May Day / Beltane

Several years ago I wrote a story for my friend and colleague, Milbre Burch, and her husband, Berkely Hudson, on the occasion of the birth of their daughter, Katie Blake. I recently adapted the story for our May Day festival at The Odyssey school here in Asheville where my step-daughter, Kaiya, is in 3rd grade.  We gathered in the green wood making fairy houses, playing games, dancing the maypole and eating strawberries and cream.  Here is my story:

White coral bells upon a slender stalk
Lily--of-the-valley on my garden walk
O how I wish that you could hear them ring
That will only happen when the fairies sing

There was once a Keen-eyed Woman and the Kind-hearted Man, who lived in a rich green valley below a snow-topped mountain. They had a fine garden full of vegetables, fruit and nut trees, and flowers. They were especially fond of the May Lilies they planted along all the garden pathways.

The valley was so green because of a winding silver river that ran through it, fed by many mountain streams that sprang from the deep heart of the mountain. Often the Keen-eyed Woman and the Kind-hearted Man would go down to the river bank to dip their baskets brimful in the cool waters. Then they would meet the many other folk that also lived in the valley, exchanging news and greetings.

One day, as the people knelt by the water, a rumbling boom was heard in the skies above and the earth was felt to tremble. As they looked up, they saw great flashes of fire and clouds of smoke rising from the mountain peak. They watched the fire and smoke long into the twilight and then retired to an uneasy sleep.

The next morning a dense fog sat upon the valley, obscuring the mountain and muffling all sound. As they stepped tentatively out, a painful moaning broke the morning quiet. An old woman approached through the fog. She was wrapped in a green shawl and had white hair falling upon her shoulders like snow on the mountain. As she drew nearer, they could see that she was badly burned in face and hands and that her shawl was singed and steaming. She stumbled to the river bank and fell upon the water, soothing her burns and drinking deep. As she knelt there, the river shrank to a thin silver thread. Many fled from her sight, most turned away. But the Keen-eyed Woman and the Kind-hearted Man saw her distress and came to her aide.

They helped her into their home and nursed her with soothing balm from their garden herbs. As she huddled there, she muttered one trembling word, "Dragon!" And they understood. A dragon had come to the mountaintop and was busy now making its nest.

There are many kinds of dragon, but this one was clearly a fire dragon. It sought a high place of stone to nest upon. It would scratch and crumble the living stone to make a rocky eerie, and it would dry up any water there.

The strange old woman regained her strength under the good care of the kind couple. One night she stepped to the door and proclaimed, "A blessing on you for your caring hands and your generous garden. May you always have plenty to serve you in need. May your garden bring hope back to a desolate land." With those words, she vanished into the dark.

Soon the mountain's heart was sealed and the mountain springs ceased to flow. The land began to die as the earth cracked and the air filled with smoke. And the hearts of the people parched as well. Yet the parched earth did not reach the garden of the Kind-hearted Man and the Keen-eyed Woman.

One morning, as she was working among the May Lilies, the Keen-eyed Woman heard a gentle lullaby and a tiny ringing as of little bells. There, nestled in a lily blossom, she saw a tiny baby girl. The child opened its eyes and smiled at her, then rolled out of the flower and onto her hand.

The kind couple tenderly cared for the fairy child. She grew swift and bright and happy, and they called her Little Lily Girl.

Their home was blessed all the while Little Lily Girl was with them. The garden was always moist and green, the butter came quickly in the churn, and the milk never soured. Yet all around, the valley was drying up. Though the dragon was seldom seen, its presence was felt everywhere. The sky was always dim and the air was ever smokey. The land and the hearts of the people were parched. Each kept to each.

When Little Lily Girl was old enough, she asked her kind parents "Why is the land parched, the sky filled with smoke, and the mountaintop burning?"

They told her "A terrible fire dragon has come to nest on the mountaintop. It choked the springs of the mountain, dried the river, and burned the land. It broods ever above us and is drying even the hearts of the people."

Hearing this, Little Lily Girl said "I know now what I must do and why I have come to this place."

She gathered seeds from the garden into the folds of her apron and then stepped to the dry edge of the riverbed. Lifting a delicate dandelion tuft, and said, "Dandelion, you can fly. You have the power to lift me high."

With that the wind lifted the Little Lily Girl as she held fast to the dandelion tuft. Up high along the mountain slopes she flew until she hovered over the great dragon's nest. Below, she could see a black scaly body coiled round upon itself, steaming, smoking, and flaring its fire.

Little Lily Girl reached into her apron and withdrew a honeysuckle seed, saying "Honeysuckle, with your vine, you have the power to entwine." She dropped the seed into the center of the dragon's coil. Instantly the seed shot vines out in every direction, making a green net about the great worm. The dragon struggled and roared and became more and more entangled in the living net.

As the beast raged and rolled, Little Lily Girl dropped down to the edge of its stony nest. She withdrew a sesame seed and said, "Open sesame, with your root in rock, you have the power to unlock." She dropped the sesame among the rocks. Immediately the seed put down roots, cracking through the rocks and stones and reaching deep into the closed heart of the mountain. When the roots tapped through to the deep spring, its water came shooting upwards.

A fierce geyser of ice water burst beneath the struggling dragon, carrying the creature over the mountain ridge and down through the valley. All the while the beast raged and steamed within its net. The water bore the dragon far off in its fury. The people saw a massive black cloud, flashing and thundering, rise up in the distance as strong winds blew it out of sight.

Soon after, the river ran free again, the valley grew green again and the people came together again. They gathered seeds from the garden of the Keen-eyed Woman and the Kind-hearted Man. With these, they replanted the valley and regained their community.

Ever after that, they would sometimes here a distant roaring thunder and look up to see a black cloud flashing in the sky. Yet soon after, the waters would fall to quench the dragon's fire.

The Little Lily Girl was never seen again in that valley. Yet a short time after the next new moon, the belly of the keen-eyed woman began to grow wide and round. And when it was full and silver like the moon, she bore for them a child. A keen-eyed, kind-hearted daughter.

Tellin' About Jack

Saturday, I was honored to join Ted and Rosa Hicks along with Connie Regan-Blake, Gwenda LedBetter, Joseph Sobol, and Vixi Jill Glen, to raise support for the family in memory of Ray Hicks, the great mountain Jack Tale Teller. We had a great day tellin' about Jack!
Read all about it here.

And enjoy the stories:

Sense and Simulacra

I lived briefly in Berkeley, CA, many years ago. Along The highway to the Bay Bridge, just below Emeryville, wide flats of mud stretch along the edge of the tidal basin. The mud flats are a sludgy, dull, repository for trash. One can see half-submerged tires, cans, bottles, planks of various lengths, and large appliances, scattered across the mud like a bizarre elephants' graveyard. I would often stare across that wasteland with a sad confusion over our modern habit of disposal. But every now and then I would spy mysterious creatures rising from the junk, assemblages of trash forming great dragons and upright giants, transforming the sad bones of urban disjecta membra into fanciful images of whimsy. Artists made their way into the junk field of the flats and pulled together crazy, ephemeral creations, turning ugliness into beauty, chaos into art.
I think the modern mind is sometimes like those mud flats. Our thoughts are filled with a confusion of images, random bits of distraction clutter our minds. But when we organize our thoughts around a coherent story, we build from our mental and emotional flotsam and jetsam, images and experiences alive with meaning. Stories help us turn our inner lives from chaos into art. 
That is why, I am fond of saying that storytelling is aerobics for the mind.
Now science backs me up. There is an interesting article, Your Brain On Fiction, by Annie Murphy that appeared in the NY Times last March. She writes:
"Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life." Read the entire article
Just as this was being printed in the Times, I was working with a class of third graders at Jones Elementary School in Asheville. My residency was based on the book, Something Beautiful, by Sharon Dennis Wyeth. We were working on the discovery of beauty and the ability to effectively tell about beautiful places and people so that we could give the beauty to others. 
I realize we had to be like those artists in the mud flats. We had to wander across the wasteland of daily life - that is, the wasteland of impoverished language about daily life - find and conjure forth the inherent beauty that is there. We did it by rehearsal.
"Rehearse" is a word derived from farming. It literally means "harrow" and refers to the act of raking back and forth across the land, breaking it up into smoother and finer furrows, to be more fecund. To rehearse is to open up the earth for more life. A clear example of that occurred when one of my third grade students spoke about the scene outside her back door. At first, she dismissed the backyard as "ugly" saying that there was merely an "ugly pile of mulch." But as she went back and forth over the scene, her language opened up, revealing "A large, brown pile of mulch, rough and mouldy, that smells damp, with green sprouts growing out." 
That is an image to stimulate the mind, and create a virtual experience of beauty.

Never Turn Your Back On A Story

So back in 1987 I was working as a teaching artist for San Diego Institute for Arts Education. SDIAE was a program based on the Aesthetic Literacy model developed by philosopher, Maxine Greene, and implemented by the Lincoln Center Institute. While working with a class of kindergarten children on story structure, I developed an heroic treatment of Itsy Bitsy Spider (it became something of a signature piece in later years) that was a blend of Mother Goose and Homer. My inspiration came right out of Joseph Campbell's "Hero With A Thousand Faces" where he wrote:
"The characteristic efficacy to touch and inspire deep creative centers dwells in the simplest nursery fairy tale, even as the flavor of the ocean is in a single drop of water, or the mystery of life is in the egg of a flea."
So an epic retelling of this familiar finger play grew out of this work. At the time, it was a fun, tongue-in-cheek, comic romp.
But that same year, a classmate of mine from graduate school suffered what we used to call "a nervous collapse." Today, he would call it a "bi-polar episode." The point is, my close friend was suddenly in an intensive care ward at the area mental health hospital. I visited. He was in bed, heavily sedated, clammy to the touch, with glassy eyes masking a torn and broken soul. I anguished at his side over what I might do to help or comfort him. He said, "Tell me that story about the spider."
There, at his bedside, up close and personal, I told the the epic tale and found myself drawn into the vortex of myth, doing its ancient bidding.
Never turn your back on a story.

New Year's Eve

The skies these past few weeks have been curiously drowsy. Odd, Spring-like conditions have prevailed. That should come as no surprise, considering the climate in general, but it makes for a moody situation. We scatter straw across the yard to absorb the mud. The stage, jutting out from the porch, is surrounded by a pale yellow straw beach, giving it the quizzical appearance of a tropical desert island. But the air is damp and cool and the sun barely shines. Last night, however, the stars were holding court. A front brought a cooler dryness and the muddy straw is exhaling. The sky was clear enough for me to see the Milky Way from the street of our city suburb. It is a poetic moment for the season. The clearing sky, the fresher air, the brilliance of the stars all inspire the moment with hope and dreams.

Most afternoons recently our yard would have Nick (9) swinging, Kaiya (9) hanging, and Jordan (3) climbing, while Jasmine (2) runs in tight circles around it all, nipping and yapping. Occasional appearances of the sun would lure us out only to usher in the clouded gloom, which seems desperate for our attention. It is as if our attention is deliberately directed to the gloom. It is easy to feel the gloom, but to really heed it is another matter. With a little less self-pity and a little acquiescence, the attention shifts.  I look out and see the boon of mud.

The mud is magnificent. It has a dark, fudgy firmness. It clings well to heel and toe, then falling in dried shards around the house. Either the mud wants to come in from the gloom or it wants us to go out. Both, of course. There is a story of a boy who comes to honor Buddha with gifts. Having nothing, the boy makes a mud pie and prayerfully presents it. The gift is received with a blessing and the boy is reincarnated as the great king, Ashoka. There is more to the story, and others can explicate its significance to Buddhism. But to me, this New Year is offering us the rich earthy mud, filled with potential for new life.

So I offer you good wishes for the year ahead. May 2012 bring many blooms from the soil of 2011.

Not Enough Room?

The Small House

adapted from a favorite Jewish folktale

Jacob was a farmer and Sarah was his wife.

They worked hard together to live a happy life.

They had a couple chickens, a good old dairy cow,

and a cranky, stubborn mule they harnessed to the plow.

The only thing that stopped them being happy with it all,

was the feeling that their little house was much too much too small.

They visited the Rabbi, an elder man and wise,

And told him of their trouble and asked him to advise.

After thoughtful meditation, this is what he had to say:

“If you will do as I instruct, I think there is a way

to make your house a place of peace that happiness will bless.

But tell me am I right to think you have some chickens, yes?”

“We have some chickens, yes,” they said “what would you have us do?”

“Take the chickens from the yard into the house with you.”

“Bring the chickens from the yard into the house, you say?

We honor age and wisdom and will not disobey.”

So straight away they went and brought the chickens in to nest.

But instead of getting better,  they were very sorely pressed.

The chickens squawked and scratched about, they laid eggs everywhere.

The noise and feathers were enough to make them tear their hair.

So once again they went to seek the Rabbi for advice.

He said, “I see a way to make your situation nice.

You have a cow for milking, yes?” “We have a cow for milking, true.”

“Go to the field and take your cow inside the house with you.”   

“Go to the field and take our cow inside the house to stay?!”

They thanked the Rabbi for his advice and later on that day

The house had chickens laying and a cow chewing its cud.

The walls were nearly bursting, the floor was turned to mud.

The noises, smells, and other things were enough to drive them mad.

Once more they sought the Rabbi to seek advice he had.

“You say the chickens and the cow have made your home a mess?

But there is always room for more. You have a mule, yes?”

“We have a mule to pull the plow, we keep him in a stall.”

“Then take him in with all the rest, one roof will cover all.”

“Take the mule into the house with cow and chickens too?

We do not understand but we will do what we must do.”

Now the crowded little house had the mule ushered in.

Mooing, clucking, braying, made an awful din.

There was no room to sit, no place to build a fire,

The rafters shook, the air was foul, the floor became a mire. 

The hapless couple groaned and cried “we cannot take this life!”

And once again they asked the Rabbi to save them from this strife.

The Rabbi lit a candle and poured them each some tea.

“You’ve endured a lot of suffering, this is plain to see.

“One last suggestion I will give, it should not be too hard,

“Return the cow out to the field, the chickens to the yard

“Return the mule to his stall, then clean and fix and sweep.

“Then see if you have room enough to get a good night’s sleep.”

Once more they did as they were told and to their great surprise,

The house that once was much too small, was now the perfect size.

How often even now, just as it was before,

when our want is keenly felt and we lament at being poor,

we think that having things will even up the score, 

only to discover: having less beats having more.

Good words

My stepdaughter, Kaiya, is enjoying Rachel Roberts' Avalon series. Here is a recent quote that we find meaningful and inspiring. Enjoy

There’s an old saying: “The darkest hour is always before the dawn.” I believe that to be true. There are times in our lives when feel alone, face trouble, or feel scared by the darkness the world can sometimes force upon us. It’s these times that true courage can be tested. We must never give into despair, even when it feels like the night will never end. You have the magic with in to meet any challenge and carry on. A new dawn will always shine its way into your heart. 

 –––– Rachel Roberts, Dark Mage