(no subject)

I wrote this in June 2017. Still haven't a clue what it's about.

IN ALBION
In Albion the wind that cuts the shore
bone white, then riven by the sky and sea,
runs inward like the moonshod horse
lopping the grass upon old Dragon hill,
And when the sun comes up, it moves the land
around the stones, so honeymen may say;
Twisting the tale with open lip and hand
grown fat as sheep among the beanfields fed.
Albion's bard is wind on moor and wave,
And for her love, both George and Arthur bled
Who speak no more but tourney endlessly
From unknown barrow to old iron keep
And from Drakes drum no bidding beat shall come,
though many turn in an unquiet sleep.

Katabasis

A friend on FB writes on the subject today.There's so much to admire among my friends who weave some deeper sense of the spiritual out of many strands, herblore and folklore, saints of the church and visions of the heathern, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, and of course, Rupert the Bear...

https://www.facebook.com/caitlinmatthews.author?fref=search&__tn__=%2Cd%2CP-R&eid=ARBBQStqi0GRHtChGXNYNRnBa4y9YsuKrK02kuOe3v6Df0ArNGG9rU6gVxg8VI4W4YN49VacMw3pIicv

Katabasis is a new word to me. It sets me thinking of my own journeys to the Underworld.

I don't mean the Underworld as a bad thing, or darkness as a metaphor for evil. My life's been all about light and dark, not as some dreary bunfight of opposites but as something beyond me to define, something else. I used to sleepwalk as a child, not often but occasionally. It worried Mum, because she feared me breaking my neck on the stairs. She recounted her experience of waking up to see me in her bedroom standing at the window. Scared and cross, she demanded to know what I was doing. I answered,'I will see the dawn.'

She scolded me awake, then sent me to bed.

One of my earliest memories is of bright sunlight in Spain and Singapore, though I was born in England and my first descent was in returning to that grey-dark, more prison-like and often not as interesting as it sounds. But the descent is not always linear; one doesn't immediately go directly down 'to the next level', meaning to another test slightly harder than the one last succeeded. Nor is it a labyrinth. It is, as Rupert Bear discovered, 'a series of fabulous kingdoms'. This particular fabulous kingdom was often very sad and dangerous, but it had millions of stories in it, many of which I still haven't recorded. Perhaps it won't happen. Why should those stories matter to anyone other than me, even assuming I could express them?

And I fell and kept falling through strange landscapes and mysteries, meeting all sorts of beings. As mythic journeys go, mine make the Argo look like a taxi with satnav. I don't care how indignant Odysseus' expression might be at the suggestion, even if we grant him his 20 years plus 5 extra of warring and wandering, I still beat him hands down on spending decades wondering what the hell is going on.

Royton was sunny at first and then grew grey, but it was on the edge of something very dear to me, and I wrote my first book there. Then London again and immense fun, and the unseelie house, which I loved; it was not sad but dangerous for sure, Thomas of Eildon's river of blood flowing right through it. Next came the light on Shooters Hill, all green leaves and sunsets. And now I am here, where the sun lingers till something like 10 pm, and the road at the back of the house leads due west, straight into the dream lands. What a strange but perfectly traditional fairy tale, to find oneself walking twilit roads only to stumble out into a place of light. I recall memories of reading 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,' where one character is described as being able to appreciate a garden without needing fairies at the bottom of it. All well and good, Ford Prefect, but if they're there, how can you unsee them?