Luna-Lunochka

On the way home from my early-evening refreshing (read: cold!) open-water swim, I noticed the tiny, four-day-old baby crescent Moon right out of the Slavic Dreamworld. All this image needed was a giant, menacing raven.

It didn't even qualify for being called "Luna," so I referred to it as "Lunochka."

By sunset, it mischievously dove in and out of multicolored clouds, as if playing hide-and-seek. 

It was not until Darkness falling that I noticed how little Lunochka was actually vengefully yellow.

This made me look up the Moon calendar for the next two months, realizing that October's Full Moon falls right on my birthday!

< Insert sunglass-smiley here. >

Of course, I plan to visit London, followed by Washington, D.C., and, possibly, New York City around that time. If this trip works out, city lights will be sure to obscure my Moon.

The Gray is Back

The Gray is back.

And it's only natural--Autumn is prime feeding time, as it has to fatten itself up before Winter. Just like the local grizzlies, minus the claws. 

Following its standard routine, the Gray arrived the day of September's New Moon and began doing what it does best: gobbling up the Mountain. 

Incidentally, the Mountain herself didn't mind: it had so many daily responsibilities of housing all those trees, deer, turkeys, wolves, people, and, yes, grizzlies, that it often felt like a bona fide Atlas. Sometimes, it's nice to take a little nap in all that spa-like fog!

Unlike the last time, I let the Mountain have its "me-time," traveled back into town, and was thus able to capture that rare moment when the Gray's belly burst from all the gluttony.  

What you see below is the Sun slowly crawling out feet..errr...rays first! 

But this small victory only took place over the main Mountain's little sister. To top that off, it was late in the evening, so the Sun had to be off to bed on schedule!

And the Gray? The Gray is still here the morning after.

Natural Art

What time away from social networks allows one to accomplish!

I've caught up on a number of work issues and even had the chance to revamp one section of this website. What initially started off as one project, "In the Snow," has transformed into Natural Art. (Yes, you should click on that link!) So I needed to explain why I keep returning to this difficult-to-control medium (have you tried rearranging tea leaves to make an eye?) and update the slideshow.

The direction that I'd like to pursue here pertains to myth and myth-making, and, in particular, those of the Slavic Dreamworld. 

Oh, and maybe now I can reconnect Twitter and--eventually--the greatest distraction of all, Facebook!  

Sleep (and Fires Within)

Sleep is a curious thing.

On the one hand, it is "a-kin" to Death. 

In terms of mythology, this is literal: Morpheus is the nephew of Thanatos. 

On the other, it is possible to obtain clarity regarding certain personal situations; last year, I've even been able to formulate some of the best arguments in my dissertation, as my brain continued to mull over all those disorganized thoughts swarming in my head during waking hours.

And then there are meaningful dreams and welcome illusions.

Lately, I've been waking up with Russian (Slavic) childhood rhymes that popped into my head seemingly out of nowhere. I remember exactly what some of them are. Others--not so much--for instance, one that begins with "burn, burn bright." (Imperfect grammar--deliberate.) I suspect that this was something we said in the context of lighting camp fires.

At the golden hour, even the most common mountain weeds resemble torch lights.

I translated it into English:

Burn, burn bright,
Keep it alight.
Stand aside,
Look outside,
Trumpeters pass by
Eating braided pie.
Face the sky:
Stars are glowing,
Cranes are calling:
—Hey, hey, I'll run away.
One, two, don't miss the game,
And run like a flame!

The original Russian: 

Гори, гори ясно,
Чтобы не погасло.
Стой подоле,
Гляди на поле,
Едут там трубачи
Да едят калачи.
Погляди на небо:
Звёзды горят,
Журавли кричат:
— Гу, гу, убегу.
Раз, два, не воронь,
А беги, как огонь!

The source of these lines, however, was quite different from what I assumed. Gorelki, "burners," was an ancient Slavic game, not unlike tag, for young single men and women, related to various pagan rites such as the coming of Spring and the Summer solstice. 

Nowadays, this game is exclusively for children.

Midday Sun.

Perhaps, the appearance of this rhyme is a cryptic reminder to tend to one's inner fires.

The End of August Gray (part ii)

 ...And then around 6 o'clock the next morning, when every self-respecting night owl should have been sound asleep, else defying its very essence, it finally happened.

The Gray gorged up too much of itself. To top that off, the growing belly ache from swallowing the Sun the day earlier was not helping either.

It exploded. 

It was then that the Sun peeked out from the blue mountain ribbons. Frankly, it was getting a little tired of going through the same exercise every few weeks with the same result.  "Sisyphean labor," it scoffed. 

The Sun was a staunch Heideggerian.

But sometimes, when no one was looking, it engaged in its guilty pleasure of choice--historic existentialist literature. Only a little! 

 

Then the Sun recalled that it was much higher up the totem pole than the Gray--indeed, some would say, at the very top. (The Moon always disagreed.)  So, it illuminated the valley.

Though considering the sheer magnitude of the Gray's most recent gluttony, bits and pieces of its shredded amorphous body floated over certain sleep-deprived night owls' heads for hours to come.

They were occasionally pushed over by the Wind revealing the Water. "Divide the task into manageable segments!", the Wind used to say.

August Gray (part i)

Today, the Gray visited "Twin Peaks" again.

Without much hesitation, it gobbled up the mountain. And the entire sky.

This is a little disorienting, you know. You're standing on a mountain, but there is no mountain! 

The Gray got greedy and ate the Sun, too, temporarily (the latter always burns through its belly, but it never learns). In the end, the Gray always consumes itself--when its appetite simply becomes insatiable.

Yet unlike its counterpart at the end of the rain season when everything, every blade of grass, sought a glimpse of sunlight, whereas humans were popping vitamin D, this Gray was much needed.

It hasn't rained in weeks, and now the woods will finally acquire that crisp verdant color. Nature, like a woman, must be renewed.

After all, the new Moon is coming. 

Mistress of the Mountain

As a child, I grew up on Bazhov's fairy tales from the Ural region of Russia, such as the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. As an adult, I've become convinced, as have those before me, that people of the West had lost their links to the archaic, by and large, pushing their myths deep into the subconscious, only to manifest in dreams or during the creative process.  And even when we see patterns that resemble mythic beings, we focus on the scientific, not the symbolic. 

So I imagined that the local mountain here has to have a Mistress, too, and I willed her into existence.  (Admittedly, there likely are authentic Native American legends associated with this part of the Northwest with which I'm not yet familiar.)

Her base is rock on rock, as she is of the mountains, after all. I've deliberately used only local plants and tried to incorporate as many attributes from different seasons as were available.

The Mistress' dress at the neckline, for instance, is made of old, fragile leaves that survived the winter. They reminded me of intricate chocolate-tinted lace, as the closeup demonstrates. In contrast, her pink earrings are fresh flowers. Closed eyes: indifferent, asleep, or deep in thought? And, of course, the Mistress is not always amicable: hence the tiara made of prickly bur. 

P.S. Music sets the mood, the tone, the pace. I've created this while listening to Creature Creature's Phantoms (and a bit of Light & Lust). Consider it an inspiration as well.

The Trees Have Eyes

Channeling myth, Tolkien used the term ents to refer to trees endowed with human-like qualities, whereas contemporary scientists simply cite pattern recognition, anthropomorphism, and a slew of other categories, which explain the phenomena, but undermine the archaic. 

When I lived in large cities, meeting spots comprised a certain exist at a train station or a particular coffee shop. Now that I'm in Twin Peaks, my favorite hike has a number of markers, too. I refer to them as the "Dragon," "Cthulhu," and "Krampus."  This kind of nomenclature came naturally, as the trees and tree stumps in question bear strong resemblance to these mythic and literary creatures. 

While the structure of my consciousness obviously reflects Modernity and Postmodernity, as is the case with contemporary man in the West and its derivatives, I am now beginning to understand our ancestors. 

So, next time I'll meet you by the Dragon! 

P.S. I photographed these ents (and friends!) in the American part of the Rocky Mountains, the Canadian prairies, along with Kanazawa and Mount Takao in Japan. 

​Grubby little ents have grabby little hands!