I am indebted to Katryn Jehane Price who inspired this conversation.
Over a tiny perfect arched wooden bridge straight from a willow
pattern plate, I stroll seduced into the beckoning green glade
where spirits of gypsies dance and play by her faery cottage.
Under wind chimes and
prayer
flags she takes me in through newly glazed doors whose panes are her
openness, whose latch is her secrecy. She makes me
breakfast,
blending ingredients in pottery bowls with a big wooden spoon while the
cat with green eyes looks on. She's not simply a chef. She's an
alchemist. She's not just a fixer. She's a healer. One brush of her
fingertips and you're alive. One touch of her lips and you're gone.
She's a
goddess
of transformation at whose feet I sit offering distinctions I custom
build for her in the moment with my words. Hot strong coffee and french
toast with blueberries are sacraments at her altar. Sunbeams leap and
split through prisms and quartz,
painting
moving
rainbows
on her morning walls, framing her alluring smiles with soft lightning.
She can't tell me fast enough how her life is going. Words spill from
her generous mouth, lilting, babbling and tripping like water
meandering through a cool pebbly brook. She's as amazed by the cosmic
benevolence she represents as she is by the day to day events in her
own personal drama. She considers herself blessed. I consider her smart
- very smart.
Putting her hands on a musical instrument which looks as if it's not
made on
this planet,
she strums and sings in rich dulcet tones, the warm honey and melted
chocolate in her voice opening me to a new world of music I haven't
heard before where language as song transcends physicality. I'm
mesmerized by this beautiful Glinda. I'm entranced by the spells she
casts. I let tears come shamelessly as my fingers seek something solid
to anchor on with which to respond. They find a carved wooden chest
(and who knows what this angelic Pandora keeps in it ...)
on which they're now tapping out a bass line to the cascades of golden
notes she pulls from the strings which touches me as closely as if she
were combing my hair. Her acoustic balms calm me. The savage beast is
soothed.
Draped outside us and all over us like a woodland friar's robe, the
faery cottage has no sharp edges, no predictable shape. It's all
exciting nooks and places. Its wooden shingle walls are its bare,
pleasantly callused skin, its asymmetrical windows its eyes. A bent
chimney flue extends and juts from its roof as if it's pensively
smoking a pipe like an Andean matriarch. I sense and respond to its
sylphan feminine energy which draws me to it with a gentle magnetism I
don't understand yet I accept and allow. It makes me want to draw back
her covers and look on her nakedness. The faery cottage seems to
breathe - sighing sensually in the cool breeze. Its walls seem to move
ever so gently in response to my flat handed touch ... or it is just my
imagination?
In this place is cessation of all conflict. Here's where peace is a
tangible possibility. In this place is grace alive. Here's where living
the fabulous is simply a matter of choosing to. In this place is heaven
for the asking. Here's where we're each
god
in our universe ... and there's only one universe.
In this place, spirit isn't merely spoken about. In this place, spirit
is the spoken word itself, served by happy laughter like Pocahontas,
carefully mentored by gentleness like Tigerlily. In this place, in the
environs of this faery cottage, is anything and everything for those
willing enough to allow their eyes to see what could be, and for those
daring enough to allow their spirits to become what's possible.