Susan

I'm writing this from a seat by the fire, outdoors but not camping. I'm at Susan's, and she says she "loves everything about getting back to nature except the actual arrival." So we are outdoors, on comfy chairs, with a fire in her firepit. The oak logs smell wonderful burning, and the flame is both warm and bright, so we are enjoying the best aspects of camping as much as one can without adding in the necessary discomforts.

Susan would not have enjoyed anything like 'nature' at all if it hadn't been for her two experiences stepping into Narnia. She is definitely what one would call a 'town' girl, or cosmopolitan, or maybe 'sophisticated lady.' She was old enough in WWII to remember the times before, which were for her happy times of social events in the company of her mother, and grandly solemn times with both parents in the 'upper circles.' I think her father was a diplomat and the family mixed with the higher spheres of the international world, but I may be mistaken.

She is one of my oldest friends. I don't mean we've known each other forever, but that relatively she is old when I am young, or at least younger. We are friend nontheless, through our common fictionality.

Tonight we share the brightness and aroma of a natural fire, surrounded by the dim sounds of American civilization - the quieting buzz-hum of the distant freeway, the laughs of neighbors watching the World Cup, the TV in the living room where my cousins are watching a cooking show. Susan is more bundled up than I, wrapped in long coats with a warm hood on and a blanket over it all. The air does not carry that much chill, but our discussion is covering rather ... empty spaces in our lives. At such time bundles and the warmth of fire are welcome indeed.

It grows dark, with the fog-driven wind sinking down through the trees above us. Time to sit together and stare at the flames and cover old ground with talk.

Mid-year Astronomicly

We have just pasted the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. That means different things to different people, and I used to try to give it a special meaning or place in time. But the universe never cooperated. This year it marks the end of a period of time which started roughly at the winter solstice, in which I have had to cling hard to reality and rationality for survival. I have survived, yes, but now I look around and see signs of the slow steady progress of life that slipped past me during this time. Seeds I planted sprouted and grew bushy, flowers have blossomed and faded, fruit has ripened (and been stolen by squirrels!). I am angry that I missed this, that in this sense the time has been taken away from me.

The only true existence any of us have is the moment we currently occupy. The past is a memory, the future is imagination. Only NOW is a reality. The more aware I can feel of a given moment, the richer my existance. Sound, smell, sensation, taste, all deepen my experience of reality. God and the Holy Ones exist in Eternity, for them all time is Now, for us we touch that other side of reality moment by moment, as the edge of a coin touches a flat surface at only one point that moves around the disk as it rolls across the floor.

Thus I regret those times past when I have limited my own awareness for whatever reason, but I hate those others who have by their actions or threats to my existence forced me to limit my awareness against my will. Yet giving in to the feelings of anger and dwelling on the hurt and loss they caused robs me of this moment's reality as well.

It is extremely difficult to forgive and let go. It is harder because I cannot find any reason for their actions. When there is a reason, it is possible to understand and thus easier to forgive. Without any reason, my mind keeps running over the incidents and actions again and again, trying to understand. God give me the grace to walk away and start a new time.

Thoughts about Alice

Watching the newest telling of Alice - in "Wonderland" as it continues to be called. Seeing that world as it is shown here stirs memories galore, mostly of the times she and I spent comparing adventures through discontinuous environments, where at one moment you might find a fiend before you and rocks beneath you, then suddenly realize the fiend was simply an ugly puppy but the ground had become a deep slimy morass.

Alice generally fared better than I in these mutual excursions. Fictional creations tend to have the gifts we are created with, and Alice had an innate ability to adjust, to move from one reality to another, one set of rules to an apparently contradictory set of rules. I always spent time, even if moments, attempting to grasp that "large is small" or "love is power" or "the first are last," which left me always two steps behind her.

Of course, at times this was to our advantage, as Alice might charge off into a new scenario only to find the apparent contradictions merely differences in resonance upon sylables, or some other meaningless cunnundrum. (how DOES one spell that word anyway!)

I have no idea what Father or Mother would think of Alice. They are both solid creations fitted into a story of their times. They have no need to introspect, they ARE, fully created and archetypal to their cores, pure and true and simply themselves. And, for those wondering about developments shown publicly, they continue to be happy, joyfully recognizing the touch of the supernatural that has given them their lives.

Almost an anniversary

On the other hand, it is never easy to write about my mother. I do not think of her often anymore, and now when I do it is with a tremendous feeling of emptiness so great I cannot describe it. As time goes by I feel that I need her more, not less, yet when I reach out my hand to hers for that reassuring contact, it falls away empty.

In the early time after she passed away, I did not fee this sense of loss. We were not living close to each other, so it seemed no different to be where I was with her gone, than to be where I was with her miles away. In either case, she was present in memory, and with love. Either way I evoked her in memory, thinking of the last time I saw her, or some occasion earlier, and the memories did not change because she had died. I only felt a reflection of the sorrow that others expressed, with a need to reach out to them with comfort.

But the more time expands between then and now, the more I feel the hole in my life that only she might be able to fill. Or perhaps breach: because when I went to her in physical retreat from the problems of the day, and yet I never discussed them with her. We talked about very little, mostly keeping quiet beside each other. We drank tea, we chatted about family or perhaps she corrected my crocheting. Somehow she in her self was a secure removal from daily troubles. After the children came, there were times I simply slept, on the sofa or bed in her room, free from the burdens that I could not escape anywhere else.

This week happens to be one of the decades of the anniversary of her passing. Everywhere I am confronted with re-collections and the sense of emptiness. Even the weather mimicks the unseasonable chill and rain of the week she passed away. I am a creature dependant on the facts

There is something I need to record about her, or maybe a but for now I can only curl into a small space and ask for rest. I need to go now.

What about me? or maybe Mother.

It is easier to write about myself at night, when the sun has set and shadows spread into imaginary shapes that feed the imagination. Mother says that comes from being a fictional being: we gain substance and self-awareness as the real world loosens its hold on us.

We exist no less during the day, but I find it most difficult to know myself while daylight shines and other eyes look at me and reflect onto me their own understanding of who or what I am. That leads to difficulties more often than not. We stall out together, caught between what I am and what, based upon their perceptions, they wish me to be. There are some costumes that do not fit over the size and shape of our bones.

On the other side of the glass, I love to watch the images of us that are depicted by real people acting in the visual arts. My favorite for family is Rutgar Hours' depiction of my father, which presents his spirit most realistically, and Mr. Broderick's role as my Uncle Phillipe. Uncle Matt actually surpasses the character he depicts, it was a happy day that placed him in that role.

I think you should take great care to remember, now in your real life and in all stories you read, that wherever the person is, there is both evil and good, and that Good always triumphs at the end, with sorrow for those who we love that have fallen along the way.

My First Post - May 2010

I, a fictional character, now proceed to establish my self. I am myself Isabo Emilia Navarr-d'Anjou, also known as Mrs. Inigo Montoya. My ancestry and parentage is distinguished, my own character without fault, save that I do not attend the Holy Mysteries as often as I should or would like. But what can I say? our travel schedule is erratic. When I find myself in the vicinity of a church and able to attend service, I go.

I feel myself a creature outside time in some ways. Not as Our Lord and God is outside time, that is, within Eternity, but somehow my own life is bound loosely to the stable thread of chronology. I once had a chain-linked rosary from which some beads had broken, leaving just the metal thread, and my fingers had to pause in their jump from bead to bead and add in the appropriate prayer without the physical object intended for that sequence. In similar ways I feel I have skipped through moments of time within my own lifetime. I had a beginning, I will have an end, but the flow and pattern of my life has been. . .interrupted.

My mother had some things to say about this, my father a few more - my husband very little, but we are living in a very moment-to-moment existence. God willing, I shall have more time to explore all this.