I Saw A Meme…And I Liked It

This meme popped up in my newsfeed this afternoon from a page I follow for Netflix’s The Last Kingdom, which is just wrapping up filming on Season 4, based on The Last Kingdom series of books by Bernard Cornwell. It got me to thinking about myths and legends.

Every mythology has The Three Spinners, The Fates, spinning our fate out until one of the snips the cord. As Uhtred, the protagonist in the books says, “Wyrd bið ful aræd”. (Fate is wholly inexorable). More on it’s translation and meaning here: https://anglosaxonpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/2017/06/08/wyrd-bid-ful-araed-the-wanderer-line-5b/

I’ve always loved World Mythology, so much so, that I took two semesters of Mythology in high school. Sadly, we mostly studied Classical Mythology, you know, Greek and Roman gods. Not so much the earthier, often darker mythologies of the Norse, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish. You know, the more interesting ones, the ones that whisper to us.

Waxing poetic on the second part of this meme, “the ‘spirits of my ancestors walk about in my bones”. Well, that’s just a fancy way of “the essence of who they are is in the mitochondria, both male and female, that they have passed down to me, making me, uniquely “Me”. Change one gene…and life changes and diverges, same as it ever was.

Now, the science is beginning to say that the life experiences your grandparents had, good and bad, influences and minutely alters their DNA. Those changes become part of our parent’s DNA, which we inherit, then pass on to our children, along with any changes to our DNA, and so forth, on down generationally. Micro evolution writ large.

Think personality and physical traits, like when the great granddaughter looks identical to the great grandmother at the same age, balding, height, hair and eye color, etc.

It’s like a great scroll, unfurling, back, back, back into the mists of antiquity. The Story of Me, the Story of You, the Story of All of Us. It’s quite a story, and it’s still being written, forever.

And THAT, Kids, is how my brain spent the better part of an hour this afternoon. Turning a meme into a “mini TED Talk” on Existentialism and Life Science, with a light dusting of Philosophy .

#Microevolution #Mythology

#SheBlindedMeWithScience

#DarwinsFinches #QuirkyBrain

Time Shift

In the days when Time was endless, and dreams were real, we were wild and free.

Summers lasted forever, and we were too young to know that they would end.

We spent our days like they too, would last forever and we would always be young.

Possibilities were endless and we believed anything was possible.

We felt that we could reach for the stars and grasp them, hold them in our strong and capable hands.

Our faces unlined, our brows not yet creased, back, back before Time did his work, knotting our fingers, bending our backs.

Wreaking his havoc on our physicality and mentality, stealing away the gleam in our eye.

We lean into the wind, longing for the days when it was at our back.

Insight

I walk these fields alone at night

The ruminations of my heart like a second sight

The things I’ve done and the things I’ve been

Lonely girl, broken girl, never quite fitting in

Across the long arc of my intrepid life

The conjecture of events stand out, sharp as a knife

The good and the bad, the sacred and the profane

Bits of clarity intermingled with the inane

The struggle inside, a turbulent river flowing

Chaos and calamity abridged by love glowing

And the never ending battle to be understood

Comes up against the calloused heart that is up to no good

Sunday Morning Haiku

Quiet early morn

Enjoying my cup of joe

The wind is roaring outside

She Is There

It was foggy out this morning, very early, just before eight, before the sun had risen. It was also that deeply beautiful shade of violet blue that I love so much.

When I was a child, I loved to roam the fields and forests on foggy mornings. Sometimes I was afoot, and other times I was on horseback. Each mode of travel held its own charms.

On horseback, in the fields, the scent of horse overrode the scent of human, and I could hear deer moving about the shorn cornfields, but never could I see them in the thick fog, so I soon turned my horse back into her pasture and struck out alone.

Afoot, I could disappear into the fog, knowing the paths and trails with my eyes closed, so familiar and dear were they to me. I loved the feel and smell of the damp earth, trees and rocks. The thrill of adventure when I left the fields, angling into the woods, down its slope, across rain-freshened creeks, then across the wide bottom of the big field, past an old settlers grave, down yet another, steeper wooded slope to a cool and clear running spring, where I would drink my fill straight from the source as it left the ground.

It was like existing in another world, enfolded in those magical pre-dawn mists and enshrouded in the most perfect holy color of sacred violet blue. Rooted in earth, yet free as the sky, I was an entirely different being then.

But I still remember that child, the one who danced with the wind, walked among the trees, carefree and daring. She lives still, but she knows her world is not the world I live in now, so she is restless, sad, hopeless and yet hopeful.

She is there in every long way home, that yearning ache to pull over and set out across a field, through the woods or wade in a creek.

She is there in a downpour, remembering a hiding place way up near the rafters amid the hay bales, listening to the thunderous rain on the barn roof.

She is there on starry nights, remembering lying in a field watching the moon and stars rise and set, dreaming of the wonders of the Universe and wishing on shooting stars.

She is there in the smell of woodsmoke, recalling days of helping to cut and split wood and winter evenings by the fire with hot tea.

She is there in the snow, remembering the pristine and holy silence of a snowy Winter’s night when first I heard the sound of falling snow.

She is there in the glorious sweep of a verdant field rising up to meet an impossibly blue sky and cottony clouds I dreamed on.

She is there in the falling leaves, the harvested fields, the scent of hay and horse and green corn.

She is there in ever woodland wildflower, the Dutchman’s Breeches, the Jack In The Pulpits, the Violets of yellow.

She is there in every Shagbark Hickory, every Beech and Oak, every Weeping Willow, and the long bank of Maples that blazed fiery red every Autumn.

She is there in every creek, bringing home stones and frogs, mats woven from cattail leaves and jars of tadpoles.

She is there in long, blazing sunsets, quiet nights of crickets and the far off calls of an owl.

She weeps for what was lost, bereft, empty, aching and mourning for the only home she ever loved.

Oh my darling inner child, my wild darling, who broke rules and did impossible things. Who loved with her whole self those acres that raised her, that fed her body and her soul, that made her….her. My darling, I promise you, we’ll go home, someday.

Snow Song

Once, long ago, when I was but a child, I discovered a secret. A secret that only a child could discover, and it has stayed with me for forty-three years.

The secret?

That on a cold and still Winter’s midnight, in the depths of the silence that encompasses a snowfall, that the falling snow has a voice. A voice all its own; a voice so quiet, that it’s just the faintest of whispers, just a tiny breath of sound.

From the moment I discovered that sound, the very instant I heard it, snowfalls held a sacredness to them. To think of it now, conjures up images of silent fields dressed in white, cloaked in that deep violet blue of twilight that lends its own sacredness, listening to the holy choir sing its fragile, sacred snow song as it falls on and all around me.

HALLOWED FIELDS

Hallowed be these frozen fields
I walk in Winter after Autumn’s yields

It’s fertile soil so rich and sweet
Arise at Dawn to roam and greet

There are tracks of deer and the song of birds
But it’s golden grains now feed the herds

The bitter snow the night lay down
Is scattered on the furrowed ground

I’ve often walked these fields at night
Alone and bathed in sacred moonlight

The call of owls and chirrup of crickets
And the subtle sound of deer in the thickets

But I felt no fear for there I belong
Breathing in the Night’s holy song

And when I die and cease to be
It’s to this place my soul will flee

To walk once more these hallowed fields
Before and after the Autumn yields

Thoughts #1

Mother blessed, I walk in your shadow, asking for your love, your guidance. I am but a Journeyer, your storm tossed daughter, yet remain only myself.

I find myself standing still, even in the midst of chaos, thinking of the child I once was, my father, the hills and fields and forests I once walked and was a part of.

Memories, like images, transfixed and translucent, on old photographic glass plates, swim through my weary mind, bringing tears.

I am numbed, stunned, disheartened by what this world, and I, have become.

Solstice 2018

‘TIs the longest night in the Wheel of the Year

The dark, cold time that many men fear

But from this night, the days grow longer

The nights grow shorter, the Sun grows stronger

Rest yourselves beside the fire

Watch the Yule log send its sparks higher

Carrying messages to the gods above

For Peace, Prosperity and above all, Love

Ambient Agua