The windings of the dragon track...

Or perhaps that should be 'windlings' rather than 'windings'?!  Terri Windling has begun a new 'Moveable Feast' on her blog, and asked the question, "The Desire for Dragons: What Brings us to Myth & Fantasy? 

What brought me?  It's hard to say.  I could mention the books I read in those most impressionable and permeable years between age 10 and 17, most particularly C.S. Lewis' Narnia books and Tolkien's 'The Hobbit', both of which did indeed feature dragons (though poor old Eustace was only temporarily winged and scaled), and Susan Cooper's 'The Dark is Rising', which featured the Pendragon, which was something to do with dragons, I knew that much even then.  But these books seemed more like a recognition, a remembering, than a true discovering (though they were that, and more).  A remembering of something that had always been there, I'd always known it...though 'knowing' is not really the right word.  It's more a visceral feeling, right there in your gut...and in your heart.  The feeling you get when you've been away for a long time and you open your front door and walk in, drop your bags, shuffle your shoes off, and sit down in your very own comfy chair.  Of being home.

As Terri mentions, the title of the Feast comes from J.R.R. Tolkien.  He wrote, regarding his life-long taste for myth and tales of magic, "I desired dragons with a profound desire.  Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever the cost of peril."

When I first encountered Herne the Hunter at age 13, in Susan Cooper's 'The Dark is Rising', I felt my heart pound as if a long forgotten question had been answered.  I am very sure I had never encountered the Wild Hunt, not as a child then, nor in the years since I read the book, and like Tolkien, I probably don't really want to.  But the sudden joy in knowing he was out there was so palpable, that I can feel it now just thinking about it.  The thought of him was enough.  Knowing that Merlin existed, even as an idea, a figment of someone else's imagination, a possibility, was enough.  Well, almost enough.  Like it is enough for me to know that Polar Bears still exist.  I'd like to see one (not too close...a little like the Wild Hunt!), but if I never do, just knowing they are there is enough to lift my soul and make my world brighter and more beautiful.  Something we would do well to understand quickly, before there aren't any.

Dragons have come to mean this to me, more than as actual, physical, winged, fire-breathing beasts.  The unseen, hidden, veiled magic and mystery that abounds if only we open our eyes (and our hearts) enough to see it.  And yet, we don't need to see it, for we feel it and know it is real.  At 15 I saw 'Excalibur', everything my fledgling interest in Arthurian and Celtic myth could wish for.  And there I encountered a dragon who was everywhere at once, all around us, in the land we walk, but never seen.  The dragon's breath was real enough to ride across a chasm on, yet it remained hidden.  Mysterious.  Magical.

Gorgeous dragon found using image search...I think the signature is 'R. Esselton'.  If anyone knows for sure, please let me know so I can attribute correctly.

And at the age of 16, a chance hearing on a radio program of this...

...but let us sing the skill of the master builders long ago

for it was no peasantry plodding after scrawny cows 

who raised the hollow hills and the henge stones

but calm and cunning wizards worked these wonders

continuing the snail line, dod flat at ring stand

ruling scribing and pegging out in granite

the windings of the dragon track

that writhes unhewn

in sward and marsh and moss and meadowland

that twines in stellar gravity among the eaves of the cubic sky...

'Five Denials on Merlin's Grave' by Robin Williamson

The 'calm and cunning' Merlin, by the incomparable Alan Lee.

Now there's a dragon.  'The windings of the dragon track'...it still gives me delicious shivers just saying it in my head.  The path of the unseen embedded in the landscape, the mysterious, the beautiful and terrible, of truth that is more than facts, of story that is more true than truth, the path of the wise fool, the path of white stones dropped so that someone might follow, the road that leads ever on and on, the road less travelled...

And so we follow the dragon track, overgrown as it might well be through neglect in this last century of facts and rationalism.  Because the dragon is worth following.  It has great wisdom to bestow.  It is dangerous to know, certainly (though, I've never felt that dragons were evil...just, wild), and we might not be able to see it...but if we listen carefully, we might hear it singing as it passes.

And once you've heard a dragon singing, there's no going back!

Scenes from a summer Christmas...

A few pics, before I disappear for a few days!  Merry Christmas to everyone!

The last piece of unwrapped panforte, because I forgot to take any before I cut them up, and wrapped them!

A munchkin who wants some!

Little nativity on top of the heater (which won't get turned on until late May or early June!)

Our family room with Christmas tree (and guitars, which seem to be multiplying!)

The Green Lady who watches over us all year round.

This is about as tidy as it ever gets!

A small dragon caught in the flash.

The tree...and the other tree (an ex-light pole made of jarrah) which holds our house up!

"Wolf Bride"...music, of the non-christmassy type...and happy Summer Solstice!...

(Oh, and happy Solstice everyone!  Here it is midsummer, and I look forward to the gradual slanting AWAY of the sun, though we have long, hot, stifling months to get through yet!)

I thought the last post would be my...well, last...for the year.  But inspiration strikes when we least need it sometimes!  I've made some panfortes, I've wrapped most of the presents, the house is semi-clean, so this morning I lay in bed with the beginnings of a song going round in my head.  This had its genesis a few days ago.  I was laid up on the couch with one of my shocking headaches, and when I cop one of these, there is nothing much I can do but lie down, wait it out...and think.  It gives me some small comfort, to weigh against the depressing fact that I probably lose one and a half to two months out of every year to headaches of one kind or another, that occasionally the enforced stillness and thinking produces an idea for a painting, a song, a poem, or SOMETHING so I can tell myself it's not time totally wasted.  I was pondering the problem of my song 'Beauty Remembers'.  Not a problem in itself, but to perform it requires about 10 minutes of explanation.  That's what happens when you change a beloved and well-known fairytale to suit yourself, and then write a song about the END of it!  So it occurred to me that the best way to avoid a long and boring introduction would be to tell the WHOLE story through song (and perhaps some spoken words/poems).  A 'Beauty Song Cycle' if you like.  I didn't think anymore of it then, and the last few days have been a bit mad.  But this morning the thought returned and woke me early and then wouldn't let me get back to sleep.  So I wrote another song.  It's still very rough and I don't think it's actually finished, but I really wanted to get it down quickly, because if I don't, by the time all the Christmas chaos is over, I won't remember the tune at all!

So here is 'Wolf Bride', which is Beauty explaining (well, I hope it explains) why she loves the Beast and why she doesn't need him to turn into a man.  After this, I'd better start thinking a bit more clearly about how many songs I need and roughly what each of them need to say.  And once they're all written and perfect (ha ha), I'll need someone willing to sit and listen for a half hour or so.  But first things first. Create the songs, worry about audiences later!



And if I get really keen, I might post some photos of our decorations and so forth later.  I've gone a bit bonkers on bunting (making bunting can become an addiction, I've discovered), but I think I like it better than tinsel.  I've also been painting and making things for little people and relatives...phew!  Unfortunately all my prayers for a cool Christmas day have gone unanswered and it looks like it will be another scorcher, about 40˚C (or just over the old century).

We finished 'The Hobbit' this morning.  Well, I actually finished it last night, and closed the book to discover the munchkins fast asleep on the sofa next to me.  So I had to read the last chapter again today.  I'm going to start Susan Cooper's 'The Dark is Rising' tonight, despite our weather, it seems an appropriate choice in regard to the time of the year, and the fact that biggest munchkin is 11 just like Will in the book.  And it will be such a pleasure to revisit a childhood favourite!

Late addition:  The lyrics, in case they're not clear

Wolf bride - Beauty song cycle (© Christina Cairns Dec 2012) 

The stories will tell you it takes one kiss
The stories will tell you it takes just one kiss
But I don’t need stories to make a prince of you
I would have you no other way than this.

You are my wild and terrible one
In Nature’s great (pure?) image made.
You are my wild and beautiful one
And I would have you no other way.

This talk of curses and kisses
Conceived in the minds of small men
Why in God’s name would I choose one of them
When I have you (a king?) instead?

Why would I want a mere man in my bed
When I have a whirlwind, a tempest, a storm.
Your howling cry wakes something deep inside
I choose the river, the mountain, the snow
I choose to be the Wolf Bride.

I have lived among men long enough
To know they are petty and cruel,
They beat their wives, they lie to their friends
They beat (starve?) their children too.

And you, with the strength to tear me apart
Have not touched a hair on my head
Your wild eyes full of truth, no guile in your soul
Why would I not give you my heart.

So I will choose mountain, and river and snow
And I will let the wild in my own heart grow.
I will choose the great (rough?) beast, I will walk by his side
I will be no other’s but the great wolf’s bride.

The stories will tell you it takes one kiss
The stories will tell you it takes just one kiss
But I don’t need stories to make a prince of you
I would have you no other way than this.



Edited 7th June 2017 to add new Soundcloud link, as Divshare seems to have swallowed all my old recordings!

Christmas...peace and goodwill to all

We are nearly at the end of another year.  A year of pain and sorrow for so many, and my heart goes out to all of them.  I hope 2013 will bring peace, and compassion, and hope for us all.

As for me, I am my usual disorganised self, and have not sent out my cards, nor even made my usual 'every-christmas-without-fail' panfortes in time to post them to far-flung loved ones (sorry little brother, maybe a new year panforte?!).  I'm feeling a bit numb by this time, the over-commercialisation just depresses me, even when I find myself getting caught up in it.  I long for something simpler, cleaner, quieter.  Christmas carols, real ones, not 'Frosty the Snowman'.  Sung by people I know, not pre-recorded by the latest pop sensation.  Family and friends and small gifts, home-made or chosen with care.  A story about a tiny baby, small children dressed up as shepherds and kings and tripping over their dads' old dressing gowns.  And hope.  Hope, compassion and peace for us all, no matter what spiritual creed we follow, no matter where we are.

And so, I wish you ALL a safe, joyful, peaceful Christmas season, and a happy and hopeful new year. Follow your dreams, be creative, love and be loved...and don't forget to fly.

With love and hope,
Christina

I must not forget how to fly (detail.  © 2007)

Hobbits and Jam and Spring in the garden...

I am currently reading The Hobbit to the munchkins, the beautiful Alan Lee illustrated one above.  As the movie will be out soon, and we will probably take the girls along to see it, I wanted them to hear the story and to be able to create their own pictures in their heads first.  I started last Wednesday, after a day of dusting and cleaning (along with a lot of coughing and sneezing!), and so my poor voice was croaky and not the best.  It's been a long time since I've read The Hobbit, so I'd forgotten I'd be required to voice 13 dwarves, 1 wizard, and various trolls and goblins...AND sing all their songs!  I was very tempted to make the youngest dwarves, Fili and Kili, either very camp, or perhaps castrati, just so my poor voice could have a rest from all the 'deep and booming'.  Bilbo was the only respite, bless him. So when I got to the goblins a couple of nights ago, they seemed to naturally develop rather higher pitched, whiny voices!

The songs are fun though, and Tolkien's lyrics and rhythms are simple enough that it's quite easy to just make up a tune on the spot, which is fine until the munchkins decided they liked one song so much they had to hear it again.  I tried to explain that it wouldn't be quite the same, but they insisted.  So I sang it again, sort a bit like the first time, and the next morning I heard them singing it together, reading the lyrics from the book as they went.  Last night, they sat drawing as I read, and produced their own illustrations.

Mr Bilbo Baggins, and a generic dwarf, by littlest munchkin.

A Goblin guard, by biggest munchkin.

One of the Warg wolves (with more than a passing resemblance to Flynn, with a bad case of Rabies perhaps!), by biggest munchkin.

Do you see what I mean!?

Other than Hobbit duty, I've been busy with work, though I'm back to part-time till the end of the school year (on the 19th Dec).  Which is good because there is LOTS to do.  The Apricot tree has become far too dangerous to sit beneath for afternoon tea, due to the kamikaze apricots that fling themselves towards unsuspecting victims, which mean it's JAM time.  We've made our first batch, but there's a bumper crop, so I'm going to need to go on a jar hunt.  I think I'll make chutney again too, last year's went rather well (if I do say so myself!)  We've just about finished off our last year's jam supply, so we get enough for presents for Christmas and to do us for a whole year.  Pretty damn good I think, especially when the tasteless, floury things that pass as apricots in the supermarket cost between $10 and $15 a kilo!

Kamikaze apricots all over the ground.

But there's plenty more...or at least there was, before the wild weather of the last few hours brought several more kilos tumbling down!

We've also been busy with the front yard, tarting it up and putting in more vegie boxes.  We emptied out the worm farm casings onto the main vegie box about 3 months ago, with a view to preparing the bed for spring planting.  But we must eat a lot of tomatoes, because pretty soon the entire bed was covered in seedlings just popping up from the worm farm!  So we left it, and have been eating our own self-seeded tomatoes ever since.  And they taste SOOOO much better than the supermarket ones!  We've got more tomatoes, corn, beetroot, eggplant (aka aubergine), and plenty of herbs, so the front garden is looking pretty good now.  Phew!

The Herb patch next to the cubby...fenced off because Flynn likes to dig in it!

New vegie boxes in the front yard.  I'm not sure if the corn will still be standing tomorrow though!

These tomatoes are just about at the end of their productivity, but there's a few more on there.

The Elderflower is blooming again...but still no scent whatsoever...sigh!

Another rogue that popped up out of the worm farm casings.  I think it's a pumpkin (?), though it seems unlikely, as we never have them due to the fact that biggest munchkin will not touch them.

The Lolly tree, or at least as good as, in my opinion.  The kids adore raiding it as soon as they get home from school...though I try to get them to change out of their school clothes FIRST!

The vegie boxes again.  Though they may not look like this tomorrow!

Wow, we have had some WEATHER in the last few hours!  High speed winds and lashing rain.  Not very 'springy' at all.  In fact, I'm wearing my 'ugg' boots and a jumper at the moment.  I had to go and dig them out after packing up the 'winter clothes', positive I'd finished with them for this year.  I imagine our back lawn will be covered in squished apricots tomorrow morning, and everything in the front yard may well be horizontal.  As long as the trees...and the house...aren't!

Beautiful music!

Time, where do you slip away to?!  I seem to be so busy lately with work (full time again for a few weeks), and gardening (it's Spring here and we've been putting in new vegie boxes), and just...life.  I haven't been very creative at all.  But I'd like to share something beautiful and creative with you, not from myself, but from my very talented 'little' brother, in his band of two, The Malakoff Street Orchestra.  Two songs, a Nirvana cover, and an utterly gorgeous original.  Enjoy!

The failure of language part 2: transparency

Just before you read Part 2 (if I haven't completely lost you already!), I wanted to share this because it seemed so pertinent to Part 1.  I began watching it, and even before the 'voice' of the snail was heard, it dawned on me that showing the snail up that close, focussing on it as if it was the most important thing to look at, made me a) aware of how beautiful it was, and b) how awful I'd feel if the next bit of footage showed someone casually stepping on it.  I've done that myself, I'm sure we all have, especially when I find them munching on my baby lettuce plants.  But suddenly, just looking really closely made me see the snail properly, as a fellow creature, an individual, worthy of kinship in some way.

The transparent transferal of knowledge...or not!

Colonial history shows us that one of the best ways of destroying a people is to destroy their language, because with it you destroy their culture: their stories, their history, their connection to each other and their connection to the land. In the colonial past, we gave the colonized people our language in return (believing it would have some kind of ‘civilising’ influence), which often did not have the words that they needed to describe their way of living, and so, their way of living, their way of perceiving/experiencing the world, dies. I'm sure we've all heard the cliche of the Inuit people having fifty words for snow. It’s not strictly true, but if a language that has words for concepts familiar and known to the people who speak it dies out, and there are no words that exactly match in any other language, then isn't it inevitable that those concepts will either disappear completely, or be changed and corrupted by using words that can never quite fit? We think that we create culture, that we create language to be a tool of our culture, but the truth is it’s often the other way around. Our culture shapes us, how we think and how we behave. And so does the language we speak. My eight year old said to me the other day, “imagine if there was no word ‘it’, mummy, what would we use instead?” Without really stopping to think I replied that there would probably just be another word that meant the same thing. But then I thought, what if there wasn’t? Imagine a language with no word for ‘it’?! How would that shape a culture, a people? And then I thought, imagine if there was no word for ‘hate.’ Can you hold a concept without a word to name it?  It's a bit of a 'chicken and egg' problem, but I don't believe that it all goes one way.  I do believe that language 'frames' our view of the world.  And I wonder sometimes what's outside the frame.

I remember reading years ago that early missionaries to the pacific islands had some trouble translating the notion of ‘the lamb of god’ to the islanders they were trying to convert, as these people had never seen sheep. So they settled for ‘a small woolly pig’ in the local language. On the surface it might seem close enough, but it cannot possibly hold all the centuries of information, the layer upon layer built up like an archeological site of interpretation, of experiences, of meanings. What on earth would the islander people have made of a 'saviour god' who is described simply as an animal you eat.  Language is not a transparent medium through which ideas can pass unchanged from one person to another. In terms of translating from one language to another, what do you do when you encounter idioms, slang, metaphors, culturally specific jokes or references to things that are well known within the original, but not in the new language? You really have two choices, and both are flawed. You either translate literally, and leave readers bewildered, unable to access the meaning. Or you find a similar(ish) metaphor or idiom your readers will be familiar with and use that instead. And something is lost. Sometimes it’s difficult even within the same language. If I say, “a couple of tinnies short of a six-pack,” or “too many roos loose in the top paddock”, do you understand immediately what I’m saying?

When I was studying literature at Uni, I became fascinated with what I was learning about communication, culture and language. I know there is theory upon theory upon theory, and perhaps sometimes academics are in danger of disappearing up their own arses in search of the ‘truth’, whatever that might be. But so much of it rang true for me. I was taught the ‘postmodern’ idea that each of us is an individual shaped by our unique experiences, and that we therefore bring our past experiences to everything we see/hear/experience now. Remember what I said about the brain interpreting new data depending on context and past experience. So while we might all share lots of the same information about a given thing, and the closer we are in terms of age, upbringing, sex, socio-economic status, religious beliefs, education and so on, the closer that info will be, there will always, always be a layer of experience that is ours alone, that will influence and inform whatever we see/hear/experience, so in a sense, we can never truly share the exact same experience. It will be different and unique for each of us. If I haven’t said that very well (this is a post about the failure of language, after all!), I’ll try and explain. Take the word…

…tree. It’s a pretty simple word in the English language, only four letters, and we all know what it means. Don’t we? But if someone says ‘tree’ to me, will I see/feel/remember the same tree that you do? Tree to me is, obviously, a tall thing with bark and branches, it grows out of the ground, it has green leaves, it creates shade. Sure, we all know that. But tree is also…the tree of life, the tree of knowledge, the tree Adam and Eve are supposed to have eaten the fruit of. If you come from a Judeo-Christian western culture, you’re probably familiar with all that. It's the trees of the Amazon basin that are being cut down at a terrifying rate. The trees that breathe out the oxygen we all need to live. The family tree. Tree is also the thing that moves some to tears of joy (if you’ve read the poem by William Blake), the thing that breathes largely the luminous breeze (if you’ve read D.H. Lawrence’s poem). Tree is Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse mythology, that Odin hung from in return for knowledge. Tree is the link between upper, middle and underworld in some shamanic traditions. Tree is where the mad king Suibhne of Irish legend spends his days. Tree is the home of Robin Hood, and the Secret Seven (at least in one book!) Tree is the mighty oak of European legend, the Druid tree where the sacred Mistletoe could be found. The evergreen holly tree that promises the return of spring. The weeping willow overhanging the banks of rivers where who knows how many ‘murder ballads’ have set their scene. The Magic Faraway Tree, “all shall find the light at last, silver on the tree”, “tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree”, the old man of the apple tree who must be left the last apple or there’ll be no harvest next year. Ents. The majestic Karri Trees that grow down south, tall and utterly awe inspiring, like being in a green cathedral.  The beautiful jarrah trees, their warm red (and very hard) wood cut down and turned into blocks to pave roads in London (or so I believe) and are still being cut down.  I could go on...and on (!), but I won’t. I’m sure many of you will recognize some, most, even all these trees. These are just a few of the ones I can think of off the top of my head. And there are many, many more that I’ve never come across, from other cultures, places, times. But then, there are my trees. There is the liquid amber tree that grew in my grandmother’s backyard, shedding red gold all over the lawn and the rose garden every autumn, and the Jacaranda I used to climb, though I wasn’t supposed to. There were the red gums I climbed in the bush behind our house when I was a child, the pear tree and the greengage by the washing line. The big willow out the front of a house we rented for a while, with the swing on it.  Do you know these trees? Or the giant pine at the bottom of my friend’s garden, the trees down in Whistlepipe Gully that I gave names and called the Guardians? There is my oak tree too, only a memory now, where I was married and where I said goodbye to my little one. There is the tree in the courtyard here, that my girls climb and sit in to sing. The weeping mulberry that every year promises blue stained fingers and tongues and feet too, the baby oaks in their pots, children of my memory oak, waiting for the day we can find our place in the country and they can be planted out to grow tall. All this and more lies at the heart of the word ‘tree’ for me. All these meanings intersect and weave together in utterly unique ways.  Even mistakes; things misheard, misread or misunderstood, and then reheard, reread or re-understood correctly, add to these intertwining layers.  And each one of us carries this kind of vast store of layered meaning...for almost every word in our language. It’s why I love poetry, it’s what makes poetry happen. All those shared meanings…and yet it’s also what makes the poem I read just a bit different to the one you read, even when it’s the same poem. 

These layers upon layers of meaning, the ambiguity between message sent and message received are some of the things I love about language, that make it such a marvelous medium. The discrepancies, the double/triple/infinite meanings of individual words, the gradual sliding of definition between generations, these are what make poetry and song and story so powerful, so redolent with meanings built up over aeons. It can be a marvelous tool, a beautiful flawed thing. If you understand it is not transparent.

Language is, at best, a translucent medium. It is impossible for an idea, an experience, to be passed from one person to another entirely intact, without any loss or change in meaning. If we are similar people of similar backgrounds and beliefs, it will pass more fully. But there will always, always be a certain amount of ‘energy’ dissipated, or transformed into something else in this exchange. There will always be the core of meaning, the seed, that remains utterly incommunicable, that remains ours alone. A secret that can never be shared.