imagine

Page Fourteen

Monday 5 May 2008... Turners Fools


I'm a person who has to apply artsy and otherwise imaginative things to all of life: music, colors, images, etc. To ensoul the ordinary, to turn the ordinary into a little magic, to let my imaination have its fun.

For instance, fairies. In my own life that is now gone, I was wild about fairies, but only pretty ones. All my fairies had to be pretty. And I chose to envision all fairies as kind and benevolent, even though this is by no means the case in Celtic myth and folklore.

And I chose to see all pretty fairies as symbols of all the good things life can have. And so on. Ensouling everyday life. Adding a little magic to the mundane. This is a very different thing from delusions, please note, and from the popular psychiatric disorder that is commonly called "magical thinking." This is a conscious choice to PRETEND, because normal pretending is safe, and sane, and fun, and good for the soul. One book in which you could read more on this subject is The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life, by Thomas Moore (a psychologist, by the way).

I did this in my conversations with my animals too. In the years that my cats and I walked along the canal in Turners Fools (where I'm visiting today and typing these words; where my family and my life were demolished), I named various spots along the canal with our own names that no one else knew: the sunset hill, Zoe's lookout, Shiloh's lookout, etc. I did it again with my dogs in the woods at the address we were just thrown out of. The fairy well, the hill to the morning, the little hemlock, the little singing stream, and more. My dogs, Brainse and Mishi, learned these names for things very quickly, and loved for me to say the name of each place when we reached it. Brainse liked to take it one step further. She would stop at each place, often getting there ahead of me, and she would not walk further until I said the name. Sometimes I'd be lost in my thoughts and I'd forget to say the name. Mishi and I would keep on walking a few feet, and then I'd notice that Brainse wasn't with us. I'd turn around, and there she'd be, sitting or standing at a certain spot that was special to us, looking at me as if to say "You didn't say the name, Mom." Then I'd apologize and say the name, and she'd smile and wag her tail and trot forward to meet me. Putting a little magic into everyday things. It's all gone. And the DMH and the CSS sat back on the cheeks of their brains and let it all be taken from me.

Update 12 November 2009: I've been thinking a great deal lately about those dog walks in the woods and all the things we named there, and the sweetness of our time together there. But I cannot yet face returning to that woods.

I have, though, returned to the canal and the river in Turners Falls, where we also walked and named things and had sweet times. The pain of the loss of those times is greater than ever. The pain and rage that still, after 20 months, no "christian" souls will tell me what happend to my animals, is enormous.

~~~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

part of the book Stolen Stars