Mountains of Myrrh

It was the Tree of Life, a different meaning and understanding.  We reflected on it.  The mirror we saw.  The mine had caused a transformation in both of us.  Max told us there was word the planned road ahead was impassible, and that guides would meet us to take us through the famed “Mountains of Myrrh” that we knew from the ancient text of Solomon’s Song.  It was our favourite poetry, full of rich imagery.  Sacred too, and we gave it due respect as the guides with burnished gold hair and green gowns led us through the valleys, that seemed to breathe with fresh green life and all kinds of jasmine scents and perfumes.  The sky seemed vast and full of possibilities, and the clouds stretched like angel’s wings across the vaulted blue.  In motion we travelled, and as if by magic our old dark travelling robes were dissolved away, and Max laughed, as the guides clothed us in coloured silks and dressed us anew.  He said that by way of travelling through the valley, that each footfall was valid and necessary, to walk the path in earnest.  It was the doing, the learning that changed people’s minds, not the human follies of excess, like loving too much or too little.  Max had a list of them, rolled up on a tiny piece of gold scroll under his wing, and he referred to them whenever humans needed them.  So it was in this way we had become enchanted, not by stealth or mistake, but by evolution.  The valley path soon revealed the Lemurian Abbey, that we had once seen, but was now transformed again.

(copyright Imogen Crest 2006.)

 

Alluvial Mine - Real Gold

We left the mules tethered at the entrance of the mine, and let Max do all the talking. The minekeeper dressed in red nodded her head and gave us no trouble as we passed, concealing the skull behind her back. She brushed away some cobwebs that had gathered, hanging like old garments from the damp cave walls. Max chirped and chattered, his small eyes glowing red in the semi darkness, and he had an intense look on his face. The grey ghost was nowhere in sight. The rock glowed in places, clinging with bright jade moss and shimmering ore. Our footfalls echoed in the space, and we could hear water running, cool and clear, inside the honeycomb caverns. “It’s better than I thought,” said Orlando, and I nodded, knowing he did not always believe things until he saw them. “It’s because of Max…he knows far more than we do, and everything more than the other ‘advisors’. I think they were illusions. Delusions. Maude did mention them…” He nodded, distracted by a kind of room formed by old water routes, that once roared through the honeycomb. Max was animated, leaning forward like an arrow, his little glowing eyes beaming in a new direction. A thin shaft of sunlight streamed in from a gap in the rock of the underground space, illuminating a kind of font, and we looked at the reflection in it. “What is it?” I said. “What is it indeed?” I said, as we both suddenly realised its meaning and stared.

(copyright Imogen Crest 2006.)

Canary Gold Greening

Since Spring came across our path, Orlando and I saw many things come into bloom.  A golden canary had also flown to come and sit on his shoulder, as we travelled toward the mine, speaking boldly that its name was “Max”.  It sang and chirped and flowers grew from the seeds around us, coloured just like his feathers.  Spring Enchanteur had come. (copyright Imogen Crest 2006.)

Unburdening & Mine Particulars

 

Orlando and I continued along the roads, coming to the honeycomb of mines inside the foot of the Olympic Mountains.  After his spontaneous sleep under the Wise Oak, many things had changed.  I had also changed, witnessing the burned out wood on my walk.  Yet still, the critical voice remained, taunting us in the form of a mischievous grey ghost, hovering near our shoulders and rustling the dead leaves in the trees, and putting sticks and stones in our path.  On the horizon we could see Spring had changed the landscape around the foot of the mountains.  We could also see the other seasons beyond the mountains, in our imagination.  This was but one more trace of winter to be left behind.  We had to be mindful of following the instructions Maude had told us, and I could see her bold jewels flashing by way of Mnemosyne, in my mind.  If something would go wrong in those Olympic Mountains, the grey ghost would be of no use.  And what would Maude think of Orlando, and what would he think of himself?  “We ought to make our way easier,” I said.  “What do you mean?” he said, kicking at the stones in his path, “I don’t think that’s possible.  Struggle is part of life.”  “I want to let go of it,” I said, stopping just as spring sent blossoms winging across the path.  “I want to go with the new.”  Orlando looked at me as if I had lost my mind.  “Struggle is the only worthy thing,” he said, forging ahead.  The entrance to the cave was guarded by a mysterious creature, dressed in red and holding a skull in her hand, waiting.  A man was making his way across the path, as if out of nowhere, calling, “Unburden thyselves!  Unburden thyselves!  This is the only true way, the only true way.”  He hauled easily a cart filled with every possible load imaginable, people’s woes and fears, anguish and heartaches, and there were a number of grey ghosts hanging off the back, which looked suspiciously like ours.   And so it was that I tricked the ghost, into joining again with it’s own…as like attracted like…with Orlando powerless to stop me.  Like a magnet it stuck, hauled to the back of the cart as it moved away, and clung to its likeness.  “I’ll be back…” it said, as the cart moved away and the man’s cries diminished into the distance.  Spring sent white petals around us and a quickening wind that made us hurry along the path toward the cave entrance.  “You know it’ll be back,” said Orlando, biting into a rosy apple he’d got out of his pocket.  “Perhaps, but it won’t ever be the same again…” I said, quickening my steps to the mine ahead of him.

(copyright Imogen Crest 2006.)

Mandala Green

This image from nature

is a reminder to always be “green”.

This is the mandala for the journey,

green as nature is.

 copyright Imogen Crest 2006.

 

Burned Out Wood

“I can’t go on,” said Orlando, who had been quieter than usual, as we travelled up the green valley to the Olympic Mountains, towards the honeycomb of caves.  “What do you mean?” I asked.  He sat down on the rock by the roadside, I settled the mules and sat beside him.  “I mean I can’t go on — in the same way.  The things I’ve learned now, they change the picture.  It’s making me unsteady and it’s torment, the old ways of the world.”

Smiling, because I understood this age old problem, I shaded my eyes against the sun and looked at him sitting there all forlorn.  “You seem guilty, haunted by something,” I ventured.  He had changed much, and so had I, but the constant on the journey was change, so it must be.  The unsettling tug of it, the almost taunt of it.  Backwards and forwards, one step forward, two steps back, as they always said.  I wondered how long we would wait, until he was clear again.

A flower became apparent to us, hugging the rock as it did, bright in the sunshine.  Then it spoke.  “Guilt and fear,guilt and fear,” it said, edging closer to the rock to get Orlando’s attention.  My eyes opened wide, and I realised it was a forget-me-not, and it was white.  “Orlando, I think that flower is trying to communicate with you…”

Orlando indulged my feminine promptings with a polite glance in the general direction, humouring me, then saying, “Forget-me-nots are blue, not white.  And the very sight of it just makes it worse.  I mean, how many of those have I unwittingly trampled in my life?  It doesn’t bear thinking about.  Just leave me to my thoughts.”

I wandered away from him, finding an old oak, shading part of the road.  It seemed in a conversational mood too, one of its leaves reaching out to whisper discreetly in my ear.  “The universe is out of balance, and the newspapers are saying it’s all his fault.  He finds the weight too heavy, being of that gender the newspapers are mentioning.”  I thought about this for a moment.  The forget-me-not said he was full of guilt and fear, and the oak was saying he was trampled by headlines.  Not a good note on which to continue a journey such as this, I realised, and said as much to the oak:  “How are we going to fulfil the expectations set for us, with all these unnecessary things?  Useless thoughts, false labels.  I mean, if he was the worst kind, he wouldn’t be on a journey at all.”

The oak agreed wholeheartedly, said I was beginning to make sense, but doubted this sense would come to the doleful mood of Orlando, without a little time under its protective boughs.  And so it was contrived, by way of enchantment, that Orlando would rest awhile, after some bread and cheese from the pack, while I wandered with the mules over and over the green valley, pondering what I had learned.  It was there, by a running stream and yellow flowers, that I saw the chimney remains of an old house, badly built from the beginning, and in ruins now, the wood charred by a fire.  All was as it should be.

 (copyright Imogen Crest 2006.)

Seed Appeasement

Orlando and I set out the following morning in the renewing sun, knowing we had to see the Minekeeper, a woman of infinite wisdom and discernment.  Maude has told us so many things, some of which would not be realised until much later on.  Leaving her house was like squeezing though a tiny hole, and when we looked back it was nowhere in sight.  We knew then this was no ordinary journey, to search for and find the elixir of creativity, and Mnemosyne warned us there was something more to this.  She had explained the centre parts of the earth were sacred, like a womb, where things were birthed.  Partly we felt unworthy of this trek, and we knew we did not want to violate the sanctity of the meaning there, as respect had to be paid.  So it was right that in meeting the formidable, simply dressed woman, we gave her the single gold coin, like for like, and some poppy seeds for her rich garden.  It flourished green, bursting the boundaries of the wooden fencing, and forming a lush, long, verdant belt through the valley.  Mnemosyne had reminded us to put these things in our travelling packs, but we had not known what they were for.  “Instinct” — Maude had said, was the key.  Now it seemed right to offer them, and indeed it was true, the Minekeeper was pleased.  Orlando also reassured her he knew the ways of right travel through these parts, as we had been through the darkness of fear and superstition, and stayed a night in Hades.  She smiled as if in feint remembrance, and I wondered if she knew the glowing jewels Maude had, and indeed, if she had been the giver of those.  There was an uncanny likeness, but not sameness about them, as if they were sisters in some way or another.  After she had given us a rich brew of herbs, done in her own special way, she sent us on with brief instructions, and wasted no time at all in planting the seeds we had given her, in her flourishing garden that covered that part of the valley.

 

(copyright Imogen Crest 2006.)

Bored Maude - Housekeeper of Jewels

 

Maude was usually bored, except when callers came knocking, her only company a small terrier called Kipper, she told us, opening the door quickly in the pitch darkness to let us in.  She had diamonds for eyes, glowing as she made us welcome, and her hands were aged, knotted like veins of ore in the earth.  And she wore jewels, opals and things as rings, on every finger.  Orlando listened carefully to all she said, while I sat in the darkness near the only candle, giddy.  It was hard with no light, and Maude seemed to make more light, as the facets of her jewels glinted with the stories she told Orlando with her hands.  Closeby on her table the only other thing visible in the gloom was a basket of rich red pomegranates, cut through to reveal black seeds.  There was still the same moaning from outside that hadn’t ceased, like a chattering voice that didn’t know when to pause for breath.  It was the voice of fear and unreason, superstition.  Passing me the basket, Orlando and Maude insisted I eat the pomegranates, so I did, with very little trouble. 

This house didn’t need curtains to keep out the light of the moon at night, because there was none, it was so dark, the only things that could be seen were the single flame and jewels from Maude’s wizened hands.  I imagined, finally, that this was what it was like in a mine, under the ground.  If I were to lean forward and puff out the candle, well, it would be darker still.  Thus the flame was important, more important in the dark to keep it alight.  They were still chattering about the mine, how to approach it, what to do, so I leaned forward and drew out my almanac, and looked at the markings for the following day in the dim light. 

Maude told of a star we should follow, gave us a compass and bearings.  She said the Olympic Mountains, where the mine was, were riddled with caves like honeycomb.  We would have mules to take our supplies, and would be again on foot.  The almanac showed conditions would be fair.  I longed for the light of day.  The dark limited the imagination, or heightened it.  What the eyes couldn’t see, the mind would imagine.

“You have to get through here to get to there,” said Maude, tossing a scrap of bone to Kipper, who went straight to it in the stifling darkness.  “It’s all in the instincts…my precious ones.” 

(copyright Imogen Crest 2006.)

Lemurian Portal Beckons - Owl Creek Road

Orlando Non Furioso met me at the Glade, curious as he was to learn the journey had something to do with digging, as was his art.  The City of Ladies would be quiet now with many of the travellers taking to the road.  He had put up a sign “Gone Prospecting” at the Ancient Pottery Studio on the outskirts of the City, and laden with picks and shovels in his pack, we proceeded together on foot, taking in the Glade and noticing for the first time the Satyr, feasting as he was on poisonous orange berries and playing his reed pipe.  “What is the way to Owl Creek?” asked Orlando, not surprised when he was greeted with a mischievious grin and then ignored. 

The Glade was verdant green, spiced with orange berries unfit for general consumption.  But we regarded the Satyr and his merry tune with amusement, and smiled in return.  “We must follow this way and see where it leads.  No answer is as good as any,” said Orlando, casting his attention ahead, away from the idyllic Glade, where the landscape lay in black and white, all colour of the City of Ladies gone.  Yet Mnemosyne made sure it was firmly etched in our minds, so we proceeded with a kind of trepidation.

Orlando made sure I had brought the almanac along, for earth and sky, a bag of talismans each, and the gold coin.  Enchanteur had told us about the mine where we would stake a claim, and what we had to do there.  “Night is due any moment,” I said, as ahead we could see the shades, dark shadows making cries of melancholy and loss.  “We must find the inn, where our alluvial hosts will be,” he said.  The cries grew louder and soot filled the air, acrid with the smell of years of waste.  I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but Orlando insisted I listen.  “Listen, but pay no heed, and all shall be well.  These are the voices of superstition and fear.”

A single flame lit the window of the inn, barely visible in the darkness.  The cries grew louder and I listened to what they said.  The merry tune of the Satyr seemed to lace with these cries, woven like a plait of a child’s hair.  Soon it was so dark, all that could be seen was the flame of the candle at the window.  It seemed as if the very earth was in a darkness it could never release, a dark like Hades.

(copyright Imogen Crest 2006.)

Vista - The Beginning

A path unknown

though

places far and wide,

to sleep under a canopy

of trees,

guided by the sun,

at night with

the stars.

A bag of talismans

safely hid,

a single gold coin

tucked inside a cloak.

To the place where

the leaning birches

were, to seek

Owl Creek,

and find out what

is there.

(copyright Imogen Crest 2006.)