What Witches Know ~ An Original Fable

 

WHAT WITCHES KNOW 

by

Psychscribe

© 2009 www.psychscribe.com

 

     My grandmother, just before they burned her, said this to my mother: the only difference between them and us is they don’t know they have it.  She gestured with her chin at  the bonneted, jostling women, who far out numbered the men in the seething crowd around the stake. Her own unbound hair snapped in the wind as they lit her.

     Afterwards my mother fled to this secret, wooded place that welcomes our kind.  The curse they call a power spills like gentle sunlight upon the bears  and other wild things that feed from our hands. The beasts of the forest are kin to us.

     I had no father.  She grew me, all on her own she liked to say. I never asked her for the truth.  I knew he’d met the same terrible fate as all the others, the ones who came after. 

     We never knew how they found her here.  They would just appear between the trees, squinting and searching, as if sucked from the great open spaces by a hungry wind.  Raking her fingers through that thick, viney hair, she would sigh so deeply you could feel the cottage tremble.  I trembled too.  For them and for her.  Go away, she would whisper.  Not again, I would pray. 

     The gods did not answer. The men did not hear.

     She tried to warn them.  I’ll hurt you, she’d cry.  Leave while you can.  They never believed her.  Princes and farmers, hunters and noblemen, even the friar thought he could save her.  They never said from what.

     Save yourself! she would shriek.  They only chased her more.

     She looked safe enough. Layers of violet gauze robes hung from a tall, fragile frame, concealing tiny breasts and skin so pale it seemed as if she might vanish at any moment.  They must have thought they were chasing a fairy.  How could they know what she was?

     What they hunted, hell-bent, was their own annihilation.   They would forget to eat and drink, or wash, or even sleep, and laugh in delight when she called it to their attention.  See what you do to me, crooned the hunter to his prey.   See what you do. 

     And each would whisper his dream of wholeness and nothingness, the dream we’ve been hearing since time began, the one that sends them from their churches and wives’ beds and into our damnation.

     Did she love them?  Almost, always almost, she once said.  But as soon as I can smell the fear in them the feeling is replaced by something else, something I can’t name. 

     Sooner or later she would grow tired from the hunt.  How long can you run from water when your throat is parched?  But she never succumbed, not at once anyway.  Breathless and laughing, she would toss the suitor her robes and the promise of tomorrow, disappearing into the cottage and bolting the door.

     Witch! they would shout at her naked, fleeing form, angry yet smiling in a way I did not understand.  Burn her! Burn her! the wives left behind cried out in their dreams. 

     In the morning, still naked, she would unbolt the door and open it wide, her dark hair coiling and writhing, lifting toward the sun.  I could feel her heat from where I lay in my small bed.  She would not close her eyes when she made what they called love . They liked that at first ( ah… spirit! ) arched triumphantly over her like bows and staring into the depths of what they fancied to be their souls.  They always got to the point, of course, where they needed to close their eyes on what they saw. But by then it was too late.

 

     We keep a little piece of them.  Not because we are evil but because it is our nature.  What we take are their shadows, their dark, howling secrets.  If you’ve ever seen a squirrel skinned alive then you know what it is like.   

     They live through it.  They go home to their wives, their hearths and their children.  But a man without his shadow is never sure he’s really there.  He looks at the ground and sees nothing beneath his feet.

 

     The witch hunts come cyclically, just like the seasons.  We know it is time long before we hear the pounding of hooves, the blood-thirsty cries.

     The man who led the hunt for my mother was probably the most enamored of all her lovers.  And the most tormented.  He brought his wife, a small, plain  woman with flat brown eyes.  She’d known, of course.  They always know.  He’d offered her first torch when they found the witch.

     There must have been forty men.  You could smell the lust in the air when they stripped her.  I sure would like a taste of this one before we cook her, one of them said as he grabbed at her breast.

     Don’t touch her! I’ll kill the lot of you! screamed my mother’s lover, aiming his musket at all of them. The wife paled at his outburst.  She swayed on her feet like a sapling in a winter wind. My mother reached out a hand to steady her.

     A look passed between witch and wife that can hardly be described.. It flickered brighter than the torchlight in the air between them, a fusion of forces human shaped and witch radiant, so brilliant, so strong, that the men had to turn their faces from it. 

     She passed her torch to my mother, then gently wrapped her cloak around my mother’s bare shoulders.  Piece by piece she flung the rest of her garments at the men, laughing and spinning herself into the frenzy that is older than time.

     The men dared not say a word.  The husband could not.

     Embracing the stake like a lover, she wrapped her naked arms and legs around it as my mother lit the pyre.  Not a hand was lifted to stop it. 

     Afterwards he carried my mother home, belly down on his horse.  He married her and got his shadow back.  It was said, for a time, that he’d never looked better.  My mother, of course, died the death the wife had chosen for her.  It was slow, and a terrible thing to see.  First they bound her hair, then they put bonnets on her, and in time when he looked into her eyes he saw nothing.  Nothing at all.

 

     A witch without her magic is like a man without his shadow: useless both of them, and damned anyway.

My new photo-blog

Hi All,

I haven’t been around because I’ve been on a wonderful creative surge (this is one place where I know that is appreciated!) I’ve been making jewelry and taking photos and so enjoying myself!

Please check out my photo-blog, launched this morning, when you have the time:

http://psychscribetoo.wordpress.com

Thanks, and enjoy your day!

Psychscribe

To My Everlasting Shame

I did not stay at my father’s bedside, to be with  him until he passed. There he was, right upstairs in the bedroom, while I hid like a coward downstairs and out of sight. We knew it would be that night. The doctors had called the family in and said so. 

All his brothers and sisters, the aunts and uncles I grew up with,  had been pretty much staying at my parents’ house for those last weeks.  The pasta pots were always boiling. They brought Italian bread and provolone cheese and sweet salami with big green olives. Most importantly,  they brought the black humor which is our family trademark , especially during our darkest hours.  It sustained us and carried us.

And yet, there was an age regression that took place for me. At age 32, they were still the grown ups and I was like a child again. That’s just how the dynamics morphed. When it was soon to be time, my favorite aunt had a talk with me and asked me if I really wanted to watch my father die. She explained to me, 32 going on 8, that dying was not like in the movies. It was quite a frightening thing to see.  She encouraged me to have my quiet time alone with him, now in a coma, and say my good-bye. I did so. Then I walked out of the room and all his siblings and my mother went in and the door was firmly closed.

And so he died with his wife, brothers and sisters all around and me nowhere in sight. They later said it was an awful thing. Blood and God knows what everywhere. Even his brothers were shaken by it. It was not something I should have had to see, they told me. As if they had protected me from something.

But not long after, I realized it was my own father’s awful thing. I should have been there. I allowed myself to be shielded by my beloved and well meaning aunt with childlike trust.  I should have been there. I was not a child. I was not, in truth, protected or shielded. I was written out of the last line of the last page of his life.  No, we wrote me out. 

And I am so ashamed, sorry, and regretful… What if my father knew or sensed I wasn’t there, right through the invisible walls of his coma? My shame is this: that I, his oldest and most responsible child, should have  accompanied him on the final stage of his journey. I should have been there. 

No tidy ending to this post. I should have been there.  

(This post was inspired by a poem by Cordie entitled:  If I had it to do all again)

The Measure of Grief

 

 

THE MEASURE OF GRIEF

 

Twenty-five years ago today my father died.  

Even in my dreamless sleep I knew it.

 

I stumble out of bed  

where is my husband?

 

I want to hug him    

hug him so tightly

but he is gone

gone to work  

to work his ass off.

 

Gone.

 

I worry about his heart.

 

I want to hug my father  

(who worked his ass off).

I want to hug him  

hug him so tightly

 

but he is gone  

 

gone to rest    

to rest in peace.

 

I’d rather he were here, God forgive  me.

Yes.  I would rip him right out of paradise    if I could

to have him back here with the whole family

loving    living   YES , even suffering

but right alongside us where  I  think he belongs.

 

A quarter of a century.

One-fourth of a whole.

A quarter coin is so small really.  

 

A hole the size of a quarter 

is still in my heart  

big enough to kill me.

 

by Psychscribe ©2009

Icicles on Rhododendrens

©2009 Psychscribe

Winter Twilight

Listen  to the silent wail of  swaying, naked treetops.

Watch them blindly seeking  cold comfort

from the dark indifferent  sky,

as howling winter winds whisper :

night is stalking.

Winter Sun

© Psychscribe 2009

Final Words

*This post was written for my children,  F. and A., to hold in their hands and carry in their hearts when someday  I am gone. But it is dedicated to my father, Frank Spinale, who will always be my tallest memory.

After my father died at home of a shockingly short terminal illness, I spent months searching the house for a message he might possibly have left behind. In vain I rifled through all his books and papers, checked between the mattress and box spring of the bed he died in, and ripped apart the satin panels of his jewelry box.  When his pants pockets and underwear drawer yielded no results I even pulled the fiberglass insulation down from the basement ceiling to blindly grope above my head for a hidden note.

I wanted some tangible nugget of wisdom , or perhaps it was love, to hold in my hand and carry with me throughout the remainder of my life. It bothered me that though we’d had many intimate moments together in the weeks before his impending death, he’d ultimately slipped into a coma and I therefore did not know, when I heard them, that I’d heard his final words.

For years I rehearsed what my own final words would be to my children should I be fortunate enough to have such a dramatic opportunity for closure when my time comes.  But what I have come to understand since I lost my father is that final words don’t really matter all that much. Because now I know that what matters the most later, when you view the panorama of your life, are the  memories that stand out like steeples in the clouds.

And since only certain memories stand out it figures they do so for a reason, which is why bad memories as well as good ones are taller than the rest. Bad memories are inevitably associated with loss, which is why we prefer not to think about them.

My own worst memories: Being told of my young father’s terminal cancer. (He was younger than I am now.) That terrible, brave look in his eyes when I rushed to his side upon hearing the news.  The day my first marriage truly dissolved, when we sold our first home and handed the keys over to the happy younger couple who bought it. The day I was  served with papers in the ensuing custody suit and read that I must show “just cause” why my children should not be taken from me.  The day my little boy was taken from his sister and me to live with his father. I falter  even now as I try to list them. It hurts too much to  think of my losses. A self protective blankness arises. But I know that loss, like fear, must be faced in order to be conquered and transformed.

We cannot live without loss, but most of us don’t see that when we’re young. Maybe we’re not supposed to. We have the future with all its possibilities before us.  Might not the magnitude of such awareness stall us in our tracks?

With the passing years, as we lose youth, strength, loved ones, health, and outward beauty, the protective veil is lifted and the awesome paradox is gradually revealed: that we are most human when we love most deeply, that it is our innately human desire to hold on to what we love forever, but that the human condition requires that we  must lose everything we love in order to grow.

The first thing we lose is our symbiotic closeness with mother. We must leave the warm, safe womb in order to be born. We must leave our mother’s arms in order to explore the world. We must lose the innocence of childhood in order to survive the world. And then it begins again. We become parents ourselves. We love our infants but they grow into children. We love our children but they turn into young adults. We love our young adults but they separate from us and leave us to start their own lives. We find romantic love that cannot last. We love our parents and others in the generation before us, but they must die.

Each and every path through life is paved with losses, and sometimes we use poor judgement on our journey. This makes the losses even harder to bear, knowing in our hearts that the pain is self inflicted.  It  has taken me twenty five years to understand this about my own personal history. Now that I am owning it to myself and my  God,  the pain is lifting and  I’m beginning to grow wings.

Our biological and psychological mission on this earth means we must keep moving forward, continually leaving something behind. Because to grow means to change, and  we cannot change without losing some part of ourselves.  We must suffer the pain and loss of every person, state of being, or part of ourselves  that we love in order to be fully human.  Yet the more deeply we love, the more deeply we experience our humanity and the brilliance of our souls.

The only way to avoid the pain of loss is to be dead. But there is an alternative.  If we are brave enough to allow ourselves to feel the pain and mourning, to hold tight to the memories until we’ve squeezed every drop of blood from the experience, we are transformed. Our souls radiate previously unimaginable,  dazzling colors.

This, of course, is the hardest part of all. The natural tendency is to want to put the pain behind us, to forget about it, avoid it and get on with our lives.  When we do that without the lifework of suffering and introspection, we are depriving ourselves of the learning that experience is meant to provide.

In other words, our loss is meaningless.

And so, my darling children,  this post, these words, are my final words to you. Please forgive me for the pain I’ve caused you, and rejoice in the joy we’ve  shared. Always, always remember  the inexpressibly deep love I had for you. Hold on to it. You keep some and I will too. And when you arrive Home I’ll be waiting for you there, arms wide open, in the place where there is no more sorrow and no more tears.

By Psychscribe

Finding My Way

© Psychscribe 2008

© 2009 Psychscribe

Winter Vineyard

© 2009 Psychscribe