Twice now I have walked Jessica's Labyrinth by the light of the moon, once demi-lune, once full. In the moon's subtle eye, memories rise like a fog, irritations trip to anxiety, and attacks are born on the subterranean plane where confusion reigns till the sun walks to the eastern horizon. I kicked off my clogs to take my chances among the twisting turns.
It's like me to do such a thing. Traveling in Ireland, I marched up the Hill of Tara, home and ruling center of the ancestral kings, and sat my butt down in the Hag's Chair, which is the throne of the goddess in her final aspect. It's constructed simply of three slabs of stone thick as a man's hand is tall, one the seat and the other two upright on either side. An Irish shaman invited me to take a settle, but coupled the invitation with a warning that the honor of sitting in the Crone's chair came at a great price, since her most profound gift was to teach much needed lessons and she wasn't necessarily gentle in how she went about it.
So this night, facing the labyrinth, the nimbus of the moon provided ample light by which to see. I took a deep breath to rid myself of the workaday world as my feet tested the earth. Then I entered. The wind kicked and the trees rustled the latest wisdom. I looked up at the sky, bruised and tender as dew. There was a lone star in the talking firmament, and the perennial dust of earth mumbled of the effects of man's thunder. Evergreens and deciduous trees writhed in silhouette and I noticed, in the shadows, one tree thick as three men rising like a god above the campus buildings. Turning, a burnt tree stretched toward the canopy like the arthritic fingers of an old woman opening.
Bits of grit and cinder dug into my heels, the pads of my feet, between my toes, and suddenly a bird flew chirping over my head, but this was a different sort of chirping, angry, defensive. It was like I was being told off. I considered for a second that it was a bat as it flapped very close to my head again, complaining ferociously, but looking decided it was definitely a bird, probably a songbird by day, and that my presence was obviously making it very nervous. Ducking again and again, I wondered as it continued to try to scare me off, "Should I just go?" That's probably what a sane person would do, I told myself. But then there was me. I decided to stand my ground, even if I was walking in a circle, and determined that the bird would grow accustomed to me, realizing that I was no threat. Instead of doing what a rational person would do, I flipped up the hood to my beat-up, brown, Obey hoodie my son gave me and continued walking, feeling now very much like a monk.
The bird dive-bombed me without relent, tweeting angrily as I slowly swirled into the labyrinth and a good deal of the way out as well. I knew that it was protecting a nest somewhere. This was nothing personal, yet I was wondering if somehow it might be warning me of a passage soon to arrive. I stilled my mind and listened to the insects chirp in the wild grass. Theirs was a peaceful communication, but perhaps I was angry underneath it all, perhaps I had unresolved issues, perhaps I was defensive in my approach to things. I didn't feel angry and defensive in that moment, but sometimes reactions remain just under the fault line ready to crack what we think we are wide open for the conscious mind to see.
Gazing up at the sky with its painterly indigo, coming out of the tangles of hair, the waves of existence, that sense of loss and finding that the labyrinth provokes, I still after all the unremitting attacks and unresolved soul searching felt a release of some kind. There had been some trial that I walked through successfully, at least to a degree. It had been about ten minutes since the bird ceased its defense. As I suspected, it eventually grew to trust me, to recognize that there was no threat in the brown, hooded figure who persistently walked in circles. And perhaps this is who I will be for the rest of my days. A traveler walking calmly through the disagreements and entanglements of a world too easily upset.
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