When i first started Facebook and MySpace in late August ’09 i began with 17 friends, and even then that seemed too many! i imagined 17 whisper-thin, silver, wire threads exuding from my forehead (third eye chakra/pineal gland) connecting into the ‘hub’, and out again into each other individual.
It was awful, i felt i could see what they could see and feel what they could feel, and the imagery became too intense.
i almost closed my accounts in confusion but took good advice, and learned how to shut the portal! Thus i created the Astral Caravan…as a spiritual retreat…and this is how my stories began.
Weaving thoughts and dreams with the status updates of others, anything out of the ordinary, inspiring or thought provoking that caught my eye….an organic fractal, branching out, with Fibonacci root and flower…..
What i now refer to as the ‘Facebook ricochet’.
Arden and How are a good example of this, for they exist, just as much in the real world, as they do in the astral realm…
Welcome to the weaver’s world …
“i made safe the caravan and untethered Shadowstorm and Starwalker…..they made their way slowly, quietly, to the nearby stream to sip the water…..ahead, lay the forest walls…..trees, gathered so closely together, there seemed no path that we could follow…..and all the time the moon was sleeping, wrapped in …silken cloth and hidden from the eyes of wolves…..
We’d travelled all day…..i walked ahead of the caravan, chopping at the brambles and the thorns so the horses were not hurt…..the more polite trees, it seemed moved aside of their own volition, and bowed as they felt the invisible rays from the magical glow of the moon, hidden deep within the silky veil that lay in the battered casket, beneath the cushions…
On the great journey through the forest, we stopped awhile, and there spied, in the most wondrous glade, the stall of Essence…..messrs Arden and How….. “purveyors of fine spices” read the curlicue sign…..but i wondered what essence they’d sell…..happiness…..excitement? Beside the workshop were giant bellows…..and the fire roared in harmony to each blast of air…..
i wondered though…..if the essence they sold, in tiny blue bottles, were to be mixed with water before it was taken…..perhaps like orange squash, and then i thought…..to add water to squash does not make orange squash into orange ‘juice’…..does the essence of something then, remain the whole…..or is it just a partial memory…..?
Delightfully, ENHANCED…..especially as it is purveyed in little blue vials…..and audacity of hope…..might be the first to be condensed…..who knows…..
3 pieces of silver i drew from my pocket…. “is this enough?” I ventured…..looking Arden squarely in the eye…..but it was How who replied…. “not quite enough for some vials,” she whispered wisely…. “yet more than enough for others..”
Hmm, i thought, what essence then should i choose…..and at that moment it was the moon who spoke…. “Choose HOPE”
i sipped…..and sweet it tasted…..how then, might this elixir steer me through these darkened leaves…..i decided to lead the horses myself…..in turn of course, they pulled the caravan…..and i hacked at stronger branches, till at last we found that the densely packed trees began to clear…..wolves though…..were all around…..and snarled like greedy monsters and salivating at our every step…..
As the beasts caught my stride, an instant metamorphosis came over me, i stopped, and shuddered as my back begun to arch and i was forced to fall on all fours……the wolves gathered round me like strange brethren, and i begun to howl…..but i was not yet done…..i reached into my pocket and grasped the small blue vial labeled simply ‘hope’, i sipped, it took just one drop, and instead of wolf, i changed to fox
…..as fox i weaved between the lupus forms…..i was fast and they could not match my speed…..i dived for the bramble and the briar…..some followed, but their larger bodies snagged on the branches and thorns…..as i slipped through, ears ripped and bleeding, they in turn were trapped like flies in a web…..
At that moment, i heard the Astral Caravan thunder down the road that cut through this part of the forest, and there, on the driver’s platform, sat Mukunda, the swami…..Shadowstorm and Starwalker flew, like transcendental thoroughbreds, burning through the ether so the barbs could not hinder them…..the wolves howled as their black fur ignited and….. parted like a sea of embered coals before the flame…..and even the sturdiest brambles begun to burn…..as they flew past, Mukunda reached down to take me by the paw. As soon as he did so, my hand was flesh again, and i was swept, no longer as fox, but as man, beside him, and we flew into the astral sea, a magic carpet ride…..and disappeared into shadows of the night……
Richmond Harding is a musician and weaver of digital communication threads.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Harding’s writing has been a great inspiration to me for some time. Great to see him published here and to get the opportunity to take a look around the rest of the magazine.
thankyou so much niki….and as you see, i too owe you a debt, for without you, there would be no 17 silver threads …..to explain….
Explain…
simply that you allowed me to use that extract from the email i sent you, which captured my moment ‘then’, ‘that NOW’ in words like a photograph….
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