The One Place I Can't Go

Stitched the interfacing, finished assembling a heavy bookcase I purchased at Walmarts using incomprehensible instructions, started shampooing the living room carpet. In a bit of a better mood, even though I was back to digging stuff out of my toolbox(es): Phillips head screwdriver, straight edge screwdriver, hammer. Last time I used these I was searching for a soul mate by furnishing the bedroom, as I recall. Immediately had to put the whole soul mate search thing on hold while I tried to heal from the injuries inflicted by a fool in a jeep trying to get to a (wait for it): funeral, which he felt it necessary to drive to at the speed of light. Heh. And we can all see how well I healed from that.

Mr. Signpost again reminded me of the more familiar signs of the Summer Solstice: the Holly King taking over from the Oak King. There is actually a park celebration here in the Andovers today where they replace the Oak King banner with a Holly King banner and then tell the story of the Oak and Holly Kings. They also rent out kayaks and paddle boats on the pond, and I'm reminded of Greenwood Lake, and how badly I wanted to do that.

In any event, Damien's version is much better than being chased naked through a dark forest and bleeding out through my dead feet (see last entry). Although I'm not sure how much safer that version of searching for a soul mate is, compared to setting little pieces of paper on fire in my apartment without a fire extinguisher nearby.

Well, I got off my lazy butt and looked it up: Damien switched over to Twitter on May 7th - and rather calmly as a matter of fact (as you'll recall, I had assumed he did it a tad more dramatically, an entry or so ago) - which is about the time I was beginning to really suffer from the pain in my forehead and had stopped posting blog entries for a while.  And of course I missed it, being as miserable as I was at the time. I enjoyed reading his past tweets the same way I enjoyed reading his journal, and found a few other semi-coincidences between his tweets and my blog:

Me, on 9 October 2011
Back many, many years ago I had started a Day Book. There is (or was) a witchy little shop I loved, on East 9th Street in the Village, Enchantments, where I went through Wicca 101. Another reason why, when I read about Damien, I thought, "Thank goodness I lived in New York", where they tend not to arrest you and throw you on Death Row for going to Wicca 101 classes.

If you ever find the store, not only is it the best-smelling store on the planet, they have the coolest stone carving of the "Green Man" hanging from the wall in the back of their tiny garden; something you never expect to find in lower Manhattan.

Damien, on 27 May 2012
Today I paid a visit to Enchantments. It's one of the more well known magick and meditation supply stores in NYC. Herbs,incense,books,etc.

I don't consider this a genuine (and startling) "coincidence", as I did when I found him next to Sekhmet. THAT was so unexpected, I'm still struggling with that one. This, no. We're both Wicca; that we both visited Enchantments doesn't seem all that much of a coincidence. I just smiled when I read the entry.  The "coincidence", such as it was: the reason I re-opened the Daybook I'd started during those classes - and actually started in the backyard garden of Enchantments under the watchful eye of the Green Man or Horned God on the wall - was because of Damien's prison journal, which I'd found so inspirational.


Last coincidence I'll mention. Salem. I'd thought he had just visited Salem. Now after reading all of his tweets and slowly catching up on what he's been up to, I realize he's moving there.  Another gloomy reaction; the sonnet cycle went up another notch.


The One Place
Packing up and moving so I hear: Salem, Mass.
I know my way to Salem in the dark; trust me.
I’ve been there, I know the jogs in the road, I see
the signs, I remember the smells and the hourglass;
the grains of sand slipping through, how I was aghast
to realize in Salem, what a chance I’d been
given and how, in Salem, I’d let it slip free.
I hear her name and turn quick away, let her pass.

And yet. Salem is where I hear you choose to go,
"I belong there", you say. I’m sure you’re right. And yet,
I feel a surge of grief rising; I won’t forget
where you are as I learn at your feet all you know.
Right below my surface, slithering in protest:
the one place you are is the one place I can’t go.

20 June 2012
©Snake's Trail, 2012, all rights reserved

Damien Echols is moving 30 minutes away from me. The one place I can't go back to. Ever. I'm not sure why that bothered me so much - even if I loved the place as much as he did, I doubt I would have ever gone there just because he was there. But I do remember thinking it would be a fun place to go to on Halloween, though - once. No more. So ... an odd coincidence: he's moving to the one place I can't go to without ripping my heart and guts out all over the sidewalk. I don't know what that meant - such an almost deliberately odd coincidence, if you could call it that.

At least in New York I always knew he was safe. Moving to this state - I don't feel that way anymore, but I'm sure that has more to do with me than anything else.

Day #42: More on the Sekhmet-Damien Tag Team with the Summer Solstice and Eurydice Thrown In

Woke up this morning in a thoroughly bad mood.  I so didn't appreciate yesterday's tag-team suggestion that I stop torturing myself ... personally, I think it's my constitutional right to torture myself! ... so much so that I got myself thoroughly soused yesterday on   Bailey's Irish Cream, which I happened to have in the house.  Ergo, part of my problem is a bit of a Bailey's hangover.  And I'm not even Irish.

The other half of the bad mood is self-recrimination for making some sugar-free blueberry crumble yesterday.  I love blueberries.  Absolutely love them.  The crumble was mouth-wateringly delicious; one of those desserts Mom used to make in summer.  Should never have done that, though - I suffer like hell the next morning after eating even one blueberry and I ate a whole bunch of them.  So I started out this day in a thoroughly bad mood.

And yes, I KNOW the right to torture myself is not in the Constitution, leave me alone you anal-retentive OCD'ers preparing to set the record straight!  Geez.  Some people do not recognize creative license ... oh, never mind.

Took a deep breath, preparing to start over.

As a bit of an intro:  a sonnet cycle is defined as a group of sonnets having a single subject or controlling idea.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning composed one to her husband (remember "How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways."?)  That was only one sonnet in her sonnet cycle to her husband, published as "Sonnets from the Portuguese".  Petrarch wrote his to "Laura", Dante, Shakespeare - all composed sonnet cycles.

Not that it is any comparison to those, but mine had as its controlling idea the passage through intense grief via an obsession with passion in general and Piero Barone in particular - the obsession with Piero began with a brush with cancer, the death of a beloved pet, and reached its apogee when Jim died - all of it happening in a month's time.

I use the Italian or Petrarchan format:  14 lines with a volta (turn) at the 9th: abba-abba-cddc-dc, and the Alexandrine - 12 syllables per line.  It's ongoing.  When it ends, it ends.  I'm not there yet.  Thus far, there are 25 Petrarchan sonnets in this sonnet cycle.

The 25th entry in the sonnet cycle was this, and the inspiration easily recognizable if you read yesterday's blog entry:

The Sekhmet-Damien Tag Team

All I want is to crawl into his arms and whine;

whining is such an excellent way to express
a child-like frustration at being blocked access
to something longed-for, ached for, needed, while confined,
It is annoying, but so primal; such a sign
of desire for a basic thumb-sucking solace.
Piero, they’re picking on me!  See my distress;
make them go away; kiss me; hold me, I’ll be fine.

In his place I’m met by Damien and Sekhmet;

standing shoulder to shoulder; I can’t get past them;
I need to object, “I have the right to condemn
myself, I have the right!”  But this solid duet,
implacable, serene, will resolve this problem
in their own way, blocking me, solid as cement.

18 June 2012

©Snake's Trail, 2012, all rights reserved

 I may be still refusing to listen to the "tag team" (mainly because their POV makes no logical sense to me - see previous entry), but he at least has nudged me into getting back to my Daybook.  I still can't quite call it a "Book of Shadows" because I still blow things up and give myself itchy skin rashes with recipes I've tried thus far.  I could call it a "Grimoire", I suppose, but I was reading the Veritable Key of Solomon (Skinner/Rankine) before everything went to hell in a hand basket, and spent most of my time turning the book upside down and sideways and saying, "Huh?", trying unsuccessfully to make sense of the sketches and diagrams.  So apparently, not only am I a poor excuse for a witch (who flies into trees on her broomstick),  I'm in absolutely no danger of turning myself into a skilled alchemist either, as far as being able to make sense of grimoires goes.  Too bad, too:  I could really use the gold.

So, I flip open the Witch's Book of Days, which I haven't looked at in months, to June 18th.  I don't know why I haven't noticed this before:  the book was written with the assumption that witches are all women ... which would be of interest to, say, John Procter or Giles Corey, the former executed by hanging and the latter buried under rocks in Salem for being one.  A witch, I mean.  And that doesn't even touch on the guys who were gruesomely punished in my immediate lifetime, just for the crime of being witches.  Do we want to go into any more detail on that?  No, we do not.

But I digress.  More coincidences.  The entry for June 18th is about Eurydice.  Another "WTF?"
reaction.  She was the subject of Sonnet #13.  I slam the book closed again, beginning to become seriously freaked out by all these coincidences.

 Instead, I search for information on the Summer Solstice, a few days hence:

 " ... the festival celebrated on the Summer solstice in June. They [Polish/Slavic pagans] believe that it was a sacred holy day honoring the two most important elements: Fire and Water. The tradition is to burn fires at the end of the day and bathe in open waters at sunset, singing and dancing around 'pal' till midnight. At midnight, under the pretext of searching for "Fern flower the flower of the Fern," unmarried men and women run into the forest. Ladies with a crown of flowers on their head (Polish: wianek), a symbol of their unmarried state, go first, singing. Next they are followed by single men. If you find the "flower of the Fern" the wishes of life may be fulfilled. However, nobody found it so far, but they lived happily together. The lucky man would return with a flower ring on his head, with the now engaged lady."

 [Long pause]

 Okay, so it's a seriously dangerous holiday for gimps and klutzes:  roaring fires, skinny-dipping in dark, who-knows-what infested waters, and running blind in a forest chased by who knows what lunatic?  What kind of stupid holiday is this?  And am I still naked from the skinny-dipping?  What about tripping over tree roots in the dark?  I could slash the ^&%^$ out of my feet and totally bleed out, because I can't feel my feet and wouldn't know it!!!  (pant, pant, pant).  And another thing ...!  Yes, I know:  someone needs to seriously shut me up.

I'm off to bed.  Here's hoping I'll be in a much better mood in the morning.