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Today I wandered. There's a Scottish word for it, apparently, which is stravaigan. It's a word I've never used except to book a table at a very nice West End eatery, so I'll just say I had a spot of the wanderlust. Time for a link, and some music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxmL1iaZCDw
It does not help that I know who he was singing about in that song. Or that, since I met her, she's published at least two chick-lit novels, and rarely wears latex anymore. Insofar as I know. But whenever I think of Beatrice, I will always think of talcum powder, latex, and the Artist Formerly Known As Prince.
Did I mention that there would be links? There will be links. There may well be pictures. Oh, ok, there will definitely be pictures. Even if LJ insists on putting them in upside down. So, where were we?
Wandering.
Has anyone missed the fact that I'm in Dalriada, this weekend, on my own? Well I am. Dalriada doesn't exist, of course, but that saves me from having to decide if I'm in Kintyre, mid-Argyll, Argyll or Knapdale. All of which are, more or less, where I am.
So I think of Dalriada, a kingdom that predates Scotland, and has given us some very bad fantasy novels, and created some markers on the landscape which will never go away. I call them markers, and not monuments, or sites, or megaliths. It has more than a few of these things.
In fact, I went onto a site today, http://www.megalithic.co.uk/ , looking for a place I half remembered. If you type in "Kilmartin Glen" you get "Too many sites to display", which is a bit of a bind.
Basically, the landscape is littered with henges, standing stones, chambered cairns, chapels, cup and ring marks, castles, crannogs, kysts, duns, mosses and caves to such an extent that you can't throw a ceremonial axe-head around here without hitting a place of power.
And Places of Power are how I tend to think of them. For me, this area is like a giant circuit board, sign-posts sticking up above the earth every now and then like strange components on a Printed Circuit Board or, if you have the rightly skewed perspective, like bumpers on a pinball playing field.
If I try to have a nice quiet meditation anywhere around here, they light up in my head like pin-pricks of significance. If I'm not careful, my thoughts, my attention gets pulled willy-nilly to the rock faces at Achnabreck, or the stones at Temple Wood, or the whirlpool of Corryvreckan (the widow-maker, they call it). It's a great thing, in its way. If I touch any of these places, in my head, the power rushes from them, a torrent of prayer and attention and focus that goes back at least 5 millennia. Which is great for drawing sustenance, but for particular purposes it's as much use as dipping your hand in Niagara Falls and trying to tickle a trout.
Today, I wanted somewhere with a degree of unsophisticated holiness about it. Pagan sites are too hot, and red, and bloody for contemplation. A month or so ago I sat at the centre of Temple Wood http://www.freewebs.com/aenigmatis/Photo_Archive/Scotland/cist-temple-wood.jpg
and tried to think of peace. It didn't come easily. And "modern" Christian sites can be just as bad. The Bishop of Argyll was the first to translate and print Knox's Book of Common Prayer in Gaelic. By way of a response, the Lords of the Isles brought down his castle (Carnasserie) with gunpowder. The blood runs hot, around here.
So today I tried to think of somewhere a bit more Christian, a bit Celtic, a bit familiar with redemption, as well as judgement.
Which took me here, to the place where Columba preached when he was trying to drum up support for a monastery on Iona (and Iona is a whole other subject, resting place of Kings, cradle of Christianity, Island of the Descending Dove).
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=10587&map=1
Columba seems to have made his home in as many caves as Queen Bess laid her head, usually leaving a footprint or a font. This particular cave has a font, and an altar, and a quagmire. I slogged through the latter, and laid my own head against the cool, cool rock.
The altar was not what I remembered. In the last few years the rude platform has been decorated with gifts, in the Celtic style.
Scraps of cloth (cloots) wicker crosses, candles, coins.
Not part of the church I was brought up in. Older, by far, old when Columba stopped off here. But strangely familiar. You can take the boy's great-grandparents out of Ireland...
I settled myself down beside the font, or mortar, on a rock shelf, and looked outside for a while. It was a nice view.
After a while, I focused on my breathing, on the random fall of water, on the old stone beneath me. My mind calmed, by degree, and my thoughts fell to the rhythm of water, breath, stone. I had no questions to ask, just an openness to answers.
After a while, I couldn't tell you how long, I opened my eyes and, slowly, focused them on where my gaze fell, in that dark cave, at the tail end, the tale end, of winter, and I carried away a smile from that old place, a smile I'm sure Columba shared. Smile? Hell, I heard the old bastard laugh. Point your own morals, boys and girls, I'll settle for my portent of rebirth, and life breaking through in soil I thought was long exhausted.
Slainte.
It does not help that I know who he was singing about in that song. Or that, since I met her, she's published at least two chick-lit novels, and rarely wears latex anymore. Insofar as I know. But whenever I think of Beatrice, I will always think of talcum powder, latex, and the Artist Formerly Known As Prince.
Did I mention that there would be links? There will be links. There may well be pictures. Oh, ok, there will definitely be pictures. Even if LJ insists on putting them in upside down. So, where were we?
Wandering.
Has anyone missed the fact that I'm in Dalriada, this weekend, on my own? Well I am. Dalriada doesn't exist, of course, but that saves me from having to decide if I'm in Kintyre, mid-Argyll, Argyll or Knapdale. All of which are, more or less, where I am.
So I think of Dalriada, a kingdom that predates Scotland, and has given us some very bad fantasy novels, and created some markers on the landscape which will never go away. I call them markers, and not monuments, or sites, or megaliths. It has more than a few of these things.
In fact, I went onto a site today, http://www.megalithic.co.uk/ , looking for a place I half remembered. If you type in "Kilmartin Glen" you get "Too many sites to display", which is a bit of a bind.
Basically, the landscape is littered with henges, standing stones, chambered cairns, chapels, cup and ring marks, castles, crannogs, kysts, duns, mosses and caves to such an extent that you can't throw a ceremonial axe-head around here without hitting a place of power.
And Places of Power are how I tend to think of them. For me, this area is like a giant circuit board, sign-posts sticking up above the earth every now and then like strange components on a Printed Circuit Board or, if you have the rightly skewed perspective, like bumpers on a pinball playing field.
If I try to have a nice quiet meditation anywhere around here, they light up in my head like pin-pricks of significance. If I'm not careful, my thoughts, my attention gets pulled willy-nilly to the rock faces at Achnabreck, or the stones at Temple Wood, or the whirlpool of Corryvreckan (the widow-maker, they call it). It's a great thing, in its way. If I touch any of these places, in my head, the power rushes from them, a torrent of prayer and attention and focus that goes back at least 5 millennia. Which is great for drawing sustenance, but for particular purposes it's as much use as dipping your hand in Niagara Falls and trying to tickle a trout.
Today, I wanted somewhere with a degree of unsophisticated holiness about it. Pagan sites are too hot, and red, and bloody for contemplation. A month or so ago I sat at the centre of Temple Wood http://www.freewebs.com/aenigmatis/Photo_Archive/Scotland/cist-temple-wood.jpg
and tried to think of peace. It didn't come easily. And "modern" Christian sites can be just as bad. The Bishop of Argyll was the first to translate and print Knox's Book of Common Prayer in Gaelic. By way of a response, the Lords of the Isles brought down his castle (Carnasserie) with gunpowder. The blood runs hot, around here.
So today I tried to think of somewhere a bit more Christian, a bit Celtic, a bit familiar with redemption, as well as judgement.
Which took me here, to the place where Columba preached when he was trying to drum up support for a monastery on Iona (and Iona is a whole other subject, resting place of Kings, cradle of Christianity, Island of the Descending Dove).
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=10587&map=1
Columba seems to have made his home in as many caves as Queen Bess laid her head, usually leaving a footprint or a font. This particular cave has a font, and an altar, and a quagmire. I slogged through the latter, and laid my own head against the cool, cool rock.
The altar was not what I remembered. In the last few years the rude platform has been decorated with gifts, in the Celtic style.
Scraps of cloth (cloots) wicker crosses, candles, coins.
Not part of the church I was brought up in. Older, by far, old when Columba stopped off here. But strangely familiar. You can take the boy's great-grandparents out of Ireland...
I settled myself down beside the font, or mortar, on a rock shelf, and looked outside for a while. It was a nice view.
After a while, I focused on my breathing, on the random fall of water, on the old stone beneath me. My mind calmed, by degree, and my thoughts fell to the rhythm of water, breath, stone. I had no questions to ask, just an openness to answers.
After a while, I couldn't tell you how long, I opened my eyes and, slowly, focused them on where my gaze fell, in that dark cave, at the tail end, the tale end, of winter, and I carried away a smile from that old place, a smile I'm sure Columba shared. Smile? Hell, I heard the old bastard laugh. Point your own morals, boys and girls, I'll settle for my portent of rebirth, and life breaking through in soil I thought was long exhausted.
Slainte.
