Entering Phantoms By Firelight

We visited Old Sturbridge Village for the Phantoms By Firelight event. It was a gorgeous night outdoors as we gathered with many others to walk throughout the Village. Old Sturbridge Village is a recreated 1830’s rural New England town. I have been coming to this museum since I was a child. It has been here for 75 years now. As it is not far from my home, I have visited here many times during all seasons over all these years. I often took my young daughter her to museum classes where we would spend the day living as people in the 1830’s did. Learning about daily life and participating a bit in the experience of OSV is such fun if you are interested in history. More recently there has been an effort to create a more inclusive picture of history in the US that includes Black and Indigenous People’s history and exhibits.

The daily home life of people of this time period is a draw for me as it portrays the simple lifeways of people living in a rural village at this time. The pursuits of gardening, home keeping, farming, weaving, basketry, hand sewing, herbalism, crafts are all shared and discussed here. Often there are workshops to attend to learn and study more.

Tonight our visit was a bit different. OSV has a Phantoms by Firelight event throughout October that includes an entertaining version of spooky.

Cyrkus Vampyr

Cyrkus Vampyr was the troupe that came to entertain us. It was a magical experience with little ones and adults tromping about in costumes to celebrate the night.

Hair Mourning Weaving

Inside this house was a woman weaving and creating mourning pieces out of hair.

Here we talked to the shop keeper about the goods available during the time. The gorgeous baskets above are all handmade. People back then would do side projects to try to earn money or trade goods with others to fill in with things that they needed. The shop keeper said - try not to think of things as - something costs this much money. Often things were traded to acquire what was needed. It is different than today where we just spend our money on what it is needed. You might have a couple of baskets - not many. Somehow it seems if we as a culture could embrace slowly made, handmade - we might begin to appreciate having beautiful, long lasting items - just fewer - in our home. Instead of the desire to want more. When I visit Sturbridge Village - this living picture always stays with me in the days afterward.

Bonfire On The Green

Story by firelight. This is something that people just naturally gravitate to. Still - we draw up to the fire. The warmth of a fire and good company seems to be something we naturally seek together. We as humans have been telling stories for as long as we have been on earth.

Coffin Making In The Woodshop

Coffin making by a resident woodworker. This man is 6 foot four! He said that perhaps this would be his coffin that he was making. They make a couple of coffins each year in the village. Long ago coffins were made individually for a person when they died. A simple coffin shown here that is completely handmade would have cost about 1 dollar. That would have been a couple of full days wages. The How Many Nails jar was a traveling game that people could participate in the village for the event. Oh, the scent of wood is one of my all time favorites!

Candlelight

Lamplight

Handmade Lantern

It was a lovely night. Meteor showers were up above in the clear night - just after nightfall which isn’t commonplace for meteor viewing. The village isn’t typically open in the night time so it was special to be able to walk around in a quiet place in the dark - only lit mostly by candlelight in hand made tin lanterns. The shadows and squeals were a moving wonderland of color and dream like pictures. A home diary of perhaps a bit of what the world looked like in one corner of the world in rural New England for white settlers in the 1800’s.

Strength - Herbcrafters Tarot

Today is my daughter, Emma’s birthday. October 8. Eight also begins with E. Today I drew the card 8 - Strength - Garlic from The Herbcrafter’s Tarot. E is a good letter for me. This day - long ago is when I became a mother. Some of you may have taken this wide ranging journey. It is filled with many places to discover yourself and perhaps lose yourself at times. The distance of years and time from my being born a mother day - are long in the past. However, it is still ever possible to be right back there in that moment when your life was one way - suddenly it is another way. On the anniversary of her being born and me becoming - I always find a soft reflection going on and a looking back. Where have we travelled together? What have we learned? Where will we go next? What sort of mother have I embodied? A long journey of life with another human being. I know I have learned much.

Mothering is a path and a choice that some of us take. Choosing not to take this path or having the choice made for you is a deep and meaningful pathway as well. Please know I support all decisions in the realm of mothering. I say mothering, as that is a part of who I am. I can only know what I have experienced first hand.

“I’m a worker, and I’m a mother, and all the other stuff is just semantics.”

— Patti Smith

It is true that I am a mother. It seems hard to believe that all the other stuff is just semantics - and it turns out this is true. As the years go by I develop and grow. Curiosity carries me forward and allows the moments of thinking and creative great fun. Mother is there with me always. Carrying one’s strength in this is necessary. Separation of identity requires this strength and constant fortitude. However, through it all - I am a mother. It is the thing that keeps me awake, asks me to research, and creates a flexibility to ride waves of emotion that might be sudden or unasked for. It also brings me wonderful joy and friendship. The complexity of a long and deep relationship with my daughter is a gift I treasure. I feel many deep and numerous blessings for which I am grateful.

On this day - I am ever grateful to be with my daughter in this lifetime as her mother. Happy Birthday to my Emma! May the stars follow you with blessed kindness. May the years always be good to you. May your heart be full of love. May you always have a book nearby! May the forest always welcome you…

Emma at Ocean House in Rhode Island

Never Far From A Book

Us - Sunken Garden Poetry Festival (what are we talking about?!)

Devotion by Patti Smith

A gift from my husband on the anniversary day of my becoming a mother.

Things are slow moving. There is a pencil stub in my pocket.
What is the task? To compose a work that communicates on several levels, as in a parable, devoid of the stain of cleverness.
What is the dream? To write something fine, that would be better than I am, and that would justify my trials and indiscretions. To offer proof, through a scramble of words, that God exists.
Why do I write? My finger, as a stylus, traces the question in the blank air. A familiar riddle posed since youth, withdrawing from play, comrades and the valley of love, girded with words, a beat outside.
Why do we write? A chorus erupts.
Because we simply cannot live.
~Excerpt from Devotion by Patti Smith

I am here to talk with you about the mothering journey if you find yourself exploring this map!

Witches Wisdom Tarot

Eclipse

It is 5:55 am - drizzle drips down window sash -
Water element - rivulets direct themselves nowhere -
Individual droplets merge - swell into full -
Carried to Earth -soaking seeds for future flowers
Bouquet bounty arrives in droplets of water -

Elemental energy - wisdom winding around staff of wisdom -
Desert of mind - nourished by moisture -
Paired knowledge - internal - external - centered
Colored landscape - climb into a cavern of patchwork
Learn - Earthways invite apprenticeship - trusted bedrock

All that stands with you - family of ancestors - medicine
Examined dreams tell stories - catch glimpses in mirrored seeking -
Strength - despite unknown - delay in knowledge -
Contemplation held in flesh - wrapped in sinewed understanding -
Book of Leaves - antidote to over reach - rational wrecked

Fire - autumnal breach - wings flighted messengers held -
Painted trees - orange and gold - camouflage our retreat
Preparation is remedy - aloft in discovery - ribbon of connection -
Tendrils delicate in patterned nuance - message to the gods ever listened to -
Hieroglyph hearts - etched rhythm in flighted work toward - activate

Grizzly - Owl - Hare - community of ancient knowledge - in blood extant
Strands of helix - traverse wide transition - congregation expanse -
Element eclipse shadows - shuttered views framed in ignorance -
Long ago time - present timed story - cloaks discovered knowledge -
Individual claimed - community gathers - eclipsed.

~Linden of The Bone Lines

Globe Thistle October 5, 2023

I listened to an interesting podcast over on Ctrl Alt Delete hosted by Emma Gannon with Fiona Arrigo . This series of interviews is around her latest book, The Success Myth. I very much enjoyed listening to Fiona speak as an elder in the community. While there were many good points made in the interview - one that stood out to me was the individual vs. the collective community as a way of thinking. It is not a new idea to me - and - it is good that these ideas are making it onto larger platforms.

This globe thistle standing all on its own in the garden was a surprise to find in among the autumn weeds that need to be cleaned up. The bright blue stand-out color is one of the unmistaken ones in the garden. Standing back a bit - there were the rest of them all together in a globe thistle community. It was such a metaphor after listening to the podcast earlier. Standing on our own in the world in our individual lives can be trying. How do we figure things out when we are alone, without another to help us? Help us see ourselves. Help us in new ways of thinking and being.

I am the first one to embrace being alone. It is in alone time that I replenish and find exploration as a natural state of being. My mind can wander down pathways not possible in the midst of other people. I discover who I am often when I am by myself - exploring, writing, reading, listening, tending. I don’t think people have the opportunity to be alone enough. It takes some practice in getting comfortable in this place. Sometimes, this state is suddenly forced upon us without preparation or practice earlier in our lives. It seems to me - a good practice to learn about. There will be a day when suddenly - without invitation we may find our selves with more alone time than we want for a variety of reasons. This might include, illness, accident, loss of a job, loss of friends, moving location, depression and yes of course living in the grief of a death.

In learning to know ourselves when we are alone - when a time of loneliness comes upon us - we are not as devastated perhaps. It’s a practice to develop and keep honed in our toolbox of kind ways to be toward our ever growing selves. We are all really alone with ourselves as we walk through the world. Embracing our own company is a life long gift to ourselves and each other. We learn to be able to stand in who we are with confidence. We find more of who we are with another when we know ourselves fully.

Alone is not the same as lonely. If we do not cultivate and navigate our own internal selves in our times of being alone - too much alone can develop into an ache and a loneliness. This globe thistle just seems to represent this so clearly to me. The close up of all the spikey tendrils stand at attention - almost like antennae - reaching toward another. A softer gaze sees the group appear a bit softer and supported. Is easy to find metaphor in nature for what is pressing in at any moment.

Back to the podcast mentioned earlier. Fiona spoke about our development in the culture as individual. It is baked into all of our western systems of course. Starting from a very young age our educational system puts us on a treadmill of individual striving. This is anti-life. A collective agreement has been reached among us - to continue this same pattern of living and learning. With that comes an entire life of striving and reaching and pushing. Until one day we come to a point in wondering - who am I now? If we work at this effort of learning to be with ourselves - a comfort comes. The striving for more of - what - may begin to loosen it’s hold. I often think of how these skills are not taught to young people. I am certain it is because in order to have this awareness to pass on knowledge - we must first know about it ourselves. Can we really ever teach what we ourselves do not know?

““I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Globe Thistle In My Autumn Garden

We move now to the idea of individual versus community. The individual is ultimately alone and even perhaps lonely. In western standard culture it is individuality that suffuses all that is around us. We must work hard at not centering ourselves, our own ideas, our blind faith in following things unquestioned. Instead, what is needed now is the hope of community. Focus on what we can do together. What can we offer another human - is really the way forward in this trying time of individualism. As it becomes more challenging to take care of ourselves in changing times - we will need the help of each other to sustain us. What are small ways that we can begin to participate in a more collective culture? What is needed now?

I think when I reflect upon things that are seriously changing - this includes food, housing needs, lack of water, safety in health and environment. All of these are basic needs. The challenges are so large that one can feel overwhelmed - discouraged. The local farmers in my area of New England this year had devastating crop interruptions and failures. Some of them are now facing huge financial loss. How do we help our local farmers who help us eat simple nutritious food each year? We can kick in money, help clean up fields, offer help in ways that they each need - so that these farms and farmers don’t have to fold. Small steps on the way to averting larger and larger disasters each year. We can’t do these things individually. We need all of us working together to find solutions to big problems.

The problems seem more manageable when we work together. Each day a little bit of hope toward what is concerning us the most - we throw ourselves behind the efforts that are needed. Settling can begin to feel like the only option available to us. If we find things that we care about and move a bit toward that in some doable way - a momentum of caring starts to build. Our imaginations begin to expand with what we can envision to be possible. That is exciting! Our dreams build the scaffolding of the future way of living and make it more possible. It can be rough to face the colossal failure of systemic problems in western culture. The stepping toward what we are capable of offering together can bring an optimism to our thinking. Each idea builds on the next. What we can do is try in the ways that are meaningful to each of us.

It is not for each of us to carry the burdens of a world alone. It might be for us to find something positive to create and offer up to a world that is full of hurting. The acts of service and kindness we can bring to our community is a healing balm laid over a wounding that we can each feel in some way. A great service we can offer to one another is the ability to listen. It only takes an effort in attention. It costs nothing monetarily. It does provide rich return to each of us that find some solace and kindness in having been attended to. Even for just a moment. Isn’t that how each movement really begins? Just one small movement that then ripples out to create wider and wider concentric circles - as each of us breathes in and breathes out. A paper lantern lit and released into the sky - hovering above us - small candle flame burning individually - then, it rises higher up into the sky - a sky filled with a dome of stars - catching that one small light into its wide expanse. We are in awe and wonder.

“In the history of the collective as in the history of the individual, everything depends on the development of consciousness.”

— Carl Jung

apple boxes poverty land orchards

Long ago I worked at this orchard with a good friend that I had met at weaving school. That is a story for another day. These boxes! We filled so many of these apple boxes after full days picking and hauling and transporting in a tractor. Often we worked after being out at music late at night, contradancing, or breaking down in my old VW Beetle.

Soul Midwife

Found beside zucchini - pickles in a crock just inside the kitchen door
Friendship forming - as distraction of loves held us captured
Waking each day - me upstairs, you downstairs
The frost coming closer each day

Looking out over Poverty Lane - white old farmhouse surrounded by apples
The showers were ice cold - warmth was in the working
In the orchard - in the barns - next to the woodstove
Stacking wood - throwing firewood - scar on my finger is a wedding ring

Pulling on woolen socks - handknit hats - those confining boots - work
Later on stomping in boots - contra dancing late into the night on Halloween
Our food of choice was zucchini bread - pickles in the crock
Scooping off surface mold - a daily ritual

Poverty Lane Weavers - my fathers contribution of 300$ - yours from New Jersey
You kept weaving even after I had moved on - soul midwifing in my heart
Unexpected cars rolling backward down the driveway -
Migraines laying waste to another day of work - are you okay in there

Love snuck in through all the cracks - is it love at that age or lust
Walks in the woods with one too many - Tom Wessels before he was a nature teacher
Building his house - carved from extra curricular activities
Rock climbs - car rides - oatmeal so heavy you could plaster walls with it

Long talks into the night - a shaker table handmade by a local woodworker
Barn building - over the next ridge - hauling more than I could handle
Looking back - scent of apples in boxes brings me presently there
It occurs to me - looking back is cavernous - walking forward

~Linden of The Bone Lines

Poverty Land Orchards

The above images are from Poverty Land Orchard - a place I worked a very long time ago.

Barefoot Girl With Cat Florence Harrison

““There are two beings in a door; a door awakens in us a two-way dream, that is doubly symbolical.””

— Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space.

Emma Florence Harrison (1877-1955) was an artist from Australia. I see a young girl coming through a doorway with her little cat beside her. Doorway into story is a rich life to carry within. Doorways are a powerful threshold symbol. We are entering or leaving. A doorway closed is something we anticipate entering or contemplate - what is behind the door. Often we take for granted coming and going through these threshold moments. A doorway is an opportunity to pause. What are we entering - What are we leaving - What are we anticipating? We have entered a new place. Now we leave something of ourselves behind. Entering - we bring who we are in to the space.

“The threshold is the place of expectation”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. This is a densely lyrical - almost magical book on our experience of architecture. I did a three study on this concept explored in Bachelard’s book, The Poetics of Space, in a three year Biography Work Training. Home - Dwelling - Poetics. I hope to share more here about how we live in our home places and home ways.