CUMBRIA, A Holy Longing, Part II - Augurs, Omens, Visitations & Murmurations & A Blue Moon

I listened, motionless and still; And, as I
mounted up the hill, The music in my heart
I bore, Long after it was heard no more.
William Wordsworth

Cumbria, Lakes District - July 2015

Heart+Mountain+Sun - Lenormand Revolution, Cartomancy

Illumination - Bank Ground Farm, Coniston

June was a fluid, almost unnerving month of augurs, visitations and signs.  The Holy Longing was slowly unfolding and each time a starling arrived, or I met a serpent on the road, I realized the messages were stacking up, along with the challenge of how to best interpret them? I had contracted to do some tarot readings in July in the UK, but the Lakes District was not in the mix.  


My "Shining Prince" - Vital Energy, Elixir of Life,
Immortality                              

Viper on the road to Grassac

Le Serpent - Lenormand Revolution

I usually think about shedding an old skin when I see a
snake; illusions and limitations, rejuvenation - wisdom
and knowledge on one hand, treachery & deceit on another. 
Religious and mythical differences exist between snakes and serpents,
but I'm not going to get into that here.   

                             Photos Guido Mocafico:  www.guidomocafico.com

In Revelation, Serpent = Beast/Devil

In Genesis, Snake jumpstarts the Sin-mobile

 
In the Lenormand cartomancy tradition, it is the Queen of Clubs:

could be a female rival or, an older, intellectual wise woman with glasses

(like me!) or a detour, a misfortune, medical issue, betrayal, adultery.

You might just need to clean your pipes, or maybe things are coming

full circle.  "Surround" yourself with like-minded people, who will lift you 
up, or show you something you haven't dreamed of, like Diaz's  mural below.     

Mural - Alexis Diaz

I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.   Rainer Maria Rilke


Earlier in June, we had three baby starlings on our window sill, making a racket, whistling and screeching. Vocally talented they can mimic a whole range of calls, songs & sounds like car engines, and fragments of human speech, weaving them into soliloquies.  Mozart had a pet starling, purchased on May 27, 1784 from a pet store he frequented. He wrote down the melody whistled by the bird, which closely resembles his Piano Concerto in G Major, K. 453, the last movement. The bird did make a key change and later research studies showed that mimicry in Starlings is less frequent than improvisation.  When his little songbird died after three years, Mozart gave him a proper and solemn burial, commemorating the loss with a poem.

Starling waiting for his siblings

For some reason, these talented creatures have been much maligned, though prized in Netherlands, Spain and France as a food source.  I came across a recipe for Starling Pâté...eeeeeek!  Though it does have Armagnac and Juniper berries in it.

And it's locally produced

I don't know why, but it made me think of Clarice Starling from "Silence of the Lambs" - Chianti & fava beans.

Anthony Hopkins & Jodie Foster

Starling Nest

European Starling - Isn't he beautiful?

If you observe starlings closely, you can learn things about etiquette, social standing, family relationships. The intricacies of their vocalizations and nuances of communication, coupled with their clear, piercing expression, is a shining example of  where one might take one's voice in the world.  Their sensitivity to each other and how they work together as a unit in their airy world, reminds me of one of the interpretations of the Lenormand Oiseaux (Birds) card:  "Divine Thoughts".

Le Petit Lenormand, Dondorf Deck

"Only we pass everything by like an exchange of air.  And all is in accord, to keep us a secret, perhaps half out of shame and half out of some inexpressible hope." Duino Elegies, Second Elegy
                                                                  

I saw my first starling "murmuration", pre-roosting phenomenon, in a field in the Dordogne.  I didn't have a camera, but I doubt I could have captured the exquisite ballet at dusk.  I was swept away by the swooping and swirling; the sound like a wave or a small tornado and yet there was such a silence in the center of it.  And I remembered the poem, "the Holy Longing," and words teetering on a cliff's edge, waiting to be borne, 20 years ago in Ireland.  Such a stirring inside me; a holy listening.

Photo - Fayez Nureldine

Some say starlings are messengers from the spirit realms, signaling the end of one cycle and beginning of another. The Irish and Gaelic word for starling is "druid".  See how it all fits together!

Murmurations of Starlings - Marseille, France

"Recently scientists have been able to apply high-powered video analysis and computational modeling to flocks of starlings which has revealed patterns related more to physics than biology. They describe the flocks with equations of "critical transitions" - systems that are poised to be almost instantly and completely transformed, like metals becoming magnetized or liquid turning to gas.  Each starling in a flock is connected to every other.  When a flock turns in unison, it's a phase transition.  When a neighbor moves, so do you, and depending on the flock's size and speed, member's flight physiologies, the large scale pattern changes.  What is not known is how criticality is created and maintained." 

                                         From Wired.com, Brandon Keim (Science)

Bank Ground Farm, Coniston, Lakes District, July 2015

Bank Ground Farm - Coniston

Later that day I received a text from Julie at Many Rivers in Langley, Wash., letting me know that there was a space opening up in David Whyte's Lakes poetry tour - with one small hitch: it was about two weeks away.   It seemed impossible with all the commitments I had locked into place, here, there, everywhere.  Travel arrangements, I'm so bad at them, I'm like Lucille Ball on steroids...and I don't have any of those nice flying perks, mile high clubs or extra miles to get 3 more inches of leg room in steerage.   I started to check out trains, boats and planes...and waffled. 

The next day I was coming back from doing some readings for a large group at a private house near Paussac and St. Vivienne, & I stumbled upon a Neolithic Dolmen, the Dolmen de Peyrelevade.

Dolmen de Peyrelevade - Paussac et St. Vivienne

And since I had my two decks with me I decided to pull some cards and see if I could get some clarity about pending travels.  Oh, I forgot to mention, there was also a giant stone hand along the route.

Sarl Constant et Fils

And a Sanglier with a boot                                                

8 of Wands - Swiftness

Sarl Constant et Fils

The Tower - XVI

I got the Tower in both decks + Swiftness.  So the Fool (that's me) felt as if a lightning bolt had just opened up my inner eye and  flashed a "Change" sign in Neon. The Tower is a card of revelation and liberation - so no pfaffing about. 

Lenormand Revolution 7 card line reading

And as if all the augurs, signs, omens, murmurations etc. weren't enough, that night I had a "visitation" which cinched it all.  

The rest of the story will have to wait for the next installment because tonight I'm reading the cards at the Vertaillac night market, and I must get my dog and pony show on the way.  It is a Blue Moon a-risin' which should make for a very atmospheric evening. 

Yet to come: French air controller strike, trains cancelled due to canicule (heat wave), spending the night in Prayer room at Manchester Airport, a Celtic Pilgrimage, the stone circle at Keswick, tarot readings for Peregrinas & Peregrinos, Cards, Clouds, Coffins, Crosses, Contracts, Cows, Crows and Crisps, Celestial Music, Invisible World, Incantation, Imperium Light...stories, stories, stories, and much much more.

Strange fits of passion I have known - Wordsworth

Bank Ground Farm - Coniston, July 2015

Pilgrim

It became what it was because of us, in that sense loved.

It was the name of a time over there, a place

It was the simplest way to know one another,

It is as if space were touching itself through us.

It is more ominous than any oblivion to see the world as it is...

- Blue Hour, On Earth - C. Forché

In a mythical time, crow and weasel set out on a trip north. They learn the value of friendship, the necessity of giving thanks, and a respect for the land.

Remember on this one thing, said Badger. The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memories. This is how people care for themselves.  - Barry Lopez, Crow & Weasel

Cumbria - Lakes District, July 2015

Slate Heart found by Kate on the Mountain

THE HOLY LONGING Part I - A Diary of Beauty & Bella da Morire

All roads start from the body and lead back to it.

The Body is the Road - Edmond Jabès, Egyptian Poet   
 

Chateau de la  Mercerie, Magnac-Lavalette  - The stage before arrival of  French-Irish band, Dagan - May 2015

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person or else keep silent,

because the mass man will mock it right away.

I praise what is truly alive,

what longs to be burned to death. 

In the calm water of love-nights,

where you were begotten, where you have begotten.

a strange feeling comes over you,

when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,

and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter.

Now, arriving in magic, flying,

and finally, insane for the light,

you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow,

you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.  

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated from the Germany by Robert Bly

Invocation - Dagan

Italian Tile - Chateau de la Mercerie

Often, I feel like a "troubled guest" upon this earth.  Oh, what to do, what to do? Another cappuccino? glass of wine? Episode of  "House of Cards?"  In French, the word for guest is invité, an endearing word, because it means to be invited.  We are not merely hungry guests or ghosts upon this earth. We received an invitation, which we accepted.  We belong here, for awhile. 

The gorgeous poet, Seamus Heaney said, (paraphrasing), we dwell in the fantasy world as well as the "get-up and at "em" day to day, and if we dwell too much in either one, it's not good.  My antidote:  A Diary of Beauty, wherever you happen upon it.  And beauty is on offer everywhere; cracked and spider-webbed statues, an old dog in the sun, hay bales, wheat fields, a tangle of poppies, cows and cascading roses, or pawing through Leondard da Vinci's Notebooks.  Among his lists of drawings, between Gian Francesco Borso and some completed nude figures, lies several old women's throats.

If only Nora Ephron had seen those drawings, she wouldn't have had to write a whole book about her crinkling neck.  But I'm glad she did.  She made us laugh over and over about our human foibles and especially the vanties of women.  We miss you Nora, your brazen humor and bedazzling brain.

"...the amount of maintenance involving hair is genuinely overwhelming.  Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death."
  ― Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Found on blessedwildapplegirl.Tumblr.com

This Algerian woman doesn't look worried about her neck.  During the late 50's and 60's, many Algerian women tattooed their faces and necks (during the War of Independence) to appear unattractive and thus avoid rape by French soldiers.  How times have changed - as far as tattoos are concerned. 

Bodnant Gardens, Wales - Sphinx-like Statue

 

Fountain Head, Chateau de la Rochefoucauld

 

Statue at Canal Terrace, Bodnant Gardens, Wales

 

 DUINO ELEGIES 

Ranier Maria Rilke

FIRST ELEGY

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders?

and what if one of them would suddenly take me to his heart:

I would fade away in his stronger presence. Because beauty is

nothing else but the beginning of terror, which we are just able

to bear, and we are stunned by it because it so serenely disdains to

destroy us. Each Angel is terrifying... 

Angel, Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris

Swimming Angel - Palazzo Pitti, Florence Italy

Bandes Dessinées Angel, side of building - Angouleme, France

"...Angels (they say) often do not know, whether they are moving among the living or the dead.  The never-ending torrent relentlessly tosses all epochs through both realms forever, and drowns out their voices in both."  First Elegy

Many many moons ago, when I lived in New York, I would wander into the Metropolitan Museum - the wing where they house the collection of Egyptian artifacts. I would sit amongst the Mummies & Daddies (Sarcophagi) for long afternoons.  I know it sounds morbid, but it wasn't.  It was a cool, marble home away from home. It was the detailed gems that often caught my attention, e.g., a small, ivory comb decorated with rows of wild animals.  Embarrassed to admit I had been watching the "Mummy" movies, the originals with Lon Chaney, Jr. (also Wolfman) and Boris Karloff, followed by

the Hammer Studio Horror series with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.  I never really became addicted to them as I did to Frankenstein and Count Dracula, but they were just spooky enough to make the heart race, and to imagine that there was an encased mummy a few feet from where I was sitting.  I kept waiting for a scratching or scraping sound from the false lid: the mummy board.  It's fun to scare yourself sometimes.   

The language of Ancient Egypt didn't have vowels.  It was called Kmt.  An aside:  for some odd reason, I got it in my head that the Austrian, Gustav Klimt, was a throwback from Egyptian times?! But, it may not be so farfetched, as Klimt used Greek & Egyptian motifs in many of his paintings and friezes.

Pallas Athene - Vienna, 1898

His image of Pallas Athena, derived from the classical forms, is one of his most compelling, with the emphasis on her divinity - a Goddess with masculine powers - as opposed to the sexuality of his Nuda Veritas.  The desire for power strongly connected to sexual desire.

The inscription on top of  Nuda:  If you can't please many with your deeds and your art, please only few.  To please many is bad.  Schiller

Klimt - Nuda Veritas, 1899

The Greeks called the people from Kmt, Aegyptos, their culture, "Kemetic".  They didn't believe in death, but rather that we were always coming back and forth from the unknown to the actual.  And the translation of the ancient, funerary Egyptian Papyrus, commonly known as, "The Book of the Dead" is more accurately translated:  "Book of Coming Forth by Day".  Hey, you don't know whether you're coming or going.   That's a line from Lil' Wayne song, featuring Bruno Mars. 

I do digress.  Back to my "Diary of Beauty."
                                                                      

Chateau de Charras - May, 2015

"...Yes, the Spring-time needed you for sure. Many stars waited for you, so that you'd notice them.  A wave from the past swelled up for you, or, as you passed by an open window, a violin presented itself to you."  First Elegy

PIED BEAUTY

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Village of Charras, Wood Sculpture

 Glory be to God for dappled things –

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                Praise him.

  

Hay Bales - Grassac

Guiness at Le Pontilou

The Siesta - Vincent Van Gogh

"...And distant places give us refuge in territories where our own histories aren't so deeply entrenched, and we can imagine other stories, other selves, just drink up quiet and respite...the bigness of the world is redemption..."  Rebecca Solnit from, The Faraway, Nearby

Beauty gives me a sense of belonging, not to any particular group or religion, or even to family and friends, but to life itself. The poet, Robert Haas, said "to learn not to be a stranger is the burden of the Duino Elegies."  What makes me feel like I belong here is seeing laundry drying in the sun; or sharing a moment of mutual joy with the cashier from Grand Frais over an extravagant head of Italian lettuce and a tomato.

In Beauty and the Soul, Piero Ferruci describes "Bella da morire - Beautiful to die for.  A feeling we have when we come face-to-face with beauty, we feel ready to die, as though we have now seen and felt all that is worth seeing and feeling.  We perceive beauty because we are free from worry and regret, or discontent.  We feel so complete and fulfilled, happy almost beyond capacity, we could die at that moment.  It springs from an intense love of life and a state of total surrender, which, by one of the strange paradoxes of beauty, allow us, as we say in Italy, to exclaim:  'Bella da morire'."

La Quinta at La Grande Metairie

I had a true bella da morire experience long ago, hiking in the Ventana Wilderness with my girlfriend.  We became lost for over three days, bushwacking thru brambles and bushes, running out of water in 100 degree temps. At twilight on the fourth night  (with all hope of rescue gone) a couple of moist swallows left, (shades of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"), I felt a sense of peace and quiet ecstasy settle on me as the warm breezes danced around the Madrones.  I'm ready to die, I told my friend.  I hasten to add, she was not ready to join me!  In the end, we found water and I shed another skin. I'm glad I didn't die then, there was so much more I would have missed. 

And now it's time for another adventure in shedding skins - The Chariot is waiting, the Wheel of Fortune is Spinning and the Karmic Key of Destiny is at hand.   Once the Chariot starts moving there is no turning back.  It's my Hermit year & Pallas Athena is at my side, along with a whole cast of guides and wonderful characters. I'm blessed with many Anam Caras (soul friends) and wise owls.

I'm vanishing into pencil dust & ink smudged notebooks - "of all the paths you take in life make sure some of them are dirt." Unknown

"I'm insane for the light"

A poem my brother, Mark, wrote for me; I will keep it close at hand.  

Three Things

The Wind, the Water and the

Moon.

Cards in the deck of

Infinity.

You, crooked smile, subtle

hands, wise, illuminated, and

windblown.

Rain visits you, like

tears, like a

baptism.

But it is always the

Moon that reminds me of

you.

Silver when it wishes and

amber and

yellow and even

blue.

You turn the night into

kindness.

You bring the

tides home and send them

out again to visit the

oceans. You consummate the

air.

Moon. Water.

Wind.

Light. Truth.

Love.

These are the cards that I see in your

eyes. In your

touch. In your

smile.

Stone head in wall at La Grande Metairie

Poetry makes nothing happen.  It survives in the valley of its saying.

W.H. Auden

Tree Love - Jaume Plensa - Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Beauty is the true Priestess of individuation - John O' Donohue, Irish Poet

To be continued in:   "The Holy Longing in Cumbria - Part II  - Divine Thoughts & Augurs, Omens, Murmurations" coming soon.  I'm taking a "poetry dream-ladder to God." 

"Something moves without moving"  - Lazaris