Thoughtlines

The stories that thread us through a life.

I am a storyteller, swordfighter, tonic and teacher - living life as a practice. I am practicing for those times when the gods come down and ride us mortals until dawn. I hold my practices for this eventuality of madness, because I believe that those times when the gods ride us are the times when the divine spark touches our lives. These are the times from which all other time springs. I want to be open to the gods when they come, already bridled and ready to run. I want to be ready. Now, with death riding on my shoulders, I test those practices. You are never ready, only able, for the gods ride us to our breaking points and beyond. I’ve lost my regular sword practice, I feel less like a tonic and more like a poison, and I find myself over explaining as I try and teach, but I am still a storyteller. ____________________________________________________________ My girlfriend, Eithne, works for an organization called Journeys out of Seattle - a wonderful group who leads initiations out into the Olympic mountains. They marry old rituals and new approaches to try and bring children into adulthood - and as with so many organizations doing such good work, they’re often scrambling to keep it together. I get an email from her, saying “I know you’re not taking anything else on right now, but you should check this out,” attached is an email from Journey’s director. “We found someone to fill the 2-week boy’s trip, going out on Thursday, but he was pre committed to a summer camp and would like to find a replacement. He’s looking for someone who’s

• Good with kids
• Teaches Sword fighting
• Has roleplaying experience
• And if they have some background with plants that would be great.”

They forgot to add

• ‘And is named Pan’

-but I read between the lines. I emailed the email provided, and the man on the other side, came back to me almost at once. “It looks like you’re facebook friends with my wife who will be leading the camp,” he noted. At the same time I got a message from a woman I’d known since I was 14, albeit not well. “Let’s have an interview,” she said. Before I knew it I was loading up 16 boffers into the trunk of my car, and heading off to Kingston for a week to teach a “Ranger Adventure camp.” There I learned that it’s easier to hide on the moving edges of shadows than in the dark - that children take sword lessons totally different when you’re holding a metal sword - and that when you teach children the best defence is to run away - they will. My favorite part was using latin plant names as spells, so to cast a fireball required holding some red elderberry and exclaiming Sambucus Racemosa! That, and having a stranger lead me back to a friend. ____________________________________________________________

I’ve only been back three days, when I have to be off again - this time to a Fusion dance festival. I’d volunteered to work trade for back in January when my summer seemed empty and the spectre of death had not yet grown so large. I consider cancelling last minute, but don’t. I have a practice of showing up for things I say I’m going to. When I arrive the coordinators greet me joyously. “We’re so glad you’re here. A bunch of the other volunteers cancelled last minute.” I smile inwardly to myself and get to work. I go home that night, not yet having anyone to take care of chickens in my absence since Peccalah moved away. I’m back the next morning, just after breakfast. I work nonstop until lunch, where I sit under one of the big spools they use as tables, unwilling to inflict myself on anyone else. I turn conversations dark. Christine comes and sits next to me, back to the spool, arm touching mine. Christine intimidates me. She’s a friend of Eithne, one I admire from afar for all the cool things she does in the community. I’ve had the vague sense that she dislikes me, but we’ve danced and talked in the past, always tugging at depth but never seeming quite comfortable there. Today though, our conversation spools out naturally, one thread leading into another until I ask. “What is your greatest longing right now?” She pauses, a long pause - longer than is comfortable in a conversation - “Honestly, it’s for money work and somewhere to live. Somewhere I could work-trade and have freedom to build.” Wow, I am the answer to your longings, I think. “I’m looking for a renter right now, and could absolutely pay you for some work,” I say. “Really?!” “Really.” The rest of the campout goes fast. Sitting on the edge of the dancefloor, leaning against Caitie in sweet silence as we listen to a live harp, I wonder as I always wonder if my fingers would remember. Later I snuggle up to a woman who must be a fairy godmother in her spare time, who tells me I’m still in shock, and promises to mix me up some potions. I keep myself busy, only get heartbreakingly lonely once, and it’s only on the last day that the dizziness totally overtakes me. I go ask for work, and of course they tell me to rest - I’ve been going nonstop all day. I sit down. Breath with it. “Do you need help?” Wren asks. She’s a fellow dancer, one of the special ones who’s dances are always good. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m getting dizzy when I stop. In in between times.” She comes and cradles my head in her hands, massaging with expert hands. She keeps her conversation going, which is perfect. I don’t feel in the way. When she turns her whole attention on me, tells me to breath with her, to relax - it’s too much. The tension holds the grief at bay, and as I breathe, held in a mother’s arms, I feel it all coming up at once. “If I relax too much I’m going to cry,” I tell her in that matter of fact voice that betrays no emotion. “If you need to cry, I am here for you - but I am also here for whatever you need right now,” she gently tells me. It’s the right response. “Just touch,” I tell her. ____________________________________________________________

I have been having dreams where I sob uncontrollably. I awake dry eyed, feeling like my lungs should be burning and my throat should be sore. In my dreams I alway cry close to Papa, once next to his grave where he lies shivering covered in a blanket set over him, once in his arms where I’ve sunk down uncontrollably, heedless of his sickness. We are told that testosterone increases the threshold of emotion required to cry. I cannot decide if this means that I have successfully let it out as it arises, so that the threshold never gets high enough to explode, or if it’s all getting stuffed down somewhere, held in the tensile strength of my will. ____________________________________________________________

I go to invite Caitie to a Lughnasadh celebration, and she turns around invites me to her birthday party the day after. Clever me, I congratulate myself. Last year I watched a video of her birthday and wanted so desperately to be part of it. Wanted my birthday to be like that. I’m sure I unconsciously knew it was coming up. What better way to be invited then to invite? I arrive 3 minutes after 6:00, just as Caitie and her friend Baby are putting the finishing touches on setup. I wriggle into a seat on the air mattress she’s set up by the fire, and successfully manage to stay there, touching one person or another, for over half the party. Eithne is gone on her Journeys trip, and will be for another five days of her three week absence. I miss her, and miss human contact. It’s nice to have it so naturally here. I manage to stay quiet. To listen and watch, sing, and participate, but never fall into a one on one conversation where someone might ask how I am doing. It’s unexpected. Easy. We sing together to the sunset, and eat birthday cupcakes containing both milk and sugar, and I still eat two. After most everyone has left, Caitie, Baby, a woman named Lyna, and I all cuddle up on the air mattress together. We banter, touch, and laugh. The conversation turns delightfully bawdy at times, taking on the feel of a late night sleepover with everyone just waiting for a game of truth or dare, and then reases all that tension in a song. We do get deep now, but not in the recensies of our lives, but the larger question of identity. We walk into names, relationships, and our deep desires. As similarities inevitably arise, Caitie exclaims. “Of course you’re all similar - you’re all parts of my collection!” - adding that we are her ‘marbles’ - I’m delighted to find another unashamed people collector. Honored to be owned. It’s three in the morning when I carry Caitie inside and make my way home. ____________________________________________________________

A letter from my uncle tells of his childhood marble collection - conquests won in games of skill, dropping marbles from great heights. He expanded his marble collection in a single autumn night throwing them up to catch the attention of bats. Hopefully Caitie is more prudent with hers. ____________________________________________________________

A little more than a year ago a woman named Mariah waltzed into our community. We found her in the form of little hand drawn invitations in everybody’s mailbox. A community potluck. Since then she’s continued to throw them irregularly, this is the first one this year at the height of summer. I go with a neighbor, bring sushi rice on napa cabbage with mushrooms and beef on top, and watch in amazement as it all goes in the first hour. I spend the first hour wandering, feeling uncomfortable, and looking for familiar faces. Both shy and lonely, an awful mix. Finally I sit down next to a woman who always comes to these, and she introduces me to the woman sitting next to her. “Pan,” the woman says. “You’re Eithne’s boyfriend. I walked into the room with her when she discovered that big flower heart you left on her bed.” I grin “My reputation precedes me.” She introduces herself as Diana and starts asking me about the school I work for, since she’s thinking of applying there. There’s a lot of shared context to fall back into. As is my custom I eventually drag the conversation down into death, but she responds well, and we resurface into lighter waters. I tell her Eithne reads out loud to me, and she coos about how romantic that is. I mention that I cook and she says “I know. Eithne brags about that,” and my heart flutters a little. It feels good to be bragged about without her knowing that it would get back to me. Then I go off into the twilight and find Christine kneeling on the grass near Aura, my other renter, and a woman I haven’t met before - a mother with her two month old. They introduce me as their “friend and Landlord,” and I see the different way that she looks at me. I like that look. We spend a lot of time sitting around the baby together, wishing for our own, and giggling. It feels as if I have finally found my marbles again. ____________________________________________________________

It’s dark when I stumble out of the door. I’ve just watched two movies in a row - by myself. I’ve lost four hours to the inability to do anything, the small mammalian need to hide until dark, eat after it’s safe. I’m going outside to grab greens for dinner, and to put the chickens away. My basket clutched in one hand. I go close the chicken coop door, and then stumble back towards the driveway. I reach into my pocket and my pocketknife is gone. I normally harvest nettles with my knife for a clean cut. Suddenly my task seems insurmountable. I can’t go inside to get a knife and then out again. I’m just barely standing as it is. My disorientation has me, like a fog that grips at the back of my head, seeping all the energy from me. I stop, despair dropping over me, sadness overwhelming me, and the exhaustion of the day finally hitting my body all at once. Who needs alcohol when I can stumble numbly on my own? I feel drugged, broken, empty and overwhelmed. I can see better than most in the dark, but the halflight of dusk disorients me more. My mind goes back to the thing that set me off. A certificate of achievement given to Papa less than a year ago “for making it this far in life.” I’m stuck, suddenly sad, and alone, so alone. I search desperately for my pocket knife. It was there. I reach into the pocket and there is only my lighter, then into the smaller sub-pocket, where I find a single birthday candle, slipped there from one of Caitie’s cupcakes. I look at it in the dark for a moment. Then take out my lighter and light it. Like the candle that takes me through my vigil on the longest night, this light blazes, and with it - hope.