by Gail Cleare
Then she spoke about permaculture, telling us about the California community she was a part of, where they were experimenting with the idea. She explained it as the art of designing beneficial relationships between elements like people, plants, animals, air, water and the soil to create a balanced, coherent natural system that can sustain itself permanently. She said, “the world is a web of dynamic relationships, and everything exists in communities.” I certainly agreed with that. She said that we needed to turn our minds to managing the planet in a new way. We needed to think of it as a closed system, where every action that benefits one part will impact many others, some in good ways and some negatively.
When the lecture was over she took questions from the audience for over an hour. On the way home in the van I sat up front next to Laurie as she drove. Bella and Siri were giggling about something in the back seat.
“Laurie, how did you first hear of Starhawk?” I asked.
“I read her book The Spiral Dance when I was in college,” Laurie answered. The little pentacles hanging from her earlobe swung back and forth as she shifted, glinting in the light. “It’s one of the most famous books on modern witchcraft and the feminist spirituality movement. She was one of those wild, San Francisco activist hippies of the ‘60s. They used to put on huge public rituals, where hundreds of people would gather for fire circles on the beach. Her coven is called Reclaiming. They have thousands of members now, all over the world.”
“Well, you’re right, she did seem very smart. What is the witch thing about?” I asked.
Laurie laughed at me. “The witch thing?”
“Yeah, what’s up with that? I don’t know much about it.”
“Modern witchcraft is a form of religion, Emily. It’s usually a kind of nature worship. That’s why she is so into taking care of the Earth.”
“But, what about spells and all that?”
“Witches believe that it is possible to manipulate the world with their willpower, to make things happen with magic,” she said, very seriously. “The word ‘wicca’ means ‘to bend,’ as in, to bend or shape reality. And the main rule is that you can do whatever you want to, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else.”
That surprised me. I had always thought of witches as the ones handing out poison apples to unwary princesses. And it sounded a lot like what Tony had been teaching me, the power of positive visualization.
“Do you think those women inside there tonight were witches?” I asked her, readjusting my mental image of the term.
“Some of them, definitely. You’d be surprised how normal most witches look. Like Starhawk, for example. But then there are also the flaming charismatics like that guy you and Bella were flirting with,” she teased me, grinning.
“I did not!” Bella’s protest came ringing out from the back seat.
“I saw you looking at him!” Laurie said.
“Yeah, well, he was like…trying to hypnotize everybody!”
“He didn’t like it when you laughed at him, you better watch out!” I teased.
“Oh-oh, the evil eye! It’s gonna get me!” Bella pretended to hide behind her hands, giggling.
“He was just trolling for some new disciples,” Laurie said.
“Well he must have a raging ego if he thinks he can get much action with that hair do,” Bella sniffed disdainfully. “My beautiful Latino husband is much better looking!”
I was thinking about permaculture again, and the idea that the earth was literally a holy thing to someone like Starhawk, according to what Laurie said.
“It’s cool to know that people are out there working so hard on the health of the planet,” I said.
“Yes,” Laurie answered. “It makes me want to help, too.”
“But you do, Laurie, you help a lot! Much more than most people.”
“I know, but I can do more. We all can. It’s really our only hope, you know.”
The mood had turned serious, and we were all quiet as we rode through the dark streets toward home. I looked up and saw a very bright star, all alone in the sky. It was huge. I thought it might be the planet Venus. I thought about that star being part of the same community of which I was a member, way down here on the Earth. That seemed pretty remote and hard to grasp. The star was so far away that I couldn’t picture how any action of mine could possibly impact it. So I reeled in my mind and confined my imaginary frame of reference to the Earth itself, spinning along inside its filmy little balloon of atmosphere. That was different. I could easily imagine how gases emitted by my car could float up into that frail envelope and change it, damage it. I could picture how the waste products of all the technology-addicted people in our world could poison the soil and the water.
But I could also picture how things might change. If people lived more consciously, if we paid attention to how the different parts of our eco-community interact and kept the right goals in mind, we could gradually start to do things differently. We could stop the degradation of the system and start to build our resources back up again. Our inner resources as well as our natural ones. People had been focusing on greed, competition and fear for eons, but maybe now was the time for human attitudes to change, before it was too late.
Starhawk had told us that scientists predicted we might have only ten or twenty more years before the global warming caused by the overuse of technology started to dramatically raise the level of the oceans, flooding major cities in all parts of the world. If we were truly all part of one giant web, along with the air and the water and the soil and the bacteria and bugs and fish and birds and animals, what would happen if large numbers of human beings suddenly became aware and started to dream a new vision of the future? Wouldn’t it inevitably spark a chain reaction through every filament of the web? It seemed to me that we could start to heal the Earth community by first healing our own spirits, by thinking positively and refusing to be discouraged. All was not lost unless we made it so, by giving in to the seductive pull of entropy. Instead, we should direct our thinking toward nurturing our fellow community members, rejuvenating and restoring them. It seemed like the brightest hope for the future.
The Moon
INTUITION, ILLUSION
Description: A full moon shines down from the sky. Two wild dogs or wolves howl at it. A crayfish or lobster (the sign of Cancer, the emotions) climbs out of a pool of water, waving its arms.
Meaning: Intuition vs.illusion. Psychic power, divination and the danger of misinterpreting the signs, which may be vague or misleading.
A weird thing happened one cool, rainy, fall morning a few weeks later. The summer heat had finally broken, the college students were back in town and the kids had gone back to school. Henry had recovered well enough to be more independent, so Tony decided it was time to deal with his languishing business concerns, which had been neglected due to recent events. He packed his bag, kissed me goodbye, and drove off to New York City for a few days to visit the exclusive galleries that purchased the unique pieces he brought into the country. I still didn’t want to leave Henry alone all night, so Tree and I were planning to stay upstairs at Henry’s house until Tony returned. I had already moved some of my things there, and I was over at Tony’s house picking up my cat when the phone rang, and the answering machine in the kitchen took the call.
“Hello, Tony,” a woman’s attractive alto voice said, with a slight European accent, “C’est moi, cheri! I just confirmed that I can get away, after all. I’d love to see you in New York, so watch for me at the hotel and I will arrive very soon! OK, sweetheart, ciao.” The woman hung up with a click.
I stood in the kitchen staring at the answering machine. Tree jumped up on the counter next to it, trying to divert my attention. I stroked him absently. Then I pushed the play button and listened to the message again. Unfortunately, it still sounded exactly the same.
“Well, that really sucks, doesn’t it?” I said to Tree. He blinked at me lovingly. I felt like someone had just punched me in the stomach and thrown me off
a cliff.
It just wasn’t possible. There had to be some other explanation.
I picked up the cat and put him into his carrier for the ride back to work. I cleaned the litter box and bagged it, packing a grocery bag with some cat food, fresh litter and a few catnip toys. There was another explanation, that’s all. She was an old friend, maybe a relative. She was an old customer. She was an old…lover? Maybe, not so old. She sounded sexy, sophisticated, and probably gorgeous.
I drove back over to Market Street and brought Tree upstairs. When I was passing through the second floor hallway, Henry heard me and came to the door of the study.
“Is this my new housemate?” he asked, peering into the cat carrier. I brought it into the room and put it down on the floor, unzipping the flap. Tree popped out his head and looked around the room carefully, scanning for danger. Seeing none, he leaped out of the carrier and immediately shot across the room to crouch under Henry’s reading chair. He peered out at us cautiously, his tail lashing.
“He’ll need a few minutes to check out the new place, but he’s usually a good traveler,” I said. “He got used to Tony’s house fast.” I thought again of the message on the answering machine and felt a little sick.
Tree had moved out into the open and was grooming himself now, a good sign. Henry went back to his chair. I saw that he had been reading the I Ching again.
“What does the Oracle say today?” I asked, coming over to sit next to him. I had a few questions of my own I wouldn’t have minded asking. Tree jumped up into my lap and started to purr loudly. Henry looked over at him and smiled, reaching out to scratch him on the head.
“It says business is good for us, but our foundation is a bit shaky,” he said.
“Us? You mean, for all of us? What do you think that means?”
“I suppose it has to do with my health,” he mused. “We are warned not to forge ahead full speed at the moment, due to some weak areas in the underlying structure.”
“Or, it could mean something else is shaky,” I suggested, thinking about Tony, who had suddenly transformed into an unknown quantity in my mind. It’s bizarre how such a drastic change can happen within just a few seconds. I needed to be careful not to read too much into this. It was just a phone message, after all. There were several possible explanations. After all, Henry had told me that Tony was an honorable man. I should trust him. He wouldn’t lie to me. He wouldn’t ruin everything. I started to panic, trying to keep it off my face, smiling blandly.
“Emily,” said Henry slowly, thoughtfully, “Do you ever find that the past tends to repeat itself? It changes, and things progress and evolve, but there is still a pattern one can sense underneath. It’s like an invisible grid, the warp and woof of life.” He looked at me with his mind-reading expression, like my reality was an open book to him.
I nodded my head, trying to appear cool and collected. “Yes, I know what you mean.”
“Do you?” Henry said doubtfully. “I wonder.”
I looked at him inquiringly, but he did not explain and gazed back at me with a sympathetic expression. He had definitely sensed that I was upset. Tree suddenly stood up and stalked across the coffee table to climb into Henry’s lap, turning around in a circle once and then settling down. Tree smiled his curly contented-cat smile, squeezing his eyes nearly shut for a catnap. Henry moved his legs a little to make them both more comfortable.
“Intuition is a tricky thing, Emily,” he said. “Sometimes it is truly caused by a psychic flash, and sometimes it’s based on an echo of some past experience, set off by a current event that calls up the memory. We react the way we did before, and then a chain of events falls into place, and the pattern repeats. In a way, we make it happen.”
Henry leaned over the sleeping cat and looked at me meaningfully.
“It’s hard to escape the underlying patterns,” he said. “You have to decide to deliberately change the outcome by reacting differently. It takes a leap of faith.”
His eyes bored into mine for a moment, and I realized he was saying something about me personally, not just anyone in general. I wondered what the Oracle had been telling him about me, about my future. I wondered whether he was talking about Tony and me.
“Henry,” I protested, shaking my head, “You can’t just have faith that things will go the way you want them to. It doesn’t work that way! Other people are involved, and you can’t control them, or what choices they make.”
He smiled at me fondly and stroked Tree, who had totally relaxed now, all four legs outstretched and lolling off the edge of Henry’s lap.
“You can’t control other people, that is true,” he said gently. “But you can try to make sure that what you are feeling and doing is because of what’s really happening right now, not because of something that happened in the past.”
I sat there and gazed at him, my face crumpling as my eyes overflowed with tears.
“I try not to think about it,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand and sniffling. How did he know these things about me? I hadn’t told any of my new friends about my past relationships, not even Siri. It was something I wanted to leave behind me.
“But, it’s so hard to forget when something happens, when you’re vulnerable to someone and they hurt you,” I said, my voice shaking.
I looked at him with my soul exposed and cringing, the young woman again whose heart had been worn on her sleeve, wide open and innocent, in love with love and living in a romantic fantasy.
Henry’s eyes were sad as he looked at me with affection, but he did not reach out to touch me. Instead he continued to stroke the cat, who stretched and yawned in ecstasy.
“The drama may be similar, Emily, but believe me, the players have changed,” he said, almost sternly. I gulped and nodded, not really convinced.
Just then the phone rang and a minute later Siri called up the stairs that it was for Henry, who picked up the extension. I took advantage of his distraction to end the conversation, which was shaking my usually cool demeanor and delving a little too close to my private emotional secrets.
I took Tree from the old man’s lap and brought him upstairs to show him where I was putting the litter box. I set up his food and water dishes on the floor in the third floor kitchen, and then I went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face and pull myself together. Tony’s razor and shaving gel were still sitting on the back of the sink. I started crying again as soon as I saw them. I felt helpless, lost, completely without power. I turned on the water and let it run, staring at the way it swirled around in a spiral to rush down the drain. My mind swirled around with it, rushing into the past, sucked down into a dark slick tube of memories, flashing past like scenes from a movie trailer.
I was madly in love once before. I’d had several other lovers, of course, but only one relationship that was really serious. About ten years earlier, after I had finished school and was off living on my own, I had met a man. I thought he was The Man. He was perfect. Smart, romantic, handsome and funny. He was a writer, with a fabulous imagination, and he spoke in poetic phrases like a character in a book. I was completely charmed by him. He adored me, or so I thought. He called me beautiful, made love to me with great passion, listened avidly to everything I had to say, and he left a single yellow rose on the seat of my car every day, so I found it there when I left work at night. He was also married, something I learned after a few weeks.
He told me the marriage had been breaking up for a long time, not because of me but because it was over. He hadn’t told me right away because he didn’t want me to get the wrong idea. He said, he was truly free and at this point it was really just a legal matter. He had moved out of his wife’s house and into a spare bedroom at a friend’s bachelor apartment. We spent some good times together there, but things started to change and I began to feel that he was distracted or depressed. My lover denied it. But his friend told me that after he talked to me on the phone at night, he would cry. His friend asked me why, but I di
dn’t know the answer.
Then my lover told me that he wasn’t sure about us anymore, that he wasn’t sure I really loved him. If I had, he said, he would have instantly whisked us both away to another town where we could start a new life together. He said, it would happen so fast it would make my heart spin. He said I seemed ambivalent about him.
I searched my soul and found that indeed, I was still worried about the fact that he hadn’t told me the whole story when we first got together. I wanted to trust him as much as I loved him, but I just couldn’t do it. A voice in the back of my mind kept telling me that something was wrong, that something didn’t add up. I admitted to him that he was right, I was uncertain, though I longed to be convinced. I hoped he would take it as a challenge to show me that he really loved me, but instead, he abruptly broke it off.
He twisted things around so it was me breaking it off with him, it was my fault and I had toyed with his affections. The last time I ever saw him, he was leaving for the airport to fly away with another woman, who it turned out had been his lover right before me, the girl who was really responsible for breaking up his marriage, the girl he had really been in love with, all along. I wondered what color her favorite roses were. He said goodbye to me cheerfully, full of excitement about his new life adventure.
I felt stupid, inconsequential, and I was utterly devastated. I kept thinking that he would change his mind, he would come back. I hallucinated seeing him for years afterwards, in a crowd, in the grocery store, passing in a car on the highway. But he never returned, and I never found out what happened to him. It was a long time before I opened up to anyone again.
Until now, until Tony. Somehow, Henry seemed to know about this. Maybe he didn’t know the details, he didn’t know the man’s name, but he knew how it had affected me and he was warning me not to jump to conclusions about Tony because of it. However, that was definitely going to be a whole lot easier said, than done.
