El labirinto del faun

 

I don’t get to see many films. In part that is because there is no cinema in the village and because I don’t have television or a video recorder. But it is also because I find many films quite overwhelming to watch, the noise, the rush of visual images — although I watched film festivals year after year in my 20s, a certain capacity for film-going is no longer with me.

But since reading about Guillermo del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth ( El labarinto del faun) on Jason’s Wild Hunt blog  I have wanted to watch it. Last night it was finally screened and I borrowed a TV set and sat up to watch, all by myself in the lamplit house with its creaky beams and rustling loft.

It is a beautiful, violent and disturbing film, filled with enchantment and brutality. A young girl taken up into the mountains  by her pregnant mother, to stay with the step-father she detests, a captain in Franco’s army. It is set at the time of the Spanish civil war, in 1944. Ofelia the bookloving child finds an overgrown ancient  labyrinth while following a stick insect that transforms itself into a fairy. She meets a faun who offers to help her regain her lost immortality and reunion with her father the king, in another world. The imagery is penetrated through with myth and fantas — the toad crouchiing in the hollow of a dying fig tree, the hidden doorways in walls, the waxing of the moon over the forest and the mountains. The lullaby sung by the captain’s housekeeper, the mandrake root in a bowl of milk, The faun composed of rams’ horns, moss, earth, tree bark and tendril vines.

 

And this enchantment, the labyrinth winding down into the ground, subterranean but open to moonlight, the mossy carved stone plinths, the moon gates, the music of the forest, all set against the brutality of resistance fighters in the forest, hiding out in caves, tortured, outnumbered, wounded, dying. The army captain is a sociopath, fixated on the notion of having a son who will be his alone. The dying mother haemorraghing in childbirth, the incendiary explosions of mortars and granades. Feverish, potent and monstrous, an enthralling film.

 

My childhood was spent in mountains and forests of pine with ferny undergrwoth and rocky outcrops. Fairy tales, the Brothers Grimm, Mother Goose, Hans Christian Anderson, the legends of Greece and Rome, Ovid, Marcel Pagnol – all these were my escape from family unhappiness and the utter isolation of that forest reserve. And that mythology combined with my love of nature, the otters in the river, chameleons, wild fish eagles, lynxes and rock rabbits or hydrax (dassies) and the savannah grasslands and dense forests all aroung the swift-flowing rivers of that high mountain plateau on the Mozambique border. That fantasy life became part of me, the deepest stories that shape us from childhood onwards.

 

Del Toro has said: ‘Myth makes humans what we are.’ Watching Pan’s Labyrinth last night reminded me so much of the primacy of imagination and responsiveness to nature, the beauty and magic found in the midst of horror and loss. Images of the full moon shining down and reflected between tree branches in pools of rainwater on the steps of the labyrinth, the dying child wrapped in moonlight, the promise of another world where the sacred is fully present — and the vision of this broken world pierced through and through with the sacred for those who has eyes to see.

Doesn’t joy like fear make no sound?

 

The slowness of autumn, leaves drifting down. I am beached, stranded, adrift, spending hours each day in bed. The Coltsfoot seems to be working ( Aquila) but slowly. The new Gemini moon faint as a tiny scratching on the black surface of night.

 

Besieged by dreams though — long-dead friends appear gaunt with Aids and weak from prison, emerging from the cocoon of hospice, to speak with me in weak and radiant voices  Another thinning of worlds. I dreamt last night of a greenhouse, all glass and A-frane roofing buried in the earth and glowing with black light, filled with white flowers and silver foliage. A tomb, a fragile glass coffin.

 

I don’t think I myself am dying, but something is dying in me. These times of transition, the letting go, the acceptance needed.

Each afternoon I go out into the garden and eat ripe guavas from the tree for the sake of vitamin A. The smell of guavas stays on my fingers, penetrating and tenacious. Tonight I am going to watch Pan’s Labyrinth which everyone I know has already seen. Unless the local broadcaster cancels it.

 

And today the death rate from cholera in Zimbabwe reached 100 000, the worst outbreak in Africa in 15 years. Entirely preventable. And yet there is a letter on my desk posted from a friend in Victoria Falls nearly six weeks agp in which she speaks of getting up at dawn and walking through the rainforest to stand at the brink of Mosi-oa-tunya, the Smoke That Thunders, dazzled with rainbows and spray and the great music of falling water like thunder, like ecstacy. The line from Louise Gluck echoes in me.

 

Doesn’t joy like fear make no sound?

Dark moon in Gemini looming

Unseasonably warm for autumn here in Africa, and I have bronchitis. None of my herbal remedies or spices or assiduous applications of honey and limes and lemons and fresh ginger have helped. So I am sweating and shivering as sunlight pours into the rooms and  I try to sleep under a smothering goosedown duvet.

The dark moon will be in Gemini on 23 or 24 May 2009.  The first air sign of the zodiac, the ‘naming’ symbol, I have no strong affinity with Gemini. Except that I am Libra and Gemini is also an air sign, airy and  a little undiscriminating. Needing to be rooted in humus and humility and the damp autumnal earth.

 

When I close my eyes and lean back againtst my pillows I see those heavenly twins of Gemini, complementary more than divided, and gleaning information from various contexts, sorting and placing. Snatching up shiny objects and scintillating theories.

 

And what comes to me on my sickbed is the sensation of a new thoughtful spaciousness, an opening to new paradigms. Paying attention to music I have not heard before, the tempo of a lyrical sonata. Pluto, a moody planet, is in Capricorn; Mercury is still retrograde in Taurus. Lunar cycles and the rhythms of the seasons seem more important than ever to ground my airy meandering nature. Mercury is squaring the triple conjunction of Chiron, Jupiter, and Neptune in Aquarius. That for me signifies woundeness, optimism, some oceanic overwhelm — a need to slow down and absorb, gather information, listen carefully and not act on impulse.

 

Fortunately a touch of bronchitis should keep me  in slow mode. And leaning towards compassionate solutions for unfinished business.

 

A dark moon on a cold night, the Gemini twins at play in their celestial toybox of myths and facts and symbols. Good omens for both/and thinking –

Khoisan poet singing green

Inspired by Aquila ka Hekate’s post:

 

This is the green and living voice of the Khoisan poet //Kabbo singing of the pristine beauty of the kloofs and desert spaces, the abundance of wildlife in his home territory  of what is now called Bitterpits near Kenhardt. His singing was transcribed by Lucy Lloyd and William Bleek as he sang from behind the bars of a prison in Cape Town. In his song there are the calls of birds and the exact naming, the beloved knownness,  of the buck and birds all around him back then.

 

What we have lost is irreplaceeable, the green heart of humankind before civilization.

waii

waii

!kwai

!kwai

/khwi

/khwi

!kwa

 

spingbok

sprngbok

gemsbok

hyena

 

qwagga

qwagga

hartebeest

 

the hartebeest the klein hartebeest  the groote hartebeest the groote ram hartebeest and the black wildebeest and the blue wildebeest and the white chameleon and the black chameleon and the black-and-white winged bird and the red-legged bird

the striped polecat and the bushy-tailed meerkat

 

//Kabbo sang … so he sang

Guerilla gardening

So I went out and danced in the rain and now I have a persisting sore throat and chest infection. The price for eschewing common sense in favour of ritual. All weekend it has stormed and the wind has howled around the house through the night.

I haven’t caught even a glimpse of the moon in nearly a week and feel like a lunar exile deprived of motherlight.

 

But I am extending the bird-nesting thicket of plumbago and proteas and polygala at the back of my garden, a slow rewilding.  A sanctuary for wild birds and a return to indigenous fynbos.

And I am rambling through high-ceilinged rooms looking at bookcases and deciding what I shall read this winter.  I have an old botanical guide to the forest plants of the Niger Delta currently under siege by militants and the site of struggle over oil pipelines. I am going to reread Adrienne Rich and Susan Griffin on women’s bodies, women’s bond with nature, women and justice. It is never too late to go back to basics, the strong feminist thinking that shaped me in the 1980s. And I am going to read the fiction of Sarah Waters, Lorrie Moore and Richard Yates, reacquaint myself with old favourites and new possibilities. Curl up in an armchair under the window ( natural light is best in winter), drinking cups of honeybush tea and eating sweet winter oranges from the Piketberg as I read.

 

And my small plant laboratory of indigenous healing herbs and rare fynbos plants and unhybridised beauties of succulents and restios is doing well. I shall scatter seeds wherever I go and hand out cuttings.  It is a pity that my lovely speckled aloes may not flower this year but I have plans to grow more aloes and  kalanchoes on the stoep. Honouring the deep wild heart of the African continent and ensuring I have salves for bee stings in perpetuity.

Rain shaman woman

 

Trembling with delight because the garden and streets and valley have been sluiced clean by the rain. My avocado tree has not been downed by the tearing winds.

 

And I have planted coriander, pak choi and English spinach seeds in small finger deep furrows  — all fast-growing and they will be flourishing by late winter. Pushing my fingers into cold humus-rich ran-soaked earth is so enjoyable it feels wicked. When I finished planting I danced on the wet grass, lettting rainwater spill onto me from leafy foliage. My sight fills with glistening shining moisture and the anticipation of new growth, the hope of damp nurturing places.

The garden is my pelvic cradle, my sanctuary. And I am enfolded into the renewing world, the soft undergrowth of the wild. For months now I have lived in an hourglass of quartz, hard and glittering procrustean light, burning and thirsting after  cooler and wetter places. And now it is streaming wild and wet water,  I am soaked through and  my thirst slated. I drink from the green, the slanted downpour, the rare gift of rain, Rain parting the hair on my scalp, blinding my vision with flood,  filling me up. Holding up my arms I am an arrow of falling rain, a channel, a mudslide, a waterfall.

Scarlet poinsettia like blood

The scarlet poinsettia has burst into bloom, the exact colour of bright red arterial blood. Vivid and dangerous. I am afraid of death when I look out at it. I welcome Lady Death in some deep unfathomable way but I am still fearful. Wondering and attentive but  fearful.

All that I see around me, the leaves shredding from the trees and the small Cape canaries that dart around in scouting forays, the muddy  channels of rain water spilling over, the creaking avocado tree bent back by winds — all this is passing. It will pass and alter and return and some of it will endure — but I am of those that pass, a substance as variable and vulnerable as any other life form in this obscure and lovely valley.

As I unseat my human centrality and become no more and no less than a rock, a lizard, a blazing poinsetti, ephemerality drifts right through me.

Gratitude for winter rains

Woke up this morning to the smell of rain in the garden. It has rained all day, a steady sluice of cold water. Such relief. The garden has been cut back and trimmed and I was afraid the heat would kill exposed shrubs.

Rain and strong winds are predicted for the  Cape so we are in for several days and nights of downpour. I have checked the guttering and secured shutters and shed doors. The newly planted Dietes and bulbs will flourish in this cold damp weather, sending down roots and settling in. My unusual myrtle ( from East Africa) is covered in dark blue fruit all dusted with bloom and the birds are feasting.

Storms this weekend will leave the trees leafles and bare — throughout winter I can see the mountains around the valley, concealed by leafy foliage all through summer. And I have brought in chopped firewood for the old black stove in the hearth, coughing as I do so because both my housemate and myself are ill with chest infections. I make pots of rooibos and buchu tea, the strongest disinfectants  I know. There are lemons ready for squeezing piled like a green pyramid in a white bowl on the kitchen table and jars of red organic honey scented with fynbos. I have just been posting to a herbalist in the US about trying Khella ( Ammi visnaga) for kidney stones, a plant used as an anti-spasmodic by the ancient Egyptians.

And as I work and cook and read, the rains pour down like a benison, straming against the windows and curtaining the fields across the road. Soon the flying ants will be out and then the rain spiders will come shyly into the house to take shelter and startle the occupants.

Full Moon in Scorpio

The full moon in Scorpio will be visible on 9 May in our skies. A water sign with oceans, lakes, streams and rivers in the symbolic pattern. Because I live with a Scorpio friend, this timel is charged for me: intuition, intensity passion, raw honesty. That sting in the tail. The uncovering of secrets, the exposure of dark places to the light, the opening of wounds.With Scorpio we have to alow ourselves to be possessed by strange gods.

 

Oh yes, and Mercury is retrograde, hence computer problems and verbal misunderstandings,  A fun time.

 

But to cross into another beautiful discourse, it is also Wesak, when the Buddha was born under a full moon over Asia. Right now I am busy with vipassana meditations to clear my psyche of judging  and doubting energies around a certain situation. Peering through the fog of prejudice,, letting the tension in shoulders and back dissolve through patient attention. Opening to trust and risk, desirng clarity of Right Seeing. It takes a lifetime or three, that is all.

 

And it will be the lunar Beltane in the Nothern Hemishphere, sensual and celebratoty. Here it is Samhain and the ghosts come into the ritual larger than life. I am working to stay present to whatever comes to me in theses weeks of fragilty and heightened awareness.

 

More to the point, it is a glorious aureoled and autumnal moon, soft as ash and with a fullness sweet as late ripening fruit.

Breaking open the heart of stone

My kitchen is filled with viridian tree frogs, emerald-green, lime green and black, exquisite and black, exquisite and startling. They may have been frightened by a feral cat or large predator in the trees. I have opened all the doors and windows to encourage them to leave when they have calmed down. Since I was very young, I have had a passion for wild creatures of every description and I often wish I had studied the life sciences at university.

Years ago a friend of mine told me a strange and moving story. His father had been a political prisoner in the the 1960s, sentenced to hard labour in a maximum security prison. The men would work with pick axes in a limestone quarry in terrible heat and thirst. Many of them suffered headaches and eye damage. One morning my friend’s father was hacking at the cliff edge, splitting the stone surfaces. A small rock came loose and as it rolled across the ground, he swung at it, almost aimlessly, with the pick axe. It split in two and in the hollow of the rock, he saw a small live frog. The frog hopped out of the stone and  all the men stood amazed. How had it survived  at the heart of such dessicated heat, in such a prison of rock? But it had survived and they let the frog out into a ditch on their way back to the prison that evening.

For years I lived with an imprisoned heart and from time to time I would think ruefully of the biblical verse that implores ‘Take from my body the heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh‘. And the god/goddess to whom I was not yet listening heard my inchoate pleas and answered. Another strange story.

This Samhain has been filled with wonder and premonitions. The Scottish grandmother remains elusive but I dream of wars and turbulence. One thing I did manage to study at university was Apocalyptic, and that is a horizon I have gazed on for many years now, the deep intuition of social cataclysm. Not a comfortable place but one of raw power.