Magic mirror in the sand, Tell me who I am again #1

-So you’re doing “wind angels” or something?

The words pronounced in the Gypsum Sea of the Tularosa Basin are meant to be scornful but the voice is still warm and clear… It seems to come out of nowhere, and as I look around, a bit perplex, I stop my silly moves on the white sands of this unique scenery in the south of my beloved New Mexico.

-…Huh? Do I finally utter out there in the warm air.

-It’s not how it’s supposed to be done, you’re only half way grounded; how do you want any angel to be seen from above if you have one leg and one arm in the air?

-Nicooo! It feels so good to see you again… Although I see you’re being as “niceee” as can be… Still sulking or something?

-Oh look who’s talking! As if you, yourself, never sulked. Plus if you mean to disrespect me again, like the last time we talked about los reyes, you can leave me alone now…

-Sigh… Excuse me, young man, but you’re the one who appeared here like a shadow from a cloud when I was having fun in this white sand world. Besides, you’re also the one who told me that if we were to meet again it would be in my “in-betweenness, the siege of all conflicts”, so yes, one leg and one arm in the air, drawing a V as in “Victory”, and the other leg and arm on the ground outgrowing the V into a W, also trying to still be kind of grounded. It seems to have worked, since you’re here watching me doing what you call “wind angels”.

I know that Nico sometimes does not exactly appreciate my Aries humor (or at least he pretends he does not), but, like I said, he’s the one who appeared in this beautiful desert, so after teasing him a little, I accept his definition of my UFO (Unidentified Funny Oddity) and I invite the two of us to “explore” the hidden meaning of my hybrid movements… abandoning my funny pose to sit cross-legged on the sand and inviting Nico to come by my side.

-Oh you’re sitting “Indian style”? he asks with a smirk.

-I did not know it was called that way. In French we say “s’asseoir en tailleur”, to sit like a tailor, supposedly because that’s how tailors sit to cut big parts of cloth that they will sew back together. Well, “tailleur” means different things, it is also a stone carver.

-Oh, how appropriate! Nico laughs.

-Why?

-Oh you’ll see, you’ll see… “Wind Angel”…

-Oh yeah, back to that wind angel thing. Well, so be it: let the wind sing! Heehee… It rhymes with Khamsin, by the way. Do you remember my three names, back in the day?

-I do not only remember the three names Dorothy Alice Khamsin, I remember that they were not exactly yours but rather your doll’s three names, the doll you stole from the resolana of Saint Nick’s castle, and the other one I also gave you, which I myself had stolen from his room, the beautiful Zarzuela from another time, so we basically left the poor man without his two preferred dolls, dear Nathalie Christine Elisabeth.

-Oh, I see you remember very well, con todo lujo de detalles.

-Oh give me a break with Spanish, guapa, we’re not in Spain anymore…

-True, thank God, but we are in another Spanish-speaking world, and it feels really good to be here. Oops, sorry, I’ve interrupted you…

-Yes, for once I was here talking to you… Haha! Anyway... It is not because I don’t talk too much or because you don’t actually see me every day that I don’t remember…  And, speaking of remembering, I told you once that Saint Nick SEES IT ALL, and of course, I inherited some of his gifts…

-I see… I mean, I don’t “see it all”, I mean that I see what you mean… Oops, this was not too well articulated and sounded more like a mirror talking to itself, right? But I know that you know what I mean…

-Ya… You’re the same chatterbox as ever, although I sense some subliminal irony and maybe some deeper thoughts in your talk now…

-Wow, thanks! Oh one more thing about that sight thing.. You know, when Saint Nick / Santa says "he's seen it all before", I think that he might need to consider that sometimes, he sure sees things from the future, but maybe he doesn't see as far as, say, what a bird of prey might see. So how is he? 
-Well sometimes he is doing great, sometimes not so great, like all of us. We came here because he sensed that it might be a good idea to finally let you talk to him, plus I had gotten tired of making snow angels in the Great Architect’s Eden and he wanted to make my wish come true.

-Your wish… What’s your wish?

-I think I told you already the first time we talked, it had to do with Dorothy…

-I just wanted to hear that again. You know, it feels good to hear nice affirmations. I liked it very much when you had asked me to be your Dorothy when it was movie night, but I had convinced myself that there was no way to get back to the castle… Sometimes I need to be repeated things many times so that my ego ends up believing them and fighting for them in a more active way. Plus I was pissed because I was “punished” for talking my talk…

-Or not, or not…

-Huh? Well the Grinch and Zwarte Piet were very good actors if they faked their anger when they kicked me out. By the way, did they come along?

-Santa fired the Grinch a long time ago… Zwarte Piet asked the Grinch for his Cheshire Cat trick before he left, and when he appears as Pete the human he always wears a striped shirt and starts playing antiques, like talking backwards, riding a burro facing its tail as he shouts “arre, burro, arre!” and throws pebbles at the poor animal, and he also smokes his hookah upside down and plays trumpet with the thunder when I dream… At times, when I wake up, I find he gave me great ideas as I slept, at other times not so great…

-You know what feels great though? To be here listening to your stories, Nico…

-Ok, ok, good. Didn’t you want to talk to Santa? He’s waiting.

-Like all of us sometimes… Like all of us…

A slightly annoyed voice comes from the ground saying “don’t try my patience, young lady!” Santa is getting impatient, apparently. I cannot help smiling for having lost count of how many times I have sighed “¡Santa Paciencia!” up to this point… Nico takes me by the hand and we start walking in the sand, leaving foot tracks in the white immensity.

-Look! There he is! he finally says.

I sure see a man sitting by what looks like a small pond, but this is “the Prince who contemplated his Soul”, the younger version of Bab’ Aziz, in that beautiful movie by Nacer Khemir. There’s no need to tell my thoughts to Nico, he seems to have heard them. With an enigmatic smile, he takes out a desert rose from his pocket and asks me to touch it. As soon as my fingers are in contact with this gypsum gem, I see how the two men are actually not that different from each other.

-Lay the rose on the ground now, and use it as if it were a spinning top, says Nico.

As I watch the rose spinning, it takes on green hues similar to those of a cactus, and then it seems to turn into the cupola of the small Kubba where the characters of the Bab Aziz movie had entered to perform the dhikr ceremony with a Sufi brotherhood of whirling dervishes. The man by the pool says in Santa’s voice: 

“Not all the viewers of this movie understood that the young arrogant prince who spent time contemplating his soul in the pool was in fact the past persona of the wise Baba Aziz, like you did, NaChrisEly (yes, it will be faster to call you that way, a remix of your three official names). Not everybody understood either that Baba (daddy) was abbreviated into ‘Bab’ so that it could mean 'door 'in Arabic. And you did. Aaaaah, doors, one after the other… Again and again and again… But I must admit that I am still proud of you, and that sometimes your arrogance reminds me of mine in this younger age of the past that we are living now…

-“Thanksta”! I say in a smile. And… yes it will be faster to pronounce a remix of ‘thanks’ and ‘Santa’, making up this new word which is also a reminder of “gangsta” or “sista”!

-Don’t take too many liberties too soon trying to “out-santa-smart” me though, heehee. So tell us, what do you make of this little time trick, here as you witness your first desert mirage?

-Well, I feel like simply saying “why not”. You were old with white hair, beard and horse, and now you are younger with black hair, beard and horse, you were looking through a mirror then and now, and then you were eating with your horse and Zwarte Piet and now you’re sharing food for the soul with the black horse, Nico and I…

-And Zwarte Piet too, young lady, although I’d like you to call me Peridot now, says a striped cat fallen from a yucca flower who slowly turns into a human figure.

-Peridot? Weird name, I say. I like it though. It reminds me of Perruchet, it was a clown rag doll I had when I was a little girl that...

-Yes we know, we know. Peridot is the name of a stone actually, and also, I started to use the name because I realized that it is a mix of one of the Spanish diminutives of Pedro (“sobre esta piedra edificaré mi iglesia”): ‘Perico’, and it adds the concept of ‘dot’. And you see, dots are essential because…

-OK, OK, says Santa. She’s way too fond of etymology for us to delve into this mystery right now. It would take us forever, and too far off, or too close, it depends, but it’s not our purpose for the moment. So Peridot, we are glad that you have joined us, and we need to get started now, since we all seem to be ready to travel through the mirror. Thanks for building our venue, by the way, Nachrisely…

-Who, me?

-Yes, you! But you have been so all over the place lately, and for too long, that you may not even remember what you did. You were like a lost bee that was being kept busy on a plastic dandelion, or a butterfly wondering why it had chosen that fake flower to rest on. Heehee, butterfly, nearly, but not yet, let’s call you Chrysalis better, it’s easier to pronounce than Nachrisely!

My head starts spinning as fast as the desert rose top did on the sand, and I sit down in order not to lose my own balance. I finally say: “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Santa. How could I have done anything for today’s meeting if, again like back in the day, I did not even know it was to take place?”

-Just look into this circular mirror that I hold, he answers. What do you see?

The mirror takes yellow hues and it starts to reflect one of my creations from months ago.

-Ooooh! This is part of the virtual exhibit I had imagined for a final project of one of my compulsory classes! It was the final stage of the exhibition.

-Yes. We were proud of what you did, since it was not always easy to follow your heart in those circumstances. That is why I thought “you deserved” being with me.

-Oh I see… I would really love to meet Santa’s abuela someday…

-What did you just mumble?

-Nada, Santa, nada… I was saying that your words make me feel so grateful and humble today, humble, with an H…

-Nico, tell her why we liked what she did… I need a bit of a rest from talking to her now…

I understand I’d better keep that mouth of mine shut for a while, even though it’s difficult for me not to tease when I’m being teased myself or when Santa’s ego gets in the way. Nico smiles and, without saying a word, he touches the image in Santa’s mirror, and my collage starts to swell and turns into a 3D space so that we can actually sit on those cushions and seats. There’s also an addition: the cow skull that I had left behind in my Spanish house, miraculously found its way towards us too. It flew together with what held it: the œil-de-boeuf or ox-eye window of my Spanish front door. We decide that Santa will “preside” in the armchair and Zwarte Piet or Peridot will be sitting in front of him on the Moroccan pouf. With his left hand, where a green gem is hanging from a braided bracelet made of his burro’s hair, he motions the two cushions for Nico and I to sit.

-Come on, Nico and Nachrisely, he says.

-You know, I say, I don’t really like this name. I like the concept of mixing the three names in one and all, but I think I am beyond the chrysalis stage. Let’s say I’m half way through.

-Yes, like your half angels in the air, chuckles Santa. Well, what should we do then? I like the sound of Nachrisely; there is something in the assortment of those letters. My mind boggles!

-Well, let’s play Boggle, then, exclaims Nico with a smile.

-Oh yes! I beam. I loved that game. I liked it way better than Scrabble!

-Interesting, mutters Santa. Why is that, young-lady-whose-name-is-yet-to-be-defined-and-which-will-come-soon-thanks-to-the-letters-game?

-Yes, that name would definitely be too long, heehee! Oops, sorry, Santa-who-does-not-want-me-to-outsmart-him-but-comes-up-with-stuff-that-makes-it-very-difficult-for-me-no-to-follow-him. Well, first of all I think I have scrabbled enough before I made it here! And then Boggle comes with an hourglass; I have always loved that way of measuring time with sand, although I know it is all relative, but still…

-“But still”, and Time Stood Still, like the Sun in Solstice, says Peridot with a wink.

I go on without paying too much attention to what he’s just said.

-And then, the game itself: it is based on totally aleatory combinations, well, I mean that no human hand is implied in the process, apart from being the “blender” to come up with a great cocktail of letters… I am in love with that concept. Also, I prefer to try to find as many words as I can out of the letters instead of staying “half an hour” on just one word that might yield many points, what we are supposed to do with Scrabble. The only thing that is marked in Boggle is the “direction” of the letters M and W, which are underlined to show which is which.

-Witch-ery, chérie, says Peridot, just like your Me-We gate through which, true witch, you first came to meet us.

-Oh, well it’s a nice association, Peridot, I say. I hadn’t thought of that. Also, back to the letters game and like I said, I don’t like this Scrabble concept of creating for “profit only”, and in the hope of defeating an opponent…

-Oh really? I thought that you liked watching a French TV show about letters that confronted two candidates though, says Santa.

-Oh, you mean “Des Chiffres et des Lettres”? I remember. Yes, I liked the concept of the letters, but always failed miserably at reaching the total in the math part of the show. To me, it was pure magic when the candidates came up so fast with the famous sentence “le compte est bon”, meaning they had reached the desired number, when I was still struggling to try to get relatively close to it. I must admit that the episode I preferred was a fictitious one though.

-Of course, the one in La Belle Histoire, am I correct? asks Santa.

-Well you see and know it all, so why do you even ask, why do I even tell…

-Because I want our friends to see it for themselves, says the holy man. 

And he touches his circular mirror, which he has placed at the center of the setting. It starts to change its color to black, and from the center of it, images take shape.

Nico is excited like I am, trying to form as many words as possible from what he sees in the Boggle game displayed on the screen mirror. He exclaims: -“Kimo, Sun, Guts, Knees, INXS”!

-“…I got to let you know… You’re one of my kind”… I sing with a smile. OK, my turn:
“Mots, Goût, Émoi, Moi, Toi, Nous, Oui”!

-Haha, chuckles Santa. This is perfect, so perfect… See, you two are reenacting the fictitious game by your adored Lelouch, young lady. You seem to be doing the same playful dialogue as the actors in the movie!

-True, I say in wonder and awe…

-Why? What does “Rasmiagen” mean in French? asks Nico.

-Well, the word is not yet formed, but it will become something soon, I say.

-Yes, exclaims Peridot, I know: “Images”! It’s the same in French and English.

-Correct, Peridot, I answer in approval. Although in the movie the man had found another word, longer, and very appropriate for the plot: “Mariage” leaving out only the N and the S.

-Wrong, shouts he with a buzzing sound, Marriage takes two “R”s!

-Well not in my language though. In our French spelling of “marriage”, there’s one and only “R”.

-Oh, ok, he says, I’m so used to doubles though...

-And ok is “d’accord”, right? asks Nico as he reads the other word that was formed.

I answer with just a silent smile, and he suddenly blushes.

-Well well well, says Santa, this is starting to be very interesting, and I’m having way more fun than when we would reenact The Wizard of Oz in the TV room back in the Spanish castle, from where you two stole two dolls to rename one with a trinity of names, by the way!

-Oh, I say looking down at the sand, I am so sorry, Santa. But if you knew how this doll helped me though…

-Like I did not know, says the old man. Don’t you remember? You’re the one who said I knew it all in the first place. You sometimes have a fish memory, we should find a way to let those memories stick to your mind.

-That’s why fish sticks were created! Hahahahahaha, says Peridot with a roaring laughter.

-Haha, you sometimes embarrass me, Peridot, says Santa, but what would I do without your silly humor… So let’s take a seat, friends, I am foreseeing grand things willing to unfold, and I’m sure there’s no mistake in this unfolding desire... Time to find a name for this lady, so what do we make of N –A – C – H – R – I – S –E – L – Y ?

The three of us start shouting our words:

-Sin!
-Cry!
-Scar!
-Hey!
-Hay!
 -Heal!

-Hmn… says Santa, kids, I’m glad you’re having your own therapeutic-dialectic battle here, but maybe those words are a bit too short and not too fit for the beautiful name we want to find here…

-Right. OK so here’s one says Peridot: Siren Clay. What d’ya all think?

-Perdonen la interrupción, says an unknown voice, but I think it is pretty horrible that you guys are sitting on furniture made of my extended family. Even the window doubly takes from us, con el ojo y la calavera, it is so shocking for my poor cow’s sight… 

We all stand there facing the cow, dumbfounded, without knowing what to say. Then Nico has the cutest way of trying to make her feel better, stating that, on the contrary, she should try to see death as an ultimate honor that goes back to ancient times.

-See, señora vaca, he says, traditionally, the farmer would worship the cow’s milk that would be used in offerings, then the hunter would ask for forgiveness and pay tribute to the four-legged’s sacrifice of a life that would feed his people, and finally the tailor would sit and assemble hides together in a symbolic reenactment of what the Egyptian Goddess Isis did. She had the cow as one of her sacred attributes.

-Wasn’t it Hathor instead? asks Santa.

-I think both, anyway… says Nico. Isis’s man, Osiris, had been slaughtered and cut to pieces that were scattered all over the place. She gathered them all, well, nearly all, only his penis was missing. She made one out of clay. She pieced her man together again, and even had a son from his resuscitated body: Horus. I’m sure the cow had helped her in the process.

-¡Ah pues entonces molo! exclaims a proud cow.

-Sí, molas, I say in amusement. You do indeed rock. You’re a great cow who came from outer space, you are the best ingredient for a Molocow Cocktail!

-Haha! Check out what I found on the net as I looked for data about the sacred cow and the goddesses! says Peridot who shows us his cell phone. Molocow does exist! It’s a milk brand. 

He goes on: I also found a great poem by someone whose nickname is “Aedicula Antinoi”:

-What a great nickname! I mutter… The shrine of Antinéa… It was my second cat's name!

-Hmn, where does this girl take her stuff from? He mutters. Anyway… Check this out!

Hail to Hathor, who holds the sun between her horns!

Hail to Isis, who wears the cow’s horns upon her head!

Once around the temple the sacred cow travels

to bring blessings of field and farm to the people.

Twice around the temple the sacred cow travels

to bestow the gifts of fertility and flourishing.

Three times around the temple the sacred cow travels

to show the people the ordering of time’s passing.

Four times around the temple the sacred cow travels

to make the ways holy for priests and scribes.

Five times around the temple the sacred cow travels

to teach the musicians and dancers the arts of joy.

Six times around the temple the sacred cow travels

to demonstrate the secrets of magic to the wise.

Seven times around the temple the sacred cow travels

to mirror the moon’s journeys above in the celestial vault.

Hail to Hathor, who holds the sun between her horns!

Hail to Isis, who wears the cow’s horns upon her head!

-Oh, I’m honored, says the cow. Hail to Hathor, hail to Isis, I’m going back to my hay.

-Hey! Hell yeah! It will protect you from my own haiL if I decide to make ice balls out of the creek near your pasture, laughs Peridot. Walk in beauty on the seven colors of the rainbow that protects your temple, señora vaca. Thanks for showing up!  Mooh aaaah, big kiss!, shouts he as he waves goodbye to the four-legged. Ok, so back to our name game. Nobody told me yet what you guys thought of the brilliant name I came up with: “Clay Siren”.

-I like it very much, Peridot, I say. Although maybe it’s a dangerous name to bear: when the siren wants to swim, she will turn into mud again…

-Maybe that’s in order to let her know what Osiris experienced, says Peridot.

-Yes, but now that we’re all together we don’t want her to disappear again, says Nico, please, Peridot... Check mine! I had thought of a couple of options: “Lacy Shrine” or “Ashen Lyric”. What do you think?

-Oh my god, it’s beautiful, Nico, I say.

-Yes, recognizes Santa. It’s better than my own options: “Chin Layers” or “Inch Slayer”, haha! But you’re the first interested in having a name, lady, so what have you found?

-Well I found five, I say. I had come up with “yin aches”…

-…WAKE IN YANG… mutters Peridot.

-What did you say? I inquire.

-Nothing, nothing, he answers. It’s just that mention of the yin… I don’t know, forget what I’ve said… It’s not made of the letters we were given anyway. I should not have said that, it comes from my personal letter pantheon. What else do you have?

-“Resin”, “real yin”, “she can” & “rise clan”…

-Wow, ‘real yin’ or ‘yin aches’, I love it. Just wow, really… says Peridot. It shows that all in life is made of one thing and its opposite, it’s all about choices, hahaha… I love the way letters always play with us when we think it is the other way around.

-Yes, acknowledges an impressed Santa. They’re pretty powerful and work perfectly well in combination, but I think that Nico’s choices sound more like names. They could be Facebook nicknames by the way! So which one? Lacy Shrine or Ashen Lyric?

-Lacy Shrine, I decide.

Nico looks happy to see that I love what he created.

-So are we ready for the journey now? he asks with a bit of impatience.

-Yes, Nico, says Santa. Please place the roses in their position, recite the magical words, and we will be ready.

As soon as Nico places three desert roses around us, one behind the seat of each of my male counterparts, the center of the mirror takes red hues and starts to spin really fast. Then Nico pronounces these words:

“From our belief in muses, gods and goddesses, from spirit, from the clouds, from the sun, from the sky and the moon in our cosmic theater, please bestow upon us a good tomorrow through this earth walk, waking dream, to understand that boundaries can become horizons. In the name of the one, in the name of the two, in the name of the three that make us one and holy.”

Rolling down from the sky, thirteen brief thunder claps are heard, and then three longer ones. The red center of the mirror is cut in half like the Red Sea, but I realize that it is what I would have expected from the number of repetitive sounds, which reminded me of childhood evenings spent watching theater plays on TV. They would start with those blows, maybe one less to avoid reaching 13 though. 

A red curtain is set open and Santa solemnly re-cites:

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Life's a nice walking shadow,

a fun player that scans and frolics his hour upon the stage

and once, twice, thrice, decides if I’m holy and sage”.

I think that he slightly changed the lines he took from Mc Beth but I am so fascinated to see, here and now in the desert, images from my past, that I omit to mention my doubts quote-wise.

-What do those images tell you, Lacy Shrine? asks Santa.

-A beautiful but brief taste of a life style that my dad and I loved better than my mom, who basically hated this community-based experience, I think. We would learn to make raisin bread, pottery, we would hike, we would draw, paint, write poetry and play theater like on this group of photographs.

-Another ‘rasmiagen’ taking place, I see, says Nico.

-Haha, ok, we’ll change the word for you, I answer. I remember that the celebrant wore a basketball ball cut in half on his head!

-What are you doing with the “bride” on the bottom left picture? asks Santa.

-Oh it was so difficult for me because of my broken arm! We were playing those girls hand clapping games…

- Peridot sings: Down, down, baby / Down, down the roller coaster /  Sweet, sweet, baby, I’ll never let you go /  Shimmy, Shimmy cocoa pop / Shimmy, Shimmy ride….

-Ha! I know that one, says Nico. And there’s also “Peter Pan, is a man, who can fly, in the sky, turn around, touch the ground, click, click, click, peace!!”

-Wow, I’m impressed, I say. Aren’t those hand games more for girls though?

-Oh you’re so stuck in those old gender roles sometimes, girl… sighs Peridot.

-Perdón, perdón… You’re right… I say.

He laughs:

-well, you’ve been learning a lot since the last time we talked, let us not be too rough on you though. By the way, speaking of rough, how did you break your arm when you were little?

-Oh well, it was the second time I did it. The first time, a girl had fallen on me in the school playground, but “since I was the schoolmaster’s daughter”, and to avoid a hypothetic “special treatment”, I was actually totally ignored by my teacher when I told her that I could not write from the pain… She dismissed the voicing of my pain and told me to stop whining… So I basically did stop whining, I shut up there, I barely mentioned it at home, and I let my arm recover by itself. The very next week end, if I remember correctly, we were taking part in a “parcours vita”, a fitness trail in the woods, with my family and a bunch of friends. I remember that I even did a chin-up exercise, hauling my body on that wooden pole, all this with a broken arm. I was seven by then, I guess it was the opening of a very long cycle for me. A cycle of hiding my pain under the surface of a heavy cast…

-Oh, well, see, exclaims Santa, there was a reason for me to come up with “chin layers”! And you need many layers to make a cast, so it makes perfect sense.

-Well now that you mention it, I say, cast, outcast… I think that this particular event may also have triggered some of my reactions and habits to make an outcast of myself. Something like a month after that incident, I fell again, on the same arm which totally twisted upside down, and the doctors saw that it was a second fracture…

-Wow, that’s cool, you’re tougher than you look! Says Peridot.

-Yeah, especially since my dad did not take us to the hospital because he said he had responsibilities at school, and my mom can’t drive, so it took us forever to finally get there and have my arm fixed. There was a big mess with all this second time I broke my arm since I had no medical records of it. The hospital “protocol” had them start an investigation to see if there was any evidence of child abuse. My mom who always looked at me with a magnifying glass thought she was going to die of shame. This and her being so pissed at my dad for not taking us to the hospital, I think, made me go back even deeper into my shell, because I somehow thought, maybe, that all this was “my fault”. Maybe I buried my very soul in that cast…

-So how did it feel to have this thing around your arm? asks Peridot.

-Well, very hot and itchy in the summer; it drove me crazy. I remember I used a pen from time to time to scratch my skin underneath the layers. Once, the pen cap stayed inside and my dad had to use tweezers or something similar to reach it. I shrieked in terror, like a pig waiting for slaughter, when I felt the cold metal on my skin!

-Maybe you remembered some Inquisition device, said Santa…

-Huh? I inquire. You really want to use your second creation, “inch slayer” or what? It’s true that my poor arm had shrunk once they ripped the cast open. But anyway, the good thing about that cast is that it taught me how to do things with the right hand, to try to exercise my left brain a bit; it was ok for some time, but of course as soon as my left arm… left its prison, my southpaw spirit won again!

-Very good, very, very good insights for this first of many memories of our daydream walk in your earth journey, says Santa. Yes, we could say that we are slaying inches of that cast that imprisons the real knowledge of who you are… Does anybody know what casts are made of, by the way?

-Yeah, I’ve seen a documentary about that, answers Nico. First you apply a cotton layer on the skin…

-Ah, my dear clouds, mutters Peridot.

-And then you use plaster of Paris.

-What is that? I ask.

-Well, it’s usually made of gypsum… The material we’re on right now…

-Oh, sure! Hmmm, interesting… But what I mean is: why is it called that way?

-Because there was a large gypsum deposit in Montmartre, the sacred hill in Paris, and it took its name from it. You heat gypsum to 300ºF and voilà!

-Oh… So that plaster has to do with the Parisian mount of saint martyrs, haha, it makes me laugh so hard, says Peridot.

-Isn’t there anything sacred for you? asks Santa in an angry tone.

-I thought you knew me, Santa Man… What kind of question is that?

-You’re right, the old man says. Sometimes I’m still driven by my ego a little bit.

-OK you two, let us not start again one of your endless fights, begs Nico. Instead, I think it is great to know, also, that gypsum in its ‘plaster of Paris’ form is used for theatrical sets and sculpting material called modroc…

-Nico, how I love the way you are… I say with a huge smile.

-“Modroc”, yeah, “mode rock on”, teases Peridot. See, here we are, the lady here doing her wind angel on gypsum IS a clay siren, well, one made of white clayish material! And even though she wants to look like a rock, she melts with Nico, heeheeeheee…

-Well, yes, I do. Is it a crime? I ask, driven a bit by my ego too.

-Hey guys, goes on Peridot, I think we might soon have to carve a gypsum wedding cake, you know, with those typical bride and groom dolls on top of it. I imagine the bride with a huge tulle veil covering the top of the cake.

-A spinning top, I wink…

-Hey, asks Nico who blushed a bit, isn’t it what the place we’re at means? Pink tulle, Tularosa?

Peridot sings: “Don’t trust in me she said / I’ll always lie to you / that way you’ll never know just where you staaand” / Don’t tell me baby / Don’t tell me how / How you love me / Things can never be the same / ‘cause a part of me will still remain / in Tularosaaaaaaaa...

-Peridoooot, I beg. Stop it! Oh I’d love it to mean that, Nico, although tulle is ‘tul’ in Spanish. Maybe it takes its name from the Mexican city of Tula.

-Ah maybe, says Nico. Well, long before the Spaniards came, there was contact with the southern tribes, so why not.

-Yeah, well sorry to disappoint the lady, says Peridot, but I’ve googled it on my cell phone and the name comes from Nahuatl, and it means “typha” or cattail, ‘reed’ that is… So the Spaniards added pink because of the color of those cattails, meow, on the banks of the river.

-OK, Peridot, but if they did use the word “tula”, it means that it does have a relationship with that city otherwise they would have used the Castilian name: “enea”.

-She’s unbearably smart and sometimes on the fringe of daring to patronize me even when she’s kind of wrong but I can’t help kind of falling for her too… sighs Peridot.

-Kind of gracias, I smile… Enea reminds me of a “silla de enea” I had when I was a little girl. It’s a traditional chair painted with bright flowers, very typical from the flamen…co world.

-Why did you pause as you said that? asks Santa.

-I don’t know, I lie. The thing is: I had destroyed the delicate painting as a teenager when I painted it all white.

-Well, maybe it was already the Tularosa Basin and its white sands calling you, suggests Santa.

-Yes, maybe… and this tulle thing, now that I’ve mentioned my childhood, I am recalling a music box. It was painted with vintage black lacquer over wood, and maybe it also had red flower motifs on it, similar to those I had erased from the chair. I remember the smell of the box as one opened it… The treasure inside was a little ballerina in a white tulle tutu, who spun and spun on her axis. She was standing on red velvet, and there were three mirrors behind her. I loved looking at her spinning and spinning, and how she seemed to no longer be alone thanks to the reflection in the mirror dancing behind her.

-So they were four dancers, like us, says Santa.

-What do you mean? I ask.

-Well, if she dances in front of three mirrors, she dances with three reflections of herself, and it adds up to four, like us!

-Wow… You get my mind spinning again, Santa Man…

-That’s good, that’s good… he answers. Let’s see, Peridot, focus on what we’ve just mentioned and make an image pop from your mind’s eye for us to see.

-As you wish, beloved master… says Peridot who comes up with this:

-Wow! We all exclaim.

-We talked about the music box and the Egyptian goddesses, so I get that, says Nico. Then I think I know who is behind the disguise of cat woman there in the center of the labyrinth, but what are those big statues?

-Atlantean figures, as in Atlas the giant who separated two continents… says Peridot. They are giant Toltec warriors at the temple dedicated to Quetzalcóatl, because there in Toltec land was supposed to be his mythical kingdom.

-Wow, I mutter. On the Aztec Calendar I was born on a reed day, on a reed year, and the day of my trecena or “month” is ruled by Tezcatlipoca, the shadow or nemesis of Quetzalcóatl… The day I was born also falls on the same “dot” on the calendar as Tonatiuh’s birth, the fifth sun. Yes, I’m a child of the Sun…

-Oh you too? asks Peridot. I knew it…

-Did you also know that they call the twin gods white and black Quetzalcóatl? Tonatiuh is the black one… I thought you’d like that, I add.

-I do, says Peridot. Well anyway, I thought that those giants would fit in my little composition here, casting their shadow on the labyrinth. And your black and white story makes me think of them as giant chessmen.

-True! I say. You know, when I see this image of yours, I think of the day, back in Belgium, when I had taken the Egyptian Gods and Goddesses from my parents’ glass case to use the figurines as little dolls. They enabled me to better understand the family ties of Mythology heroes… And now, by the way Nico, I remember that I had enacted the piecing together of Isis’s husband and brother, father of Horus…

-Your brain is functioning well today, Lacy Shrine. says Santa. Don’t you think that the pattern of the labyrinth evokes a brain cut in half? Where is this labyrinth, by the way? Any idea?

-It’s the labyrinth of the Chartres Cathedral, in France, I say. There is a reproduction of it here up north in Santa Fe. Maybe that’s why I had seen a Native-American labyrinth figure, man in the maze, the first time I wrote about this kind of things just before meeting you, guys.

-Yes, says Santa. I remember that you had seen it by a mural painting of a face in a wall in Granada…

-Oh so you did read me, Santa?

-Who me? Of course no, my team read it for me… They only gave me a summary of it, I don’t have time to read that kind of things, says an obviously embarrassed Santa Man who awkwardly builds his lie.

-Aaah… I answer. Well yes… I remember that mur… OUCH!

As I remember that first mention of a labyrinth in my writings, which I had compared with a huge Frisbee, I receive a real one on my head.

-Sorry, says a shy little boy who comes back for his “toy”. I thought it was a Frisbee, but mom told me it was actually a sand disk. It’s for sledding down the gypsum slope… I apologize.

-It’s… ok, I say, fascinated by this little boy.

-Wow, that’s a cool mental association, Lacy Shrine, says Peridot.

-What?

-I love what this little boy triggered in your mind!

There is my mental image projected on the hot sand for all to see. It still bugs me a little that there is no mind privacy whatsoever when Peridot, Santa or Nico want to see my thoughts… I start to sweat in discomfort, and Santa gets closer, to wipe out the drop, I guess. But against all odds and without a warning, while smiling, he throws sand in my face, and as I raise my left hand to cover my eyes, I feel that I fall and fall and fall down a long dark pit. I have the distinct feeling that I am not the only one falling, and I catch glimpses of an upside down piano and a frozen raven on an Underwood type-writer writing a Rumi quote.

(To be continued: here)