, as in heaven, or a place that people go to be forever happy, or to suffer for eternity. I think of religion as man’s first attempts at creating a moral code.

At the same time, those rituals yesterday gave me peace. Just like the womb experience of sitting in the hot tub in the middle of the night with stars spread out above, like I talked about in my last post. I realized that while I may not have what I perceive as religious beliefs, there is something about stone and water and trees that lets me breathe.

So I guess those things are my religion. Walking in the woods, or being near trees is definitely my ritual. What are yours? What fills your soul or speaks to you? Or what routines that others might see as habits, do you see as ritual?