Earth and Water

"I alluded a while ago to a recent trance (you read a witch's blog, you take the flaky with the profound, my friends) where, instead of finding the forest I usually do, healthy and green and crawling with life, I found a charred and blasted clearcut, the landscape so dry that even the riverbed was cracked and fissured. For the non-witches in the audience, aka most of you, water is the element of emotions. And it was as if a fire had raged through and evaporated even every drop of groundwater. It was frightening; considering what I thought was going on, it was also extreme. When I found a river I followed it to a waterfall with a cave behind it; the cave was like a geode, inside all amethyst crystals so sharp they cut my feet to ribbons. (I have not figured out why my feet were bare.) There was a scrying pool in the middle, and I smoothed out a patch of stone beside it using a file and a hasp. As I did, the rocks bled. The rocks bled, and soon my hands and feet were slick with it."

I wrote that in Slippery, the first post presaging the eventual divorce, back in December of 2006. Since that time it's been non-stop Epiphany Central around here, leaving me with any number of subjects I could write about for Julie's hump-day hmm today, most of which are subject to the gag order. Instead, I thought I would finish the story.

That was the trance that gave me the Monster; the Monster that, once looked at, ended the marriage; but it didn't bring the water back. For that I had to follow the river back to its source.

Would you believe me if I said I've never once used any illegal substances, and didn't even have a glass of beer or wine until after I'd turned 20? It's true. I have not so much as smoked a single cigarette. Anyway.

When I'd followed that river--the one that's in my head--back to its source, I'd found that it had been blocked up with boulders, and only the merest trickle of water was getting through. On top of the dam was a house, a house I'd recognized as my own; and even the house itself was full of rocks. This needs to come down, I thought, but had no idea how to do this or even where to begin. How do you dismantle a house and a dam? Kick it hard? Blow on it? Wish it away? Trances aren't strictly rational but they follow internal logic, in the way dreams do; you have to follow the rules to make things happen.

Digression:

This is a digression I've made so many times on wiccan posts I could probably type out the whole thing while singing the soundtrack to Moulin Rouge and scanning news headlines. Here I go again:

Wicca uses the traditional four elements, not in a scientific sense, but symbolically. The four elements are air, earth, water and fire. (Sometimes a fith, spirit, is added in the centre.) Air is to the east, earth to the north, water to the west, and fire to the south; unless you live in an environment where this makes absolutely no sense, i.e. Australia or the east coast, in which case you are free and even encouraged to rearrange them into something more locally appropriate. Air represents analysis, thought and communication; fire represents energy and passion; earth (typically represented by stone) is strength, and water is emotion. In dream symbolism (which trances borrow a lot from, since it's basically the same thing) houses are souls.

So, essentially, feeling had been completely dammed up by strength, and I'd built myself on top of this mess.

(Well done, Andrea!)

Sad Part:

My first memory is of my father throwing me on to a sofa. I can't remember why, so I tell myself it was probably supposed to be a game. The first thing I remember I am in the air. It was an old, worn-out sofabed, the cushions gone to mites and air long ago, and I landed on the metal spine in the back. It hurt; I can't remember how old I was, but I was small enough to be thrown, so I must have been fairly young. In any case, I hit it, it hurt, and I cried.

"It was only a sofa, Andrea," said my father. "It didn't hurt." And when I couldn't stop crying he sent me to my room.

I mention this because this became the pattern on which later emotional (un)expressions were built: everything was a sofa, and nothing hurt. Anything that was supposed to hurt, which in a normal family would hurt, was dammed up by another boulder. The boulders could be any one of a number of things: "Other people have real problems," "It could be worse," "It's all my fault anyway," "It doesn't matter," and so on. Until the river ran dry and the forest burned down.

Fast forward to last summer. Frances is with her father for the weekend; it's a beautiful late-summer day, and I am exploring my new neighbourhood by bike. I find the path by the East Don, and for the first time stop by "my" boulders, sit down, and watch. I trail a hand in the water, examine the shallows for fish. Iridescent-green and velvet-black dragonflies are dancing in the air by the water's edge, and the sky is that electric grey of early twilight. All the knots in my shoulders and neck unknot.

The water churns over the stones, thrown up into a white froth, backing up on itself, tumbling down a shallow cascade, and the music of it fills my head. It's not a natural environment, whatever it looks like: the boulders were placed here to channel the water and keep it from eroding the banks. I think: they don't have to be oppositional. Stones and earth don't have to keep water still and hidden, and look what they can make together. How much energy there is here. I remember the waterfall beside my grandparents' cottage, how it drowned out the trucks driving by on the highway, how we'd sit in pools within it formed by boulders and let the water pummel our shoulders. I think: water is more beautiful when it's moving over stones.

I don't need to get rid of the boulders; I just need to move them.

A shot of the rapids from "my" boulders on the Don.

Posted by Andrea at July 30, 2008 1:49 PM under Witch

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