Magic mirror, in the hay, thanks for showing me the way #1

The red way

Here I am, at the entrance (and also exit) of the so-called maize maze which actually is a sorghum maze. A post indicates, through wooden signs, the direction of important points of reference in Albuquerque: Petroglyphs, Balloon Fiesta, Biopark, Old Town… Oh, that is nearly my part of town, because I’ve always been attracted to the old, I guess. It is strange to enter this realm through its west gate… As if we were going backwards, well, maybe it is what is intended after all, at least to take a look back to understand what brought us in the now. My first steps take me on an intuitive walk among tall wannabe maize stalks, and I hear a voice in my head that asks me if I am ready to step into the past and the future, to put on the coat of who I am.  

 -Yes, I say out loud, feeling that there is more to this “mind thing” than hears the ear, and definitely more to life than (doesn’t, heehee) see the eye…

-Are you ready to become a cosmic stalker? goes on the voice.

-A stalker? I exclaim.

-Well yes, answers the voice. Now you will understand my interpretation of the real meaning of the word, now that you’re walking among these sorghum stalks… So you’re a stalk-walker or a stalker!

I acknowledge that the voice has a very good point, although for now I’d love to be a stilt walker to see the labyrinth from above, but I know it would somehow be cheating, but still... Meanwhile, the voice goes on:

-So if you are ready, reddie, heehee, go and look for the colors on that parchment concertina that you received… But first, make sure that you look all around you and that you gather what feels rightfully yours…

What a thrilling mystery the voice is inviting me into, how I love it, actually… So I decide to obey (hallelujah) the voice and I look all around. A tinkling sound is what draws my attention toward the feet of a sorghum stalk. Hidden behind it, I see three copper bowls disposed around a copper plate. All have incredibly gorgeous designs: spirals for the bowls, and the flower of life on the plate. The tinkle came from a stone that rolled towards the plate in the center. As I lean forward, another stone comes by, then another, and so on up until there are seven stones.

-This is weird, I murmur. Are the stones playing bowling with those… well bowls? It makes sense, although right now I’m kind of expecting to see that red “monster” in the movie with David Bowie, may he rest in peace…

-Who? The monster? asks the voice.

-No, Bowie. I answer. Well, Ludo too if he’s dead, but how can a mythic character die, though? It’s as if he were smiling at me from inside those bowls… I remember he had big, bright teeth when he smiled at Sarah, although he looked a bit like a lost Minotaur…

-What are those lines on the stones? asks the voice.

-I don’t know. But let’s gather them, like Hop-o’-My-Thumb gathered pebbles from the river to find his way back home…

-Well, logical, since you are entering the Labyrinth too, comments the voice.

-Oh wow, true! And by the way, Hop-o’-My-Thumb was seven years old, and also the youngest of seven siblings, like seven are these pebbles

-And the colors of the rainbow... adds the voice.

-I am in awe, I murmur.

-N…

-Yes, this is the initial of my first name, I answer. Why are you uttering it though?

-You’re in AWE-N, awen, in poetic inspiration, says the talkative and very inspiring voice.. It is a Celtic word, it actually means something like “flowing spirit”, and also life essence. If you listen to your awen, it will give you profound insight into past, future or present; Awen is the poetic frenzy given to you by your spirit muse. Permit yourself to be Cerridwenn again… Swim towards the land beneath the waves, and Stir the Cauldron of Transformation again…

-Oh, the Cauldron of Transformation… I remember that I used the imagery for my Halloween celebration back in the day, I say as I stare at the bowls. I guess it is not “just” imagery, huh… Let’s take those bowls and stones, I feel that they will be very useful…

 I start piling the copper bowls into the plate, and put the stones inside the bowl on top, stack them in my bag and proceed with my stalk-walking / maze-talking journey. After a few minutes of progression in the green universe singing with insects’ voices, colored branches like huge arms stretching out to me are in sight. I have reached the first color station that is mentioned on the parchment concertina. And it is red.

An informative panel explains that it takes 40,000 beetles to dIe, to make one pound of cochineal dYe, and also lipstick… Oh, pretty dire for the beetle, but I guess it is a symbol for sacrifice, charm and rebirth… The sign also talks about the death of stars that gives birth to iron. Hmmm… So it takes death to be reborn in another form, I like that. Well, it’s kind of cruel but it’s a metaphor for life in all its raw truth. Under the text there is also the representation of a wavelength, red curves that underline “665nm”… What does that mean? New Mexico?

The voice comes to rescue me from my scientific ignorance: “Oh, no… It refers to the visible light. Nanometers, aka nm, are a unity of length equal to a billionth of a meter”.

-Oh pretty small... Well, in order to remember it, I will call them “metros enanos” (dwarf meters)! Like the Seven Dwarves! Wow… Another seven!

The voice giggles in satisfaction and sings in the back of my head “High he, High ho”. The more I hear the voice, the more it sounds like a wind instrument melody. It reminds me of the flute in my bag, which I had taken for some reason, so I decide it is time to give it a blow. After all, the origin of my last name is from Germany and it means “the blower or the flautist” in old German.

-Oh what a nice recorder you have there, says the voice. With your name tattooed on its skin, or pyrographed on its polished bark...

-Oh I like that, and it reminds me of the fact that once I burned my hair as I leaned on some pokerwork.

-Interesting. Do you remember what you were drawing with fire?

-No… No lo recuerdo, I answer as I shake my head, somehow disappointed at my lack of memory for events of my childhood. By the way, I ask, what did you call a recorder?

-It’s how we call the kind of flute you hold, in English.

-Oh, I say. We call it flûte à bec, in French. A flute with a lip (or beak or bill…). When I heard the word I was thinking of a recording machine, and also of the Spanish verb “recordar”, to remember… Well, let’s play what came to my mind, actually, I say as I blow in my recorder after many years of silence… Sol sol sol sol do mi fa mi do… I play the first notes of Home-Made Religion (in My Kitchen), by Noa.

-What was that? asks the voice.

-I don’t know; it’s the melody that came to my mind here in the red, maybe I relate the color to a kitchen?

-Well why not, says the voice. Red is survival, meat is red, meat is survival and viceversa! And back to the wavelength, red has the slowest vibration frequency and the largest wavelength. It is a warm and stimulating color.

-Actually there is something that stimulates my curiosity now…What is this stool over there?

As I lean over what appears to be a plastic structure, I clearly recognize the circular, spiraling patterns of a tree stump, enhancing the ring lines.

-Speaking of “recorders”, you know that tree rings are historical records, don’t you? asks the voice.

-Yes, I do. According to whether the rings are thinner or thicker, it shows how the overall growth year was, for each ring. And yes, speaking of ‘records’ now, I am thinking of this fantastic scene in the movie Amélie (yes, again) when she imagines how vinyl discs are made: just like crêpes from Brittany!

-Here we are, back in the kitchen, but also to sounds, says the voice in what I recognize as a smile.

-Oh, like in this experiment in which they literally played tree rings on a record-player. The result was really awe-iNspiring.

-I told you that you were in the awen, says the voice. So now what do you see if you look into the rings?

As I look even closer into the stump, I see something like a mathematic chart with a sort of funnel that contains the colors of the rainbow. 

-Oh! Hay un embudo de colores! I say amused.

-Embudo, north of Española, NM? asks the voice.

-Nooo… Embudo means funnel in Spanish. But it is actually the reason why the inhabitants of Embudo gave their place its name. Early Spanish settlers observed the spot where the Río Embudo flowed, between two distinctive cone-shaped hills, and it reminded them of a funnel. I can’t help but feeling like putting this funnel on my head, heehee. You know, it is how they represent crazy people. I think the painter El Bosco or Bosch was the first one to use this symbol, in order to identify the so-called lunatics in his paintings. And the funnel I actually see is red, haha!

-Yes, but seeing things upside down like the position of this funnel also helps opening ourselves to spirit whispers. Many people don’t get that though, so it is easier for them to deem crazy those who can…

-A very good way to put it, I say. I love it, dear voice. Actually what “c’est fou” also means in French, apart from “it’s crazy”, is “it’s amazing"…

-Yes, a Maze…ing, repeats the voice.

-Oh but wait a minute, I see images from MY KITCHEN right now! What is this??? Wow! The center of the tree ring has turned into one of the stove burners. Such an American shape, by the way. Everything is so different from Europe…

That thing in the center of the burner reminds me of my childhood toy: my rag doll, the red-haired Perruchet. What is his head made of here though?

-Well don’t you see, asks the voice? It is pretty clear if you observe what’s on the left.

-A huge pomegranate seed. Oh wow!!! Yes, it’s a pomegranate peel with two seeds for the clown’s eyes. I am thinking of a tale, also, in the Arabian Nights: a crazy pursuit between the Princess, Queen of Beauty, and a Genius; at some point the genius turns into a pomegranate and all the seeds but one are swallowed by the princess turned into a rooster.

-Yes, agrees the voice. Exactly like in the story of Cerridwenn’s cauldron when she was robbed of the power of her brew by this young man who, thanks to what he had drunk from her Cauldron of Transformation, started playing the same game of hide and seek in another’s… hide or skin. The beginning of shapeshifters maybe… When the goddess discovered what he had done, he turned into many things until he ended up being a grain of wheat. Cerridwenn, who had turned into a hawk by then, saw his strategy and turned into a black chicken that came to peck all the grains… From then on she bore the thief in her womb, swore to kill him at birth, but did not have the heart to do it so she abandoned him in a leather bag on the river. He became the most gifted storyteller and poet of all Celtic times…

-A Celtic Moses… I answer, somewhat lost in thoughts. I feel dizzy, as if I was swirling into the spirals on those copper bowls.

-Stay grounded, advises my fellow flute player.

As we talk, a black chicken has arrived and pecks on a weird object, maybe thinking that its tube-like elements are super worms. It is a multicolor xylophone that someone left there. I take a closer look and notice that actually the chicken was not only a music lover but was also trying to peck pomegranate seeds that were scattered on and around the xylophone. The dividing line between reality and fiction is getting more blurred than ever.

I take a few seeds and crush them between my thumb and my middle finger to write the French spelling of the notes “so” and “ti”.

-Haha! I am getting more and more into my Little Red Riding Hood color role, with this “seed blood” on my hands. Have I eaten the wolf?

-Maybe the one in yourself that was no longer needed, says the voice in an enigmatic tone.

-Oh, speaking of which, the image in the stump also showed that my lobo paws stickers had gotten down from the fridge to leave their tracks on the stove stump, and the middle track is half on white, half on black. Half on fake tree, half on fabricated fire…

-do do do si la do la do la do la do la re, re re re do si si re re do si si la la sings the voice as it plays the notes on the xylophone.

I am so moved that the voice has adopted my French way of calling the notes that it does not even astonish me to see that the xylophone sticks are moving “on their own”. What matters to me now is that the voice seems to know how to perfectly guide me toward humming my true heart song. So I sing along:

-« Le jeu de la Marelle va de la terre jusqu’au ciel, lance bien la pierre, regarde où tu mets les pieds… » I loved that song ! I exclaim. Oh, and now that I think of it, the lyrics are actually very profound, like the game itself, hopscotch. “Hopscotch goes from earth to sky, throw the stone well, watch out where you tread”… Maybe it is a way to warn us against faux pas?

As I say that I trip on a stone that has rolled out of my bag, it is the one I prefer, it has warmer tones than the others. It is more of a sepia tone than the rest of stones colored in a greyish tone. I take it back very carefully and decide to keep it apart from the rest, in my blue jeans’ pocket. And I go on analyzing the song that the voice brought to me.

-The warning against a faux pas seems pretty clear in the first part of the song, in Brazilian (I like that it’s bilingual, by the way): “Jogo d'Amarelinha, Na linha na vai pisar, Pé dentr, pé fora, Esse pé não vai errar, Jogo d'Amarelinha, È pra menina pular, Cuidado pra não errar que a vida É curta menina e nada se vai levar” (in the game of hopscotch, beware of crossing the line, foot in, foot out, do not misstep; the game of hopscotch is for the little girl to hop, watch out, don’t get lost, life is short, little girl, and you will take nothing with you once you’re out of it”). But do we really listen to those recommendations, huh? Aren’t we all meant to “err” for quite some time? Actually, I think that some faux pas are good ways to learn what we’re really meant to do and who we’re really meant to be. Maybe we could see them as rehearsals for our final masterpiece. What do you think, invisible double?

-I think that I like it very much… And I also love how this ancestral game actually shares its Hopping name with the little boy of the tale, the one who used the stones to avoid getting lost in the forest… Marelle, you say… What does that word means in French?

-Well, I don’t know actually. Let’s check on the net, I say as I take my cell phone out of my very resourceful bag. It seems that the initial name was “mérel” or “stone”, the one that is thrown in the different “windows” of the hopscotch court. And then it goes on saying that “mérelle” with double l – e is the name of the shell that pilgrims wore on their hat on their way to Santiago de Compostela, while walking that way of St James. Wow! I’m amazed…

-Yes, we’ve said that already many times, guapa, chuckles the voice.

-Oh sorry, you’re right. But hey, it’s incredible! Like this innocent game of hopscotch is not innocent at all: it symbolizes our life’s sacred journey. Now I understand why we would draw the court starting on the earth and then hopping or limping our way toward the sky. Dios mío, it’s intense! Wait a minute, let me check those bowls again… The spiral might be that hopscotch sign too, but instead of a ladder shape it draws an escargot, a snail shape. I’ve seen that sometimes. Actually it’s like a spiral staircase. Geez!

-Yes, and geese inspired the goose game. That board game is another “innocent” representation of that concept, says the voice who is having a hard time not sharing the knowledge kept in the realm of invisibility.

As the voice says that, I hear the geese outside the labyrinth, and then they fly above us again. The union between the here and now and the infinite possibilities of other dimensions seems closer than ever. At that moment, I think that I should somehow draw the hopscotch court on the labyrinth ground, knowing that I will be hopping from color to color instead of the court windows, but I need to physically express the deeply philosophical meaning that desires to come alive at the tip of my fingers. What shape should I choose? I start stirring the dirt with a stick that I found on the ground to draw my court, and as I do it, the stick stumbles upon a rigid structure underneath the earth. I start removing more and more dirt, and I uncover a rectangular mirror buried in the ground. I feel an urge to hold it against my chest to show it to the invisible voice. As I do it, I feel the most incredible sensation in my body, as if it regained its little girl’s size, and I am starting to be surrounded by objects and drawings all around me.

I am speechless, the voice is helping me to understand the symbolic meaning of what’s going on.

-The mirror is reflecting your deepest thoughts. It is also showing you more options to read between the lines, be they the lines of so-called reality and imagination, the lines of the hopscotch court itself, or any other line you can think of.

-Well actually I am thinking of the Spanish name of hopscotch: rayuela, the little line… So maybe it is good to cross certain lines, like we are doing here, lines between world perceptions…

-Well yes, says the voice. It is precisely what ‘scotch’ means: a scratched line. The rule states not to tread on it or cross it, but it is indeed very rewarding, spiritually speaking, to cross the line between realms. Let’s have a look at the different “courts”, shall we?

-Yes.

The shapes of the courts also show a difference in the number of “windows” and in the name of “la meta”, the “finish LINE”… The one I know better is the one in the mirror. It looks like a Ankh actually, now that I look at it better… So it’s normal to have this one inviting you from earth to sky, from below on the ground to above in the heavens. It looks like a ladder too, right?

-Yes, answers the voice. And it reaches the sky at 9.

-I like that, I say… Now I understand stuff happening every nine years.

-What stuff?

-Just stuff… I say, keeping that for myself.

-The one in “escargot” is very neat, says the voice.

-Yes, it reminds me of Paris districts, built in a snail shape starting on l'Île-de-la-Cité on the river… Actually, “Paris” river is a perfect choice for home… I like how it also evokes a Nautilus… shell in a boat, or boat in a shell, in a nutshell…

-It invites one to hop into 10 windows before reaching home.

-Yes, I acknowledge. Because 3+7=10, and 10 is unity.

-What logic is that? asks a voice who plays dumb, trying to sound astonished.

-Mine, the one that matters! I say with a wink and a smile…

-OK, heehee… And what about the red one, the one that only has 7 windows and ends in a cats cradle?

-I love that one, I answer enthusiastically. I also love that it stands by the black cat thermometer that gives the temperature both in Fahrenheit and Celsius. It is mine actually. The hopscotch ends in more confusion apparently, since it conjures up this string game: intricate patterns around one’s fingers, which we can either unravel or tangle even more.

-This is pretty cool, yes. What is this in the stump’s reflection now? Asks the voice.

As I look while still holding the mirror, I see other objects, from home, which are playing with each other as in this proverb “quand le chat est parti, les souris dansent” (when the cat’s gone the mice dance), only that here it’s in mirror since I’m the one who was called souris (mouse) and a cat is the one implied in the new vision.

Oh wow! This is our thread, well my thread, but I feel like asking you to hold the other end of the red thread, dear voice.

-As you wish, says the voice.

-The red hues of this place in the maze and of the color of the red thread that I had tied around this cat pen, and then the blue tone of the headphones, and the green of the wool ball that the hand-knitted cat never seems to reach... I know there’s a meaning to it all…

-Of course there is, says the voice. You will discover it and write about it very soon. I am sure this is the reason why the cat object that popped up was a pen… Maybe it’s time to dive (like the cat pen once the cap of its pen has been popped) into the meaning of other cats, d’autres chats… les chats-kras!

-Cha… oh, our chakras! But of course! What would I do without your insights. I’m afraid I don’t remember too well what they mean though, you will have to help me here.

-I will, I always do…

-True… For now the red cord reminds me of something I got back after some time, last summer, but also of Ariadne’s thread, which helped Theseus finding his way out of the labyrinth once he killed the Minotaur…

-Yup, lady… Anything else?

-Yes, I think that these stones that I have are the fable version of the thread, in a Hop-o’-My-Thumb’s fashion. So I think I will find my way out…

-Me too, says the voice. What does that American doll, Logan, do here by the mirror?

-I don’t really know. I like that on the cover of her book she holds a white rabbit like that of Alice. All that I know is that I also notice this red and blue marriage in her outfit, leading to the color purple on the clothing of the other doll on the second children’s book.

-I like the title of that book: it mentions someone teasing… Heehee…

-Why is it that it does not surprise me? It’s like I’ve known you all my life and even before that, dear voice… I also have the feeling that I have held this mirror all my life, actually.

-Maybe you have, in your dreams… What is this last figure on the horse?

-Tyl Uylenspiegel, Tyl l’espiègle, the mischievous one, his last name means mir…ror. But of course! He’s holding a mirror in one hand and an owl in the other. Wisdom and then the other side… He’s the trickster of Flanders and Germany, those places that surrounded my French-speaking hometown… Actually a Belgian author, Charles de Coster, used the character as the embodiment of a hero figure who fought against the Spanish occupation of my country in the 16^th century.

-This is great, says the voice. Let me share something with you here: your trickster rides a horse, and it is said among some Native cultures of this country that the horse embodies the 6 directions: the four legs are the four cardinal directions, the tail points to the earth, and the ears to the sky.

-And what about the rider? I ask.

-Well, be my guest and guess, says the voice.

-Well, let’s see, the horse and its rider once were seen as one being, like a centaur!

-Those creatures were born of a cloud nymph, goddess of hospitality…

-Oh really? Wow… I can’t wait to learn more about that, I say with a big smile. It must be why I see centaurs in such a positive light. Let’s see, back to my question about the rider: he or she rider completes the horse, so we reach wisdom once we ride all those directions exemplified by the horse and we can find our balance and center in ourselves.

-I love you, says the voice.

-I love you too, I smile…

-You’re blushing. Good thing, since we cannot forget that we’re in the red. Let’s look at the stump again, I’m sure it has other things to reveal.

As I look into the stump again, my face must change because the voice is asking me if something is wrong.

 -No, not really wrong… It’s just that, whew… Let me sit on this…

-Oh you’re showing your behind to the vision?

-Oh come on, voice, well yeah, I do, because it’s too weird…

-Well flush it then! Hahahaha…

The voice is having a ball with this scatological joke, and it reminds me that actually the real etymology of Uylenspiegel means “to wipe one’s ass”, since “mirror” was usually a metaphor for one’s buttocks. Even though I have not uttered this, the voice has heard me telepathically, and the laughter is now a roar…

-Aaaaaaaaaaaaah, I loooooooooove it! So funny! Well, moon is ‘lune’ in French, right? And a little moon would be… ‘lunette’, dear brunette? Ah hahaha, I know that when it’s in the singular it no longer means glasses or shades but that thing with a hole on the toilet seat so that you can sit there and… get your shit together before flushing, heeheehee! The stump is the lucky one who got to see your moon, though… Oh I’m so good, I have come up with another association here. You’re a lady so you must know what ‘moon’ means too, right?

-Yes, I do, we’re in the red so I guess it’s all normal, bloody voice! If you don’t mind my using this British insult to ask you to stop going in that direction…

-Oh come on, show me the vision… the voice begs.

-OK, all right, you win… Here it is. I’m starting to think that I might be going a bit bonkers here because all the utensils have come to life to form spirals and bewildered faces…

And the strainer now gives its face to an old lady as it transformed into her hat…

And while grandma is wearing her strainer, other utensils among the spiraling burners look like the face of a rapper, with his hat worn backwards and asking me to hush with a pair of scissors… Weirdest thing ever…

-Don’t worry, says the voice. And please don’t hush… You’re not going crazy at all, you just have allowed your creativity to flow again, and now you also let it express itself freely, this is a good thing. It is exactly what you need to do with the energy flow of your chakras, let it flow, do not imprison it, inside neither of them… So what does red evoke in your mind or memories?

-Ponies…

-Some red horses you liked?

-No, well there are horses implied, but in the engine… Red cars are coming to my mind. The one I owned for many years, but also, strangely enough, a rental car. I’ve used half a zillion of those, but there’s a particular red one that stuck in my mind…

-Oh you meant car / ponies, heehee… Like in that movie, says the voice.

-Yes, Pow Wow Highway, I confirm.

-Isn’t it funny, says the voice while observing the three cars that have appeared in the stump, the red one, on the bottom right, seems to have a wolf paw sticker, it’s black instead of the three red wolf paws of your kitchen here…

-Oh, it’s true! I had forgotten about that… Haha… Let me play a little tune here. Sol, Si, Do, Do, Do, Do, Si, La, Do, Do, Si, Do, Re, R, Re, Re, Re, Do, Si, Sol… En rouge et noir (in red and black), by Jeanne Mas. Part of the lyrics say: “I will exile my fear, I will go higher than those mountains of pain”… I loved her songs. She also had this “Coeur en stéréo” (stereo heart), and “L’enfant”, a song about a little boy searching for the love of his mother and the strength of his father in the middle of destruction… It moved me very much. It’s strange, I never knew she was from Alicante, Spain, up until now. I worked as a waitress in that region of Spain when I was a teenager, before moving to that country for 23 years.

-So this red car is a Spanish car? asks the voice. I am asking because you erased the license plate.

-Yes, it is a Spanish car. My last car there. Oh it was not intentional, actually I remember that license plate, its four numbers started counting in multiples of three, and its letters were the initials of my place, Granada, and the last ones the initials of Arizona. It had always struck me.

-AZ also represents the first and last letters of the alphabet… First and last letters of your American heart song?

-I do love this, voice… Yes, I love it…

-What about the other cars though? What about that red one above?

-That’s the rental I have mentioned. It is a feeling of liberation I have from that picture. I was freeing myself from a very unpleasant situation by then, and literally started living again.

-Our red chakra is about survival; it makes sense…

-Yes, it does. I remember that day perfectly, I went to the beach… with a former student who has been a mom for a long time now. She’s been all over Europe, and she has a very open way of treating other human beings, she makes you feel part of her family at once. It felt good and we had fun in our road-trip in that little Twingo.

-Twin, go… murmurs the voice.

-Oh wow… Haha, yes, signs were speaking loudly, it seems…

-And what about the bigger car, the grey one?

-It’s the car I’m driving now. The insight that I want to share for now is a pink sign that stayed on the windshield for some time. I did not want to erase it. It said VIP, because I had been given a pass for a festival and they marked the vehicles according to which spot we were to use on the parking lot.

-Oh so you did not erase it because you like being called a VIP?

-Haha! No, I think it does not mean anything to call someone a “very important person”. We are all very important people. But I think that what I remember is the reason why I call this the “pony” image. Because Vip was the name of the very first pony I rode. He was a Shetland pony, all black, and I remember riding him in a corn field… in Northern France, where my dad partly grew up, by a beautiful creek and a castle...

-Una milpa, eeeh… That’s perfect. You look funny, though!

-Why do you say that?

-Because the stump has shown me that memory. “In red and black, lalalalala…”. And it’s not that I want to sound too insisting here, but the stump seems to find it important that this very important pony took you right into the milpa.

-Well yes, it is important. And you just revealed the reason of the pony being named Vip, haha, I’m slow sometimes…

-Tell me about it, sighs the voice… I like the special effect, courtesy of the stump to enhance the corn aspect of this image.

-Well it’s not a special effect it is another sight from my visit to the River of Lights last year…

-Ah… Just what I say, you’re slow.

-Well sometimes the riding grounds don’t allow you to trespass certain areas, you know that very well…

-OK, ok, it’s true. I’ll look for something nice to say. Let me think, ah! Got it: it’s good to see you rode bareback, back then. People who only ride horses with a saddle don’t really know how to ride. It’s a beautiful connection with your horse. Bareback riding also requires more skill, balance, and coordination.

-I know, I know… Everything is about balance, huh… Reminds me of the plate I kept in my bag. Plate is ‘assiette’ in French, and it’s how we call the balance that comes through horse riding. And we also say that we don’t feel “in our plate” when we feel sick. I guess it means we’re not grounded nor well in our body. And all this also reminds me to think outside the box, but maybe not outside the transmission, heehee. Because I see a parallel between bareback riding and stick shift driving. To me, people who cannot drive manual cars don’t really know how to drive. Check out this riddle I had found on the net, I thought it was very cool, don’t you agree?

-I agree. I am good at going into reverse.

-I bet you are, yes. But I’m sure you like going forward too…

-Yes, it’s why I like talking to you. But we seem to still be going backwards for now, or at least to look into the past. Anything else that you remember in red?

-Well, yes, many things of my childhood, actually. I used to dress in red.

-Oh I see. And you used to ride fake ponies, heehee! But what on earth does the little boy of The Shining have to do with all this?

-Well maybe because we have the same hairstyle, I chuckle awkwardly. I don’t know, I have just seen the movie recently. The number of the room is very, very appealing to me, and also the fact that so many things are, again, red and blue in the movie, especially, the kid’s outfit. But I think that in this case it is a detail of his room: the little dwarf, Dopey. I had the same one in the first house where we lived with my family. You can see some other Disney characters behind me as I “ride” my Skewbald rocking horse.

-You wear red and blue too…

-Yes, before Bluetooth, ahaha…

-And what about the last picture in the center?

-I loved that little cherry dress, and the cat brooch that I wear had a nicely perfumed lotion in it. I loved going out on little excursions. I can nearly smell the bark of the trees and the nice baguette, although there’s some sadness in this memory, maybe because it is at the end of this vacation that we got the notice of my first pet’s disappearance. A gorgeous black cat, we called her Nic Nac. I always thought it was a Walloon name but with four k’s it becomes an English expression, funny… Why would we give her a name that means “unimportant” though? She meant so much to me. Anyway, the thing is that once when we came back to pick her up from my godmother’s place, she told us that the cat had disappeared in the cornfield near their house. Sometimes they would see my four-legged when they called her, and she would let them see her, but she preferred her freedom and made her life in the field.

-A cornfield, huh?

-Yes. And yes, I’m seeing a pattern here…

-Maybe she belonged to a sect like that of the Children of the Corn, woohoooo, scary!

-Yes, I remember that movie. I think it was not a very good idea to turn it into such a gore thing. The children were right to want to get back to the ancestral knowledge and to tell the adults that they had messed up big time. Of course maybe killing them all was not the best choice of dialogue, haha! OK, back to serious here, yes, there was a third cornfield moment in my childhood, and that one was incredible, when I was 4 years old, I let go of a balloon with a card attached to it, and it came back, months after I had reluctantly let go of it, from… a cornfield in Guadalajara, Mexico.

I did a lot of research and it appears that this place was founded by Cristóbal de Oñate, a conquistador from Vitoria, the Spanish Basque Country, a city where I happen to have spent a whole year (I hated it there, though, but anyway…) And then his son, Juan de Oñate, went north and became the governor of Santa Fe de la Nueva México. Here that is, well más o menos.

-Why does this image of you appear with a deer in the snow?

-Because all that time of my life actually started to come back to my memory when I attended a deer dance, but also because the day when the balloon left for its incredible journey overseas was the day of St Hubert, who had his epiphany when he saw the cross of Christ in a deer’s antlers. I wrote about that some time ago, and when I found that picture, it is as if the deer on the snowed path was a candle  wick standing in the hear of the flame, so I guess it’s why a water flame appears here. So-called opposites, plus the scene is in the snow.

-Yes, water relates to feelings, so it’s quite normal to have two water flames here, heehee…

-Right, voice?

-Yes. You’re meant to be here. It’s home for you. And it seems that your roots, since we’re dealing with the root chakra, were already pointing the way towards the direction your soul wanted to take, turning into red wings.

-Well yes, my soul knew that there were many reasons for me to be here again… You and I know that very well, don’t we?

-Yes we do, be doo, be doo… Ok so speaking of which, what should we do now?

-Well, I answer, I think I will draw my first hopscotch game here in the dirt, like I wanted to do eons ago, heehee. It will be in a spiral shape, and I will leave the first bowl on the window number 1. I will leave it in an upright position, to receive all the energetic information that we still need. I feel that we are still in a moment of incubation of some sort.

-Beautiful. I told you that you would go back to your Cerridwenn self…

-Why? I come from a Celtic region but apart from Asterix we don’t really know much about it in my family…

-Soul has memory, lady, soul has memory, just like earth materials, and you still have some pomegranate juice on your fingers, and as they say, The Blood of the Covenant is Thicker than the Water of the Womb (whatever it means, haha!). I like the reddish color of the bowl, by the way, and its spirals… It nearly looks like a little cauldron, don’t you think so?

-True. I like that too. There’s quite a warm energy in this bowl, actually. It is like it had its own beating, resonating in the earth beat. Here, I, Nathalie Bléser Potelle, place the first bowl of my journey into the labyrinth of who I am.

-Say that second last name again? asks the voice.

-Potelle, I repeat.

-Oh, it sounds like “little pot”, doesn’t it, like this little bowl… Let’s go and see what color will pop up next!

-OK, let’s go… Thank you for being with me on this journey…

-My pleasure.

(To be continued: here)