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Today, I took a trip that I had not expected to take... just a slightly different turn made while travelling along a familiar, well-worn path.
I was heading to my grandfather's house to take him food shopping, with just a short stop at the mall planned on the way and a few stops at other stores planned on the way home afterward. I'm pretty sure that's what ended up happening to... but at the same time I think I might have ended up a bit sideways of where I had set out for.
I think it was the song on the radio that was the start of it all... a simple, popular country music song that I've heard a hundred times before. Not one I care much for, to be honest. "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" by Toby Keith. I don't exactly know why it hit me the way that it did today, but it felt different when I listened to it today... and it made me really stop and listen to the lyrics. And that's when I heard the invocation inherent in the words.
"Hey, Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list,
And the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist.
And the eagle will fly and it's gonna be hell,
When you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell.
And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you.
Ah, brought to you, courtesy of the red, white and blue."
There it is. Don't see it? Look again... look closer. See it yet? The patron goddess of the land... the goddess of liberty, freedom, sovereignty... the mother goddess, called upon in her aspect of goddess of war and retribution. The Morrigan, or one akin to her. It seems the old gods still make themselves known to us, even in the realms of the diaspora. I just wish that such a popular Calling would be one that helps us remember that she is not only war, but also the peace that comes after.
So, that was how it started, my trip out of the world to one a little less often seen. A glimpse of the queen of battles... an auspicious beginning when all I had planned was a little shopping. But that would come next.
I stopped, as I had planned, at the mall... lots of window shopping there. I looked a lot there, but I really didn't find much until I stopped in Sam Goody and took a look at the celtic music section. I've more or less gotten past listening to mostly the etherial enya-like celtic music, and I have a ton of more robust stuff by artists from Tommy Makem to Gaelic Storm. So I was looking for something different. I ended up finding just that.
That which I found (and actually this was my only purchase of the day) was a CD... "Celtic Traditions: Memorable Tales". It's an anthology of ten songs by ten different artists, all of which tell stories of one sort or another. It's very different from other celtic music that I have listened to, but I really like it and I'm glad that I got it. It was also relatively cheap, less than ten dollars (plus I belong to the rewards club at that store so I earned some store credit towards future purchases there.) I have to say, it's interesting to hear the song "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" sung by a woman. (The version that goes "When I first said I loved only you, Maggie, and you said you loved only me.")
So, after stopping there and finding that gem I headed to my grandfather's, picked him up, and we headed to the supermarket. Not much eventful during the actual shopping, but while I was putting the groceries on the conveyor belt I started thinking about things... like how even simple, repetative tasks like that don't have to be drudgery unless we let them. You can feel your muscles move as you do something like that, you can take pride in doing it quickly, efficiently, even gracefully... you can feel alive when doing simple work like that. I think that's a side of life that people as a whole feel disconnected from these days... the pleasures that can be found in work, and how to make work pleasurable. It's something I'm trying to reconnect with.
From there my thoughts took another random turn and I started pondering other tasks in my life that I have considered drudgery and have been unable to take such satisfaction from. Tasks that make me feel dead inside, rather than let me feel truly alive. The one that sprung to mind immediately was history class in highschool. I thought about why that was, and I realized that I truly felt no connection with the information that was given to us in that class. It's hard to feel connected to an almost random collection of historical events, names, and dates. We covered the history of various countries and various parts of the world in no particular order, very seldom taking the time to look at the overall interaction between the seperate regions we had studied, and in the end the information we were given was barely connected to itself, much less to us. Oddly enough, the phrase that best describes the way I think history should instead be taught comes from fiction. "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, in fact.
"Long past?"
"Your past."
Most of the point of history is to teach us the lessons of the past... or at least that's the most often quoted reason. "Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them." But unless it's a history that is told in a way that is relevant to us... unless it is our own history, a history we can feel truly connected to, it's hard to understand it all, much less truly learn from it. I think that's why history was once told in the form of stories.
After shopping, my grandfather and I went out to dinner, and then I dropped him off at his house and headed towards home, stopping at Barnes and Noble and Bed, Bath, and Beyond on that way. Saw quite a bit at both places that I wanted to buy... an overview of the history of ireland, a collection of sagas by or about iceland's warrior-poets (a phrase which always has the potential to catch my attention), and a guide to cooking which was heavy on the tools and how to use and care for them, the methods, and relatively light on the actual recipes which I have a ton of books about already. At Bed, Bath, and Beyond I also was looking at cooking stuff... a spice rack, a small rotating stand suitable as a free-standing shelf that would allow easy access to all of it's contents while fitting onto our countertop, a new spaghetti pot with built in strainer.
In the end though, the only thing I took with me was an old lesson that I was reminded of. There's a difference between those things we see that we can't live without, and those things which we actually need. The things I saw today will keep till I'm truly ready to get them... I don't need them yet.
So that's what I found at a Faery market today, and brought back with me... one cd and a few lessons. The cd was cheap, and the lessons actually saved me money. I wonder what I'll find the next time I go... it's just down that way, and a bit sideways.
I was heading to my grandfather's house to take him food shopping, with just a short stop at the mall planned on the way and a few stops at other stores planned on the way home afterward. I'm pretty sure that's what ended up happening to... but at the same time I think I might have ended up a bit sideways of where I had set out for.
I think it was the song on the radio that was the start of it all... a simple, popular country music song that I've heard a hundred times before. Not one I care much for, to be honest. "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" by Toby Keith. I don't exactly know why it hit me the way that it did today, but it felt different when I listened to it today... and it made me really stop and listen to the lyrics. And that's when I heard the invocation inherent in the words.
"Hey, Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list,
And the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist.
And the eagle will fly and it's gonna be hell,
When you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell.
And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you.
Ah, brought to you, courtesy of the red, white and blue."
There it is. Don't see it? Look again... look closer. See it yet? The patron goddess of the land... the goddess of liberty, freedom, sovereignty... the mother goddess, called upon in her aspect of goddess of war and retribution. The Morrigan, or one akin to her. It seems the old gods still make themselves known to us, even in the realms of the diaspora. I just wish that such a popular Calling would be one that helps us remember that she is not only war, but also the peace that comes after.
So, that was how it started, my trip out of the world to one a little less often seen. A glimpse of the queen of battles... an auspicious beginning when all I had planned was a little shopping. But that would come next.
I stopped, as I had planned, at the mall... lots of window shopping there. I looked a lot there, but I really didn't find much until I stopped in Sam Goody and took a look at the celtic music section. I've more or less gotten past listening to mostly the etherial enya-like celtic music, and I have a ton of more robust stuff by artists from Tommy Makem to Gaelic Storm. So I was looking for something different. I ended up finding just that.
That which I found (and actually this was my only purchase of the day) was a CD... "Celtic Traditions: Memorable Tales". It's an anthology of ten songs by ten different artists, all of which tell stories of one sort or another. It's very different from other celtic music that I have listened to, but I really like it and I'm glad that I got it. It was also relatively cheap, less than ten dollars (plus I belong to the rewards club at that store so I earned some store credit towards future purchases there.) I have to say, it's interesting to hear the song "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" sung by a woman. (The version that goes "When I first said I loved only you, Maggie, and you said you loved only me.")
So, after stopping there and finding that gem I headed to my grandfather's, picked him up, and we headed to the supermarket. Not much eventful during the actual shopping, but while I was putting the groceries on the conveyor belt I started thinking about things... like how even simple, repetative tasks like that don't have to be drudgery unless we let them. You can feel your muscles move as you do something like that, you can take pride in doing it quickly, efficiently, even gracefully... you can feel alive when doing simple work like that. I think that's a side of life that people as a whole feel disconnected from these days... the pleasures that can be found in work, and how to make work pleasurable. It's something I'm trying to reconnect with.
From there my thoughts took another random turn and I started pondering other tasks in my life that I have considered drudgery and have been unable to take such satisfaction from. Tasks that make me feel dead inside, rather than let me feel truly alive. The one that sprung to mind immediately was history class in highschool. I thought about why that was, and I realized that I truly felt no connection with the information that was given to us in that class. It's hard to feel connected to an almost random collection of historical events, names, and dates. We covered the history of various countries and various parts of the world in no particular order, very seldom taking the time to look at the overall interaction between the seperate regions we had studied, and in the end the information we were given was barely connected to itself, much less to us. Oddly enough, the phrase that best describes the way I think history should instead be taught comes from fiction. "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, in fact.
"Long past?"
"Your past."
Most of the point of history is to teach us the lessons of the past... or at least that's the most often quoted reason. "Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them." But unless it's a history that is told in a way that is relevant to us... unless it is our own history, a history we can feel truly connected to, it's hard to understand it all, much less truly learn from it. I think that's why history was once told in the form of stories.
After shopping, my grandfather and I went out to dinner, and then I dropped him off at his house and headed towards home, stopping at Barnes and Noble and Bed, Bath, and Beyond on that way. Saw quite a bit at both places that I wanted to buy... an overview of the history of ireland, a collection of sagas by or about iceland's warrior-poets (a phrase which always has the potential to catch my attention), and a guide to cooking which was heavy on the tools and how to use and care for them, the methods, and relatively light on the actual recipes which I have a ton of books about already. At Bed, Bath, and Beyond I also was looking at cooking stuff... a spice rack, a small rotating stand suitable as a free-standing shelf that would allow easy access to all of it's contents while fitting onto our countertop, a new spaghetti pot with built in strainer.
In the end though, the only thing I took with me was an old lesson that I was reminded of. There's a difference between those things we see that we can't live without, and those things which we actually need. The things I saw today will keep till I'm truly ready to get them... I don't need them yet.
So that's what I found at a Faery market today, and brought back with me... one cd and a few lessons. The cd was cheap, and the lessons actually saved me money. I wonder what I'll find the next time I go... it's just down that way, and a bit sideways.
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