Pagan Godspell

Greetings, best beloveds, from the fog-enshrouded fields of the not-so-wild midwest!

Snow gathers in the thick of low-hanging clouds that smell like the North and have a Woman cackling in them. Mother Holle gathers her bedclothes and makes ready to shake down over the corn stubble, making modest the naked Land. The first snows of late fall. Signaling fine, they come, they come. Dusting the branches of skeletal trees.

Oh, and here I am. Full and brimming and struggling to find words. Dissolving in the delicious golden light of a dimly lit room, sipping cinnamon & turmeric tea touched with the miracle of honey, thinking of vanilla brandy. Wondering what a perfume called “Winter Light” might smell like, dreaming with my eyes open, steeping homemade cranberry midwinter liqueur and reading about coffee filled with cardamom.

The achingly cold nights that have led me so far into my bones now tease me out into my tongue and hands. The fastest way to bring me back to myself is with a spicy cup of tea. My body was made to touch and taste, to smell and hear and see. I can’t help but roll through the gorgeousness of the world on the best instruments the Mama has given – a sensualist’s manifesto.

I have had a full to bursting couple of weeks – brought out of my bonewalk into an explosion of color and light, into laughing and city wildernesses, into labyrinthine bookstores and storytelling concerts. The season of richness and smallest lights in the darkness is cusping. My mystic’s hat seems permanently affixed to my head lately – it’s good to be brought up to the breathing world by pink cheeks and dancing. The path of my beloved Pagani is a sensualist path, and I am reminded of its joys and its loveliness, plucked even in the teeth of the grotesque, here in the gloaming, when just this evening the sky caught on holy fire and no one was left unmoved. What were these bodies made for but to celebrate and mourn and eat and sweat and pray?

Over here, the smell of cloves. Over here, a ragdoll made of thrownaway pieces of gingham and velvet. Over here, a stretch of fiddle music or a crusty bass line, impossible to resist.