Legend of the Seeker

My sister, cousin and I have a new parody up. Check it out!

Check it out on YouTube!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

 

Inspiration

I must away into the woods alone to let my thoughts settle like resting butterflies. I am absorbed into the songs of birds and the humming of insects, carried away on the whisper of the breeze. My mind uncoils and rests, listening. Listening. And then it comes when I am delighted by the simple pleasure of the sun on my skin, the leaves rustling over my head, the largeness of the mountain beside me. It comes when I strip away shields and welcome every hope, every impulse and delight in the little girl I am inside. The girl who loves moonlight and faerie dances and horse manes. The girl who is never afraid to express her love of all things.

It is then, when I am quiet and dissolved into the life around me, that it comes on tickling, tantalizing wings: unbridled inspiration.

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Mother’s Day

This is the card I painted for my momma on Mother’s Day. The garden is planted and growing. The air near it already smells of herbs. The wild grasses are all dry. Summer is fast approaching!

A faerie dance!

Happy Birthday, Nick!

This weekend, the little boy I nannied (also my neighbor), Nick, turned 10. I began caring for him when he was 18 months, so you can imagine how close I feel to the beautiful little boy. I had it all planned out. On his birthday, he would go on a treasure hunt around our properties to find lost “pirate gold” (lollipops). Then he would open his presents from me, including a hand-painted card. After that, we would watch the movie we had filmed a few days prior. I wrote all these tasks onto a to-do list, and on Saturday, I got to work.

I edited the movie, which took most of the day with my retarded software, then I painted the card and wrapped his gifts. I decided to save the treasure hunt for the next day so that the hiding spots would be fresh in my mind. After fixing a few glitches on the DVD of our movie, The Couch Potato Olympics, my sister looked at the calendar and gasped. It was 11pm at night, and we realized that THAT day was his birthday.

I had spent all day trying to get ready to make his first double-digit birthday special, then I missed it because I was off by a day!

The card I painted — set sail to follow your dreams!

The next day, while I was waiting for Nick to come home from a friend’s house so that he could go on his treasure hunt, we took the dogs for a walk. It was Beltane (May Day) and the air was strangely charged. On Beltane, the spirits of the Otherworld are near, like on Halloween (Samhain). Comanche pounced on a fawn almost as soon as we set out, and my sister had to grab the baby deer, and then the dog, to prevent a murder. Chee then dragged her into a pond, so we cut our walk short and headed home.

Once home, a coyote strolled right up to my brother while he was tacking up our horse Houdini. They usually aren’t so bold. Comanche helped him chase it off, then wandered off and ate what sounded like baby rabbits or a rat. Then Nick’s dog Oreo followed him down to our house and wandered around, which is something she usually never does. All the animals we encountered were behaving oddly.

After the treasure hunt, we headed up to my neighbor’s house to watch The Couch Potato Olympics. Just as we were pushing play, Nick’s mom strolled over and casually said, “You know Osama bin Laden? He’s dead.”

Talk about a crazy day where oddity and change were literally in the air!

Beltane is about cleansing to ready for summer, so I suppose a mass murderer being stripped of power was a fitting end!

New Painting

And here I thought I could get into the habit of writing a blog post a day. Oh well!

I tried my hand at painting a cover my second book, Sing Over the Bones. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a blotchy mess. I’m glad I saved the expensive art paper for my second try! I love the freedom of watercolors, but I also hate how one tiny thing can mess everything up. Like the face of the Isabel — just as I was touching the brush to paper for her features, a drop of water slid down the brush and onto the tip. So now she looks mentally challenged.

I still love the idea of this scene, though, and am rather proud of how the ship in the background turned out. Ironic given that I had to hold my breath while painting something so small!

The trials of expressing artistic inspiration are always a challenge, and my man Percy Shelley sums it up well in his Defence of Poetry.

“[Inspiration] is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own, but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sand which paves it.” 

Dissolving

It’s been almost a year since I graduated with my MFA from SJSU. I’ve been in school since I was two, so this year has been one of adjustments, to be sure. But the biggest adjustment has been in my head. Sometime ago I realized that I no longer thought of time in terms of months, semesters, seasons… but instead in terms of goals, events and achievements.

I also realized that outside of the classroom, I don’t always know who I am. I am confident in my field(s), but since I have been in school so long (and dedicated to my studies and craft), I have missed out on many of the common experiences and mistakes of young people. I’m twenty-seven now, but feel like I’m living my twenties backwards. Most people hunt out new experiences in the younger half of this decade, while I’m doing it in the older half!

That isn’t to say that I’ve ever turned my back on new experiences, but now that I lack the structure and demands of curriculum, I have more opportunities to explore. And explore I am! Last September, I packed up and hopped on a plane to temporarily live with a girl I had only spoken to once on the phone. I trusted the connection I felt with her, and was rewarded with a wonderful friendship because of it. We made a film with a crew that was a cast of characters in their own right, and while there were several tense moments where I regretted trusting my script and safety in the hands of an inexperienced crew, the resulting life lessons were worth it. When I tell the story of the flawed, dramatic production to friends, they say “You shouldn’t have trusted that producer!” I know that now, but I don’t regret it. Not in the least. And it hasn’t dimmed my ability to trust others who come along with promises. That could be dangerous on my part, but while my integrity is always solid, my analysis of people is fleeting, at best.

I learn about myself through others. I’m no good at sitting down and defining “this is who I am.” And I’ve developed a bizarre, nebulous consciousness of late. Maybe it’s because I’ve been visited by death and tragedy far too many times in this past year, and those experiences have shred the veils of order and reason in my world. But when I am with other people and hearing their thoughts, my own mind is relatively quiet, and I listen and absorb all they have to offer. I dissolve into their minds and see the world through their eyes. In part, this is a game — a character study. But it is also largely because I now wit hold judgment (probably too much at times) because I strongly feel, “What the heck do I know? Who am I to say that this person’s choices are correct?” I lose myself in others. I know this is a risk many actors run, but I don’t know how to stop it.

Slowly but surely, I am defining my own characteristics through others. It’s as if all the walls of my mind have fallen away and I am slowly rebuilding their structure. They will shift and change and probably never become fortified, but hey, at least it’s a start!

Has anyone else gone through a time when they felt like a leaf in the wind? Embarking on new opportunities when they arrive, sometimes for the mere sake of trying everything once? Am I too much of a Romantic?

The Celts

Last weekend, I attended a talk by the former Chieftain of the Loch Lomond Celtic Society on surnames. Maybe this is old information/widely known to genealogists and anthropologists, but it was all new to me, and it helped my existence make more sense, so I thought I’d share it!

Sometime around 1600 BCE, the Celtic peoples left what is modern Tibet (where white mummies from this era are being excavated) due to unknown disruption. No one gets up and moves in those numbers for no reason. It was global warming, cooling, drought, famine, war etc. The Egyptians recorded that a mass of our people walked by. The odd thing is, when the Celts poured into Europe, they knew where they were going and made a beeline for Ireland.

Europe. 1600 BCE

The first Celts to arrive in what is now the British Isles were the Picts. The Romans named them Picts because they went to war decorated with blue painting (“pictures”) of animals on their bodies. The term “Celt” includes the Picts, but when Picts is used alone, it’s understood that we’re talking about the earliest wave of Celts. The only people who lived in Ireland at the time the Picts arrived were the Jutes from modern day Denmark. It is believed that the Jutes occupied the northern parts of Ireland and Scotland in the winter then migrated back to their mainland in the summer. The Irish myth of the Tuatha de Danaan comes from the contact between these early peoples.

The migration happened over several generations, but it is documented that in one single generation, a particular group of Celtic people crossed Europe to Ireland then came all the way back to the Caspian Sea. Our speaker made an effort to point out the fact that there must’ve been similar peoples living along the path the Celts took, or else they never would’ve made it. To go that far, you’d have to be able to speak to the locals and have enough in common with them to share their shelter and food for a brief time.

The Picts first settled in Ireland then moved up to Scotland where their descendants still dwell. The Romans called this region “Caledonia.” The Picts also settled in northern Germany. The Romans, for all the prowess of their military, could never defeat the Picts. When they first came to Britain, the Romans believed Caledonia (Scotland) to be uninhabited. They were shocked when their legions kept running into pockets of fierce warriors. Once they realized there was an entire population of warriors to the north, they gave up. Emperor Hadrian built a massive wall to keep the Picts along what is now the modern Scottish-English border. Remnants of Hadrian’s Wall can be visited today. The Romans also built a massive wall across northern Germany to keep the Picts out.

If you don’t know why they had to keep the Picts out… see The Eagle. (In this trailer, the Picts show up at 1:45)

But the locals south of the wall in Britain weren’t very tame, either. The Romans wound up bribing the Britons to keep them from raiding their supply lines. They paid the Britons more in bribes to placate them than they paid in all the bribe money across the Empire combined.

There is a story of a Roman legion that went hungry. Their supplies did not arrive on time, so they did what any occupying military forces would do – raid the locals. This was in northern Germany, and the Celts there were mostly farmers. The Romans suited up in their armor and approached the farming village on boats on the river. Romans were not trained in how to fight in the water. When the legion arrived, the farmers attacked and quickly discovered that all they had to do was flip the boats and push the Romans over and their armor would drown them. A group of farmers killed 60% of the legion. The other 40% starved to death.

Now, some of the Celts didn’t head west right away. A pocket of them, either part of the Scythians or very similar, hung out in the Caucasus Mountains and found work as mercenaries. They were led by two brothers. One of the brothers began changing the language so much that it is now named after him: Gaelic. This band of mercenaries eventually headed to Ireland, but before they did, they spent their time in the mountains, raiding and murdering when the occasion called for it. Coincidentally, this was the same time period that Moses and his people wandered the desert for 40 years searching for the “promised land.” They weren’t searching. They were hiding. From the Celtic and Scythian mercenaries. That puts a new spin on the Bible, eh?

The Irish were the first to use surnames. “Mac” means “son of” and “O” means “grandson of.” Let’s say your name is John. In the old days, you would be John, your son would be MacJohn, and your grandson would be O’John. Once you died, your son would drop the Mac and just be John, and your grandson would become MacJohn. This was confusing, so the first surnames in history were used in the British Isles (this is currently seen in the names of the Clans).

The Celts in the Isles had a booming population which contributed to their need for surnames. There was something like six major plagues that wiped out a large percentage of the population in Europe. We are usually only taught about the most recent wave that struck in the 14^th century. The fleas that carried the Black Death on rats couldn’t survive in the damp climates of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. With each outbreak in Europe, there were only a few cases in Britain, mainly in the big cities. So while the population on the mainland diminished, that on the Isles remained strong. After each plague had subsided, some of the Celtic peoples moved back into Europe since there was a lot of vacant land to be had.

The main surviving Celtic areas are Ireland, Scotland, England, Galicia (Portugal), northern Germany, and northern Italy… and one other that I can’t remember. But there are more unions between the Irish and northern Italians than any other cross-cultural blend, and our speaker theorized it was because they stem from the same tribe: Celts.

Celtic people have a way of finding each other no matter the time or distance. For example, our speaker was from Washington state. He was Irish, Scottish, and German. He traced his family’s lineage back as far as he could and stuck red pins in the world map for his mother’s side and blue for his father’s. While there was a stray pin every now and then, the majority of the pins on either side all came from the same Celtic areas. All of his ancestors were Celts who had married other Celts.

His theory is that cultures pass down thought patterns. We teach our children certain ways of thinking, and those ways of thinking are shared within our family groups. We are attracted to people who share those thought patterns (and probably pheromones, as well). The Celts were an aboriginal people: they wore their wealth, worshiped and protected the land for future generations, and considered themselves of the earth. Every culture is indigenous, but not every culture is aboriginal. The Romans, for example, are not aboriginal. They sought to alter the landscape to gain whatever they could in their brief lifetimes. They had money. They had written laws. Unfortunately, most of the Western world has fallen into their model.

The Celts, on the other hand, had universal laws. Whether you traveled from Scotland to Germany, you knew exactly what was expected of you. We’ve never had a system of law work so efficiently since. Aboriginal peoples tend to get along with other aboriginal peoples, which is why our speaker theorized that the Irish have historically always crossed the “race line” and married into other aboriginal groups when they didn’t marry into other Celtic groups.

The entire way the Celts looked at the world was different than the rest of the Europeans, and I was reminded of the words of John Trudell, a Sioux who participated in the American Indian Movement in the 1970s who I heard speak last month. That’s another story, but both Trudell and our Celt speaker emphasized the fact that to be a human being means living simply from the land and caring for the land. Without that spiritual connection, we are humans without being. Celtic allegiance is to the family, always, and then the clan. Now, we are asked first to place allegiance in our nation. It just doesn’t work like that. Not for me, at least.

The Celts looked at the leader of their clan as a parent. It was the leader’s job to make sure everyone was cared for. Times of drought were tough on the leader, because it was also his or her job to care for the land. But Celtic leaders were never tyrants. There are several accounts of Scottish kings who decided to go to war, then on the day of the battle, discovered that none of their warriors showed up. “You can go attack McLean if you want,” they’d say. “We have no quarrel with him. Have fun!”

If you didn’t agree with your leader, you were wholly entitled to your opinion. There was no punishment for not doing what he or she said. And yes, I say she, because women were treated very differently in Celtic society than they were in ours.

Most Irish know the stories of the mythic Cuchulain, the greatest warrior of Ireland. Given that most of his myths have existing place names, it is assumed that he was based on a real person. The story goes that he boasted he was the best warrior in the world. People pointed out to him that that wasn’t true because there were two better than him in Scotland. So Cuchulain went to Scotland and he battled the first warrior, who was a woman, and won. Then he headed north to battle her sister, the second warrior, and won. Only then could he claim that he was the best warrior in the world. Yet everyone still hated him because he was an asshole.

Cuchulain

I found it interesting that the second sister lived in the same region my Scottish ancestors, the MacRae’s did. When I mentioned that our clan was allegedly famous for the women fighting alongside the men, our speaker pointed out that that was very common among the Celts. In fact, women regularly went to war with their husbands and served as protectors. An “I’ve got your back” sort of deal. Warrior women were so common that Romans, and later the English, had to make it illegal for women to go to war.

I remarked that that was shocking, meaning that I had never known it to be so common. But our speaker misunderstood and said, “There are things men don’t like to admit, such as the fact that women can usually outthink and outmaneuver a man in combat. If you’re cleverer and quicker than your enemy, then you don’t need a heavy weapon, so you don’t need to be strong. They didn’t want women fighting because they were good at it.”

Maybe my tendencies to write about women warriors is genetic.

In conclusion, our speaker challenged us to think of the people in our lives who we feel most comfortable around and to find out if they were also from the Celtic peoples. He was 80% sure we’d discover they were. After some discussion, I realized that it was true for me and for everyone else in the room.

We did some research into my family and further proved his theory. Almost all my Celtic blood is actually Pictish. I’ve never felt connected to the German side of my family, but now I know that they were Picts, as well, which was why they married into the Scots.

I am fortunate enough to live in the country, surrounded by nature. Sometimes, I spend more time with trees and animals than people. Pavement has never felt right. Elevators are scary. Satellites disrupt the stars. I fully partake of our modern world, make no mistake, but I have always striven to live in rhythm with the land, as simply as possible, for that is what feels the most right in the core of my being. After hearing this talk, I understand that side of me much better, and feel justified.

So if your family is Scottish, Irish, Welsh, English (up until WWII, 80% of the English population was Celtic) or even European, tracing your family’s roots may be well worth your while. One of my best friends immigrated to the US from Bosnia. On the surface, a California native and a Bosnian who grew up in a war wouldn’t have much in common, but we do. Lots. And guess what? Her ancestors were Celts, too.