A Tragic Christmas Morality Tale

To describe a Morality Tale as 'Tragic' probably is redundant to some extent.  When I think of all the Morality Tales that have been written or told throughout the ages, I find that almost all of them ARE tragic.  Whether it is the tale of the boy who was eaten by a Wolf after issuing too many false warnings, or a nursery rhyme involving a boy who kissed all the girls and made them cry only to be unveiled as an adject coward when faced with other boys, they tend to be dire warnings of one kind or another.

This Morality Tale is not only based upon fact but is unadulterated fact at that.  The lessons it provides are practical prima facie, but like the best of Morality and Fairy Tales, it holds a deeper significance.

It starts during the time of the Millenium when people were collecting dolls and toys under the truly foolish impression that they constituted a good investment for the future.  I never thought that was a good  idea and told customers constantly that the only reason to purchase dolls or plush toys was if the buyer or gift recipient actually LOVED them and furthermore that the idea of keeping a doll or toy in a box forever was obscene.

In the World of the 'Collectible Investment', now blessedly defunct for the most part, the only way a doll or toy keeps its value or actually gains in value is if it is NRFB, aka Never Removed from Box.   What this means is essentially that the buyer takes the box, stuffs it into an attic or closet and forgets about it until values soar a decade or so down the line.  These silly 'collectors' believed somehow that values would increase and that, when the time was ripe, they could cash in all the little surrogate people and animals for cold, hard cash.

In fact, many partents were teaching their children to do that immediately after being given a 'collectible' gift.  Boys and girls were bragging about having made a profit shortly after Christmas by selling the Beanie Babies or Holiday Barbie Dolls they had received as gifts.  Needless to say, I did not bring up my daughter in this fashion.  I taught her rather that dolls and toys should be treated with the same care and regard as real people and animals.  When Freya dropped her doll, she would cry out, 'Heart, are you hurt?' and indeed, performed a very heroic if foolish act of heroism one day when Heart fell into a busy road as we crossed and she ran back instantly to rescue her.  Thankfully, that did not end badly..  I was both horrified and proud.

In any case, I seldom kept any doll or plush toy in its original box, preferring to allow them to lead an existence outside of their dark prisons and believing that, if I liked a doll or plush animal enough to acquire it, I should display it somewhere.  Unfortunately, limitations of space, the bane of any collector, ultimately made my displays more cluttered than I would have wished.  Dust tended to land first on the dolls and animals at the back of the shelves and finally, everywhere.

There were a few dolls that I kept in their original boxes.  One of these was a beautiful Christmas set made my Madame Alexander.  It was a 10" couple who represented 'White Christmas', an iconic American film.  During the Millenium period, all dollmakers tended to go wild in producing more 'limited editions' than usual.  Rather than issuing one or two dolls for Christmas,  theAlexander Doll Company issued almost a dozen.   I therefore kept 'White Christmas' in the box for future display in some unscheduled 21st Century Christmas.

Well, as time passed and I became more disabled physically, the entire business of dragging out Christmas decorations for a month only to e forced to take them all back up the stairs after Twelfh Night became increasingly difficult and exhausting.  I tended to use the same boxes of Ornaments and Decorations again and again rather than unearthing special Decorations from the furthest corners of the storeroom. 

We then moved and I gradually began to move the boxes of Christmas Ornaments and Decorations and various other sundry items from the old house to the new.  A year later, I still have not completed this daunting task, partly because I am disabled and partly because I no longer drive and therefore do not have my own car.  It was only recently that I found the box containing the NRFB 'White Christmas' set and carried it to the new house.

So here is the lesson in this particular Morality Tale.  I opened the box today, fully trusting that the two dolls would be as fresh and new as the day they were made only to discover, to my infinite rage and horror, that somehow the Worms with Wings, my eternal Enemies, had invaded and wrecked havoc with both dolls and the pink tissue paper that allegedly was their protection.

I do not know how the War with the Worms with Wings began but I suspect they were brought into the house in an antique camelhair rug from Kazakhstan.  It was a gorgeous hand crafted piece that still smelled deliciously of wet camel.  (Yes, I love camels and I love the scent of the animal as well!   It is NOT a fetish, however.)  To my sorrow, I found trails of moth holes throughout the rug about six months later and from that point onward, the situation escalated.  I had to chuck out so many beautiful woolen and fur items.  They are filthy little creatures as well and will nest even in items they cannot consume.  It took me years to learn their various stages and to realise that the moment of flight is not the moment of greatest danger.  I could write a book on the topic but I am heartily sick of it all. 

When we moved, I made certain to scrutinise every single item I brought to the new house, even when they were made of materials moths could not devour.  I found evidence of them in wooden bookshelves and books, silk flowers and leather handbags... in fact, nothing was safe from their invasions.

Even so, I never imagined that a box that never had been opened would carry moths inside it.  And yet, I opened 'White Christmas' to find the discarded casings of hundreds of the foul creatures.  The pink tissue paper had been chewed in some places.  The fake fur that lined the velvet festive holiday clothing worn by the dolls was covered with their husks.  I did not see any evidence of life, thank God, but it still was an unpleasant surprise.

I have learned how to clean items that have suffered from these invasions and afterwards, I discovered almost no actual damage had occurred to anything but the box and the tissue paper.  The dolls now are displayed in a window and no one could tell they had endured such a horrid ordeal.

What then is the lesson in this Morality Tale?  It is not a new one for me.  My mother has been guilty of the same error many times, especially where food was concerned.  She would save a wonderful chocolate concoction or cake for a future 'special occasion' only to discover it had become stale by the time she decided to eat it.  I have done the same myself... but here, I was guilty of the Collector's Mistake, even though my reasons were quite different. 

The moral therefore is to enjoy anything that is special or beautiful without attempting to save it for some unspecified special and possibly impossible future occasion.  Furthermore, the Dolls and Toys that are displayed can be protected better than those that are locked away from sight.  Moths do not like objects that  are likely to be moved.  They like to burrow into the cardigan at the very bottom of a stack, to find the darkest corner in a wardrobe, to find a box, like this one, that was never opened.

As far as any more profound significance is concerned, well... you can judge for yourself but I would say that where friendship is concerned, there is no point in waiting for some unspecified future occasion to renew ties.  I have experienced so many deaths of my old friends to know that one never can count upon the future.  I regret that I did not make more of an effort to spend more time with those friends, even if they lived hundreds or even thousands of miles away.  The old adage: 'No time like the present' is very apt.  Carpe diem.  Make Hay while the Sun shines... etc. etc.

Freya, Goddess of Love and War and Marital Arts Training

When I discovered I was going to have a girl, I decided to name her Freya.  It's a beautiful name in itself and an unusual one, but beyond that, Freya was the Goddess both of Love and of War, strong and independent, a woman who was willing to do almost anything to save her race, the Vanir and one desired by all creatures.

When Freya was quite young, I enrolled her in a martial arts school.  Tae Kwon Do was my own discipline and I therefore looked for the best Tae Kwon Do school in our area, hoping that we could train together.  When I was a young girl, there were very few if any martial arts schools in the West and certainly there were very few girls who studied unless they were Asian.  I studied fencing and specialised in sabre fencing rather than the epee.  I loved being able to slash as well as thrust.  I loved edged weapons and, drunk upon tales of warriors like the Three Musketeers and Cuchulain, considered a sword to be an extension of the soul.  I never was a violent person but to me, the sword represented perfection.

When I went to University, I discovered there was a Tae Kwon Do club and joined it at once.  One joins far too many clubs in the first couple of weeks at University.  Many girls joined the Tae Kwon Do club at that stage, but most of them simply did so in order to meet guys.  After the first rather grueling lesson, they all dropped out apart from two.  I was one of the two who stayed and the other girl was Sue, who became one of my closest friends.  Both of us found the philosophical aspect of martial arts as seductive as the idea of honing ones own body into a perfect weapon.

Although I loved the concept, it was not in order to fight that I wished to perfect the art, but for the sake of perfection itself.  For some reason, martial arts always appealed to me far more than dancing, although I felt they both had the stame essential foundaton and structure.  Both were physical art forms, but martial arts had the additional component of being practical and of giving the practitioner power.

I was not a 'tomboy' by any means as a child.  I loved dolls as much as I loved swords and daggers.  It was when I saw Angela Mao Ying explode into action, however, in cinema, that I realised how utterly feminine and still deadly a great martial artist could be.  She was beautiful and dainty and yet an incredible force.  

So why did I want Freya to study Tae Kwon Do?  Well, for a start, I wanted to share something that gav me intense joy and satisfaction.  There have been few activities in my life that allowed me to experience what is sometimes called 'bliss'.  One was riding a carousel and another was Tae Kwon Do.  I hated team sports in school.  I loved fencing, almost every sort of folk dancing and tap dancing but I never liked ballet.  In school, I was a bit of an outsider, different from the others and therefore subjected to cruelty.  I was much younger than the other children in my classes.  I graduated from school ultimately at the age of 15.  While other girls were able to go out with guys, I still was treated like a child.  It was only when I went to University that, despite my age, I was treated as an adult and the difference in age became irrelevant, apart from my own naivete.

In my academic circle, I often was resented, even at University for being too articulate, for having been a child prodigy (and still a bit of a prodigy on occasion).   There was an edge of hostility often in the behaviour of guys who tried to chat me up.  At Tae Kwon Do, however, I experienced a sense of belonging.  The guys were my comrades.  We struggled together and triumphed together.   I always longed for a brother as a child but it was only when I joined the Tae Kwon Do club that I finally had brothers.  It was wonderful.

Freya was an only child.  I did not want her to be awkward with boys.  I wanted her to be able to have friends who were boys as well as friends who were girls.  I felt that Tae Kwon Do would give her the opportunity.  That was another reason I wanted her to study martial arts.

Many women either study martial arts themselves or enroll their daughers in martial arts in order to give them a source of protection from attack.  I myself experienced abuse at the hands of men but that was not part of my reason for studying martial arts or for wanting Freya to study.  I did want to 'empower' her, to give her a sense of confidence in life, but it was more of a spiritual sense of empowerment that would encompass every aspect of life.

Freya now has her third degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do and teaches at a Karate studio.  When I watch her, I see in her all the beauty and power of the Goddess Freya.  I know she is far more humble but even so, I hope it has given her a sense of her own grace and beauty as well as power that should be second nature now.

Originally, I had hoped to be able to train with Freya, but I became physically disabled and was unable to take that journey with her.  I always did try to distinguish between my own goals and those of my daughter, to try not to impose my own desires and ambitions upon her.  I am really happy that she chose to continue with the art but I know that her vision may be entirely different from mine. 

The Etruscan Principle of Auguries, telling fortunes from the flight of birds or behaviour of cats and grippers

From the early 19th century, those who heard of the Etruscan tombs and or visited them became fascinated with the mysterious civilisation.  It is mysterious primarily because few written records remain, even though the Etruscans were, to some extent, the ancestors of the Romans who founded the great Roman Empire.

When I visited Tarquinia, I immediately experienced a sense of enchantment similar to that of Ludwig I of Bavaria and Robert Graves as well as a host of other artists, princes and ordinary tourists.  For a start, I love underground places and entrances to the underworld or other world, whether they be barrows, tombs or caves.  The way that the Etruscans laid out the tombs with a dining table and seats for the living visitors as well as the dead tenants appealed to me enormously.  There was something exquisitely peaceful and positive about the whole business, despite the 'presence' of the winged demons who guarded the door to the other world.

That is not the topic of this post, however.  It is rather the extraordinary reliance of the Etrusans on auguries of every sort, whether the flight of birds, the entrails of a sacrificed animal or the appearance of a meteor shower. 

Today, I had an experience that I would consider to be rather Etruscan although I wonder if I should attach any significance to it. 

Over the past year, I slowly have been trying to salvage all of my possessions from my former abode.  Decimated by moths and often almost inaccessible beneath other possessions, valuable clothes often are found only after I have removed 'work' clothes, mainly because work clothes were used on an almost daily basis and the more valuable clothing was seldom worn.  In any event, I found a few of my good cashmere leggings and was able to rehabilitate most of them.

There was a brief period when cashmere garments, especially when mixed with other textiles, were relatively inexpensive.  Fabricated usually in China, one could purchase a fair number of items on sale for a ridiculously low price.  The downside of this sometimes was the colour of the items.  Living in a climate where winter could be bitter and in a room that did not have proper heating, I really was not that concerned with the colour of leggings and bought whatever was available.  As the years passed, I tended to wear the weird colours and kept the black or charcoal pairs for special occasions.

There was one pair in particular that I wore often, despite the fact that the tie at the waist broke immediately.  The tie was made of the same fabric and woefully inadequate for its purpose.  Unfortunately, the openings for the tie were extremely small and all I could find to replace the fabric tie was a rather unattractive length of string.  It never worked perfectly although I continued to wear it.  Ultimately, however, I put the leggings aside, when moths and time left multiple tears along the seam between the legs.

At first, I left those leggings behind but recently have been rescuing clothing that was not my first nor my second choice.  I decided that one way to empower my rather battered soul would be to mend or rehabilitate as many of my damaged and ruined possessions as possible.  Some things are possible.  Others are not.  I had to toss some beautiful antique rugs because of the moth invasions.  The leggings, on the other hand, infinitely less valuable but possibly equally irreplaceable at this point in time, could be mended.

I first shored up all the holes, using simple thread rather than matching wool.  One could not tell the difference honestly, which made me regret that I had not performed the action sooner.  I then ordered some narrow elastic cord online.  This morning, I spent over half an hour threading it through the very narrow channel at the waistband.  The results were everything one could wish and I was rather proud and pleased. 

Let me mention here that one of the reasons I decided to mend the leggings was my inability to find any replacements at a reasonable price.  Cashmere is not as common as it was a decade ago and is very expensive now as well.  In searching online, I found some extraordinary goat wool leggings from the Ukraine that looked like Pan's legs but nothing in cashmere,  I rather fancied the mythical leggings but they were rather expensive actually.  Ultimately, I decided it would be more practical to mend the rather pedestrian leggings I owned.

At this point, I had to go downstairs to feed the cats.  I decided not to change my clothes.  After all, the leggings, even if cashmere, were very old...

Half an hour later, I tried to help Ashleigh onto my lap and his claw became caught in the lower part of my leggings.  He began to struggle and tore a hole in them!

What is the significance of all this?  Is it some kind of cosmic statement that one really cannot fight against the ravages of Nature and Time?  Is it a warning not to bother with my damaged possessions because there is no way to win this fight?  Or is it nothing more than a little coincidence.  The hole was very small.  I was able to mend it in a few moments and the casual viewer cannot tell that there was any damage.

Later, I dropped my grippers on the landing.  When one cannot reach very far nor bend very far and one needs some kind of aid, what does one do when the tool one uses is dropped?  Again, what sort of augury is this?

Perceptions of Organised Religion

I have met far too many individuals in my life who, having been brought up in a strict religious atmosphere of one kind or another, whether at school or at home, have rebelled completely against the entire business of religion, discarding the spiritual along with the organisation itself.

When people tell me that they are religious in their own way but 'do not subscribe to organised religion', I once felt that I could understand that point of view but I soon realised that my own was quite different.  I believe that organised religion serves a number of purposes and that we ought to USE the religion rather than allowing it to use us.  To say one does not believe in organised religion is rather like saying one does not believe in public transportation or hospitals or banks.  I do not trust any of them but they all have their uses, as does organised religion.

Without the organisation known as the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no soaring cathedrals and exquisite little churches and much of the great art and literature of the Western World would not exist.  Why on earth would one not wish to take full advantage of the beauty offered in the name of the Church without allowing it to take control?

One can worship God at home or in a garden, but there is nothing quite like a magnificent 'House of God' whether that be a Cathedral, Church or Mosque.  Furthermore, in the best circumstances, the energy of a group of people united in worship is quite powerful.  Sad to say, most of the time, much of the congregation or audience is not really concentrating on God or worship or using any spiritual energy at all.

Fundamentally, I believe that, at the very heart of Christianity is the ancient mystery religion of the Sacrifice of the God and I therefore believe that the Roman Catholic Church offers the most powerful experience of this mystery in Holy Communion.  Transubstantiation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is true magic and anything less is less potent.

In like fashion, I find the traditions of Muharram and the weeping over Imam Husayn to be one of the most powerful experiences in Islam.  It is a practice that is limited to the 'shiani 'Ali' or Shia but it, like the crucifixion of Christ has its roots deep in the ancient world.  The weeping of women over the death of a God is one of the most potent communal magical acts.

Why on earth would one not wish to have life enriched by these incredible traditions and mysteries?  Why would one shun Cathedrals and Mosques, turn away from the extraordinary unfathomable face of the Divine and slam the door on cultural and spiritual practices that have belonged to humanity in one form or another since the very dawn of Time? 

I do understand how one might rebel against bigotry and strict adherence to any set of rules or regulations but to me, that is not the heart of religion.  That is simply the sort of thing that human beings do to place control over others in their own hands.  I therefore ignore it.  I believe that priests and Imams serve a function but it should not be treated as anything that interferes with the working of the individual soul and heart.  I find my own morality.  I choose what to follow in any spiritual tradition and in doing so, am free to sample more than one religion and  find the common threads that link them together.

I know this is a topic that I consider again and again but the reason I am thinking about it now has to do with the Runes and the Mysteries of Dionysus.  I have been studying the Runes for about three decades now and none of the explanations of their meaning ever convinced me totally.

It is the same with the mysteries of Dionysus.  I have read book after book on the subject but although they are filled with explicit and detailed accounts of this and that, they do not appear to find the very heart of the religion.

I do believe, like Joseph Campbell, that all religions are linked and there is a fundamental eternal Truth out there.  Even the worst religions and cults have a kernel of this truth somewhere, however much dross overpowers the gold.

The real problem with the Runes and the literature that deals with it, is Christianity and the way it dominates our thoughts in the Western World, whether we actually be Christian, atheist or belong to some other religion.   The way History is written, Christianity spread like a wildfire, instantly dominating the cultures it touched.  It evoked strong opposition in some cases but even when it did, it still was given an importance it may not have possessed at that point in time.

I read an interesting book that declared that it really was a toss-up at one point soon after the death of Christ whether Christianity or the worship of Mithras would triumph.  That struck me and I would go further in fact to state that Christianity NEVER would have achieved the significance it did were it not for the long history of mystery religions in the West and the worship of Dionysus, Adonis, Osiris and Attis.

Do our Lives or our Libraries Define Us?

My dear, now deceased friend Fleming used to say that he had lived many lives in a single lifetime.  I felt and still feel the same about myself.  My various identities, created in part by my occupations, jobs and interests through the decades, really were worlds apart sometimes one from the other.  Some were lived simultaneously.  Others were consecutive in nature.

I consider motherhood to be an identity by the way, and one that very much changes the soul.  I had other interests and occupations while I was engaged in being a mother on a full-time basis, but motherhood was at the very centre of my life at that point.  Now that my daughter is at a University almost half a day from here, my role as Mother has declined significantly but for two decades, it defined and shaped my destiny.

I am a Collector and always would have been one, had I not moved from continent to continent quite often, thereby precluding the opportunity to really amass a Collection of any magnitude.  There is an old axiom to the effect that 'a rolling stone gathers no moss'.  For better or worse, that was true in my own life until I had a child.  I then stayed in the same place for two decades, mainly for her sake and not because I had chosen the location for myself.  Children crave stability and although I felt that my own childhood was enriched immeasurably by world travel, it was very lonely as well in many ways.  My daughter has traveled but her childhood was spent in one place.

Finally, I have moved from the house where I spent two decades raising my daughter.  The new home is not that far from the old geographically but the problem of moving my belongings from the old home to the new has been huge.  After a year, at least half of my belongings still are at the old house and it gives me a curious sense of dislocation as well as a great deal of anxiety.  The older I become, the less secure I am emotionally.  I can become agitated or anxious about things that would not have affected me in the least when I was Freya's age.  I suppose part of the reason I am concerned about my belongings is the fact that I lost so much in my youth whenever I moved.  I am heartily tired of losing things that I love.  Furthermore, the chances of replacing anything have diminished drastically.  I cannot reinvent my life so quickly at this point.

I cherish my collection of edged weapons as well as my collection of dolls and plush toys, my small collection of antique clothing and jewelry and my porcelain, but above all else, I cherish my books.  I was able to bring a few bags filled with books to the new house last week and I spent a couple of hours on my birthday dusting them and placing them in bookcases.  It was then that I realised a stranger only need look at my books to know me.  All of my interests, including my interest in dolls and edged weapons, in Napoleon and Lawrence, in fine jewelry, textiles and porcelain... all of these are encapsulated in my library.

There is a difference between the world of the imagination and the concrete world and I do enjoy the tactile ability to hold a dagger or doll as well as being able to be surrounded by them when I lay in bed.  Being physically disabled now makes these objects more important to me.  In the past, when I lived in London or New York, it was easy enough to visit a museum to surround myself with treasures any time I wished.   I no longer have the freedom to do that and I therefore believe that the little collections I have amassed have acquired more value to me because they now are the representatives or ambassadors of a wider world I cannot experience without great difficulty.

There is a wonderful woman here who has been my sole source of assistance in terms of moving my items from Point A to Point B.  She is the very soul of generosity but I know she is tired of carrying bags of my dolls and books from one house to another.  During the last trip, she turned to me and declared: 'You should get rid of some of those books!'

The world is divided between people who treasure books and people who really cannot comprehend their value.  In this age of technology another split has occurred between people who still treasure real books and people who would be just as happy to read a book on the Kindle or laptop or other device.  I am not opposed to the use of the internet for my research at all, but I still value my library of reference books far more.  Technology changes and people who are relying upon the 'Cloud' for example one day may find that it has vanished into thin air, taking all their invisible stuff with it.  Books are permanent, unless they are destroyed by an Act of God in a fire or flood or other natural or manmade calamity.  One can inherit books from a parent or grandparent.  One can pass them down to a child or grandchild.  They are part of our personal history.

Once again, I am aware of the enormous gap between myself and most of the people I know here.  There are so many qualities that set me apart at this point and not the least of them the inability to move freely from one room to another or to participate in many of the activities that people consider to be 'fun'.  I no longer can dance or hike, for example.  I could not go on most of the rides at a fair, although I would hope I still could ride a carousel horse if the opportunity arose.  As I cannot sit for any length of time, however, the ability to travel has decreased somewhat.

And yet... and yet... do I not have a larger world at my disposal than this lovely lady who helps me move those books she considers disposable?  I only need open a book to be transported to another place.  Whether it is a book of fairy tales or a book on the history of Sumer, my mind can be freed temporarily from the shackles of physical disability as well as the shackles of time, space and reality.

There was a time when I was hospitalised for a terrible cluster migraine and I could not read.  I needed darkness as well as silence but I did have an art book and I was able to look at one painting for a brief instant, shut my eyes and use my imagination to weave some sort of other reality from that painting...  later to turn the page, look at another painting and perform the same magic.  The pain did not disappear but I gave myself a little window from which to imagine freedom if not live it.

There are a number of authors of books for children who create rich tapestries, weaving art with a tale to create a marvelous place where some one who is suffering can find a ittle relief.  Jan Brett is one of these.  Arthur Rackham and Howard Pyle are two other incredible artists who brought their tales to life through drawings and paintings.  Edmund Dulac... well, one could compile a long list really.  Those are some of the books that are treasures beyond price.

Here are some of the books most recently brought to the new house.  The reason the same book appears twice in front of both rows of books, is because a portrait of me is on the cover.  It is the Dutch edition of 'Blind Side' by William Bayer.  The photo was taken across the road from my flet in the East Village, 'back in the day' when I lived in Manhattan.  A very different life from the one I lead now!

Les Jetons de Napoleon

When I was a little girl, after reading 'The Three Musketeers' many times, I was very excited to find what I thought were two coins from the time of Louis XIV in a coin shop.  They did not cost much and my stepfather bought them for me.  I wondered even then how coins from that period could have such little value but it was not long before I discovered (rather to my disappointment) that they were not coins at all but rather 'jetons'.

Jetons in France tend to be commermorative medals that are struck like coins but ordinarily are made of brass or other lesser medals rather than gold or silver.  They originally were used as 'counters' throughout the Western world rather like the beads on an abacus.  Later, they were used in some countries as 'chips' or 'tokens' in gambling games.  In France, however, as in some other nations, they came to be used as propaganda tools, depicting the current ruler, his accomplishments or members of his family.

I did not see that many jetons in coin shops as an adult.  It was only recently that I found quite a few listed on Ebay.  I always look at Napoleonic memorabilia as well as items that deal with Lawrence of Arabia.  Usually, all of these items are too expensive for me to be able to bid on or purchase.  It was on the Anniversary of Napoleon's Death this year that I first saw jetons dedicated to him.

The jetons I found interested me precisely because they had been modified, thereby losing most of the small value they had.  Made of brass or a combination of base medals, a small ring had been added to the original 'coin', allowing it to be worn on a chain or watch fob.

The subject matter was interesting to me as well.  One of the larger jetons had Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides on the reverse.  The smallest one depicted his son, Napoleon II, otherwise known as 'The Young Eagle'.  His official title was the 'Duke of Reichstadt' and this was the title given on the brass jeton with the date 1832.  Was the jeton made in 1832?  Who knows?  Unlike coins with specific weights and values, jetons were not used as currency and therefore any date is as likely to refer to the date of the event depicted on the counter as the date of manufacture.

Roman and Greek jetons probably are the first to have been made in Europe.  They were known as 'calculi' from the word for limestone or pebble.  (Calculus, the word from which is derived our 'calculation').  These stones were shaped like discs or balls cut in half.   Other ancient jetons were made from glass or bone.   They were made to be pushed over a counting board.  Thus the French named them 'jetons' from the verb 'to push' or 'to toss'.

The metal jetons appear to have surfaced in Europe in the 13th century during a revival of international trade probably fueled by the Crusades.  A wooden board with lines was used as the surface.  Less frequently, cloth inscribed with lines could be used but because of its durability, a wooden board was preferred.  Remember that zero did not exist where calculations using Roman numerals were concerned.

If any one is interested in the method by which jetons were used to calculate, it is not too difficult to visualise.  A series of horizontal lines on a wooden board or stone surface represented the various Roman 'units': I, X, C and M.  V, L and D would be given a place between the lines.  The result would be a 'tree' with the higher numbers at the top and the lowest at the bottom.   Numbers could be separated by vertical lines.  By adding or removing counters or jetons, one could arrive at a solution for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems.

Of course, it is much easier to calculate with the use of zero and Arabic numerals became popular among accountants and then with the general public.  Even then, many merchants and households, both secular and sacred, continued to use jetons to calculate.

The use of jetons in gaming houses would be a little different and would be rather like the use of 'chips' in modern casinos.  I doubt that they would have been used much in private homes but only in public gaming houses throughout Europe.  It would be a way to lend money to patrons as well as a method by which to keep real coinage 'safe' from possible criminals during the course of the games.  The real money could be kept under lock and key.

It appears that the manufacture of jetons throughout the Middle Ages and beyond occurred mainly in France and the Netherlands.  It therefore is no wonder that many jetons bear the profile of a French monarch or ruler.

My Louis XIV jetons were extremely large but the three I collected of Napoleon are quite small.  As they are made of base metal, I probably shan't wear them as jewelry but would like to think of another ornamental use for them as the ring allows them to be strung on a chain or string.  Evidently a small group of collectors have interested themselves in jetons for centuries.  It is only with the advent of Ebay that individuals have a wider market from which to find these charming trinkets.

Below are photographs of the three Napoleonic jetons.  One has an heraldric device on the reverse that may be Spanish rather than French.   Napoleon and his family ruled many nations briefly.  I wear a gold 40 Franc French coin from the Emperor's reign that proclaims him to be 'Re d'Italia' as well as Emperor of the French.  His brother Joseph was the very unpopular King of Spain for a few years.  The Lion Rampant was a device of Leon as well as the House of Savoy.   If these jetons are contemporary with the life and death of the Napoleonic dynasty, the place of manufacture of the jeton bearing the heraldric rampant lion could be Spain or Italy if not France.   The lion rampant was a very popular device, used by Scotland, England and other nations as well, but I mention Spain and Italia because both were ruled by France during Napoleon's reign.

I believe that these particular jetons were owned by other devotees of the Emperor.   The popularity of this Emperor has not decreased, despite the passage of time and staunch supporters can be found throughout the globe even now. 

A Safe Addiction to Romance

At the risk of baring my soul to strangers (if any one ever reads these posts, which I sometimes doubt!), I spent much of my youth addicted to Romance, in search of a 'soulmate' who would share my dreams and satisfy my visions of an idyllic relationship.   European 19th century literature, after a steady diet of fairy tales in early childhood were at the foundation of this.  Perhaps there are soulmates and indeed, I have known individuals who shared most of my interests even if there were other impediments to the 'happily ever after' denouement so beloved of novelists.  19th Century Literature, by the way, is not filled with 'happily ever after' but it is filled with the soulmate concept and should the happy ending not be possible, one usually commits suicide because of course, one cannot settle for less!

In any case, when Freya was born, I decided that all that nonsense should be forgotten because there was nothing more important than my daughter and any search for Romance had to be shelved in the interest of giving her a stable life in which she and not some imagined soulmate took centre stage.

Enter Captain Nathaniel Claw.  I was a fan of computer games from the start.  With a young child of two, I looked for games that would be educational for a toddler at first.  As Freya became a bit older, I discovered the magnificent game of 'Claw', featuring a dashing pirate cat from the Golden Age of Piracy.  I became 'Freyashawk' to protect my young daughter who insisted on communicating online in the Claw Forum with other fans of Claw.  Ultimately, my strong-willed four year old decided that she wanted to marry Captain Claw and she dictated a love letter to him.  To their eternal credit, Monolith, a small firm that had created the game, actually took an interest in Freya and a guy who went by the name of Scorpio on the Forum responded to her love letters with very appropriate letters from the Captain himself.  They sent her gifts even in the form of an artist drawing of Claw and a shirt with his portrait emblazoned on it.

I do not know many children who have been as fortunate.  I certainly had no early experiences of that sort.  I do not know how much Freya actually remembers but I have to admit that I was envious of her romance with the Feline Pirate Captain. 

At this point, I achieved a small measure of notoriety and fame because I created a number of 'custom levels' for the game and wrote little stories to accompany them.  Every level I created had Freya's name written somewhere in gold coins that could be collected by the player.    I certainly am no expert in this sort of thing, but the game came with a programme that allowed the player to create his/her own custom Levels.  It was brilliant.

When Freya was about 7 years old, we discovered Harvest Moon.  She was the first to play it and one of the features of any Harvest Moon game is Courtship and Marriage.  You have a choice of potential spouses but you have to win the heart of the one you choose and it requires a great deal of attention, energy and time.  The first Harvest Moon game we had was 'Friends of Mineral Town' for the Game Boy Advance system.  In this game, your Character was male.  Freya wanted to marry a girl named Ann but was finding it difficult to win her heart.

I started to play the game to try to discover how to win hearts of Eligible Girls.  I wrote my first Harvest Moon guide in the form of a Journal.  I believe my character's name was Aloysius.   I myself preferred Karen to Ann but decided to try to win the hearts of EVERY Eligible Girl before I proposed to any one.  I therefore would be able to help Freya with her Courtship of Ann while following my own desires.

Meanwhile, I found a couple of online guides to the game, but they were filled with errors.  For some reason, I contacted IGN with some tips of my own and told my contact about my guide.  That was the beginning of about a decade of guide writing for IGN's site.

A new series, Rune Factory, was introduced.  It was described as 'Harvest Moon with a sword' and indeed, it fulfilled all of my desires for, with the usual Courtship option, one had the option to buy a forge and crafting bench to forge weapons and accessories.  In real life, I always was interested in forging and jewelry-making although I never had the money to pursue either, apart from creating designs for other people to implement.  There is a 'Martino' dagger made by a famous knifemaker and I designed a number of gold rings, earrings and pendants at one point in New York.

So here I was with a series of games that allowed one to experience the heady pleasures and thrills of Romance while forging blades and using them either as a man or a woman.  It was wonderful to be able to be a woman who fought as well as any man using a blade she herself had forged.  One could save the world while making friends and influencing people.  Moreover, my old strategy of making every eligible bachelor fall madly in love with me before I chose to propose to ANY ONE still was possible.

I should explain that both Harvest Moon and Rune Factory really cannot be described simply as games.  They are, in fact, interactive novles.  The amount of dialogue in any Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game can be greater than a bound novel.  Moreover, there are Events that are determined by your Character's behaviour and responses.  In other word, an Event may have three different possible paths.  The creative genius behind any Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game is astounding.  People who love to read but who have not explored any of these games are losing out on an incredible experience.  It never ceases to amaze me how something like 'gaming' can be perceived in narrow terms by individuals who call themselves artists or writers but who never have played a single RPG.

I now am playing Rune Factory 4.  My daughter is at University.  My life has become very circumscribed because of physical disabilities.  I live in constant severe pain but Rune Factory has not lost its magic.  In the process of courting the Eligible Bachelors in Selphia, I have expeirenced some genuinely thrilling romantic moments.  It is all very innocent, I must add.    Nonetheless, to read a bit of dialogue from a bachelor I fancy that actually causes my heart to skip a beat amazes me at this point.  I have to confess it is wonderful.

Religion, Ecstacy and Intoxication

Having studied the mystery religions for decades now, I realised suddenly that I may have missed the entire point of each and every one of them, including the root from which Christianity sprang:  is it possible that all Mystery Religions were founded upon nothing more nor less than recipes for intoxicants?  Could the business of 'Heaven and Hell' be nothing more than altered states of perception?  Is it possible that the only other 'realms' that exist in this world and the next are simply constructs of our perception at various moments and in various states of being?

It was when I was reading a very comprehensive translation of the Ras Shamra texts about Baal and Mot that I had this Epiphany.  Going back to Sumer and the tale of Inanna's Descent into the Underworld, I found the same themes there.  There is the Grape Vine and the Barley... and each is 'Lord' or 'Lady' of half of the year.  The descent of Dumuzi and, six months later, his sister Geshtinanna, represent the two seasons in which barley wine or beer and the wine of the grape are made.

How very discouraging in a way to discover that these noble myths may deal with nothing more ennobling than casking wine or placing liquid in skins for fermentation!

Yet, one only need look at the Aryan Hymns to see how the mystical Soma was elevated to the position of a deity.  Pages and pages devoted to the making of the Soma...

The 'Dark Night of the Soul'

It is a very old expression suffused with almost too much significance to bear and yet no one uses it now in the 'Age of Prozac'.  They dubbed the States 'Prozac Nation' a couple of decades ago and although Prozac appears to have lost some of its glitter, the general population still relies upon anti-depressants for the most part instead of examining and dealing with root causes.

Well, I am deep into the dark night of the soul myself now.  It has been a gradual decline from light to darkness, brought on by accelerated pain issues for the most part but partly as well by a recognition of my physical limitations and inability to take matters into my own hands to improve my life at this point.

The 'Dark Night of the Soul' is not something that is restricted to a small unsung group of people.  Almost every Saint has dealt with it.  They called it 'wrestling with demons' I believe.  I once thought in a vague sort of way that those bouts of physical conflict with the dark powers had something to do with sex.  After all, most 'religious' in Roman Catholic houses devoted to faith take vows of chastity. 

That point of view was exacerbated by Boccaccio's 'Decameron' and his tales of monks who insisted that the 'devil' aka the 'male member' needed to be 'put into hell', aka a nun's private and inviolate sanctuary... well, let us call as apade a spade, her cunt.  (Shakespeare used that word often and I think it actually needs to be rehabilitated a little.  It was a NICE word once upon a time, I do believe but now has become the worst insult possible.)

My own current Dark Night of the Soul is a little different from those suffered in my youth.  In those days, I would wrestle with the idea of God and why we had to suffer so much if He truly were merciful and loving and so on.  Oddly enough, I don't think about that at all.  I accept suffering as an integral and fundamental part of existence in the same way that maggots and beetles and rot and compost are part and parcel of the magical business of rebirth and resurrection of life.  I furthermore do not perceive the Daity is a parochial figure.  Although I consider myself a Roman Catholic for the most part, I refuse to accept any of the Judaic claptrap that has been gathered into the Christian lexicon.  No true Deity would choose a murderous nomadic group as 'His chosen people' or place a seal of approval on a dedicated campaign of genocide and destruction.  It simply does not wash in any way, shape or form in terms of a Being who is infinite and omnipotent and beyond the constraints of 'Good' and 'Evil' in human terms.

All the Creation myths from every civilisation and culture as well as those that were born of a single individual's creativty (such as Tolkien's Silmarillion) are tales that depict some aspect of Creation or Life or Death or the workings of the Universe.  They cannot possibly encompass the business of a truly Divine Being.

Suffering simply is part of the balance of existence in the same way that Death is.  One of the best analogies comes from the old Norse poems and the need to bang away at metal in a forge in order to strengthen and purity it and remove the slag.  If we are to improve or progress, suffering is a necessity.  We may not like it.  We may wish for the 'cup to pass' from us, but ultimately, if we have any desire whatsoever to improve or gain a measure of enlightenment, we must accept it rather than whinging endlessly or railing against the supposed 'injustice' of it.

Suffering has nothing whatsoever to do with justice or injustice.  Full stop.  That old chestnut of 'Why do bad things happen to good people?' is a question that is not even deserving of a response because it is tantamount to the use of metric measurements to define the state of Death.  'Bad' is a matter of perception in any case.  Things that HURT may not be bad in actual fact.  They are undesirable.  They are difficult, sometimes even impossible but I do not believe that one can give a moral character to them.

'Good people' is a matter of perception as well, although there is no doubt that some people are far better than others in their thoughts and actions and how they affect others and the Earth itself.  Even so, the suffering they endure is NOT a punishment nor is it sent by God in a specific fashion.  It simply is part of the business of Life and Death and Rebirth.

Suffering and Pain therefore should not have any effect on Faith.  A Divine Being definitely exists in my opinion.  Our Universe is not random ab initio, although that Being does not have a hand on the tiller of our own lives.  I therefore do not rail against God for the Dark Night of the Soul that I currently am experiencing.

What is the 'Dark Night of the Soul?'  Specifically, to me, it is a place and 'status' if one borrows Facebook terms where light cannot penetrate to any appreciable degree.  It is a state of being devoid of Hope.  They say that 'Hope springs eternal' and that is true but in the Dark Night of the Soul, one cannot find that source.  One cannot SEE any exit, unless Death is considered an Exit.

It actually is not Pain itself that has brought me here but a feeling of utter impotence.  When my life was unendurable in the past, I changed it.  Whether or not I made the right changes was kind of irrelevant.  The entire business of making significant changes fully occupied my days and nights and I had no opportunity to go back into the Dark Night of the Soul.  It had become a luxury I could not afford if I intended to survive.

I had a friend named Sam Roach when I lived in Los Angeles.  He was one of the first individuals I ever met from New Jersey and I found his humour very appealing, although now I realise that it is very much a sort of humour that comes almost naturally to New Yorkers and people from certain parts of New Jersey.  He had gone to Vietnam as a volunteer, unbelievably, as a Marine.  He returned, like so many veterans of that despicable military adventure addicted to heroin.

He was very bright, but had no inclination to DO anything with his life.   The reason I mention him at all is because he said something once that I never have forgotten.  He had a habit of putting himself into the Veteran's Hospital (psychiatric wing, I think) every month or so for a week.  He did it as a sort of holiday.  'Four squares and a bed' he would say about that.   I think a lot of guys deliberately commit crimes to be sent to prison for the same reason.  It is a blessed end to worry about the business of day to day survival and it does take one off the streets.

That was not the main thing about Sam that I remember however, although it is part of the same general philosophy he espoused.  He told me more than once that he almost preferred to be homeless because then he could not afford the luxury of THINKING about the reason for existence or anything else beyond the need to find shelter and food.  He said in a way he was happiest when he was homeless.  (He tried to live in a car belonging to one of his friends once in pursuit of that basic happiness but that did not work out as he resented the fact that she actually used the car to go places he had neither reason nor desire to visit.  This bothered him so much that ultimately he had to abandon that domicile!)

I had a childhood friend who told me when he reached early adulthood that he refused to have any friends who weren't 'going somewhere' in life.  When I look at the list of friends I have had over the decades, I realise that this guy would not have given most of them the time of day on that basis.  And yet, my friends all have been interesting people.  They all had something to offer, even if they were adject failures in terms of society's view.

Even Sam Roach, apart from offering that little window into the mindset of the homeless, had something valuable to give, which was a recommendation to read his favourite book, 'A Confederacy of Dunces'.  Wonderful book.  The 'reasonable man' of legal fiction, looking at Sam Roach and his life, might have mistaken him for a person without any intellectual gifts but that definitely was not the case.  I often wish I had kept a journal of some of our conversations.  He could be witty and incisive.  He could have written his own 'Confederacy of Dunces' actually.

The other introduction he made was to the music of Tom Waits.  I still do not LIKE Tom Waits but he certainly is an interesting songwriter and musician.  It isn't my sort of thing, in the same way that I never can warm to jazz, despite the fact that almost every friend I have from the Arab Nation adores that genre of music.  I understand the intellectual appeal of it but I do not LIKE it.

As for Heroin, although I do not believe that it makes people more interesting, I certainly have known a lot of extremely interesting, sensitive and unique individuals who were addicted to it.  I do agree with Baudelaire that 'the man with the mind of an Ox on hashish will have the dreams of an Ox' but the heroin addicts I encountered for the most part had rather extraodrinary minds and dreams.  What they all had in common, however, was the fact that they were 'broken' in some very fundamental way.    In many cases, they lacked any protective colouration or veneer to prevent themselves from suffering every tiny cut or bruise or unkindness of humanity.  Heroin therefore provided them with some measure of emotional protection, without which they could not endure Life.  That is the simple, unadulterated truth.  They were not going for the experience of Ecstacy so much as dulling the Pain that Life brought in its wake on a constant basis.

I think that is why so many artists have been addicted to drugs as well.  Obviously, it is better to address the root cause and attempt to create some sort of natural protection but in the absence of that, the addiction usually continues.  Suicide is another option of course, and many heroin addicts have committed suicide, half-deliberately in most cases, because they knew deep down in their souls, that they never would be able to cope.

To return to the topic of the 'Dark Night of the Soul', if I am to be honest, it is not the physical pain nor even the idea that I never will be free of it that has cast me down so low but rather the fact that I have no one in my circle who appreciates anything I do or shares any of my loves or interests.  I always had a wide circle of friends who appreciated me and shared many of my loves, even if they were not close geographically all the time.

At present, I am surrounded by people who dislike, even HATE Cats and basically treat me with a measure of contempt.  This is entirely unacceptable.  I realise intellectually that is is partly jealousy that motivates this, the idea that I could love and pay attention to something other than THEM but intellectual comprehension does not lessen the hurt and the sheer weight of depression that this is generating.  Month after month after month... when I lived in the centre of town, there were people everywhere but now I live in virtual isolation, totally dependent on one person essentially for transport.  I vowed I never would allow myself to be in this situation after an abusive marriage but here I am.  For the sake of my Cats and my daughter, I have put up with appalling behaviour and still do.  It is taking a toll and the saddest part of it is that I hold MYSELF in some contempt for not pulling up my socks as it were to get out of here, even though I know that my physical limitations present much action in any direction.

As my daughter begins to resemble her father (and my own mother) more and more in his negative aspects, my sense of despair deepens.  I thought she would be a compassionate being.  I tried to teach her to be one but she is beginning to exhibit the same passive-aggressive negative behaviour towards the Cats (and me) that her father shows.  In a three day visit, she refused to go with me to 'Le Salon des Miroirs' where the Putti live for even the briefest of visits.  What shames me here is that every one asks why she is not willing to help me with the litter boxes but she will not even take the trouble to descend a flight of stairs to visit them with me.  She waxes sentimental about photographs of other cats and animals but will not show an ounce of compassion or love for her own Cats.  Beauty is HER Cat, after all.  She begged for an Orange Cat and I found Beauty for her years ago.

As for the Chinchillas, they are hers, given by her best friend Kait but she does not spend a moment with them either when she visits.  I understand that they are not as absorbing as her old high school friends and so on but this is MY life, for better or worse and by shunning everything that occupies my days, she is making a statement about me.

Is it my perception that is at fault here?  Is it possible she is not aping her father's behaviour but simply is exhibiting normal young adult selfishness?  I wish I could convince myself of that, but there are too many other signs that she will go out of her way NOT to share any activities with me.  She will not watch any films with me any longer, although her childhood was spent watching films and comedies with me in the 'Cinema de Conde'...  She will not go shopping with me, even knowing that I am housebound to an awful degree.  Instead, she tells me she can do it a lot faster without me, even though she is not pressed for time in any way or has a full calendar when she is here.

I dislike writing about personal matters such as these, but I doubt I am the first or last mother to experience this sort of hurt and, after all, ultimately I can write about philosophy but life really consists of trivial facts all all philosophical views probably are generated by personal experience in the end.  Part of me believes I ought to 'call her out' on this because if I fail to do so, I fail to make any effort as a mother to caution her against selfishness.  If she had behaved this way towards some one else, I would have spoken immediately.  As it is, however, I doubt the purity of my motives as it is MY hurt here.

I suppose I should count myself fortunate that my daughter and I never have experienced outright hostility and emnity towards one another but my life has become so circumscribed that I actually need some positive interactions rather than being ignored.

The Art of War: Strategies from the War against the Worms with Wings

It has taken me almost a decade to learn how to fight the ultimate enemy and sadly, the war has been taken to a new battlefield, forcing me to continue the struggle even after the first battlefield was abandoned to osme extent.  Fighting against Moths has taught me how to fight ANY war and the secrets of how to defeat any enemy.  Unfortunately, it is not an easy business and there are few shortcuts.

Many have declared the maxim and it holds true whether or not your enemy walks on two legs, crawls on a hundred or travels on wings through the air:  KNOW THINE ENEMY.

One of the greatest flaws in my strategy agianst the Moths was the fact that I lacked knowledge of all the different forms they could take and the various stages, all dangerous, in their putrid existences.  Foolishly I believed initially that they were most dangerous when winged.  This is not the case at all.  They are most dangerous when they come to rest and create the little sleeping bag in which they will mutate.  It is THEN that they begin to eat their way through whatever spot has taken their fancy.

Furthermore, although wool in its various forms may be their meal of choice, they will choose almost any fabric and even wood as a place to weave their bags.  It is not only sheep's wool that is at risk either.  Alpaca and Camel hair are other favourites and they will destroy these utterly in a very short space of time.  The WORM is the creature who feeds, not the winged moth. 

Here we are in the 21st century and because of synthetic fabrics, many people would not even recognise the sort of moth that destroys household treasures.  It is one of the smallest moths, actually, and quite pretty.  It has a silver sheen to it and a cloud of these winged worms rising into the air is quite a beautiful sight... until one realises what it portends.

An important weakness and one that kept the worms alive for years in my own home is the unwillingness to destroy the treasures one loves.  When a Moth made depredations upon one of my cherished mohair bears or wool scarves or antique rugs, I was as conservative as possible in cleaning the area.  I tried to SAVE even the spots where they had fed.  This was a terrible mistake.  It is only by being ruthless and being willing to LOSE areas of the item that one can destroy the threat.  Moths can hide very easily and successfully.  One has to scrub the item throroughly.  Water does work, as long as one is thorough.  Better to have a mohair bear with a little patch of baldness and NO feasting worm children than to try to keep the mohair where there is evidence of worm infestation and end by fighting a new generation the following season.

One cannot be soft-hearted therefore towards the items one loves.  One must be willing to participate to some extent in the worm's path of destruction to make certain that all the eggs of the creatures and all the little sleeping bags are GONE.  That is the real secret of success.

It is only in the new house that I have learned the utter ruthless approach that is needed.  At first, I left the items that had been infected by moths behind in the old house.  I then realised they were too valuable to me to abandon and began to bring them, a few at a time, to the new home.  What I have learned is that an incredible investment in terms of time is required to make certain that every item is cleansed of the infection.  It can take an hour to clean one mohair bear or one small tapestry.  Furthermore, as I mentioned previously, one must understand that they will find hiding places even in items they do not eat.  I have found them concealed beneath the hair of a hard plastic doll... hair, by the way, that is inedible.  Mohair wigs, however, are another favourite feast and any cloth doll is doomed if one does not move quickly to eradicate any evidence of the presence of these horrid creatures.

I wonder sometimes why Nature is filled with these obnoxious killers and destroyers but then remember that Nature is both Creator and Destroyer.  I suppose in some period or epoch, it is possible that Moths rid the world of items that were destructive to the Earth, although I cannot imagine them doing anything positive whatsoever.  It is quite different from the beetles that cleanse bones of flesh.

Caring, the ultimate Achilles Heel

I always have known people who were too sensitive for their own good.  Often these people realise that caring about something gives another human being the ability to hurt them and they therefore search for methods by which to 'shut down' their instinctive compassion or love.  I understood but fought against that impulse tooth and nail as I believed that living WAS caring and that shutting down emotionally and spiritually was tantamount to death in life.

For two decades now, I have been in close proximity to some one who is dedicated to a programme of belittling, ridiculing and making access to anything that matters to me as difficult as possible.  It is not a new strategy by any means but in the past, I distanced myself as quickly as possible from any person with those tendencies.  It obviously is motivated by jealousy and insecurity, a sort of 'dog in the manger' mentality.

Living in constant severe pain, however, I realise that it is only if I actually continue to CARE about things that I can continue to exist.  I need a reason to continue to struggle against the pain, to attempt to overcome it, to carry on.  My cats are seven years old.  My pain levels have been increasing recently to a point that is almost unbearable.  I would not abandon them, however.  It may appear ridiculous or trivial to some people but THEY are the primary reason why I continue to live.  Seriously. 

When I was younger, I was less responsible.  i do have regrets about that, as much as I try to believe that regrets are pointless.  What I have promised myself, however, is that I will do my best to be responsibile NOW for every creature who depends upon me for his/her survival. 

My daughter is almost 21.  She was my primary reason for making certain that the pain did not defeat me until she went off to University and essentially became independent.  I seldom see her now. 

The dynamics of chronic pain are complex.  I wrote a paper on it once.  I have searched for methods by which to mitigiate its effects on my life and my soul.  Gaming was one of those and to some extents still is, especially in the middle of the night when I am too exhausted to do anything truly meaningful but cannot sleep.  I think I would have gone mad if I hadn't discovered games.

Before I became disabled, I walked on a daily basis.  I explored the cities in which I lived.  I walked to the most beautiful place I could find within the radius of a mile or so and spent time there each day.  When we lived in Centre City, that place was an old cemetary.    I have loved graveyards since I was a child.  I did not find the presence of the dead frightening or off-putting.  I basically believed that they were sleeping, which is an extremely peaceful activity.  I did not feel as though I were alone, but at the same time, I felt I was surrounded by a community of people from the past who were at peace in one way or another.  The primary reason I loved the cemetary in Centre City, however, had nothing to do with the dead.  It was rather the grand old trees that had grown to immense heights and girth over the decades.  When the sun began to set, hordes of tiny bats would fly out of the trees and fill the air.  I never feared bats either.  I rather like them.  (Used to keep mice and birds as pets, so why would I not like a creature who was essentially a mouse with tiny wings?)

If any one read these posts, I probably would not write in this fashion.  I would not bare my reality to this extent.  It is a sort of grim consolation to know that no one reads half the stuff I write because I needn't hide behind some sort of vestigial sense of pride or ego.

People make fun of Facebook and the trivial stuff that users post there, but I have discovered that a large segment of the Facebook population is in the same situation as I, living either with severe chronic pain or osme life-threatening disease.  It makes me more tolerant towards the often silly status updates I see.  Basically when some one posts a photograph of his/her solitary dinner, or of a job he/she completed recently, I see it as a declaration of sorts:  'I exist.  I am here.  If you cut me, I bleed.  I have survived another day.'

I had a very dear friend named Ernst.  I met him in Manhattan when I was teaching a class in German Mythology.  He was German, although born in the States during the Second World War.  His childhood was filled with nasty encounters, mainly with Jewish-American kids who blamed him personally for Hitler's policies.  He basically was taught in school and by society that German heritage was shameful or evil.  When he grew older, he decided he wanted to embrace his heritage and thus came to me.  Over the years, he became a guardian angel of sorts both to me and to Freya.  He sent us parcels each week.  He sent books, sweets and necessities.  He was more like family than my own family.

He died a few years ago but in the years that preceded his death, he spoke often of how he wished to die at home and how he would not want to survive his cats.   He had some serious chronic health problems but I still was shocked by his death. 

As when any close friend or family member dies, I was angry and felt a bit betrayed that he had not made me aware of all the facts.  I felt I ought to have been able to prevent his death somehow, to have intervened.  But how?  To have sent him to hospital against his will?  He died in the fashion and at the time when he wished to die basically.  That was his right.  Sometimes now, I think about that and how I am beginning to feel the same way.  I don't think I want to outlive my cats.  Understand this:  were I not in pain all the time, were I able to walk, were I able to read properly, and even, if I had a partner who needed me and would be bereft were I to die,  I would NOT think this way.  None of that being the case, however, I begin to see death as a release from everything that imprisons me and tortures me.   I think I have at least five more years to endure though for the sake of the Putti.  Probably better for my daughter as well if she finishes University and embarks upon her chosen career first.

Who knows?  Perhaps a miracle will occur and there will be a way to live without this crippling pain.  I do believe that there is a Divine Being and that miracles and divine intervention is possible but I somehow cannot comprehend WHY any Divine Being would involve itself in our petty little lives.  When people claim that God is on their side in a war, it is nothing more than political propaganda.  I cannot imagne any truly Divine Being being other than impartial.  Bad things happen to good people not because they are being punished by God but because God maintains a policy of non-intervention in our affairs.  Full stop.

Beyond Death and Life

As always, I awakened this morning between 3.00 a.m. and 4.00 a.m. but contrary to my usual habit, fell asleep again and had an extraordinary dream.  Did not awaken then unti almost 8.00 a.m.

I dreamt of Fleming.  As is almost always the case with respect to some one who has died, I was aware in the dream of the fact of his death but a woman who was a very close friend of his in the dream (but no one in the real world as far as I know), contacted me to tell me he was in a place in Florida and that she was going to visit him.  She asked if I wished to accompany her.  I couldn't believe he still was alive but that I hadn't known and I was consumed with guilt for not visiting him sooner.  I agreed, of course, to go with her.

She had a motorbike and I hate motorbikes but I climbed onto the machine behind her and off we went.  The place in Florida was a sort of nursing home that resembled to some extent those awful colonoscopy places, with rows of little long cubicles where patients lay dormant.  The nurse at the entrance was frisking every one and asking for driver licences and passports for some inexplicable reason.  I think this is a reference to the fact that one cannot buy pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) any longer without a valid licence which is absurd and which we discussed again yesterday when we needed some.

In any case,  I hung back, not knowing if I should let the woman go through alone but she turned round and encouraged me to enter.  She went first though and saw him and came out and said he had some sort of special photograph on the wall.  I must try to remember what that was...

She then said she was going to try to get him into another room.  I went rhrough and saw two old men at the end of the corridor, one on either side.  I did not recognise Fleming at first.  I then looked at the walls and saw photographs of him on one of the walls so I looked down and instantly knew him then.

I went to him and found that the upper half of his body was in a glass case, kind of like Snow White in the coffin of glass.  He suddenly had tentacles and many hands and he grabbed at me and at first I wanted to flee or at least move away, but instead I allowed it... and he became normal and the glass case disappeared.

I told him I loved him and missed him.  We spoke of the Puttikins and some of our shared interests.  I was conscious of overwhelming joy that he had not died and a sense of profound kinship.  It was as though I had found my family after losing them.   I promised to visit frequently.

When I came out, the woman asked if I had paid for another room for him.  I was surprised and said the topic had not come up at all.  She then said she had asked her father for money and had paid for another room for Fleming.  Not certain what this all means???

In essence though, the place was a kind of holding place for people who were on the edge of death.  Evidently, the rooms were steps either towards or away from the final death moment and she was moving him  gradually away from death by changing rooms.

The photograpshs on his wall showed him in his youth as wall as childhood.  I think there were photographs of me as well.

When I awakened, I was conscious of great joy as though Fleming actually had contacted me from beyond the grave.  I felt he was helping me to heal physically and indeed, my pain levels were far less than they have been for months.  I was actually able to walk a little without that terrible limp where I cannot even place my left foot on the ground.

I know that Fleming firmly believed in life after death.  He and Julia visited mediums and spiritualists... never knew precisely WHY in terms of whom they wished to contact unless, for Fleming's part, it was his mother, whom he had loved dearly.  The main reason for going, as far as I could make out, was to try to prove life after death existed.

Fleming died two Christmases ago.  Since then, there has been no hint of contact or his continuing existence until now.  I think of him daily.  I miss him quite badly.  The dream this morning really, for all its bizarre nature, FELT like contact.  I do have very vivid dreams, however, and who knows?  I'd love to be able to 'visit' Fleming again though and see if there is a way of moving him to a room that is closer to this life.  So very interesting... he would have LOVED this dream and would have discussed it with me with great enthusiasm.  God, I miss him!  He was as close to an intellectual and spiritual soulmate as one could have.

The first Easter in a new home... I transported a few of my plants from the old place, including two purple Hyacinths, some Snowdrops and the tiny purple flowers that resemble Snowdrops and are known apparently to those in Eastern Europe more than elsewhere.  They did not take the transition too well but one hopes that they will recover to bloom next Spring.

Meanwhile, having seen more evidence of Southwestern U.S. landscaping here than anything else, I was saddened by the reality that almost every other house in the neighbourhood had a vast array of daffodils but this house had none...

Or so I thought until I found a single daffodil blooming next to the Blue Spruce in front of the house!  How magical but how lonely!  I took a photograph of it.

More imposing is the glorious Weeping Cherry in the garden behind the house next to the hot tub.  I have a splendid view of it from my bedroom window and clipped a few sprigs to set in a vase as well.  It is an exquisite tree, redolent of Asian beauty. 

Erotica, Romance and Dreams

When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with Romance in the 19th Century sense of the word.  The idea that one had a soulmate somewhere, a man for whom one would be willing to die and without whom, life would be essentially meaningless... this was part and parcel of all that Romantic Idealism that my pursuit of classical literature in all its manifestations gave me.

Well, decades later, I have found that of course, it was an illusion but, like the best illusions, one that can take one either to ecstacy or plunge one into the abyss.  The trick, of course, is to remain in control of the illusion, to keep one's hands firmly on the reins at all times.  The soulmate is the mirror self, alas, and not another being.

Please do not mistake me for a cynic.  I still believe that one can love another and find a certain measure of happiness in a good domestic situation but because of my early Idealism and obsession with Romance with a capital R, I never looked for the right partner.  I looked for that quickening of the pulse, that dizzying infatuation and naturally, that is something that cannot endure.  The person on whom one fixes all this love or lust or whatever ultimately is nothing more than an ordinary person and usually an immensely flawed one.  The good ones don't have that dizzying effect, at least not at the outset.  It is the 'lame duck', the so-called hero who, like Athos, is almost poisoned by melancholy or tragedy or whatever that is able to elicit those faulty sensations... and ultimately, one finds that it WAS all illusion and one that was self-generated.

Is it any wonder then that some of the most heady moments in my life romantically speaking occurred in a virtual reality called Second Life?  Ironically, the people with whom I shared these moments  for the most part were real, dear friends I had known for years.  There, however, they were able to wear different skins, different names and to be whatever it was that I desired.  I owned castles.  I wore wings and made love beautifully and even exquisitely.  I watched the aurora borealis from the tinted windows of my bower and lay in the arms of a man who was everything desirable and utterly gorgeous physically.

Stories were written about me, songs sung and a mythology became fact for a brief time.  I was a woman, I was a vampire, I was a cat, I was a wolf... I was part cat and part woman or anything else that took my fancy.  The intensity of that world was something that had to be experienced firsthand to be understood.  I think that, like anything, the power is in oneself.  I have found it in my favourite childhood books as well and in Harvest Moon and Rune Factory.

The most profound and intense moments are in my dream world, but that is not within my control and when I awaken, recall is sporadic and incomplete.  Second Life, on the other hand, was a controlled vision.  Utterly marvelous.  I owe an eternal debt of gratitude to the creative minds who made the cities and palaces that were the settings for my waking dream life.

I have to say that these dear friends of mine, so different in real life, put me in mind of Leonard Cohen's wonderful song, 'I'm Your Man' when they met me in Second Life.  They were able to deal with me on a level that would have been impossible in reality... entirely without ego or pride.  They appeared to enjoy the various roles they played for and with me.

I know this is the age of telephone and computer sex, but that is not what Second Life was for me.  It was pure romance.  Yes, there were intense erotic moments but that is quite different from 'virtual sex'.

'I'm Your Man' really is the most incredible manifesto.  I do not know if any man could live up to those promises though.  Like so many things, it is poetry and not reality.

Living Half a Life

My Mum and stepfather lived for over a decade between two homes in San Diego.  One was in La Jolla and the other was in La Mesa.  They stayed a few nights in La Jolla and the rest of the week in La Mesa, depending upon appointments and so on.  I never knew how stressful that could be until October when I moved from one house to another, but was not able to move most of my belongings.  Six months later, many of my belongings remain at the other house, now devoide of running water after a pipe burst during the coldest night of the year.

Without being able to drive now, I am at the mercy of other people in terms of transportation.  Nor do I have blanket permission to bring anything I like to the new house.  It is frustrating and stressful.   Furthermore, it has destroyed the Wheel of the Year to some extent in terms of being able to decorate for festivals and holidays.

I have been fascinated with festivals most of my life.  I became interested in the Eastern European Festival of Martisor before I ever had Romanian friends.  When I met a charming woman named Adryana, she was surprised by my familiarity with customs that are virtually unknown in Western Europe and the States.  She sent me a Martisor card from Romania.  I still have it, but of course, it is at the OLD house.

Martisor is celebrated on different days in different countries but sadly, is over now and I missed it, partly because of an emergency with my Puttikins and partly because of a terrible snafu with my bank that was caused by PayPal and the inability of computers to deal with real people.

More snow and ice than usual this year contributed to the problem as I was unable to go to the old house at all throughout most of the month of February.  Finally, I was able to visit yesterday and I found my beloved snowdrops in bloom and as yet, not stolen from the little garden in back of the house.  I dug up two clumps and placed them in small pots to bring them to the new house.   At that point in time, I had forgotten what day of the month it was although Martisor was on my mind because of the association of that festival with Snowdrops.

I found my Snowdrops in a local graveyard before Freya was born and through the years, they have multiplied.  They really are the first flower that appears in the cycle of the year and they are fairly hardy, blooming amidst snow and ice and continuing to bloom sometimes for a fortnight.  The snowdrops in the little pots have not bloomed fully yet, but have survived the move evidently, much to my delight.

The two people who understood my love of Martisor are dead now.  Adryana died of a sudden brain clot.  Fleming died last year after a long struggle with cancer.

Freya and I exchanged Martisors when she was a child and indeed made Martisors for one another a couple of times but she is at University now.   My enjoyment of these Festivals has diminished greatly now that I have no one with whom to share them properly.

One year, I made a traditional Martisor pair of little couple from red and white yarn.  In the years that followed, my Martisor couple were devoured gradually by moths.  The pernicious creatures worked from the back, hidden from view until it was too late.  Today, I thought I would make a new pair but discovered that although I had brought the red yarn to the new house, the white yarn remained at the old address.  Very symbolic of my life in general.

The Snowdrops in the little pots remind me somehow of the Adonis plants that the ancients grew and then threw in the river as a sacrifice.  They remind me as well of the plants that still are grown for Nawroz in Iran.  Rather than throwing them into running water, however, I think ultimately my Snowdrops need to be planted in the earth of the new house.  I will have no real spiritual roots here until some of my plants grow in this soil.

The Goddess Tree I planted at the old house died last year.  It was a sign of sorts that made it clear to me that it was time to move.  I grieve for her still.  She was not the right sort of birch but she had power.  When I placed my palms on the trunk of that tree, I could feel the thrumming of life through her veins.  It rather amazed me, in all truth.  Although I always have been interested in shamanism and magic, I never had the blind faith in any of it that so many people appear to be able to summon at will.  Magical experiences elude me for the most part, but there are moments.  One such moment occurred in the shallow caves on the French Riviera near Menton where some of the earliest human settlements have been discovered.  Such experiences are unforgettable and that is all to the good.

I am a stubborn woman and refuse to admit defeat.  If I cannot return to the old house for the white yarn, I will buy another skein and make a new couple to bring luck to this house.  Martisor is a festival that celebrates rebirth.  If one considers that our calendar does not represent an absolute, having been changed a few times through the ages, it is possible still to celebrate Martisor.

I owe it to Adryana and to Fleming both to try.

Formulae for Folktales and Legends

Every culture has its own special formulae to begin a tale that is clearly a folktale, legend, myth or allegory.  In our own culture, it is: 'Once upon a time...'.  In the Arab Nation, the most common formula appears to be: 'In a time that is neither now nor then, in a place that is neither here nor there...'.  In other words, by making it quite clear that there is no set time in which the tale occurred and, in some cases, no set location apart from a possible mythological one, the listener or reader is alerted to the fact that the events occur in the 'Dreamtime' or Other Realm where anything is possible. 

Many myths contain kernels of real historical events and characters such as the Scandinavian myths of the Aesir and Vanir who may have been tribes in conflict initially.  Odhinn in fact may have been a warrior king who took his people to a new land and came into conflict with the native people and their gods.  Impossible to say for certain either way.  Both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda contain foreign elements that show the influence of Christianity.  It is a fact that the ancirent Scandinavians had both trade with the Arab Nation and served in various military groups as well as household guards for Arab leaders and governments.  It is Vikings who founded the nation later named Russia after the word for 'Red', referring to the pale-skinned, red-haired Vikings who sailed there and founded cities.

To me, the notion of ;fundamentalism' in any religion is patently absurd and whether it is the Holy Bible or the Holy Qur'an, these tales in many cases clearly were founded upon more ancient legends and myths that dealt with very different gods from Yahweh, Allah or Jehovah.  In fact, the ancient god El or Al is a newcomer when compared to Inanna.

It is odd that no one has remarked upon the beginning of Genesis and its similarity to other formulaic beginnings of legends and Creation myths.  'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.'
In my opinion, 'In the Beginning' is as much an alert to the fact that the tale occurs in a place that is neither here nor there and a time that is neither then nor now.

Are you MENTAL?

I was thinking today about a short story I wrote years ago about an open ward in a Mental Hospital.  I doubt these facilities are available any longer, but at the time, I interviewed a number of patients to discover why they had committed themselves and the reasons were sometimes very surprising.

An open ward in a mental hospital could be a substitute for a holiday hotel, a cheap substitute for a 'health farm' or a refuge from an abusive spouse or lover as much as it was a place for the mentally ill or confused.  Many of the patients I interviewed were regular inmates who used the facilities for their own purposes.  They had as little in common with the 'real' inmates as with a pet goldfish.

One woman who weighed about three hundred pounds used the ward as a place to lose weight.  She would commit herself as often as her insurance would pay for the privilege.  I am not certain how much weight she ever lost but she confined herself to a liquid diet while staying at the mental institute.

Another woman was a 'suicide addict' who used the ward as a place from which to fire threats at her father, to convince him that she was tottering on the edge of the abyss.  In fact, she had a right jolly time seducing all the male nurses and aides.  Her regular attempts at suicide were coldly calculated never to cause any permanent physical damage or to place her actually at risk of meeting her maker.

A third committed herself to escape a husband who beat her regularly.  He was an alcoholic who had been in the war and suffered what now is called traumatic stress syndrome.  He should have been committed but of course had no intentions of changing any of his destructive and negative behaviour patterns.  She committed herself instead and he visited her daily, bringing gifts of flowers and books, appearing to all the world as an ideal spouse and loving companion.

There were real mental cases there as well but I could not interview them easily as most of them were rather anxious, even distraught.  There was a young man who paced up and down the corridor counting every step, back and forth, back and forth, throughout the day without any breaks in his routine.  The staff said that he did not remember even his name and that his only link with reality was his ability to count his paces.