Caela’s Story 18 #fiction #serial #somethingsacred #caela

Harmonic Academy’s philosophy of encouraging a variety of learning styles and peaceful self-expression was a positive nurturing environment for children who might feel pressured by social stigmatization of any kind in their neighborhood lives. With gorgeous rolling grounds, just far enough north of the hub of the city to be out of the way, it was a wonderful world of play in which to grow. The witchfolk children knew not to shine, not to stand out, to get along enticing no comment. They knew which teachers they could trust to help them with academic or personal concerns.

Out in the harsh eastern drylands, no one wanted to build their futures. Land more dust than loam, weeds more yellow bristly rough to the touch, creatures less shy, more mean, stinging angrily at whatever may disturb hard fought for and unforgiving territory. Sira had never been beyond the city to the east. She had been given warning images in her catechisms against careless disclosures. They might not exile someone like Sira if she should be fount out. They well might imprison her in horrible conditions, a much more viscerally palpable threat. It was in the harsh glaring sun of the unproductive east land that prisoners, pariahs from city justice, were sent for penitence.

All societies need prisons, don’t they? Time-out holes to hold the dangerous, or repositories for the politically and socially incorrect are hallmarks of civilization. Aren’t they? Well, not in a community in which a wrongdoer is immediately hit hard with the emotional toll wrought; not where the governing structure is more libertarian than democratic and disputes are honored by settling them through well-argued compromise. It is easier, of course, to settle disputes and prevent the welling up of criminal intentions within small enough social confines so that all parties are mutually well known. Once factions set up against factions, arguments intractably settled into place, disputes become institutionalized, and so do the losers.

Sira’s favorite teacher, Merin, was secretly a historian among her people. He was also a learned historian of their colony planet and of the home world, Earth. He was generally a favorite among the teachers and students for his easy friendly, yet passionately fierce manner, the way he made what might seem difficult concepts so immediate and real, the way he readily listened and deeply appreciated what was said to him. His intense mental thirst had led him to acquire a broad range of knowledge which it was his great joy and privilege to share. That Sira’s best friend, Reag, was Merin’s son only added to her estimation of them both.

Caela’s Story 16 #fiction #serial #somethingsacred #caela
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You are always going back into the forest. It helped to form you, as did your father’s seed, your mother’s womb and milk. What forms us, becomes us, we must explore, if only in dreams or strange obsessions, or unnatural silence.

Caela and Larik are quite a pair. Old and young, female and male, hyper-sensitive and numb to sensitivity, working out who they need to become in the cabin once a happy home to Caela, Singer and Felicity (with Maea and friends of the moment in tow). It naturally fell out that they be together. The boy who could not bond, could not fathom what was common to those around him, was bonded to Caela. She alone made sense to him. She had always been a part of who he was. Caela too felt a strong and special connection to this child. She also felt a need to find a way to heal him of the affliction resulting from a wound she also needed to heal within herself. Larik’s mother, Maea, meanwhile, was having difficulties and unpleasant awakenings of her own.

“He acts like I got pregnant on my own. Now it’s all my situation to deal with. As if he had no part in it at all.” Maea is speaking bitterly of Larik’s father, Larn, whom she clearly still adores. He has shown considerably less interest in her since it started to become evident that she would be more of a drain than an energizing inspiration. It’s not that he didn’t care for her; but there are many for whom he feels great fondness. All are subservient to his brightly shining visions, his grand plans and their imperatives. It is not that he is any different from the man she has known him to be, loved him for being, all along. Yet she feels bitterly disillusioned. She has lost her anchoring, her way, her understanding of and belief in who she had thought herself to be. She no longer feels part of the House community. For awhile she tries staying with her parents, spending much of her time with Caela and Larik, attempting to be a family. It is clear that Larik greatly prefers Caela, is shy and confused around Maea. Mirra and Doren have become set in routines to which Maea feels an outsider. She feels their love; but Maea feels awkward when she needs to find a respite of serenity in which to reconnect to herself, discover where her next steps need to lead.

Maea’s grandmother Maris’s place had been left behind, not too far from Jase’s outpost, as building moved further outward. The house is surrounded by plenty of land for their grazing animals, crops for fiber, feed and food for the household (supplemented by trade). It was a large house, built onto over the years to accommodate people and projects. Maris and here older daughters, Arla and Cali, still kept up their busy textile workshop. Cali’s longtime lover, Lilia, does her part as well, including her magnificently intricate and lovely embroidery to their bag of tricks. Lev, who has been living with Maris for decades now, assists with his carpentry, building equipment and furniture for the household and as part of their stock for trade. Always plenty of work for another pair of hands, and Maris informally takes in whoever wants to stay for as long as it all works out for them all. There is plenty of room in which to enjoy solitude, and plenty of companionship, easy-going or intense, depending on what one seeks. Caela comes around frequently with Larik. He likes the more private simple chores as he learns them, working with the animals and plants, away from the main farmlands of the community. His family knows not to pressure him, not to overwhelm him with expectations he has no ability to comprehend. Maea is getting better at dropping her own expectations for how life is meant to be.

Less enthusiastically involved with Larn, though still sympathetic to his vision, Felicity and Teren now live in their cabin near the House with little Solia. Solia, beautiful entertaining, entrancing, cuddly imp, is their perfect muse. They are developing their own project, based on their combined talents. Felicity’s knowledge of healing and Teren’s experience with creative expression have given them ideas about exploring the realm of possible expressive therapies. Working with others who are excited about possibilities of working out personal issues, improving health and attitudes, getting more intimately in touch with their inner muses, they are figuring out together how their theories can best be turned to practice.

A life expands into other lives, energies combining and recombining, creating human ecosystems. Like trees, each living through its own cycles within the cycles of the forest, we create our stories, our lore, our social networks.

Caela’s Story 15 #fiction #somethingsacred #caela

Contractions to crowning to birth, and Caela showing off their grandchild to Singer’s tears of overwhelming joy. Felicity, after screaming her head off in amazingly colorful language, and otherwise expending her legendary energy in biological abandon, now is blissfully happy to let her mom and dad extol her virtues. She smiles, though wanly, at Teren, sharing this moment of deep satisfaction. New mother and baby daughter, Solia, trade in their well-earned exhaustion for sleep.

Caela knows that where Felicity has gone, Maea won’t be far behind. She too takes this opportunity to nap between birthings.

Singer, with more emotional high than even he knew possible, makes for the woods to compose appropriately expressive song in collaboration with nature. She is certainly in a receptively collaborative mood, brewing up a storm. Loving the musicality of storm winds, driving rain, crashing thunder, cracking electricity, Singer exults. What a beautiful day!

Maea’s child, though clearly moving toward being born, has moved into an inappropriate position for ease in exit. Though not the norm, this situation is not one with which Caela is unfamiliar. She knows all it will take is intense concentration into this newly forming consciousness to guide the child into position. First casting an aura of calm through Maea to enhance relaxation, she calmly links to the baby, so gently he feels only the relaxed presence of mother love.

Despite the wildly loud storm picking up outside, within the House all is secure.

Deep crack of thunder and accompanying swath of light outside suddenly coincide with crashing painful agony so loud it reverberates throughout, it seems, the world. In an instant lives are shattered as one is lost, killed by the woods he loves.

There is nothing but screaming, blinding pain. Caela can always feel it if she looks there.

Maea, in shock and overload, suddenly freed from the woozy peace of Caela’s ministrations, goes through the motions necessary to complete her separation from newborn Larik. He appears a healthy, if inconsolable, child. All his parts in their right places seem to be functioning as expected. Maea is in no condition to notice what is missing, her mind overtaken with Caela’s silent screaming.

Caela of course knows what is wrong with Larik. She was right there with him when the world exploded. She knows, but such knowledge, all knowledge, has been cordoned off from her consciousness. She is only conscious of great, wet pain, crushing into hard, damp ground, crushing out of breath and life. She is no longer alive. All the places throughout her being that have always been filled with Singer are gone. There is no more screaming.

Larik was silent. Suddenly Maea knew. The bond was absent. That part in her people’s minds capable of sending and receiving immediate perceptions, memories, raw emotion and emotional bonding, had been horribly wounded in Larik by the circumstances of his birth.

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Caela’s Story 14 https://caelastory.blogspot.com/2009/08/something-sacred-caelas-story.html
#fiction #serial #somethingsacred #caela

In the way of human destinies, it was not more than two seasons before Maea and Felicity were full of the wondrous news that they both were with child. Sharing their happiness with their parents in the superior manner of the young who seem to believe they have invented biology, they also share their courageous trepidation in the throes of new experience. Caela reassures them. This is just another adventure they will have together.

Entering a forest only seems more courageous than entering life because of the illusion of choice. We hear a calling. That compelling cry will not cease without an answer, no matter how we may try to quell or override it. What we answer, how we comport ourself over the journey, that we may choose. That choice may still be illusion, but of the kind extolled as prophetic in dreams.

Maea’s paternal grandmother, Narda the historian, had been part of history herself. She had been one of a small council of negotiators sent to plead the case of what were called the witchfolk to a council of leaders from the city’s government. The city leaders didn’t want bloodshed on their watch. They wanted a peaceful, prosperous reign. It was concluded that the small minority population causing all this excitement by their existence in the city must be banished. No problem. This planet has plenty of land thus far free of humanity. The native creatures have not shown signs against encroachment in all these centuries since men began doing business in this enclave. Send them far enough from here that they become a distant memory, eventually not even that. No need to be cruel. The elderly and infirm can live out their days in their familiar homes. Certainly they can do no harm in the time they have left. But we can’t allow the young and strong to have technological tools that might facilitate a future return or ongoing communication. The contract was made with the understanding that the witchfolk historians would remember and honor it, carry it forward to their historians to come. Being a small, out of favor, minority, they agreed to a contract of exile in return for freedom and life.

Fearful as exile had been to those who lived it, for the younger generations it has become more of an opportunity. They have been born into a society with few overt rules and an appreciation of creative innovation. The basic, primitive material conditions, depending on their own muscles and skills rather than elaborate machinery, makes for immediate appreciation of good ideas.

Larn had good ideas. He was idolized by his peers for his audacity of vision, and ambition. Maea is prouder than proud, higher than the stars, to be carrying their child.

Felicity as well is (surprisingly, more quietly) glowing in that rapture of love and hormones. Felicity and Teren are so sweet together. Caela’s heart pitter-pats to see them. They share a larger room in the House now, with an area they are preparing as a nursery. Family arrangements are flexible and fluid within the House. There are shared nursery and children’s rooms for less unitary families. There is plenty of loving nurturing to go around. As Felicity and Teren become more closely bonded, though, they are talking about perhaps moving into a cabin near the House eventually. Right now they are comfortable where they are, busily involved in the House community projects. There is the theater, and the classes they teach, and the classes and workshops they attend. Of course there are still the farm chores on rotation and the day-to-day hands on with whatever those hands are being asked to do. Felicity and Maea know they can be called to accidents at any time. Then, Teren, like Felicity’s father, Singer, seems to be compelled to irregular and unscheduled calls from the muse.

Caela’s Story 13 #fictiion #serial #caela #somethingsacred

It is a brightly sunny day. They are outside Caela and Singer’s cabin in impromptu picnic formation. Felicity, of course, moving about dramatically, striking poses, flourishing her arms, then flopping down close to share an intimate giggle. Maea, more languid, lies on her stomach in soft weeds shaded by a large, wide-leafed tree. Caela sits beside her, back leaning comfortably against the living wood. Singer has gone off to play in his merry woodlands, leaving the women to their own conversational recreation. Maea and Felicity live in the House, a large many-roomed multi-purposed well and lovingly made structure for the many and multi-talented men, women and children who created this home for themselves. Of course, there are still many families and individuals who prefer their own small cottages. The main thrust of this still newly self-creating society these days, however, is to an energizingly interactive while securely nurturing group arrangement. Still, Felicity and Maea have discovered living apart from their parents that they enjoy their company as lively, intelligent people, so visit often.

“So, what about your love lives?” Caela pulls them in with an impish grin, knowing that young women (or anyone) like nothing better than to swoon over the virtues of The One, or the one who makes them giddy at the moment. Mirra has joined them, meandering over from her cabin nearby with a delicious beverage she has concocted from fermented fruits and herb teas. Passing around the jug, the younger women regale their mothers with heartfelt romantic glimpses of the gorgeous House-mates they each are developing eyes for. Mirra and Caela, happily ensconced in their decades old romances, vicariously enjoy these youthful fancies.

Mirra’s Doren, Maea’s dad, is her half-brother Singer’s half-brother on his father’s side. The oldest of Jase’s scattered seeds, Doren is a historian, learning their people’s stories from infancy directly from his mother, Narda, Jase’s wife in the before world. That time has become an extension of the history Doren carries, that deep forest of lore we continue to learn from, roots to our scattered lives.

Though closer in age to Mirra’s sister Cali, Maris’s middle daughter, Doren had early been captivated by the younger sister’s easy smile and impish humor. Their young love grew with them into abiding magnetic affection. Maea may gently mock her parents’ shining glow in each others’ presence. She does this partially because she knows she wants this sweet enduring kind of romance for herself.

Maea is a’bubble these days over handsome and dynamic Larn. He is a young man already generally known as a leader, the kind who inspires with his own passion. He has an idea about art, creating space and audience for performing artists to generate performances — a synergistic pursuit. He has been part of the driving force of the House as a place of learning and creative projects. Maea is filled with admiration, enthusiasm, tender adoration, ravishing attraction. The bubbling of her blood, percolation of joyful molecular transforming of her metaphoric heart, is because he has been steadily showing her that she quickens his blood, enhances his days.

Felicity too has got herself an artist. Teren, sweet and shy, in his own world of brilliant visions, creates beauty in color and form, in magical emotional performances, in any and every medium he can find his way into playing with. He has been clearly showing his admiration of the archly dramatic young woman who has joined him in his dreams and playful waking life flirtations.

Singer returns to join his family in lightly dionysian merriment. His musical charms move them into giddy dance. Taking hands to hands, twirling into bumbling graceful laughter, expending any pent up coagulated energies into welcome release, celebrating this beautiful day. In a short while appetite turns them to devising a quick yet sumptuous feast from gardens and larders. Doren returns from teaching his regular history seminar at the House in time to join in.

After the food, the silly repartee, earnest conversations, cleaning up and good-night hugs, all make way to their own beds, their own private places, for the night. Caela and Singer, making love, though every act between them is an act of love, expressing the blessing of their human life celebration, drift lazily together in the afterglow.

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Caela’s Story 9 #fiction #serial #somethingsacred #caela

Caela could call up her memories, flip through them like sequential cards to show a movie of brief scenes synthesized from the years. Felicity appears infant, small child, young woman, active energized multi-faceted adult. Caela is in awe of this miraculous creature, feels honored by her part in this creation. What can be more fulfilling than a child’s hand, safe and trusting within yours, letting go to reach out to a great shining world of living? Reminders of Singer, Maris, Lev, herself in unconscious poses, sets of expression, features of face, form, characteristics of speech, inflections, yet so much more than a summary of parts cut and pasted from doting family. Felicity had a well-decided mind of her own which she was always ready to give a piece of to make a point, or just keep the argument going. She loved to laugh, especially at her own foibles, easily dissolved into tears at a touch of sadness, especially the shared sadness of a friend. She could plant an affectionate kiss, a warm hug, a strong eager to help pair of hands, dance away with merriment in her eyes, enlarge the heart she had opened to snuggle into a place she conjured, sweet and savory, gently unyielding, a force to be reckoned with wielding her enchanting smile.

They were a happy family, blessed by each other.

Of course life never goes smoothly, predictably, moment to moment. That wouldn’t be living, but some kind of preordained hell. We may think, especially in the throes of terrifying chaos, that we want that smooth predictability. We need the thrill of intense emotions. We need the unexpected to shake us into awareness of just who we are, how far we can go, how much we can do. Drama doesn’t negate happiness. If anything, it deepens it, freshens and sweetens. Shared emotion is continually reinforcing bonds. Caela was often, irregularly, called upon to deepen skills in coping with drama. Accidental injuries would require her to find her own calm healing instructions for sharing with the aggrieved suffering injured party. Young Felicity often accompanied her mother, an apprentice healer in the making. It was so normal to her, even from the womb, to be giving this service, refining this skill. It was not like young Caela’s desperate search for the cure that would return her mother’s loving presence to her life. Felicity, like her father, Singer, took naturally to the blessings of her life. Joyful self-determination emanated from her like the invigorating peace of a pristine waterfall.

Singer, Caela, Felicity, good people all, integrated into a community that loved and respected them. This is not a lesser challenge nor tribute than that of warriors against a deadly foe.

When Caela went into the forest to reverse the original great journey of her life, she was alone. It was because she lived alone, closer to the forest mouth than her community’s center of activity, and because of the reason she did so, that she went into that forest journey. Her extraordinary sensitivity had been harnessed and honed to the purpose of healing. There grew to be other quite competent healers, most with the help of her training. The younger crowd, now of age for responsible leadership and self-rule, had a quicker style, somehow both more formal and informal than Caela liked. They were certainly happy for her company, and advice, any aid she gave. She was certainly happy to give what she could, enjoy their companionship, but not all the time. She found she craved a luxury of solitude to listen to the natural sounds, and the lyrics of her own voice. She liked the kind of thinking akin to dreaming that told her old tales mixed with memories and sudden discoveries all weaving into moments of delight without need to share. Thus, tuning her sensitivity away from the people she knew, loved and let go their own way, Caela was able to discern a far away call they never noticed. At first she may have thought it the call of her own spirit to take up a new adventure. Of course, it was that, her spirit in synchrony with other forces of events.

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Caela’s Story 6 #fiction #serial #somethingsacred #caela

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Singer loved to explore, or rather wander into serendipity, in the vast woods surrounding the community. There had been a great enterprise of clearing space for shelters and farmland, as well as, as different projects were conceived, commons for whatever needed accommodation. Wood cleared for space was a major resource as well for buildings, furniture, fire fuel, whatever could be fashioned from it. Very little dent was made in the deep, deepening, deeper acres of forest which had long dominated that part of their world. The city from which they had come and its outlying farmlands and open fields had been cleared forest, developed over time and perceived need for open space in which to grow, build, civilize.

The exiled, at the beginnings still of their epic march, upon reaching the outlying farming area thought to exchange the money they carried, as they were leaving a social market system in which it could be of value, for tools, seed, livestock. They understood they would need to start a new farming community far within the forest still to come on their journey, once that land could be attained and cleared. Ready food and food preserved for future readiness on their way to their new home land was also purchased, as well as grazing pack animals, adapted to the local flora, appropriately accoutered to help in carrying the load.

This forest had never evidenced harboring creatures with any interest in preying on man. The local wildlife were mostly small and herbivorous. Those who were carnivores were content with the smaller forest creatures upon which they had always preyed. Even the large farm animals brought with man as frozen embryos to eventually be bred for foodstock (as who could know if indigent species would be nutritive to man) were not part of the dietary plan of indigent carnivores. For the most part, they preferred to lie low, maintain an invisible noninterference compact.

Singer felt in tune with the natural world, the living planet. It gave him a constant flow of music he could feel throughout his body, rhythm, melody, sweet sweeping choruses, in constant improvisation. He loved wandering in the woods, singing along. Caela knew to find him there when he hadn’t already dragged her along proclaiming on beauty and the sensual thrill of it all.

Making love on a bed of wet, slippery leaves, at one with the glistening beat of the rain, she could feel the smile inside her expanding into ecstasy. Singer’s smile, where she felt rooted.

Of course there were the never-ending flow of chores. Everyday was the cooking, cleaning, tending to livestock, cultivating crops, repairing clothing, furnishings, tools. Then there were always adjunct chores to bigger projects, buildings, planting and harvesting, manufacture of what useful items had been designed, even preparations for celebrations fell under the category of chores, work needing to be done.

Caela’s Story 4 #fiction #serial #somethingsacred #caela
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There were other people back there/then, bound up in who she was, who she has become. Now she is happy to pick out their voices in this visit to her past, her child mind.

Her memories drifting, focus in on Maris, strong hands, open caring face. “Singer’s mother, but in so many ways a mother to me.” Maris had taught her to sew, a strangely relaxing use of her hands and so practical for keeping garments in repair. She did not have Maris’s talent, nor her daughters’, Singer’s sisters, for the magic of the cloth. She did not seem to have the necessary patience. She did enjoy those times of womanly intimacy among Maris and her girls, sharing reminiscences, studying together in their conversation worlds of ideas and discoveries. The instance that occurred to her now was from when she was of the age still a child but starting to become aware of the intricate charms of romance. Puzzled by what was not evident from Maris’s reminiscing, she had asked:

“Why aren’t you angry, bitterly angry, when you speak of Aron? He betrayed you, deserted you and your children to keep his happy easy life.”

Aron had been Maris’s husband, father of her girls (but not Singer), back in the city, before the troubled times that marked her community’s history. Aron had left Maris rather than be exiled with her. He was not of the marked group except by marriage. The marriage had to go, not him.

“There is no need to annoy myself with anger.” Maris had pointed out. “He is the one who has missed out on this life, caught in the intrigues and unfortunate values we left behind. He is quite angry, ashamed, disappointed with himself, and does not have me to help him sort out his frustrations and confusions. I must admit, looking back, that a good part of why I was attracted to him, why I married him, was that he felt so needy at a time when I was consumed by the need to be needed. Having kids makes that nonoptional, puts it into immediate focus. Aron’s needs were no longer so important to me. Now, I’m not sorry that I loved him. I am sorry for him for giving up on himself, what he could have been if he’d ever really believed he could. When we’re young we take so much on faith in the future to make up for our ignorance.”

That was the kind of thing Maris would say. It all made sense in her clear, deliberate imagery, punctuated by wisps of passionate emotion that Caela had not understood at the time.

What would Singer say? The very young Singer when they were children working out together what must be the meaning, the appropriate attitudes toward life; Singer through all the years until the years that no longer held him. He was always with her still, in a sense by her side. She could feel his strength, unwavering sincerity, light gentleness of being. She could hear him lapsing into song as an integral part of whatever task or frivolity engaged him. He had always been so present in her life, from very early years. They had grown together such that his physical presence though missed was never essential to their bond.

Children together, parents together. Felicity had something of her mother’s gift for healing, though not her intensity. She was more her father’s easy-going side-kick, bright, flirtatious, friendly in that way of caressing openness, that sunny temperament that everybody loves. See her loving her life in the chaotic home she creates and shares with so many busy friends, constant activities, every day a celebration. Singer and Felicity always bubbling over with fun, enticing Caela to let go and enjoy the merriment. Just thinking of them always lightened her heart, widened her smile, brought laughter to her eyes.

He would say: “There is so much beauty, in here, out there, everywhere. Come, enjoy it all with me. Open your senses, feel that everpresent amazement when you take it all in. Feel me experiencing with you, my most precious friend.” Yes, he would be dancing, hugging, exhorting with melody and rhythm, imaging a clownish comedy of musical movement, hyperbolized flowering woods filled with glorious natural delights. She could feel his dancing eyes, sunlight smile, adoration, fused into the Singer center of her mind. Always.

Caela’s Story 3 #fiction #serial #somethingsacred #caela

She could feel the presence of the small frightened creatures that hid from her in the woods. It was easy to find one simple mind and hypnotize it with projected imagery. The creatures would respond from a place of which they had no awareness, the way fish are unaware of water or humans are unaware of the chemical stew bubbling out commands through our bodies. Calming the creatures, she felt a sympathetic calm, helping her to learn correspondences between the feelings within her and others. People were more complex, but also more familiar. The problem was more in keeping the separation along with the intimate connection so she could find the way in to help, to heal, without being overwhelmed or trapped in the shared pain. That was part of her problem in trying to find her way into a healing position with Letta. Her mother was too much a part of her, too easy to get lost in the sharing and fall forever to no one’s benefit. So far, at least, the delicate balance escaped her abilities. Again and again she was made aware that she was still a young child with a great deal to learn about, well, everything. Children often feel an urgency to grow up, to become smart and important like the grown-ups who inform their world. She didn’t feel frustrated and impatient so much as willing, willing her self to absorb the knowledge and skill she needed.

But it was not all like that. There was so much more to being a child, including the everpresent possibility of pure wonder, pure joy, great exhausting laughter, strong arms to lean into and feel safe.

It’s not about where we are or what we have. Children don’t start out with expectations, but with simple basic needs and a readiness to make what sense they can of whatever presents itself as their life.

Old Caela watches young Caela at play, from a great distance of time and circumstance. Memories, experiences, that came between separate them. Old Caela recognizes the child and that they share secrets from which she can still learn, take a special kind of comfort, see a shining thread of something she wants to call truth.

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