Category Archives: myth and magic

little altars everywhere

Posted on by
2

Yes, I know that’s the name of a book by the Ya-Ya writer, Rebecca Wells.

But in this case, I’m referring to this slide show of “altars” that people submitted to a request for “What’s on Your Shelf” from the blog on Killing the Buddha.

I’m not sure how I found that site — probably just surfing around, looking for something to think about, care about. Not that there isn’t plenty out there: homeless, bankruptcy, greed, war, fraud, despair. Oh, yes, plenty to think about and care about. Too much, as a matter of fact. Too much for my tired brain, tired heart.


If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him is one of my favorite non-fiction books. Maybe by only favorite non-fiction book. So, it’s not surprising that when I ran across the Killing the Buddha website, I was intrigued.

I used to have an altar of sorts — that’s when I had room for a surface to put it on. Now I have a wall

wallaltar
that includes a witch’s broom, my old power stick, a quilted shield especially designed and constructed for me by my good quilter friend, my new walking stick, Acuaba, and a photoshopped picture of “witches at tea” using the faces of my women friends. As powerful and meaningful as any shelved altar, I would think.

My shelves themselves are stacked with books, craft patterns, and assorted other things of significance. For example:

shelf

You might notice the Tarot deck, the icons, the empty box from my 3G iphone, a mini cast iron cauldron. What you don’t see in the shelves below are my collections of beads and jewelry findings that I’m trying to find time to play with/work on.

As I hurry along to get ready for Christmas (yes, I do still call it Christmas; why not?), I think about the cocoon in which I have wrapped myself during this time of world wide insanity to escape from the fundamentalists, the radical atheists, the war mongers and warring sufferers, indeed, the sufferers of all kinds.

I surround myself with resident family and Bully Hill Seasons wine and Chocolate Mint kisses, with quilting dreams and knitting crafts, with escapist suspense novels on ipod and paper, with the snores of my old and much loved cat.

I wish there were, indeed, little altars everywhere like mine — eclectic and inclusive and affirming.

I wish there were an altar somewhere on which if could feel prayers for my suffering mother would be answered.mom

haunted houses vs global warming

Posted on by
Reply

In the United States, more people believe that houses can be haunted by the dead than believe that the living can cause climate change.

The above from here.

The piece cites some polls that only reinforce the general lack of critical thinking among many Americans, particularly those who also believe in evolution, and adds:

Since republicans attend church much more regularly, perhaps a more active stance by churches on climate change would increase the urgency and conviction? Well at the highest levels, this has already happened. In 2001, the Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying, in part, “At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pressures. It is about the future of God’s creation and the one human family. It is about protecting both ‘the human environment’ and the ‘natural environment’ …Passing along the problem of global climate change to future generations as a result of our delay, indecision, or self-interest would be easy. But we simply cannot leave this problem for the children of tomorrow.”

A summary of the science of climate change is available at ClimatePath.

a black cat almost

Posted on by
1

A black cat almost crossed my path yesterday as I walked along almost spring streets.

It saw me coming, took a left, trotting a path ahead and parallel to mine, looking back to see if I were still there, moving forward.

With a last look back, it skittered under a car and watched me pass.

I wrote the following a decade ago while on a weekend writing retreat.

Walking the Stone Labyrinth

Sometimes life
like a labyrinth,
leads you where you have to go.

You think you make choices–
this man or that,
some child or not.

You set your alarm,
choose your shoes,
gather friends for tea,
count your changes.

Until one day a corner comes,
slipping you a glimpse
of those strings of stones
shaping your shadows edge.

And sometimes, perhaps,
on a perfect day,
under a perfect sky,
a perfect black cat
with eyes like glowing stones
races across your path
and waits in the early ferns
for you to cross hers.

what’s that broom?

Posted on by
Reply

“What’s that broom for?” my six year old grandson asks, referring to the “witch’s broom” that hangs on my wall to the left of my computer table, alongside some quilted wall-hangings created by a close friend, an icon of Akuaba (a gift long ago from b!X), and a old photo of 19th century “Witches at Tea” upon which I superimposed the faces of my five close friends and myself.

“It’s a witches broom,” I tell him.

“There are no such things as witches,” he asserts.

“Well,” I say, “it’s a magic broom.”

“There’s no such thing as magic,” he again asserts.

I take the broom down from the wall and wave it around, singing Salagadoola, mitchakaboola, bibideebobbedee boo.

“Well, maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t,” I say. “How about if I try to do some magic with you.”

He hesitates. “I don’t know. What will you do?”

I stop and think a minute. What would Granny Weatherwax do?

“OK,” I say. “How’s this: I think it would be really nice if you weren’t so fidgety at the dinner table, if you could sit and relax and join in the dinner conversation instead of getting up and and walking around and then sitting down again. How about if I do some broom magic so that you could relax and we all could enjoy a quiet dinner.”

As he looks at me from his perch on the carpet-covered expensive cat-litter enclosure that sits behind my chair in the corner, I look him in the eye, wave the broom around in circles, and tell him that today he will be more relaxed at the dinner table. And I tell him that he will also have a peaceful night’s sleep.

I twirl the broom like a baton and respond to his skeptical look with a “Let’s wait and see.”

At dinner that evening, except for getting up once to go to the bathroom, he sits and converses and eats all of his dinner.

“See, I say, “my magic worked.”

“I was hungry,” he replies.

The next morning I ask him how he slept.

“I only woke up once,” he tells me.

“See,” I say. “My magic works.”

Granny Weatherwax calls it “Headology.”

Despite her power, Granny Weatherwax rarely uses magic in any immediately recognizable form. Instead, she prefers to use headology, a sort of folk-psychology which can be summed up as “if people think you’re a witch, you might as well be one”. For instance, Granny could, if she wished, curse people. However it is simpler for her to say she has cursed them, and let them assume that she is responsible for the next bit of bad luck that happens to befall them; given her reputation this tends to cause such people to flee the country entirely.

Headology bears some similarities to psychology in that it requires the user to hold a deep seated understanding of the workings of the human mind in order to be used successfully. However, headology tends to differ from psychology in that it usually involves approaching a problem from an entirely different angle.

It has been said that the difference between headology and psychiatry is that, were you to approach either with a belief that you were being chased by a monster, a psychiatrist will convince you that there are no monsters coming after you, whereas a headologist will hand you a bat and a chair to stand on.

Hey, I figure. Whatever works.

it’s still the wrong answer

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to Jim Culleny for his daily poetry emails.

Myth
Muriel Rukeyser
Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the roads. He smelled a familiar smell. It was the Sphinx. Oedipus said, “I want to ask one question. Why didn’t I recognize my mother?”
“You gave the wrong answer,” said the Sphinx. “But that was what made everything possible,” said Oedipus. “No,” she said. “When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered, Man. You didn’t say anything about woman.”
“When you say Man,” said Oedipus, “you include women too. Everyone knows that.”
She said, “That’s what you think.”

the lone crow

Posted on by
Reply

For the first time ever, I see a lone crow wandering around the area of the bird feeders. At first I wonder if it’s a grackle, but a quick look in the Audobon bird book confirms that, indeed, it is a crow.
I leave tomorrow to join family and friends for my late once-husband’s remembrance party. A lone crow, and thoughts of death.
My mother is now losing her hair. Her digestive system is screwed up. She is always afraid, never satisfied or happy, constantly restless.
I watch the crow march back and forth across the small area where squirrels and doves are pecking at what the finches and cardinals have accidentally tossed their way. He doesn’t seem to be eating. He looks like he’s checking things out.
Is he wondering “Is this the place?”

the last post-it

Posted on by
1

postit.jpg

My late once-husband often sent me books that he thought I would like, after he read them. He always had an uncanny knack for selecting both books and music that I liked as much as he did.
As I continue to clean out my “stuff,” I moved a pile of books yesterday and found one I had forgotten about. And so I started reading it last night.
He was right, again. From the Amazon review:

Mixing magic and modernity, the acclaimed Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game) has woven threads of history, religion, and myth together into a convincing, time-hopping tale that is part love story, part adventure. Enchantment’s heroes, “Prince” Ivan and Princess Katerina, must deal with cross-cultural mores, ancient gods, treacherous kinsmen (and fianceés), and ultimately Baba Yaga herself.

Thanks, again, Bill.

should I or shouldn’t I

Posted on by
2

That’s the dilemma of every blogger who is considering whether it’s appropriate to post a certain entry.
b!X deliberated and then made the decision to post. And I could have left it at that.
But I see his Deathbed post and photo link as a tribute, a reminder — in a sense, a virtual wake, a moment to say a final goodbye — and, for those of us who were not there to actually witness, closure.
You can read his post and decide for yourself. This entry is my decision.
And, just as an added note that reflects how attuned our little family is to the magical occurrences in life that Myrln loved to recognize, Myrln died just about at 5 p.m. When we survivors were at his apartment last weekend sorting through his stuff, our daughter noticed that the clock on his wall, which was keeping accurate time the last time we were there, had stopped at 5 o’clock.

roses

Posted on by
Reply

I woke to the smell of roses today, but there are no roses anywhere around here. I smelled them in the garage, too, when I went to take out the garbage.
My father loved roses. His wake was full of them.
My mother barely woke up this morning. Her mouth hung slack, her words slurred. She took a few bites of french toast, a few sips of her fake coffee, and now she’s back in bed. I wonder if she’s smelling roses.

William Frankonis, dead at 70

Posted on by
8

I wasn’t there this afternoon when my daughter gave permission to turn off the breathing machine and my ex-husband, her father, took his last artificial breath. I was home, getting ready for the Hospice nurse’s visit tomorrow to assess my mother.
But I was with him for more than a day before that, when he told me had had an earworm for the past several days.
“Bloody Mary,” he said smiling, as we remembered the production of South Pacific in which we performed together more than 35 years ago, he as Lt. Cable, and I as Liat.

cur-kali.jpg In the back of my smile, I think about another bloody female. Kali: birth mother; death mother, tongue redder even than betel nuts. She had wormed in far beyond his ear.
He understood my fascination with Kali, Lilith. He might have used other names for those forces, but he knew them well. That was part of what we always had in common — our immersion in the poetic power of myth. “Myrln” understood magic. Our son tells me that, for a couple of days before I called to tell him to get on a plane, he saw three crows chasing a hawk. Bill would have embraced that metaphor.
“There’s one thing I really have to do,” he had told me in between dozing off in his recliner just two days ago. “I want to write down how I feel about all those people who have been close to me. I know that I’m a very private person. I know that I’ve played my life close to the vest. I want to tell them how much they mean to me.”
But he never had a chance to write that last piece of his special eloquence. He also never had a chance to enjoy that first day of 70 degree weather after the long dreary winter that he hated so much.
Nevertheless, the depths of his feelings had been expressed often in the many scripts (some performed and some not), memoirs, and poetry that he had written over his lifetime. His original stage play, The Killings Tale, won a audio book “Audie” in 2004.. His adaptations and original scripts have often been performed by the New York State Theater Institute.

Warner Music Group awarded NYSTI $400,000 in 1996 to develop five new musicals for family audiences. The first of those was “A Tale of Cinderella” by W.A.Frankonis, Will Severin, and George David Weiss, made possible in part by funding provided by Warner Music Group and by the participation of Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. An immediate success, the award-winning show is available as an Atlantic Theatre CD or cassette and has been re-released on VHS as part of Warner Home Video’s 75th Anniversary Celebration. Vocal Selections from “A Tale of Cinderella” is available from Warner Bros. Publications. The video was broadcast nationwide on PBS stations to an audience of more than 56 million TV households (half of potential US audiences). In the 2000-01 Season, “A Tale of Cinderella” toured all the major cities of New York including Buffalo, Syracuse, the Capital Region, and Manhattan.

His life and work will be remembered by a great many people. But I will remember him as the young man I married in a flurry of passion and possessiveness even though in many ways we were oil and water. We wound up being better friends than spouses.
I will miss his political rants and the books he would send me after he read them. I will miss the father he was to our children. I will miss a friend, and I will always be glad that I was able to be there for him when he needed help so close to the end of a life ended too soon.
ADDENDUM: b!X has posted excerpts from his dad’s willl and it is no surprise that Bill used the same humor, honesty, and creativity in writing his will as he had with all of his other writings.